While the fallout from Mercedes’s mistake in pitting Lewis Hamilton at Monaco dominated the week after the race, the sport’s governing body, the FIA quietly slipped out an announcement that may have some larger and longer-term bearing on what is happening on the track and off it.
Last Thursday the FIA announced it was opening a new tender process for teams to apply to enter Formula One for the 2016 or 2017 seasons. In itself this does not seem wholly unusual, with Caterham going out of business last year the grid is down to 10 teams and there is an obvious slot that could be filled. However coming on the back of the strategy group meeting that took place before Monaco, more might be read into it.
Alongside various proposals to improve the racing, including the rather nonsensical return of refuelling, potential tyre-rule changes and a proposal to increase speeds by five to six seconds a lap, the meeting did not come up with any concrete plan for the elephant in the room: the way the sport’s money is distributed and how to ensure the survival of smaller teams.
On that subject the group concluded that there should be “global reflection” on the sport and cost-cutting, with an as yet undefined long-term plan for the future, described in this statement: “In light of the various scenarios presented by the independent consulting company mandated by the F1 strategy group, at the initiative of the FIA, to work on the reduction of costs and following a constructive exchange, a comprehensive proposal to ensure the sustainability of the sport has emerged.”
The group which consists of the top six teams, Formula One Management and the FIA, committed to refining this rather woolly concept in consultation with the other teams in the forthcoming weeks but it is understood that the customer car concept (cars built by a constructor and sold to another entrant) was again seriously discussed and is subject to a feasibility study by the big six.
The FIA requires an expression of interest to be declared by 30 June, with full applications to be submitted by 1 September. Which is not a lot of time, certainly not for a new team to build a car from scratch for 2016. However an existing team stepping up from a feeder formula could conceivably do so were they to purchase a car from one of the major teams. Yet that too remains unlikely – the smaller constructors are strongly against the concept and a rule change to allow it to happen requires their consent, so from the customer car perspective, 2016 still looks too soon.
But the entry is open for 2017 as well, which is more realistic. With over a year and a half to go, the FIA may well have begun the process now because they are expecting there to be an agreement on the customer car question by then, in time to allow a new team to apply and then purchase a car to make the grid. However even this suggests a level of cooperation and forward planning between the FIA, FOM and the teams that appears to simply not exist.
Formula One’s chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone, said on Wednesday that he thought the strategy group should be removed because it did not work, stating: “At last month’s strategy group meeting nothing was decided – not even the date of the next meeting. We could have voted on something then and put it through, but nothing.”
So should the place not be a precursor to the introduction of customer cars, might there be another reason? On the previous occasion when the FIA opened a tender in 2013 it was understood to be in response to known interest – in this case Gene Haas’s US-based racing team Haas F1, which was duly awarded a grid place that it will take up next year.
Both the FIA and Ecclestone are convinced any new team entering must have the resources and finances to present a credible challenge – there is no interest in another team providing two mobile chicanes at the back – and one organisation that could certainly guarantee meeting that criterion is the Volkswagen Group.
Long-touted as potential F1 entrants via Audi or Porsche, that VW have not done so can at least partly be explained by the former chairman Ferdinand Piëch’s personal animosity to Ecclestone. However Piëch was forced to resign in April, leaving the chairman of the board of directors, Martin Winterkorn, in a position to pursue his ambitions in F1, not least because he has seen the commercial success rivals Mercedes are currently enjoying.
The Audi marque has been most associated with an entry, one it has always strongly and understandably denied. Their endurance racing program has been hugely successful with the team winning the Le Mans 24 Hours 13 times since 2000. They were, however, joined in the World Endurance Championship by Porsche last year who have come on leaps and bounds in a short period of time and are genuine contenders for this year’s 24 Hours.
The car they have developed, the Porsche 919, is petrol-driven, as opposed to Audi’s diesel, and utilises hybrid and turbo technologies similar to those in F1. Equally, despite being built to different regulations and designed to run for hours, it is no slouch. The team took pole at the Silverstone round of the WEC this year with a time of 1min 39.721sec, which would have put the car seventh in qualifying at the British Grand Prix in 2014. Perhaps, as F1’s background wrangling continues, it is their intention to be on the grid for real in 2017 that lies behind the FIA’s new team prospectus.
