Eve Of The War: FIA Vs FOTA?

I love so much about Formula 1; the racing, the competition, rivalry, passion excitement.  In particular the last 4 years have been thrilling championships with lots of close racing, it didn’t need to be artificial. 

Well now it seems that obviously this closeness and excitement does need to be tinkered with, because despite the teams association FOTA and FIA market surveys to the contrary it appears the public is very dissatisfied with how the sport is.

Now a lot of the focus from the World Motor Sport Council’s statement will be on the new system to decide the driver’s championship.  That seems to have taken the heat off the even more significant aspect of effectively turning Formula 1 into a two class system.

This new class is for new or existing teams to operate with a £30million budget cap. To make sure they are competitive with the higher spending teams they will be able to have a more aerodynamically efficient under body, movable wings and an engine which is not subject to the development freeze.

Yes, there have been instances where there looked like a tier system such as in the '80s with normally aspirated engine teams and turbo teams, but they were still operating under one set of rules.

The new class is meant to breed technical creativity for cheaper while the bigger spending FOTA teams abide by another set of less creative rules, but does it also not bring the simmering rivalry between FOTA and the FIA closer to a boiling point.

This is especially true when you consider this statement about keeping the competition fair taken from autosport.com

‘The FIA has the right to adjust elements of these freedoms to ensure that the cost-capped cars have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage when compared to cars running to the existing rules.’

How many controversies will this throw up when the FIA tweak this formula and these budget capped cars start winning.  If they wanted this idea to go through, why not apply it to everyone instead of what looks like trying to create separation within the teams.

It stirs up unnecessary complications to a sport that wasn’t in need of being fixed and had already been provided many cost cutting alternatives by FOTA. It looks more like as well as ignoring FOTA’s alternative points system they are now trying to wedge the teams apart.

In all fairness, the idea is not actually that bad if applied to all as it looks like it would breed creativity which I’m all for, but, it seems the FIA, or perhaps more to the point, Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone really can’t stand not being in control.