The Full Transcript of Max Mosley's Media Briefing
[Part Two]
Q. (Stan Piecha – The Sun) Max, how much has Michael's total domination this season hurt the sport and, also, have you found the racing boring?
MM: I don't think Michael's domination has hurt the sport because this happens in many sports – you get a supremely gifted performer in the right team and they win everything. Even in things where the man is on his own - like heavyweight boxing - you get eras where there is just nobody that can challenge the person for a number of years, and I think that is part of sport. I think what hurts Formula One is the fact that even down the field the actual racing is often not as good as we would like. On some of the new circuits, which are more suitable for overtaking, then it works better. But we need to change the cars, and then we will get better racing. Michael? They have just done a brilliant job and when people do a brilliant job they deserve to be successful – it is just that simple, really, in my view.
Q. (Pascal Dtro – Auto Plus) A question about the new teams that may come to Formula One. Is there any chance we could get one or two by 2006? Have you had requests about that?
MM: I would really hope we could see a new team in 2005. There is no reason why we shouldn't if we could get agreement. But they need to know very quickly. We can't wait much longer - 2006, certainly. The trouble is the existing teams – and one can understand it – want to defend their situation and they don't want somebody taking some of the money that could otherwise go to them. They have to recognise that it is unhealthy, if you just keep a little cartel of people getting steadily older and you don't let anybody new in, it is not a particularly healthy situation, particularly in sport, and at a certain point it probably isn't even legal, let alone moral, so I think we can persuade them to open up, I hope we can.
Q. (Luc Domenjoz – Le Matin) I would like to come back to the single tyre manufacturer proposal. I got your arguments regarding safety and fairness, but on fairness don't you think this argument could be turned around that if a chassis engineer found a magic solution it could be once again faster than the other chassis engineers. Regarding engines, it is the same problem – all of a sudden somebody can find a solution. So why do you apply this argument just to tyres? Formula One is all about competition so isn't it against the sheer spirit of Formula One to run a single tyre manufacturer?
MM: Perfectly true, but we have two championships. We have a championship for drivers and a championship for car constructors. So there is a car championship and a drivers' championship, and a car consists of a chassis and an engine and the tyres are simply an accessory but a chassis is fundamental and the engine is fundamental, so it is legitimate to have a competition between chassis manufacturers and between engine manufacturers, but to have a championship that is effectively a tyre championship doesn't seem right. Now, the tyre is such a vital part of the make-up, in fact a disproportionate part, so seen from the viewpoint of a chassis manufacturer and an engine manufacturer it isn't there, it is out of balance. But, obviously, from a tyre point of view they will say well, they are stopping me competing. Well, the competition comes at the beginning, when we put it out to tender and the tyre company which puts in the most attractive tender from the point of view of the teams would be the one that got it.
Q. (Will Buxton – Metro) Just going back to the point about the new teams, with the getting rid of the Concorde Agreement, what would the deal be about the bond new teams have to pay to get into Formula One?
MM: The bond at the moment is merely a sporting regulation and that could be abolished, at the moment, for 2005. It was simply a device to stop endless people putting in frivolous entries. That could be changed tomorrow, it is not part of the Concorde Agreement, it is just a sporting regulation. So it won't be a problem.
Q. (Simon Arron – Motorsport News) Max, there has been a lot of talk about improving the show. The pit lane walkabout for the fans in Barcelona is a huge success, last year the biggest day for traffic in Indianapolis was the autograph day on the Thursday. I know things have moved on since you could walk into the Silverstone paddock in the 1970s and get Patrick Depallier's autograph or whatever and get stickers, but what can you do to make the drivers less sealed from the public?
MM: I think there is a general willingness to do something in that area, certainly the organisers and promoters all want more driver involvement and I think the drivers are prepared to do that. Indianapolis was a very good example and I believe a discussion is going on between Bernie, well, FOM, and the various promoters about improving that. We would certainly like to see that happen, but we couldn't really say that is something that is under our direct responsibility because it is a commercial matter for the drivers. All we can do is encourage it, and we have certainly said that anything we can do to encourage that, we would. But clearly you cannot go back to the old days where anybody could come into the paddock – it would be chaos if we did that, just like backstage at the Olympic Games you can't, but at club races and ordinary national races it is still possible.
Q. (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Max, you mentioned the risk of a manufacturer possibly leaving the sport. Would you include Ferrari in that and do you fear a future without Ferrari?
