The Full Transcript of Max Mosley's Media Briefing
[Part One]
Friday May 21st, 2004
Max Mosley: I thought it might be useful if I just spent a few minutes just coming up to date with where we are on the proposals we sent to the teams before Imola. It might be helpful if I explained the timescale, because that is the most confusing part of this whole discussion.
Quite clearly, 2008, at the end of the Concorde Agreement, we can make any changes to the regulations of the Formula One World Championship if we wish, provided that we continue to run the championship substantially in the way that it has been run in the past because that is part of the agreement we have with FOM (Formula One Management).
However, it is our hope that the substantial changes that have been put forward will come in long before 2008, but, I thought it might be interesting if I outlined what is needed in each case for change to take place.
First of all, any change to the engine or transmission has to have either unanimous agreement or wait until 2008 - so engine and transmission, you need unanimity or it has got to be after January 1, 2008. But we have to announce that change before December 31, 2005, under the Concorde Agreement. Changes to the chassis or effectively all other parts of the car, we can do no sooner than January 1, 2006, provided we have agreement of the Formula One Commission, and that, in practice, means at least 50 percent of the teams provided you have all the organisers and promoters and so forth and other people with you. So, in practice, with half the teams we could change anything except the engine and transmission on January 1, 2006.
For sporting regulations, I beg your pardon, the question of 2006, those changes would have to be announced before December 31, 2004, you have to give one clear year's notice. So 50 percent of the teams, decision before December 31, 2004, and you could change anything on the car except the engine and transmission. Sporting regulations could be changed with effect from January 1, 2005, again with the Formula One Commission, which effectively means 50 percent of the teams. I think there is one exception to that, which is the proposal to have a single tyre manufacturer.
We require from the tyre companies that they give us a year's notice before they come into Formula One or before they leave Formula One, whatever the legal position, it would only be fair to give them a year's notice if we intended to go to a single tyre. So a single tyre, unless or course everybody agreed including all the tyre companies, couldn't happen until January 1, 2006, for the 2006 season. Other sporting changes, as said, could happen on January 1, 2005, provided they are voted and announced before October 31, 2004. I am sorry it is so complex, but that is how the Concorde Agreement works – that is one of the reasons why I personally would like to get rid of it. So that is the schedule, now where are we?
On the engines, I must say there is a very serious discussion going on among the engine manufacturers. I think the great majority are in favour of going to a 2.4 V8, there is a minority who would prefer to stay with the V10, and there are some of them that are content with either solution. From our point of view, we are really waiting for a proposal. There is a great deal of discussion going on about details to do with the engines, particularly questions of parts and components and they are working on this, they have already had meetings and they have got a meeting today and I am very optimistic that we will see a substantial reduction in the cost of these engines. Now, just to be clear, of course there is nothing anyone can do to reduce the cost of an engine research programme, they do it inside the factory, they can spend what they like.
What we are trying to do is to make sure that engines for a second team or even a third or a fourth team become very inexpensive. And the two ways of doing that are to make sure that the cost of the components, the research having been done, is low, therefore the materials are readily available and that the engines last a long time, they have a long life.
With those two things you can make certain that a second or a third team could have engines inexpensively. Just to deal with one quick point there, it is sometimes suggested that if we stop people using these extraordinarily exotic materials they can get from the aerospace industry that we are in some way dumbing down Formula One. Of course, in a moment's reflection, you can see it is exactly the opposite. If you have a problem in Formula One with your crankshaft you can go and get an exotic material. If you have a problem in a road car, where you are producing maybe a million cars, you can't solve it by buying something very expensive, you have got to solve it by clever design. Well, why don't we have exactly the same thing in Formula One?
If they can design it really cleverly using ordinary materials they will be more successful than people who can't, and it is the same sort of assertion that the industry itself needs, it is a useful way of spending time and money, whereas an exotic material is a completely wasteful way of spending time and money. So, in a nutshell, the cost of the engines, the second and third teams and so on, comes down. If the major manufacturers continue to spend huge sums of money on research and development of Formula One engines it is certain that some of them will stop – sooner or later the main board will say 'we are not prepared to spend this money and when that happens, if we want Formula One to survive in its present form, it is essential that there are inexpensive engines available for the teams which do not have a manufacturer to supply them with an engine as a first team, and the whole strategy is to get the cost of those engines down. That is really what we mean when we say low cost engines.
