[Rules] Budget cap,2010 regs confirmed

[Marbot]

£40 mil is what you'll have to find to run your very own F1 team.

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre...c_290409a.aspx

[ECW Dan Selby]

So 30 was too little, afterall. That's unfortunate, and I hope it's not enough to scare interest away.

Selby

[Fox89]

£40 still seems pretty reasonable to me! To major companies looking to come into the sport I reckon they'll still be interested.

What I'm NOT sure about is the lack of refueling during the race. Whilst it's nice to have it all done on the race track, what this will mean is that the slower cars can't run light, so they'll just be stuck at the back. I'm worried that this will make it a bit too processional again.

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by Marbot

£40 mil is what you'll have to find to run your very own F1 team.

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre...c_290409a.aspx

Its actually a lot more than that. Admirable though it is, this budget 'cap' has more holes than a collendar ! It doesn't include engines, driver salaries and anything outside of the teams' control. On top of that, compliance with this cap is optional !

Have you seen the bit about financial aid for new entrants. I love this one :

" It will also offer 20 economy class air tickets for each new team for events held outside Europe. "

I was on a Varig flight to Sao Paulo about three years ago and the entire Williams team, along with a ton of Renault personnel locked out the business and first class sections of the plane !

Looks like there'll be a business class championship and an economy class championship in 2010

[bravo]

This figure covers all team expenditure except:

Fines or penalties imposed by the FIA

love it.

[FPV GTHO]

Exempting the driver salaries gives Alonso and Raikkonen a chance of driving for a capped team at least.

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by FPV GTHO

Exempting the driver salaries gives Alonso and Raikkonen a chance of driving for a capped team at least.

What's the point ? The whole idea was to reduce the cost of competing in F1, if there are items of significant value outside the scope of the cap, then it doesn't make any sense. I don't know why they couldn't introduce driver salary caps too... as they do in US baseball etc...

[duke_toaster]

Originally Posted by 2010 Technical Regulations article 9.1

ARTICLE 9 : TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
9.1 Transmission types :
No transmission system may permit more than two wheels to be driven.
This Article will not apply to Cost-Regulated Teams.

Unless I need to go to specsavers very fast, that's four wheel drive.

Will we see this used? The minimum weight is now 620kg. Would the packaging work? 4WD with movable wings and superKERS could be somewhat dominant ...

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by duke_toaster

Unless I need to go to specsavers very fast, that's four wheel drive.

Will we see this used? The minimum weight is now 620kg. Would the packaging work? 4WD with movable wings and superKERS could be somewhat dominant ...

Perhaps this opens the door to putting KERS straight on the front wheels, for electrical systems this could be a simpler solution than adding it to the drive train and has a number of advantages including 4WD out of the corners which means you can get the KERS power on while the Rears are still traction limited with engine power alone.

[Yannick]

Abolishing tyre warmers is dangerous nonsense, especially when starting with a fuel load that is meant to last for the whole race distance.
And why abolish fuel strategy now that it's contributing to offering variety?
Won't it be necessary for safety reasons to decrease cornering speeds again come the end of next season ?

[awrb]

Originally Posted by duke_toaster

Unless I need to go to specsavers very fast, that's four wheel drive.

Will we see this used? The minimum weight is now 620kg. Would the packaging work? 4WD with movable wings and superKERS could be somewhat dominant ...

NO transmission can give 4wd, it says. But it does leave the door open to be FWD or even 1WD if you wanted, which would be pretty crazy, and certainly more spectacular as cars veer off the track!

[duke_toaster]

The bit I underlined was that it didn't apply to cost capped teams.

[ivanalesi]

I think it's a great day for F1 and racing in general It's a awesome idea. Also the technical regulations for the cost capped teams mean you're pretty much doomed if you don't go cost capped! The only thing that I'm not so optimistic is this commision. I thought it was going to be some of the big auditors, not a 3 men team. May be they will need a lot more people, but I guess it's enough for them to spot the potential breach and then take onboard more experts to investigate. Another plus to have such company onboard is the license issue, if you cover someone - you can very easily risk loosing it! And they don't care much about 40 mil companies to risk it

Originally Posted by davyboy

What's the point ? The whole idea was to reduce the cost of competing in F1, if there are items of significant value outside the scope of the cap, then it doesn't make any sense. I don't know why they couldn't introduce driver salary caps too... as they do in US baseball etc...

I guess the reason behind this is the junior ladder(note driver programs are excluded too), there are many people willing to finance young careers in order to gain in the future. If you cap the drivers' salary, then many won't have this initiative to finance careers. With unlimited testing, you can easily try a lot of young talents like Minardi used to do and you won't care much about Fernando or Kimi I know a funny case, where the father of one driver agreed to finance his career because he specifically thought his son could be taking Kimi's salary in 6 years!

[Sodemo]

A 4WD drive car would pretty much mean that there would be very few mistakes made by the driver, or at least, mistakes would be less noticable.

A 4WD car would also totally dominate in the wet, anyone remember the Audi A4 Quattro's from the Super Touring era?

[P38 in workshop]

What a mess.How can you expect to explain that the cars on the grid are competing to different sets of rules?There is also the matter of the FIA twisting arms to persuade competitors to enter my the end of May.It would be wonderful if FOTA members collectively insisted that they intended to think about it for a bit longer,say until September.Before the controlling tendencies of the FIA became quite so pronounced,it used to be the case that entries had to be submitted by late November and I can recall several instances where drivers were not confirmed until several weeks into the new year.

[davyboy]

P38, you're absolutely right. Formula One needs to be run under a single set of rules not this dogs dinner which will be incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't read the legaleze surrounding it.

I applaud the concept of a budget cap. But why can't it be made simple ? Just make the cap $40M to include everything and establish a sensible policing process.