MM: Ferrari have said that under certain circumstances that they would stop, and I am sure they are telling the truth when they say that. And certainly, from Ferrari's point of view, there could be an argument for stopping if things are not as they wish. I think it would be a great tragedy for Formula One because the two basic elements of the Formula One World Championship, really, are the team Ferrari and the Monaco race. One has to say that, these are two things that everybody knows about worldwide. It would be a great tragedy if Ferrari were to stop. I don't think they will stop. If Formula One is well managed and properly run and they can run fairly and nobody disadvantages them in some particular way I don't think there is any danger of them stopping. Clearly, if the costs are allowed to get completely ridiculous I think a lot of manufacturers will stop because it simply won't be possible for them to keep up.
Q. (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Mr Mosley, what is it in a competition when you have one team testing every day and another never tests and at the weekend they are competing for the same goal?
MM: The testing is something that we need to stop - it is that simple. We need to get the testing down to a level where people can do it with the race team and they don't have a separate test team and one of the great advantages of the standard ECU is that we would know exactly how much testing they were doing and we could limit it by mileage rather than by days and you would just be given, we would agree with the teams, so many kilometres you would be allowed and that's it. And then everybody would be in the same boat and we would be inclined to keep it right down, particularly during the season, because it is enormously expensive. It costs more than 1,000 Euros per kilometre to test one of those cars - well over 1,000 Euros per kilometre – and it is just simply absurd to do that, because it is the same for everybody, particularly on the circuits now where testing is allowed, say Barcelona. They go round and round and round and all that happens is they are faster than they otherwise would be by a few tenths and they don't run quite so much on Friday as they would if they hadn't tested. It is a complete waste of time and money. So the standard ECU is a very, very useful tool there because it gives us complete control over what's happening.
Q. (Joe Saward) The logjam in decision-making, you were saying you can't change the engine capacity on the grounds of safety. Can you explain what happened in 1994?
MM: We got agreement. What we did in 1994, we had a whole lot of changes made after Senna and we did that with a fairly simple manoeuvre – we said to the teams: 'We want these things changed and if you don't do it we are not going to organise a World Championship in 1995.' Then, anyway, everybody began to see the sense and people agreed, but it was done by unanimous agreement, with the little threat of not running a championship. Now, the current agreement has got a clause in it saying we will run the championship because that particular manoeuvre has now been stopped. There are one or two others that we could probably deploy but I would rather not talk about them at the moment. I think that is rather too confrontational.
Q. (Tony Dodgins – Tony Dodgins Associates) Max, Adrian Newey said yesterday that if you go down the route of letting people buy other teams' cars and parts you will very quickly end up in a situation with, perhaps, three or four manufacturers and the rest buying, in a CART-type or IndyCar-type scenario, which he said he didn't think was good for Formula One. What is your view?
MM: I don't think he has thought it through properly. Erm, he is probably a bit busy trying to make the McLaren work at the moment. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. If you take teams like say Arden or Carlin, but there are a lot of other teams, they are not coming in to Formula One to buy chassis and run round at the back half of the field, they are coming into Formula One because they want to end up where Williams and McLaren and BAR and so on are, and they will start off by buying a chassis, they will get very good young drivers, they will run a very good team, they will be successful, they will start increasingly to modify the chassis they buy and then gradually move in to building their own.
They will certainly get an engine from a major manufacturer because I don't think anyone believes that in five years time we will still have seven major engine manufacturers supplying engines, that is one of the reasons we need these cheap engines. It gives people a route in whereas at the moment you have to go from zero to a full competitive Formula One chassis, with all the research and development that implies, and that is just not possible for anyone except a big car company and we need the new blood from the independent teams because in the end the independent teams are the backbone of Formula One and our job is to make sure the independent teams can get in and, when they have got in, they will have a competitive engine.
The whole of the strategy depends on inexpensive competitive engines and a way in that isn't prohibitively expensive. I am very confident. I can't see anybody settling for being a satellite team or for any of those things. And, of course, we are the people who decide who gets an entry and who doesn't, and that is quite important and obviously we will keep an eye on them. If we want to, we can keep people entering year by year to begin with to make sure that they are going down the route, or we can have rules that say increasingly they have to make their own chassis. But this thing from zero to immediate full Formula One status is virtually impossible.