On the question of chassis, that is almost entirely a question of, as people say, improving the show. We have got to make it easier for cars to race each other, we have got to make it easier to overtake. One of the problems we have at the moment is that a Formula One car, at most circuits, is at full throttle for between 65 and 70 percent of the time. If you compare that to, say, MotoGP, the motorbikes are at full throttle between 10 and 20 percent of the time, depending on the circuit. That clearly can't be right and if we eliminate the traction control, if we eliminate the electronic aids, I think you will find that we will get a very different pattern. Where there is some controversy is some people say well, let's have high grip, low downforce and hopefully plenty of drag. Another school of thought is what you want is low grip and if you get high aerodynamic downforce so much the better, it is like in the wet. The experts are all discussing that, all I am saying is that we have got to get it right.
Whatever changes we make have got to work – we don't want to find out afterwards that we have done it wrong. But I have to say that some of the best engineers in the Formula One teams are fully co-operating in an effort because everyone realises we have got to make it possible for the cars to race against each other and what that really means is that if you have got two drivers that are fairly well matched the car behind has got to have an advantage from the fact that it is behind. Back in the old days of slipstreaming, the car behind could easily overtake because of the slipstream. Now, for all sorts of reasons, that is no longer practical on most circuits because there isn't much of a slipstream, the braking distances are so short and when they try to get close to each other in the corners, as everybody knows, the turbulence of the car in front upsets the aerodynamics of the car behind, he can't get close and so on. All of these problems are undoubtedly soluble, but where I am very optimistic is I think we have now got the best brains in Formula One positively trying to help us solve the problem in everybody's interest.
So we need to have that sorted out by the end of this year so we have a detailed regulation published before December 31, 2004, as I mentioned earlier, to come into force in 2006. Of course, any of these changes could come in immediately if we had unanimous agreement. A final point about the qualifying, there are a lot of discussions going on about qualifying. I think it is widely accepted that the present system, at least for those at the circuit, is not interesting, even the television people, I think, are also not entirely happy. Clearly if we had unanimity we could change it tomorrow. It is a question of getting that unanimity.
I am not overly optimistic because there is always someone who disagrees. But there are a number of interesting things put forward, the one thing that we say is it must be simple, it must be something that can be readily explained otherwise it is just a waste of time – people lose interest, it is too complicated. So we are waiting to see if the teams come up with something unanimous, I am hopeful that they will. That is very, very broadly where we are and the purpose of this gathering was really to bring everyone up to date, more or less, with where we are. And I am very happy to try to answer any questions that anyone might wish to put.
Questions From The Floor
Q. (Alan Henry – The Guardian) Two points, what would your personal preference be for a revised qualifying format and would the FIA perhaps give consideration to perhaps banning refuelling stops to make the racing more interesting because, quite frankly, there is a body that suggests refuelling stops have just turned the whole thing into a tactical affair and the actual issue of cars racing wheel-to-wheel is academic as long as we have got refuelling.
MM: Well, on the first point, my personal preference would be just for everybody to go out for an hour and whoever does the fastest lap during that hour has got pole position. And I would like to see a light on the car, a very bright light, that they switch on when they are doing a hot lap so that we all know they are on a hot lap and so do the cars they are overtaking and so do the spectators but I don't suppose any of the teams would agree with that, it is very much a personal view.
On the refuelling, I have to say I don't agree. I think the reason that we all tend to think back in the past, and you are thinking of an era when people had brake problems, people had tyre problems, and somebody like Alain Prost driving in a certain way at the beginning of the race would be very strong at the end. The engineers all say those days are in the past – but I must say one of the engineers that said that at the meeting did have a brake problem at the last race. But in principle those problems don't arise. I think the reason the cars don't overtake is nothing to do with the fuel stops, it is to do with the fact that the car behind is not currently faster than the car in front. And until we solve that problem, everything else is secondary because what we do now is we line the cars up in order of their speed having spent two days finding out which is fastest, and we then are surprised when one doesn't overtake the other. Well, in the past this worked because people had all sorts of problems with brakes, with tyres, cars broke down, they lost gears, all sorts of things happened. That happens less and less now, they are spending a lot of money so that reliability is there, so the only sure-fire way is to make sure that, when they are racing, the car behind, for whatever reason, has an advantage over the car in front, and then you get racing. There is no other way to do it, in my opinion, and I think that is now a widely held view among the Formula One engineers as well.
