FIA

S. Korea, Ecclestone and the Emperor’s new clothes

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The Korean GP is held at the Korea International Circuit is a 5.62 km (3.49 mi) Herman Tilke designed circuit located near the port city of Mokpo. It is estimasted the cost of building the 135,000 capacity facility (including Tilke’s fee) was around $264 million (250 billion won). The promoters of the race are Korea Auto Valley Operation (KAVO – a joint venture between the mysterious M-Bridge Holdings and Jeollanam-do regional government) and the inaugural race in 2010 was close to being called off due to delays in construction. 

Crowds in the past 2 years at the Korean Grand Prix have hardly been significant in their absence. Empty grandstands and comments about no atmosphere at the circuit from TV reporters hardly substantiate the organisers claim to have sold 85,000 tickets last year. Even if we believe this exaggerated figure when compared to the venue’s 135,000 capacity, this indifference from the Korean public is not really helping the organisers financial woes. The Korean Times in its article “is it worth the tax payers money” tells us the local government will lose $60m every time they hold the race.

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Ecclestone to load a mountain of debt on F1.

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It’s not possible to in a single article convey the mess that is F1 and its financial arrangements, and I’m not feeling inclined to write a book. Yet there are severe storm clouds on the horizon for F1 and it appears the governing body and the teams are oblivious to this.

The Korean Times reports the organisers’ of the F1 race are facing again huge losses. It is claimed they have avoided the contractual 10% escalation in fee from last year but still have a total budget of $67.5m to find.

The national government picks up about $5m and the rest is shouldered by the South Jeolla provincial government. Of course there is the ticket receipts, but the event has not been a raging success with mass crowds attending. The losses the provincial government has had to fund are 2010 $65m and in 2011 $54m. With a contract to 2016, local commentators are not sure they will be able to fulfill this commitment.

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Whitmarsh: It was all about the money

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James Allen reports Martin Whitmarsh speaking today at a Vodafone phone in (say that after a few drinks) when discussed his feelings over losing Lewis Hamilton, his lack of regrets on the matter and the matter of Ferrari’s complaint to the FIA of the McLaren front wing being too flexible.

On the matter of Hamilton and sans regret, Whitmarsh words are, “The offer that we made was higher I believe than any driver in Formula 1 is currently receiving or will receive next year.”

Ok, thanks Martin that’s all cleared that up then… or does it?

I’ve read this carefully constructed sentiment a number of times over the past week and Whitmarsh has repeated it on a number of different occasions, not a single occasion merely reported differently by different sources.

“We made a very, very big financial offer, bigger than I believe any Formula One driver is enjoying today,” (Reuters)

And in a different interview reported in the Mail,

“‘We made a financial offer which is better than anyone in Formula One, other than Lewis himself, receives today, and that is something I am comfortable with.” (Daily Mail)

I try at times to resist my instincts, but after a semester of textual and literary criticism that has never been fruitfully employed in over 20 years, it’s time to dust off the text books.

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Hamilton: The tipping point for Whitmarsh

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It appears Martin Whitmarsh days may be numbered as Team Principle of McLaren Racing.

First a brief background of Martin and McLaren: He studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic attaining a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He joined British Aerospace and in his 9 years there, he had been promoted to Head of Manufacturing for the Hawk and Harrier airframes having a specialism in advanced composite materials.

He joined McLaren in 1989 as Head of Operations. On March 1st 2009, he assumed the role Head of McLaren Racing, when Ron Dennis stepped down to concentrate on developing McLaren automotive, the road car division.

Each of the 3 previous years under Whitmarsh, McLaren have trailed home Red Bull in the constructor’s championship. And whilst having built a reputation for being the best team during the season to advance their F1 car development, have also failed to deliver a World Driver’s Title in this period.

Whitmarsh clearly set his stall out to retain Lewis as a driver for the team at all costs to himself, but it seems obvious that he on Dennis were not on the same page (link to prev article). The whole twittergate and telemetry saga was quite ridiculous. I’m all for freedom in the social media of F1 personnel and with regards to the previous “WTF?” Lewis tweet – who cares?

The telemetry tweet was a completely different matter, a most serious breach of conduct imaginable. Lewis was criticising his own teams’ judgement call in public as well as embarrassing he whole team by publishing confidential internal documents. Ask any one of the senior team members how much they enjoyed the flood of fun poking taking texts they received from t other teams following Lewis’ action.

Yet Whitmarsh took no action. All we had was a slightly embarrassed, “we asked him to take that one down” comment and nothing else. No reprimand, no fine and I don’t think we even heard Lewis apologise in public for the very public embarrassment he caused.

