Red Bull may be heading for F1 scrapyard with Honda

[CNR]

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/motor-racing/red-bull-may-be-heading-for-f1-scrapyard-with-honda-1055621.html


In 2007, Red Bull Technology's staff costs rose by 32.5 per cent on the previous year to £36.1m and they invested £10m in office and workshop equipment. At the end of last month, Red Bull bought out their partner, former F1 driver Gerhard Berger from Toro Rosso, leaving them with two teams under their complete control. Despite this show of strength, Red Bull could be next to pull out of F1.



? what if F1 changed to using 6 cylinder engine found it a street going car

[Valve Bounce]

There is one difference between Honda and Red Bull. Honda sales have plummeted, but Red Bull sales may just soar because Red Bull gives you wings. In times of financial stress, it could be that they may turn to drinking Red Bull.

[markabilly]

what if everyone realizes that there are only two teams, mac and ferrari, with demonstrated capacity to usually win races and all the sponsors decided we can no longer afford more a than a couple of hundred bucks supporting an "also-ran" like renault, beemer, red bulls and so on??

So we could just have the rules changed to let them run three cars each and have six cars on the starting grid.......

[Nikki Katz]

They clearly bought back Toro Rosso with the intention to sell it on, but I'm not certain they'll have any luck right now, especially as Honda's being given away. I don't think that Red Bull are going, but their last press statement was a bit worrying. It is possible that we could see a buyer for one team before the next season, but not three.

[Jag_Warrior]

No matter their place on the grid, clearly there continues to be (some amount of) value in being involved in Formula One. Though some teams and sponsors are better at exploiting that value than others. Other than Marlboro, I can't think of a sponsor that has so tied itself to racing (cars, motorcycles, boats, planes, bicycles, skateboards, etc.) as much as Red Bull has. And not like I needed to, but I never could understand Red Bull's overall strategy in regard to F1. Why not get one team right before you form a second team?

IMO, Formula One is the only series that the FIA has done a fairly decent job over time of overseeing. Most of the rest have either been allowed to die, or they've been crippled or killed by mismanagement. My fear now is that the FIA and Ecclestone have allowed their greed to take F1 down the wrong path - I just hope it's not becoming lost. When cost or risk exceeds value or the rewards... people go away. There's a lot of risk right now. I hope more people don't start going away. This is Formula One, not the IRL. We need a relatively full grid of more competitive teams and cars and the best drivers possible.

[markabilly]

No matter their place on the grid, clearly there continues to be (some amount of) value in being involved in Formula One.



IMO, Formula One is the only series that the FIA has done a fairly decent job over time of overseeing. Most of the rest have either been allowed to die, or they've been crippled or killed by mismanagement. My fear now is that the FIA and Ecclestone have allowed their greed to take F1 down the wrong path - I just hope it's not becoming lost. When cost or risk exceeds value or the rewards... people go away. There's a lot of risk right now. I hope more people don't start going away. This is Formula One, not the IRL. We need a relatively full grid of more competitive teams and cars and the best drivers possible.


Problem is that the value may become quite low, even for having one's name plastered all over a ferrari, and if it is not in the millions, then........

What drove the result in the IRL? Much of the same that is now driving F1....so when you say: "This is Formula One, not the IRL. We need a relatively full grid of more competitive teams and cars and the best drivers possible."

that answer may well be beyond control of everyone unless changes are made, and then who wants the IRL model? not me, but alas....

[jens]

The fact that Toro Rosso is seeking such driver for their second seat, who has money to offer, indicates that STR's financial position may not be too strong. Anyway, to me keeping two teams in F1 (like Red Bull is currently doing) has never made sense to me and even more so if they don't fund both of them properly, but are looking for paydrivers. Better allocate the resources to one concrete team and try to rise to the top with them.

[Jag_Warrior]

Problem is that the value may become quite low, even for having one's name plastered all over a ferrari, and if it is not in the millions, then........

Relative to the cost, yes, that's what I mean.


What drove the result in the IRL? Much of the same that is now driving F1....so when you say: "This is Formula One, not the IRL. We need a relatively full grid of more competitive teams and cars and the best drivers possible."

The result? I'm not sure what you mean. But when the IRL had full fields years ago, the drivers were hardly world class. Now, it's basically just another spec series that has a relatively small national folowing. But it has managed to attract (or acquire by default) better drivers and teams than what it had years ago. But gone are the days when AOWR teams could make or modify chassis as they saw fit. Gone are the days when World Driving Champions and (truly) world class drivers were attracted to NAOWR. Welcome to the days of the most popular driver in NAOWR being a person who has won but a single professional auto race in her entire life, and is more known for taking off her clothes and fighting than anything she has done on the race track. If one could be a fly on the wall with Rick Mears, Johnny Rutherford, Mario Andretti and Emmo Fittipaldi talking about the "good old days", I suspect you'd see a lot of head shaking going on. F1 is having its issues. But I don't see Niki Lauda and Jackie Stewart crying the blues... quite yet.


that answer may well be beyond control of everyone unless changes are made, and then who wants the IRL model? not me, but alas....

No, we don't want that. Lord knows... we don't want that!!!

[markabilly]

Relative to the cost, yes, that's what I mean.