Q. (Joe Saward – F1 Grand Prix Special) Max, it is fairly clear from talking around the paddock that there is not going to be any change, not matter what your deadlines are, unless there is a commercial deal. Is there anything you can do to get a commercial deal and will you be doing anything?
MM: The answer is that, answering the second question first, I can't make people do a commercial deal. It is not my job. I am the regulator. But I think you will find there will be agreement, with or without a commercial deal, partly because in any event there will be a commercial deal, but secondly, there are all sorts of ways in which we can bring pressure to make various things happen and I think that all of the teams recognise that you can't continue like you are until 2008, it is not possible. So I think we will get change. But the commercial things will sort themselves out, they always do. I mean, in the end, both the teams and FOM and Bernie and everyone concerned, need Formula One to be successful, otherwise they are going to have a problem. So I think there is a very strong incentive to do the necessary.
Q. (Wolfgang Monsehr – Rennsportpresse) You used the words a couple of minutes ago that you want to improve the show, if I understood correctly, on the chassis area. Do you maybe look seriously back seriously to what happened in Formula One in the 1970s, when you were running the March company, to maybe make available customer chassis?
MM: Yes, one of the things that I hope will happen is that we will persuade the teams to sell cars to other teams, parts or whole cars. I think that is essential in order to get new people into the formula, but we can only do that with unanimous agreement because there is a clause, an appendix strictly speaking, in the Concorde Agreement, that prevents that from actually happening at the moment. But I am very optimistic that will happen and I think it is the only way nowadays that a new team could come in.
Q. (Alberto Antonini – Autosprint) You said a unanimous agreement or just having to wait until 2008 for changes in the engine formula to be introduced. There may be a third option, which I think is roughly the same as 1993, with the changes being introduced in the interests of safety. Is there any chance we will see this happen?
MM: We can't change the size of the engine for safety under the Concorde Agreement because the Concorde Agreement allows us to do something dramatic for safety only in those areas that concern the protection of the driver, or what you might call passive safety. On the other hand, to extend the life of the engine is a sporting rule. Some people might dispute that, but as far as I am concerned how often you can change the engine in the season is a sporting rule not a technical rule. It means we could, with the majority of the teams, bring that sort of change in sooner. We couldn't go from 3 litres to 2.4 litres, but we could go from a one-race engine to a three-or-more race-engine. Just for the record, even a six-race engine, a V10 3 litre, you are looking at over 700hp and you are looking at about 17,000 rpm, so people who say this is like a road engine, it is complete nonsense, absolute nonsense. It would be the same as a Formula One engine of about six years ago.
Q. (James Allen – ITV) Max, the drivers had a meeting yesterday evening to discuss ways in which they could have a better dialogue with the FIA in terms of things like these proposals. They don't want to take part in rulemaking but want to offer their advice as to how cars might better overtake each other etc. In the past their feeling has always been that the FIA isn't particularly interested in the drivers' point of view. Is there any reason for them to believe that might change?
MM: We have always, always listened to the drivers. Any time a driver, for example, rings me up I always speak to them, I have regular meetings with some of them, the ones who want to do it. In the past we have had drivers on various commissions. At one moment, before my time, there were two drivers on the Formula One Commission. But what happened was after one meeting they stopped coming, so (Former FIA President Jean Marie) Balestre, this was in his day, gave up. But we have a lot of informal meetings and where the drivers are very active, and particularly Michael Schumacher, who religiously goes to all the safety commission meetings and plays an active part and now Mark Webber has joined the commission as well and I think he will.
Our position is, as far as the commission is concerned, as long as they are prepared to attend regularly, like Michael does, we would like to have them on. Where they don't want to - and that is usually the rule – there tends to be informal discussions. But we have unlimited informal discussions both with the Formula One drivers and with the World Rally Championship drivers. There has never been a case of a driver calling me, from either world championship, where I have not either spoken to them immediately or called them straight back.
Q. (Dan Knutson – National Speedsport News) Some people say that the new Formula One would be like Formula 3000 is now, and Formula 3000 now is not very exciting. Also the new GP2 would assumingly have engines of 600hp so there would not be that much difference between 'Formula Two' and Formula One.
