Quote:
Originally Posted by veeten
The problem is the difference between it and the aforementioned CART.
CART was a get together of racing teams and their managers (Gurney, Penske, et al), going against the then-USAC and IMS. The manufacturers of racing engines (Honda, Toyota, Mercedes, etc,)were on the sidelines, watching the outcome.
With FOTA, it is the manufacturers that are staging this, against the FIA and FOM.
Like CART, FOTA's major (manufacturer) members will have more incentive to micromanage the rules and regulations to their individual interests, especially one in particular. The individual that they choose to be the President of their organisation will look more of a figurehead than anything else, as the real power will reside among the manufacturers.
As this kind of politicing goes on, the very same smaller teams will feel manipulated, either by their votes or their association through their powertrain contracts, and have even less chance of being heard by the 'board of directors', and will leave.
And where will they go?... back to the original racing organisation, in whatever shape they have manifested themselves into.
History has taught us this, in many forms and facets. This will be just another example of pure intentions with hidden agendas, resulting in bad ends.
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I'll agree with that, with the caveat that the CART-USAC war the manufacturers were a non-factor. The early '80s was dominated by the Cosworth engine and it wouldn't be until the late '80s when the manufacturers started coming in en masse.
As far as the current thing, if FOTA breaks away, everyone there will be looking out for their own self-interest like they did in CART where all the team owners hated each other just because it's natural due to the system they setup. The one good thing in this case would be that the teams mostly build their own cars, so you won't have chassis controlled by one owner and he picks and chooses his competition. (Screw you Carl Haas!)
The only difference I see here is you have one bad system where there's a dictator telling you what to do and there's little logic to their decisions which cost everyone a lot of money (we're going to force KERS on everyone and then we'll back off a bit and then we'll get rid of it altogether) and they're only imposing cost controls so that the shareholders in the sport can take even more money while giving the teams less and racing in far flung places with no fans like Abu Dhabi financed by corrupt governments, and there's another bad system where the teams are going to bicker with one another. So you're choosing between bad and bad.
If I was a team owner, I'd choose the breakaway with the understanding that it will create its own set of problems, just because there are so many hands in the money pool for F1 that those people that take part in graft and corruption that need to get weeded out of the sport by not receiving enough money that should be going into the sport to improve the spectacle instead of taking it out of the sport to finance corrupt individuals' lifestyles. The manufacturers running their own championship has a lot of flaws, but I would accept those flaws instead of Max and Bernie at this point. Not to mention, all those smaller teams that didn't get their entry accepted, well if there's a new manufacturer series I'm sure they'll allow you to enter.