FIA and F1

In light of some of the more ridiculous non-sense up in the air in F1, I thought I will write this post.

I have been following the sport since 2000. Probably the first couple of seasons that I watched were the best ever that I have come across. After 2002 FIA went berserk with rule changes and I have seen no abatement since.

In 2000 Michael Schumacher won his third championship. Till then everything had been fine. When he managed to win two consecutive championships, voice began to grow that Formula 1 had become boring. This voice belonged only to a small number of correspondents who belonged to France and England. Then in 2002, FIA, the Paris based governing body began some radical changes to the rules, which began with the change of the qualifying format, they have just been changing things ever since.

I personally felt, F1 was fun. You should have asked the millions of Michael and Tifosi fans, if the sport had become boring? The answer would have been a unanimous 'NO'. The problem was that here was a German driver, in an Italian team whopping everybody else. The other teams (French and English mostly) were not getting it their way. Reminds you somewhat of the second world war, does it not? So FIA got into the act and ensured that there was no way for this domination to continue. They changed every rule in the book, over the next two years. The only thing that remained was that there were drivers, who drove cars around a circuit. They changed qualification format, engine specs, aerodymanics, the right for a team to act as a team, car configuration, the works. Everything was changed.

All of this culminated in Michael and Ferrari being dethroned. Though it was not the rule changes but the additional tyre company, Michelin, that had made it possible, FIA took all the credit for it.

All the FIA had done was to increase the cost of participation and made it increasingly difficult for the smaller teams to co-exist. In the midst of the recession in the last two years, this resulted in auto majors like Honda and Toyota bidding farewell to the sport. The commercial rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone was not too pleased to see this happen.

So they went ahead and banned in-season testing. This meant more dependence on technology for car development. More hours on wind tunnel, more simulations, etc. Again, smaller teams were threatening to quit within a year. At this point, they introduced budget caps on how much a team could spend on its operations. All said and done, they have no right to control this aspect and again they are deceiving themselves into believing that they are in control, while that is not the case.

Then the issue of overtaking being non-existent came to light last year. Their solution for the same was to introduce a bunch of technologies, which is going to cost teams a lot more. Way to go about cutting cost. Now, they are proposing to make F1 a formula which will use 4 cylinder engines so that the costs are lowered. So much for being the pinnacle of motor-sport. There are private series run by Audi which use 8 cylinder engines, and this is the vision they have for the so called "Pinnacle of Motor-Sport".

FIA is a stupid organization, which has not the slightest hint about motor-sport. They have eroded the brand value of F1 and are going to very soon destroy the formula altogether with their pin-headed thinking. In order for F1 to survive, the first thing that needs to happen is that FIA should go. They should be given an unceremonious send off. But Bernie does not want this, since he believes that the FIA is the only thing between him and the teams taking over the commercial rights of the sport.

Bernie's greed disallows him to do the right thing for the sport. FIA's stupidity is running the sport into the ground. As far as I can see, the only team that depends heavily of F1 for marketing is Ferrari, since they do not go mass market. The culmination of this entire story is going to be the reduction of Formula 1 into a pony race and the complete erosion of its commercial value. Those companies that really care about making fast cars and racing will continue to do so without being involved in this nonsense, there are several examples such as Lamborghini, Bugatti, etc. The rest of them will continue to waste their money.