The result? I'm not sure what you mean. But when the IRL had full fields years ago, the drivers were hardly world class. Now, it's basically just another spec series that has a relatively small national folowing. But it has managed to attract (or acquire by default) better drivers and teams than what it had years ago. But gone are the days when AOWR teams could make or modify chassis as they saw fit. Gone are the days when World Driving Champions and (truly) world class drivers were attracted to NAOWR. Welcome to the days of the most popular driver in NAOWR being a person who has won but a single professional auto race in her entire life, and is more known for taking off her clothes and fighting than anything she has done on the race track. If one could be a fly on the wall with Rick Mears, Johnny Rutherford, Mario Andretti and Emmo Fittipaldi talking about the "good old days", I suspect you'd see a lot of head shaking going on. F1 is having its issues. But I don't see Niki Lauda and Jackie Stewart crying the blues... quite yet.



No, we don't want that. Lord knows... we don't want that!!!


There was a time when there were a hundred cars trying to get into the Indy 500......in the last few years, due to lack of sponsorhip, those field shrank dramactically to the point that theyr might not be enough cars to fill out the grid.....then due to lack of money, many teams just do Indy and then sit....Champcars died....and the reason for the spec series of IRL has more to do with costs or lack of money (although they tried to hide it by claiming they were just trying to create more excitment and more competition for the fans)---

Indeed, even with the severly reduced costs, IRL teams and drivers that are competitive are folding up over the last few years....god knows I do not want it either.....but

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music woudn't play..........................

[Jag_Warrior]

There was a time when there were a hundred cars trying to get into the Indy 500......in the last few years, due to lack of sponsorhip, those field shrank dramactically to the point that theyr might not be enough cars to fill out the grid.....then due to lack of money, many teams just do Indy and then sit....Champcars died....and the reason for the spec series of IRL has more to do with costs or lack of money (although they tried to hide it by claiming they were just trying to create more excitment and more competition for the fans)---

Indeed, even with the severly reduced costs, IRL teams and drivers that are competitive are folding up over the last few years....god knows I do not want it either.....but

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music woudn't play..........................

Generally speaking, the closer something gets to being considered a commodity, the more important is the cost. The cost of running an Indy/Champ Car in the CART days (early-mid 90's) exceeded the cost of running an IRL car these days. But a CART race was not a commodity. The value was sufficent to justify the sponsorships and expenditures. The drivers were not the superstars that NASCAR drivers are today, but they were in many cases quite well known. Now what do you have? Why would a major company want to be an IRL sponsor? The reason most often given is that it's cheaper than F1 or NASCAR. Yep, and a used Yugo is a damn sight cheaper than a new XKR. But even with this downturn, I don't see too many Jag owners choosing the Yugo over the XKR - they'll just stay out of the market until conditions change. It has to do with reasons apart from simple cost. The IRL has never understood that. In the end, neither did Champ Car, with its Ride Buyer of the Week teams and portable carnival tent way of choosing race venues.

Over the past four or five years, on various racing boards, I have howled that the obsession with costs means little if there is no attention paid to the value of the product. When Tony George pulled down his pants and took a giant dump on the Indy 500, he devalued that race. And it has not yet regained that value. So now, he has no choice but to cut costs to the bone. As a race that gets no more than the ratings of an average NASCAR race, the Indy 500 is not seen as "special" to as many people anymore... certainly not to the degree that it once was.

What I fear will happen to F1 is that through greed and stupidity, Formula One's Wizard of Oz curtain will be pulled back, and like the Indy 500, people will stop seeing it as anything "special". I'd also like to see the costs of F1 decrease. But not in such a way that it takes away from what makes F1 different from (OK, I'll say it: superior to!) the little "commodity" open wheel series that now populate the planet.

[PolePosition_1]

Personally, I cannot understand this “its Bernie and Max’s fault” idea everyone is giving.

From my perspective, its 95% the manufacturers faults. They entered F1 during a boom in the global economy, they were able to walk into F1, and pour what was to them relatively small amounts of cash, and be best funded team on the grid. As more and more manufacturers joined, the cost escalated. The manufacturers have been responsible for bringing the costs up by such a huge amount.

I remember Max and Bernie saying years ago when manufacturers were pouring into F1 that it was unsustainable for Formula 1 to relay heavily on them, as manufacturers see F1 as a business opportunity, nothing else. Max has been active and upfront about the need to cut costs, but obviously with manufacturers having biggest budgets, they have dragged their heals in doing this, as it would give independent competitors a more equal playing field.

In many ways, its highly ironic that one of the first victims of the credit crunch is one of the main culprits to making F1 economically unsustainable in the first place.

I’m a realist, so I’m not going to say Bernie and Max are cleaner than white, both, in particular Max has messed up. With the rule changes, intended to decrease costs have in reality brought up costs, and introduction of KERS etc, its clearly not best timing.

But their line of thought has been correct. With Bernie, many have a go at him for hogging all the money F1 makes. Well I’m afraid he fully entitled to do that. CVC own 70% of Formula 1, Bernie only owns 10%, but is spokesman for CVC. CVC and their shareholders paid billions of pounds for F1, its Bernie job to make sure the shareholders get a good return on their investment. Why should CVC pay billions for F1, only for the profits to be given to someone else?

All the teams currently in F1 entered Formula 1 knowing the financial set up, now we’re hitting tough times, they want to be bailed out by more profits from F1. I just don’t think its right. At best, it would only be a short term solution, it wouldn’t be a good incentive to reduce costs if they’re bailed out, I say leave them struggle, they’ll be forced to cut costs, and it will be better for F1 in the long term.