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Originally Posted by BSchneiderFan
I can't really believe that anyone who has an ounce of feeling for the heritage of Formula 1 thinks the sport would be better off without Ferrari.
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Why so? F1 would be better off if Ferrari left IMO. If Ferrari don't want to be part of the future of F1, then leave. Are we as F1 fans supposed to hang on to the past - and Ferrari's apparent "heritage" just so they can dictate terms in F1? Are we to put up with the series being stale or even going backwards just to appease Ferrari??
IMO, one of the good things that could happen if Ferrari left, would be to distribute the extra $100M bonus Ferrari receives among the mid to lower end teams to help bring them up the grid, and in doing so hopefully produce better and much more exciting racing.
I fully agree with the below, by ESPN's Nate Saunders regarding Ferrari's threats. And believe FOM/LM should hold the door wide open for Ferrari to walk through. Enough of the games and favouritism.
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Undoubtedly, if Ferrari ever did follow through with one of its many quit threats, it would be a significant blow for Formula One in the short term. But the idea that somehow F1 would be unable to survive without the Italian team is ridiculous -- there is much more to the top level of motorsport than having two red cars on the grid every year.
F1 has been guilty of treating Ferrari with far too much reverence for a long time. It currently gets a ridiculously good deal for being in the sport. It gets paid (very well) just to show up and can veto proposals it doesn't like. All of that comes guaranteed regardless of where it finishes -- it has not won a title in a decade despite the favourable terms of its deal.
As for the idea that a title won in an F1 without Ferrari would lack value: an energy drinks company has won eight F1 titles in the 10 years Ferrari -- the team supposedly bigger than the whole sport -- has failed to win one. History has demonstrated that fans will watch F1 regardless of how Enzo Ferrari's team is doing. F1's golden era of the late 1980s and early 1990s also came during a barren spell, one that saw the team go 21 years without a drivers' championship -- that lack of success hardly diminished the value of the championships won during that time. The biggest star of that era, Ayrton Senna, became a global icon despite never once driving in its iconic red colours. If you take away its dominant spell of the early 2000s, Ferrari's on-track performances in the past few decades hardly warrant the mythology that always comes with the Maranello team.
Away from F1, Ferrari holds a very prestigious place in what is still a niche and elite market: selling supercars. F1's rule makers have unveiled an engine blueprint for beyond the 2020 season that, among other things, hopes to lure new manufacturers. That includes the likes of Aston Martin and Porsche, while fellow supercar maker McLaren uses F1 as the main platform for its own multifaceted company. As driver-turned-TV-pundit Martin Brundle pointed out in a tweet last week, nothing has the global reach of Formula One in motorsport and those other companies would gleefully step into Ferrari's place at the top table of the sport's biggest series. Whether Ferrari's brand would be affected by leaving is another argument, but F1 would not struggle to find willing replacements.
Red Bull has issued several similar threats to quit in recent seasons, all of which seemed as hollow as Marchionne's most recent declaration. Why? Because Red Bull would be foolish to walk away, and Dietrich Mateschitz knows it. None of its other projects comes anywhere close to the sort of exposure it gets from being one of the biggest teams in motorsport's premier category. F1 would continue without both.
Regardless of who lines up on the grid, F1 will always be the best drivers in the world driving the best cars at the best venues in the world -- if Ferrari doesn't want its brand to be a part of that anymore, Liberty Media should hold the door open for it to leave rather than be held to ransom about the future of the sport.
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http://www.espn.com.au/f1/story/_/id...y-need-ferrari
A public vote here.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/o...errari-threats