Back to the Future: Why F1 Will Survive a FOTA Exodus

(Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

So, a FOTA series could conceivably take shape and become a modest success in a short amount of time. With prestigious teams, famous drivers and the competitors themselves running the show, it could gather momentum and even usurp Formula One as the pinnacle of motorsport.

And then again, maybe it won't. As the FIA alluded to in a statement released earlier today, the differences between themselves and FOTA lie in a disparate set of philosophies of what the sport is about.

In recent years, the major thrust of FIA rulemaking has been about limiting the freedom of F1's engineers to innovate. Whether for safety, competition or cost-saving reasons, restrictions on what teams can and cannot include in their cars have reached crippling levels.

The consequence of all of this is that the focus of design and engineering in F1 has switched: Aerodynamic efficiency is now more important than the generation of mechanical grip; until the ECU was standardised for 2008, devising clever electronic driver aids was a workaround for the banning of mechanical equivalents.

As many fans and pundits pointed out in this time, the rules introduced seemingly arbitrarily by the FIA achieved neither of the federation's stated aims, firstly of improving safety by reducing speeds and secondly of reducing the cost of competing in F1 to a sustainable level.

The ingenuity demonstrated by F1's technical departments in finding ways to make the cars ever quicker far outstripped the pace of the FIA in banning the more outlandish innovations. And by radically shifting the goalposts of research and development year on year, the FIA did more to increase costs than it ever did to reduce them.

What the rules for 2010 represent more than anything is a change in the approach of the FIA. They have recognised, years after many of the rest of us, that they cannot cut speeds or costs by restricting the freedom of F1 teams to innovate.

The FIA are now intent on reducing the cost of competing in a far more explicit manner, by actually capping budgets and insisting that teams operate to within a certain fixed level of expenditure.

The flip side of this arrangement is that it paves the way for many of the technical restrictions on F1 cars to be relaxed; the FIA have already gone some way towards achieving this by announcing a raft of changes to the technical regulations in the wake of the budget cap.

Moveable aerodynamic devices may be permitted on F1 cars for the first time in more than 40 years; rev limits on the engines may be removed; I have even heard that four-wheel drive F1 cars may be allowed in exchange for a cost cap.

By introducing these technical freedoms the FIA will begin to reverse the changes it has made to the sport in the last twenty years, many of which have been poorly received. By reducing the reliance on stringent technical regulations, F1 goes back to what it is meant to be about—an engineering challenge.

In their stance against the FIA, FOTA appear to have missed this bigger picture. They are worried about how a budget cap will remove their right to spend their way to the front of the grid.

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