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Lewis keeps Mercedes in F1

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Now the dust is settling following the Hamilton announcement, there are a number of threads to tidy up, but we’ll start with some housekeeping.

Firstly, forgive me for some of the Tabloid headlines which are presently being used and are designed to attract attention, but we are a new blog and it is a good way of grabbing readers who have not heard of us. I will get to the headline of this article shortly.

Also, there has been a certain amount of cynicism over whether we do in fact have access to ‘inside’ information at times, but this is not actually that important except from the fact it is helpful when trying to work out what will be the next talking point.

More fundamental to the articles being written is that we’re trying to address the issues and the questions the headline writers and mainstream F1 travelling media circus miss by chasing the breaking news.

This will hopefully mean that we will call things before the headline writers do. Feathers in the cap so far, Jake Humphrey leaving the BBC a week before it was announced. Further, today a number of high profile media commentators who travel with the F1 circus have now begun looking at why Lewis has actually left McLaren.

One example is Martin Brundle who said on the F1 show on Sky TV that if McLaren had really wanted to keep Lewis they could have done quite a lot more. Without using the word “pushed” he acknowledged McLaren had been feeling the need to move on from Lewis as much as Lewis did from McLaren. Others you will have seen have been saying similar things in reflection a day after the big announcement.

So that’s 2 strong predictions in the first 2 weeks of the blog – not too bad – but a weekly statistic that will be impossible to live up to I suspect.

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German Indictments imminent for Ecclestone

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Today Suddeutsche.de reports the following.

The German Bank – Bayern LB – that once held the commercial rights to F1 and paid Bernie Ecclestone 41million Euro’s in commission to find a buyer – is looking to recover its money.

We now know this money actually just circulated on to Gerhard Gribkowsky, a board member of Bayern LB, who was apparently tasked by Ecclestone to ensure the bank sell to Mr. Ecclestone’s client – CVC. On conclusion of this deal Gibkowsky received an alleged $44m from for his troubles from Mr. Ecclestone but he is now serving nearly 9 years in a German jail for his part in the collusion. His conviction is for participating in bribery.

Bayern LB have applied to see the records of the Munich prosecutors who won the Gibkowsky conviction saying, “We are preparing everything to make possible damage claims.” The prosecutors are apparently more than inclined to offer these files up, however, it appears lawyers for Mr. Ecclestone have sought an injunction with the Munich District Court to prevent this.

This may not be the only troubles on the horizon for Mr. Ecclestone, as representatives of Ruth Kirch, widow of the late media tycoon Leo Kirch, also wish to lodge a half a billion dollar lawsuit against Mr. Ecclestone. Kirch used to be the main shareholder of the F1 commercial rights before entering into loan arrangements with Bayern LB offering the rights as collateral.

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2013 Mercedes: To race or not to race?

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I am going to be otherwise engaged after today until after the weekend, but there are a few stories knocking around today, so we’ll have a brief look at a few of them.

Mercedes pulling out of F1?

Today a number of German publications have been carrying the “Mercedes pulling out of F1” story, in particular Auto motor und sport. Mercedes have consistently refused to sign the new Concorde agreement with Ecclestone’s FOM to commit to the sport until 2020.

It appears that earlier this year, Mercedes were not happy with the proposed slice of money they’ve been offered which has prevented them from entering into the Concorde agreement. Since then there have been rumours that the main board of the German car manufacturer wish to distance themselves from association with Bernie Ecclestone following his alleged involvement in the bribery scandal that has seen a German banker Gerhard Gribkowsky sent to jail for nearly 9 years.

Then Mercedes announce today they will not decide on Schumacher’s future until October. This is significant because the he deadline for teams to register their 2013 entry is now 30th September 2012 and there is speculation Mercedes will not meet the deadline.

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Rules Damn Rules (Part 1: FIA makes historic changes)

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The old maxim, “rules were made to be broken”, has been somewhat ingrained in the DNA of F1 participants since time began.

It appears remarkable to some onlookers that this attitude is almost endemic within F1 teams. To them and others of course the Mclaren spy scandal and Flaviogate are examples of rule breaking that is completely unacceptable. Yet there will always be the run of the mill offences such as speeding in the pit lane, unsafe driving/pit release, blocking and a host of sins that are the ‘yellow card’ offences that we kind of expect.

However, its important not to lose sight of the fact that Formula 1 is a technological and development race every bit as much as a series of motor races, and it is this aspect of the sport that drives the DNA of the teams to develop the cars to the limit of the regulations. Which may be one of the reasons why someone appears to be always breaking the rules, but are the FIA changing the nature of this game?

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