MM: I think you will find that in real life there is an enormous difference. First of all, the F3000 engines rev at, I think, about 9,000rpm and it has a single make chassis. In fact, if you made all the changes that I am talking about for Formula One tomorrow, you wouldn't notice any difference between an individual car going around now to then. The only difference you would see is that on a lot of circuits, perhaps not Monaco but a lot of circuits, there would be much more overtaking and much more racing. It is a completely different thing. It would have racing engines going at pretty much the same speeds they go now and you would have lots of different chassis, high technology, tremendous competition. It is interesting that when we brought in the single weekend engine that was, for some of the teams, the end of life. And now here we are with an engine that has to last all weekend and the top runners have actually got more power now than they had last year, with changing the engine two or three times a weekend. They don't have as much power as they would have had had we not brought the rule in, but the progress is still there. You will see an inexorable increase in power, whatever we do, and in spectacle, I believe.
Q. (Alastair Moffitt – PA News) How is the single tyre proposal progressing. It seems Michelin were not very keen on it in Spain, they said they had some concerns about it.
MM: Absolutely. Both of the tyre companies would prefer to go on with competition, unquestionably. In fact, what they would really like is Goodyear and Pirelli and everybody else to come in and give them even more competition. I fully understand that. And also, no tyre company is going to agree with a single tyre because what you are saying to each of them is you either won't be in Formula One at all or you will be in with about half the departmental size you have got at the present time. But the arguments in favour of the single tyre from the point of view of Formula One as a whole are so overwhelming that I don't think anyone apart from the tyre companies would really argue very seriously with the single tyre rule.
In a nutshell, the argument is safety – that you can control the amount of grip and the amount of grip is directly related to safety. On top of that you have cost, you would eliminate the test teams and all this massive testing which costs just as much to run a test team as it does a Formula One team but nobody watches, it is just, effectively, money thrown away. And you have got the fairness point that, it could happen, if one of the tyre companies comes up with a magic tyre tomorrow it would turn the whole championship on its head. That's fine, but is it right that an engine man could work all winter to find enough power, the usual four percent increase to give him a tenth or two tenths of a second, but you can put on a different set of tyres and it could be as much as a second a lap. It throws the championship out of balance and I do think the teams are unanimous on that.
For what it is worth, the two things to me that are completely fundamental are a single tyre, or equivalent, but having the result of a single tyre, and point two, the standard ECU, or at least the electronics completely under the control of the FIA. Those to me are the two fundamental things. Everything else you can talk about – whether it is a V8 or a V10 is not the end of the world, but those things are. Because, if you control the tyres there is an argument that – and this is very technical and I don't want to pre-judge what will happen – says if you control the grip of a tyre it doesn't matter how much power they have they can't put it on the ground and even the best driver is going to be in difficulty. But those two things, the tyres and the ECU, are what we have got to stick at.
Q. (Steve Cooper – Motorsport News) We are all aware that the current Contract Agreement seems to constrict the way Formula One is run, so what is your blueprint for the next deal we will see from 2008 onwards. How will it work on the sporting side and the commercial side?
MM: What I think we should do in 2008 onwards is not have a Concorde Agreement at all, I think the FIA should simply run the regulatory side of the sport and all the commercial questions – how much they get paid, what share they get – should be a matter between the teams and FOM and the teams would act as a group and FOM would act as a group and they would sort it out between them and we keep out of it, just like, back in the 1960s, the FIA kept out, or should have kept out, of the disputes between the teams and the individual organisers about start money and so on. It is not our business.
Then, as far as regulation is concerned, I would see a situation where we consulted the teams and, indeed, those who have signed up for a long time should have a vote for a long time. But it would be more of a consultation process. Why do I think that? Because, if you look at the best experiment going on at the moment, it is in the United States, where you have got three major series – NASCAR, IRL and CART. In NASCAR, the teams have virtually no say at all about the rules, and it is by far the most successful series. And, at the other end of the scale, CART, it is completely run by the teams and it is in serious difficulties. I do believe that if you have got a disinterested and reasonably competent regulator that you are more likely to get a properly run championship than in any other way. In the end, the FIA has to make sure Formula One works because it isn't just prestige and things like that, also, in the defence of the ordinary motorist, there are an awful lot of politics and Formula One is a key that opens the door to virtually every politician and that is extremely important to us. But at the same time we have to make sure it works and if it works the teams will all do well anyway, just by itself, and FOM will make money. But that is their problem. We just have to make sure the championship has a constant and growing interest of the public and I think we are better placed to do that, looking at it carefully, than to be completely constrained at all stages by an agreement that stops everything being changed without everyone agreeing, at least in the short term.
end of Part One..... Part Two follows... |
