F1 Budget Cap row over

We haven’t really bothered covering the row going on between FOTA (the F1 drivers ‘Union’) and the FIA (the governing body of the sport) because it all seemed to us to be a storm in a teacup, with both sides posturing and pouting, but neither likely to push things to the point where the money machine that is F1 goes bang.  And so it is.

After a meeting today in Paris, the FIA has announced that it has reached agreement with FOTA to scrap the budget cap it was insisting on implementing from 2010. Quelle surprise! And in another not entirely unrelated revelation it would appear that ‘Mad’ Max Mosley will also not be standing for re-election as President of the FIA this year. Quelle surprise x 2.

This whole storm was because Mosley wanted to cap budgets for the F1 teams from next year. But that was always going to be a non-starter with the big manufacturer-owned teams. F1 is a showcase for their wares, and they will throw at it what they can manage. They may throw too much (as Honda did last year) and decide it’s no longer worth the cost, but for teams like Ferrari there is no point in competing if they can’t use not just their expertise, but also their financial muscle to buy success. And that success is a huge marketing bonanza for their road cars. Why else would the likes of Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, McLaren etc. be in the circus?

There was logic to Mosley’s plan, though. By capping the budgets he hoped to get more teams signing up. But there was always a strong argument that signing up those more cost-restricted teams would be at the cost of losing the big names. So we would have ended up with an F1 circus that was no longer F1; not the pinnacle of Motor Racing. So logic or not, it’s back to the status quo, with the F1 teams agreeing to roll back budgets to the level of previous years. But how much exactly, and how soon, is a grey area. But it’s made the row go away.

And did anyone seriously expect that Bernie Ecclestone would let his cash-cow get turned in to Mosley burgers?!