This week the Formula One circus rolls up in Istanbul for, somewhat predictably, the Turkish Grand Prix. The weekend promises to be an interesting one, with the continued dominance of Brawn GP expected to come under greater threat this weekend than at any point of the year to date.
Red Bull have been genuine contenders more often than not this year but have developed a habit of shooting themselves in the foot. Might the addition of the double-decker diffuser aid their already brilliant performance in medium and high speed corners enough to give them the weekend’s dominant car? Have Ferrari, who with Felipe Massa have won 3 of the 4 Istanbul races, found sufficient downforce to give the Brazilian the tools he needs for another Turkish victory?
They probably haven’t, in truth (though how close they are will be interesting to see – some of us maintain that this, not the one-off Monaco and the familiar Barcelona, is the acid test of Ferrari’s recent upgrades), though Red Bull might well be very, very well placed on Sunday. On a track that generally gave good racing even before the cars were shorn of their aerodynamic aids, the race should be an exciting one, but as so often in Formula One the main action of the weekend is taking place off the track. The gloves, it would seem, are off in the battle between the governing FIA and the collective might of the FOTA teams.
That might is getting less collective all the time. Already Williams, a team with no business other than racing and no choice other than to commit to a championship they know will definitely exist next season, have broken ranks. Force India are doing the same, and surely Brawn will soon be the last of the independent teams to lodge a firm entry. Motor racing is what they do, motor racing is all they do, and they cannot afford to wait in limbo while major motor manufacturers who can survive without a racing programme have a set-to with the FIA.
The manufacturer teams and the Red Bull teams remain united by a common goal, although that goal changes a little with every passing day and that unity will dissolve the instant one manufacturer spies the chance to score points over another. The issue most frequently raised, that of the FIA’s desire for a budget cap against FOTA’s desire to bring costs down by themselves without being told what they can afford to spend, is in fact FOTA’s way of highlighting that they want a say in the way the sport is governed. I may or may not get into more detail on the whole affair at some point, depending on whether I can sit in front of the keyboard at a reasonable time of day and conclude that I’m not actually as sick as a chip of hearing about FOTA after all, but in brief, they’re nuts. Self-governance will work only for as long as it takes one set of engineers to spot a loophole and exploit it, and should you find yourself disagreeing with that, consider this.
Not all of the FIA’s policies are brilliantly thought-out – the budget cap, for example, is a fine idea in principle but nobody has yet presented a way in which it can be fairly and unobtrusively policed – but their primary interest is motor racing. Each individual member of FOTA is interested primarily in the success of their own company, and it’s difficult to see how that can be put to one side firmly enough for long enough to allow them any fair regulatory clout. It’s equally difficult to see why the FIA, secure in the knowledge that their governance of Formula One has worked just fine for the last 60 years, would feel any need to give them the time of day.
FOTA say their member teams have submitted, as a block of teams, a ‘conditional entry’ to the 2010 championship, which would seem to overlook that an entry is based upon acceptance of the terms and conditions presented to you and that a conditional entry is in fact not an entry at all, rather a negotiation. Some of these teams are contractually bound to race in Formula One next year regardless of their thoughts on the rules package, and should any of the others disappear, there will be a new outfit ready to take their place; indeed, 9 brand new teams of varying credibility are thought to have lodged entries for the 2010 season. Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel and the rest will have something to drive next season, just as Fangio and Moss had cars to drive when Mercedes withdrew from Formula One in 1955, and just as Jacques Villeneuve did when Renault withdrew their engines at the end of his title-winning 1997 season – all of the FOTA manufacturers, in fact, have form for self-serving disappearances that makes their promised long-term racing commitment sound a little hollow. Whoever the entrant is, whatever colour the car is, the drivers will put on the same show. The manufacturers have missed that, but the FIA haven’t; the car, as they well appreciate, is not the star.