[Dutton]

Suppose Ferrari go for the cap.

They then pay each driver x-millions per year "extra", and then each driver, entirely coincidentally, decides to use x-millions of their personal funds each year to purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari.

I would be interested to see the mechanisms which would be able to demonstrate such spending being the team spending team money on areas within the budget cap realm.

That said, IIRC, driver salaries become included in the cap 2011 onwards.

I still think, though, post-2010, you could end up with the same thing with respect to hospitality: Ferrari provide FIAT with hospitality which ends up being like 300-million, which involves, I dunno, raffles and stuff which give FIAT money (not fixed, per say, it is just with massively generous prizes and only available to the FIAT hospitality set-up). FIAT use money to purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari, which just happens to be similar in amount to that which they win in their F1 hospitality raffles (entirely coincidental, of course).

Sponsors don't pay the team for space on the car anymore: the sponsors purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari. Ferrari isn't actually spending Ferrari's money on areas controlled by the cap.

I don't intended these examples to be taken in an utterly literal sense, but rather just the issue. Definitions of what constitutes team spending could get tricky: the circumvention of regulations could be absolutely as blatant as can be, but the matter of actually PROVING something ain't so easy.

I have long been of the opinion that budget caps in F1 would prove a nightmare to enforce. I guess we are going to find out

[awrb]

Originally Posted by duke_toaster

The bit I underlined was that it didn't apply to cost capped teams.

Sorry, it was me that misread it then. Still want to see my one wheel drive car though.

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by Yannick

Abolishing tyre warmers is dangerous nonsense, especially when starting with a fuel load that is meant to last for the whole race distance.
And why abolish fuel strategy now that it's contributing to offering variety?
Won't it be necessary for safety reasons to decrease cornering speeds again come the end of next season ?

That is simply not true
No tyre warmers is not a problem

Back in the CART days tyre warmers were banned at Indy and other CART racers and they never contributed to serious crashes or incidents. Drivers drive to the grip conditions. It just shows what a nonsense a lot of the current F1 policies and policies are.
Driving on cold tyres is something every driver learns to do in karts or junior formulae.
In effect, if it were true, it would mean you could never go onto a harder tyre in a race because it would have less grip....

[Canada ALMS fan]

Originally Posted by Dutton

Suppose Ferrari go for the cap.

They then pay each driver x-millions per year "extra", and then each driver, entirely coincidentally, decides to use x-millions of their personal funds each year to purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari.

I would be interested to see the mechanisms which would be able to demonstrate such spending being the team spending team money on areas within the budget cap realm.

That said, IIRC, driver salaries become included in the cap 2011 onwards.

I still think, though, post-2010, you could end up with the same thing with respect to hospitality: Ferrari provide FIAT with hospitality which ends up being like 300-million, which involves, I dunno, raffles and stuff which give FIAT money (not fixed, per say, it is just with massively generous prizes and only available to the FIAT hospitality set-up). FIAT use money to purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari, which just happens to be similar in amount to that which they win in their F1 hospitality raffles (entirely coincidental, of course).

Sponsors don't pay the team for space on the car anymore: the sponsors purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari. Ferrari isn't actually spending Ferrari's money on areas controlled by the cap.

I don't intended these examples to be taken in an utterly literal sense, but rather just the issue. Definitions of what constitutes team spending could get tricky: the circumvention of regulations could be absolutely as blatant as can be, but the matter of actually PROVING something ain't so easy.

I have long been of the opinion that budget caps in F1 would prove a nightmare to enforce. I guess we are going to find out

You nailed it Dutton. They legalized traction control because they couldn't poilce it and that was software that was IN the car. How are they going to police spending of teams that have hundreds of employees, multiple partners, and have many transactions/deals that no money changes hands but have value? Race team accounting is foggy at the best of times for tax purposes, what makes the FIA think they'll be any better at deciphering? I hope the spending controversies that will arise from this don't distract from the action on the track.

[Burnsie]

Originally Posted by davyboy

I applaud the concept of a budget cap. But why can't it be made simple ? Just make the cap $40M to include everything and establish a sensible policing process.

Indeed. While the idea of an all-encompassing budget cap (albeit one which is £10m more than originally proposed) has encouraged other constructors to consider their position with regards a 2010 Formula One entry - Lola, Prodrive, etc - I'm fearful that all of these apparent grey areas might lead to a number of entries being shelved.

[RotorFan]

Uh... how can the engines be developed for fuel economy if engine development is frozen?! duh....

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by P38 in workshop

What a mess.How can you expect to explain that the cars on the grid are competing to different sets of rules?

I always seem to follow sports car races fairly well.

Also.

2010 (altered) sporting and tech regs.

http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public...30-04-2009.pdf

http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public...30-04-2009.pdf

Article 9.1 does indeed seem to allow four wheel drive systems for budget capped teams and article 9.9 allows KERS to be run from the front axle.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

A 4WD drive car would pretty much mean that there would be very few mistakes made by the driver, or at least, mistakes would be less noticable.

A 4WD car would also totally dominate in the wet, anyone remember the Audi A4 Quattro's from the Super Touring era?

Yep. A friend of mine used to race them in Aus

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Fox89

What I'm NOT sure about is the lack of refueling during the race. Whilst it's nice to have it all done on the race track, what this will mean is that the slower cars can't run light, so they'll just be stuck at the back. I'm worried that this will make it a bit too processional again.

What you have to consider is that they are cutting back race times from about two hours to about a hour and a half (or something to that effect). So if they lengthen the chassis for a larger fuel tank, I see it unsuitable to refuel in a race. I don't think it will be a bit too proscessional as most teams will be using KERS so there will be a heck of a lot more passing.