Q. (Mike Doodson - Mike Doodson Associates) I wonder if you will excuse me for raising the British Grand Prix. I do so because you have personally aligned yourself with the damning criticism of Silverstone that has been made by the commercial rights holder. I am concerned that Formula One is going into new countries that I don't see as being long-term prospects, necessarily. In some cases I am sure that what they are doing is they are going into Formula One for national PR purposes. At the moment we have got some nonsense in London with a parade in Whitehall or something with Formula One cars, which I see as being a rather aggressive move by the commercial rights holder against Silverstone. Don't you think that Silverstone deserves some sort of special consideration given the fact it doesn't have any government backing and is being demanded to make a large investment that might only be worthwhile for two years?
MM: Well, I can see that, except that I don't think anyone would be sympathetic if one said the Olympic Games bid in the UK has got no public funding and therefore deserves special consideration from the IOC (International Olympics Committee). I mean, in fact, it has got public funding because the government wants it to happen, but having said that I don't think that we can say to the commercial people, that is to say to FOM and to the teams and so on, you have got to do a special deal for Silverstone, that would be unwarranted interference in a commercial matter.
However, although that is the case, in fact I believe a deal has actually been done or is very close to being done that will assure the Grand Prix for the next 2005 and 2006, and I believe the buildings are going to be built, I think there is a plan in place, and the UK government actually have played a major role in that. Richard Caborn, the sports minister, has been active in trying to get this to happen, and obviously they are not in a position to dole out lots of public money but they are in a position to use their influence. They have done that in all sorts of areas and as a result of that I think that it will happen. But it is not something we control and it is not something in which I have got any say but, as I say, the best evidence is that it is going to get sorted out.
The chance of having some sort of Grand Prix in London is about nil, I think, but, you know, there is nothing to stop people putting in a bid. They have made a bid for the Olympic Games, they could make a bid for the Grand Prix, why not? But I think Silverstone will be alright.
Q. (Steve Cooper) In Barcelona, Bernie Ecclestone was saying that tobacco advertising would stay in Formula One beyond 2005 and 2006. Don't you think the sport has dropped the ball by not agreeing to accept the convention and what is the future for tobacco in Formula One and how long will it stay?
MM: Everything was fixed, as far as we were concerned, for the end of 2006, and then, unfortunately, the health department, what was then DG5 in the commission, went and moved the date from their original date to the end of July, 2005, and, of course, that interfered with all the contracts so then arrangements have to be made to keep racing despite what the EU has done, this has driven some of the races outside Europe and now, of course, people are saying, well, why stop in 2006? Meanwhile, we were told by our lawyers that we were not in the position to impose a ban because that would be interfering with the commercial side of the sport, which we promised the European Commission we wouldn't do, so, in a nutshell it is a complete mess thanks to the health people in the European Commission and I think it probably will go on after 2006 and they are 100 percent to blame and we are just dealing with impossible people. It is quite annoying actually because we did everything and then, as I say, they messed it up. So I think it is a pity, I think it would have been better if we had a clean break at some point because then on that date everyone would know that it would stop completely and other industries, like the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, and various other people who at the moment are reluctant to come in would be in and that perhaps would be better. But, again, it is out of our control, it is not something that we can deal with because it is entirely a commercial matter between the teams, their sponsors and, of course, the laws of the countries where we race.
Q. (Steve Cooper) But isn't it bad for the sport's image?
MM: What can you do? It is a commercial matter. I mean it is just the same as if somebody sues a big company and loses, it is bad for the image of Formula One but we can't interfere with it.
Q. (James Allen) I am interested in the challenge of the standard ECU from your point of view. Obviously, you are going to have to make it work with the software and hardware of all the different types of engine. What would happen in the event of a failure? The only standard piece of equipment that is imposed on all the teams, as far as I can think of, is the fuel rig and we do quite often see those things malfunctioning or failing which does directly then affect a team's chances of winning a race. What would happen if a standard ECU failed?
MM: It would be bad luck on the team, and also, if you look at the fuel rigs and you do an analysis of which teams have had failures and which teams have had no failures and you compare that with their general success rate they are quite closely related. And the thing is that what you do get is a risk of that but in all probability, and I don't want to wander into an area where I don't know what I am talking about, we will have a basic unit, the specification of which we will agree with the teams, and I am sure it will have at least two degrees of redundancy, it would be unlikely to fail, and the teams will then be told all sorts of things they can and cannot do, how hot it can be, vibration levels, all those things, actually, are already under discussion and yes, there may be failures, but if there are, it is just bad luck. There won't be many that's for sure. It will be very efficient. |
