FORUMula1.com

[overboost]

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2015/06/f ... -over-bid/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[darwin dali]

Dunno, dunno - could be good or bad.

[myownalias]

The sport certainly needs change to survive, it's really going downhill fast for various reasons, but will new owners help that situation? Bottom line, they are investing to make a profit, they have no interest in the good of the sport, only profit, which would be the same as CVC. In fairness, that's what investment groups are, a for profit business, they exist purely to make money.

[sagi58]

This thread seems to be the one to post this one:

p.s. Mods, please move, if you feel there's a better place for it!

Red Bull's Christian Horner labels F1 Strategy Group "inept"

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Formula 1's Strategy Group is "inept" and should be abolished, endorsing the notion that an independent should write the rules.

Formula 1's rulebook has come under fire in recent months, with the sizeable penalties being handed out to McLaren and Red Bull in Austria for engine infringements reigniting the debate.

Rather than having the Strategy Group - currently made up of Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Williams and Force India - to discuss the regulations, Horner said F1 should call upon the expertise of someone without vested interests in the paddock, such as ex-Mercedes chief Ross Brawn.

"The Strategy Group is fairly inept and I think that it needs the commercial rights holder and the governing body to decide what they want Formula 1 to be," said Horner.

"Then they should put it on the table to the teams, and say 'this is what we want the product to be, these are the rules, there's the engine formula'.

"The results of the sporting working group are the penalties that we're seeing in Austria, that have become too complex.

"The work of the technical working group is the engine rules that we have.

"Maybe you need an independent, somebody that isn't currently involved, somebody like Ross Brawn, that understands the business, understands the challenges, to write the specification for what a car should be, what sort of technical regulations should be.

Horner, whose Red Bull team has suffered a string of failures with its Renault power unit, criticised the way the current engine formula was formed.

"Unfortunately, I think when you let a group of engineers with no clear directive about either cost or what the product needs to be, come up with a set of regulations, of course they're going to come up with something highly complex and highly sophisticated," he said.

"I think perhaps we've just gone too far with it and it's too complicated, we need to bring it back to basics."

[sagi58]

And, then we have Ecclestone's two cents:

F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone says the big teams aren't taking over

Bernie Ecclestone has dismissed suggestions the big four teams are planning to take control of Formula 1.

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley and Sauber team boss Monisha Kaltenborn both expressed concerns to AUTOSPORT last week in Montreal of what they believe is a power play being made behind the scenes by Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull.

The feeling is the customer car agenda being driven by the quartet is part of a wider scheme to ultimately gain "total control from a power and financial point of view", according to Fernley.

The fact bosses from the four major teams were involved in a meeting in the paddock at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve last Friday only fuelled suspicions, particularly as fellow Strategy Group members Force India and Williams were not involved.

F1 commercial rights holder Ecclestone, however, told AUTOSPORT: "This has happened in the past and it's nothing new, although it's new to them because they're all new kids on the block.

"But it's not new to me. I've been there and done it. So far nobody has threatened to do anything, but then the worst thing anybody could ever do is threaten me."

A fortnight previously in Monaco, Ecclestone expressed his own thoughts on how a customer-car concept could work, but he is strongly sceptical as to the teams' own plans.

"They think they want that, until it gets down to the how, and then that becomes the problem," remarked Ecclestone.

"How are they going to do it? If they have a plan then they should get on and do it, but it's not going to happen, so I don't even think about it now.

"There are lots of things I want to do in life but I can't do them, and they will have to learn that when they have the same problems.

"But I guess it's good for them to have dreams and meetings."

Despite a plethora of meetings of his own in Montreal, Ecclestone senses little progress - if any - was made.

"The feeling is we probably wasted 48 hours," he said.

"The trouble is nobody really knows what they want, and when you do give them something they think they want, they then decide they don't want it.

"But it's not a problem. We will do what we think we have to do, and hopefully we will get it right, which we have done more often than not."

[sagi58]

Although Horner's diatribe against the Group may be a case of sour grapes,
he makes a good point:

Red Bull's Christian Horner labels F1 Strategy Group "inept"

..."Maybe you need an independent, somebody that isn't currently involved, somebody like Ross Brawn, that understands the business, understands the challenges, to write the specification for what a car should be, what sort of technical regulations should be...

..."I think perhaps we've just gone too far with it and it's too complicated, we need to bring it back to basics."

I think a lot of us would agree with the idea of a separate entity,
just as many of us would agree we've become too high tech, to
the point where we may as well be watching a video game.