FIA President Max Mosley conducted a one-on-one interview for BBC Television in the UK on Friday, after the FIA met the teams to discuss the 2010 crisis.
Mosley is not capitulating to Ferrari pressure (LAT photo)
After the FIA’s meeting with the incumbent Formula 1 teams to discuss the 2010 regulations crisis on Friday, FIA President Max Mosley conducted a one-on-one interview with BBC sports editor Mihir Bose. The transcript is below:
Q: Max Mosley thank you for joining us. You’ve had this meeting – has there been a resolution to what seems like a very grave crisis for your sport?
MM: No, certainly no resolution yet. I think the teams have gone away with a clear idea of what we think should happen. They’re gonna come back now in the next few days. I’m quite optimistic that it will get sorted out. Whether it will get sorted out quickly is another matter.
Q: We heard that one of the proposals you made, that teams who accept the budget cap would be allowed to do their own thing, a “two-tier” championship….that will not proceed?
MM: Yes. I think we’re all agreed that it is desirable that everyone race under the same regulations. I think there’s no difficulty about that. That became necessary after some of the existing teams wanted to race under the budget cap. The original idea was that new teams coming in would probably end up as mobile chicanes, much too slow, if we didn’t give them some assistance. Now that some of the existing teams want to come in under the budget cap, obviously they would then have far too big of an advantage, so we found another way of closing the gap by way of an exchange of information, but all under one regulation.
Q: So, has the idea of a budget cap been accepted?
MM: The principal of an enormous reduction in costs has certainly been accepted. The teams are now saying that they can come up with a better way of doing this than having a budget cap. We (the FIA) say “oh that’s very pleasing to hear, what have you got in mind?”. (They say) “Well we’re not quite sure but we want to talk about it”. So I’ve said to them it will be very difficult to improve on a budget cap because it’s something that everybody can understand, it’s a level playing field, and the cleverest team is going to win because everybody has the same amount of money, it’s just who can do the best job with that money. But if they could think of something better then obviously we’d have to look at it. But I’m very skeptical.
Q: Would it be fair to say is that what you’ve agreed is that there will be some kind of budget cap, possibly at a higher figure, no two-tier championships, but an exchange of information between the teams?
MM: Well I wouldn’t go quite that far. I think no two-tier championship certainly. Exchange of information almost certainly, but I’d be very reluctant to increase the budget cap figure further because I think that would stop new teams coming in, because they simply can’t raise the money. People talk about 40 million pounds as not a lot of money. It’s an enormous sum of money, particularly when you take the engines, the drivers, the motorhomes out of it….top teams would still be spending 100 million. If we allow that figure to rise, it means a new team has to go out in the marketplace and find sponsorship of 30-40 million pounds… they wouldn’t be able to do it. We’ve got to hold the line on the amount of money. But it’s also in the interests of the existing teams, because none of these teams should be spending the money. The big manufacturers, all of them, in the end, are being subsidized by the taxpayer, directly or indirectly. They really cannot spend that money unnecessarily.
Q: But can you hold the line when Ferrari, for instance, have made it very clear that they don’t want (a budget cap) and have applied for an injunction (against it)?
MM: I’d be surprised if they get it (the injunction), but they certainly don’t agree. But in the end, if things go as they should go, they will have to make their mind up if they want to come racing, to come racing on the same basis as everybody else. Simply being there and spending more money, it’s not fair and it’s not really in their own interests.
Q: This is an injunction in the French courts saying you’ve violated your agreement with them (between the FIA and the teams)?
MM: Exactly, that’s what they’re saying, and obviously we’re saying absolutely not.
Q: How do you see that panning out?
MM: I don’t know, I’d be very surprised if they succeeded, but obviously you never know in the courts.
Q: I can understand that you are doing this because you believe the industry needs to look at itself and look at the costs. But there’s a lot of criticism that you’ve done this in a very dictatorial fashion, without consultation….
MM: They do say that. Of course, the truth of the matter is that when it became apparent that any manufacturer could stop at any moment, as Honda did, we knew we had to bring new teams in, and we’ve been discussing bringing new teams in. They then say to us we’ll give you guarantees that we’ll continue, so we ask for the guarantees and no guarantee appears. Then they say they’ll have meetings to talk about bringing new teams in….no meetings. We’ve been trying for the last two months to have a meeting to discuss these things, they’ve resolutely refused to do so – today was the first meeting. In the end, you have to take a decision. I think what they may have hoped is that we would just sit there and wait, and wait, and wait, and then it would be too late for new teams to come in, and they would have complete control of the situation with no new teams. We couldn’t do that, so we had no choice but to take a decision at a certain point when we got to the limit of time.
