|
|
 |
MARK THOMPSON/GETTY IMAGES
POOR RELATION:
With sponsors bailing out, Eddie Jordan, top, last year laid off 15% of his workforce, while his cars, above, look naked
|
|
The teams may resent the new restrictions, but they can hardly be surprised. The rivals, who find it hard to agree with each other about anything, got together in Paris in December to cobble together ideas to add spice to the racing, but the proposals they came up with — such as reducing ballast by 2005 and cosmetic changes to bodywork to allow more advertising space — didn't commit them to any serious reductions in technology and would not, according to one team principal, "have saved enough to pay for the sandwiches."
And saving is important. Many teams still receive the bulk of their sponsorship from tobacco companies, who will be forced to withdraw it under European Union laws by 2005. In some countries tobacco sponsorship is already banned; this is why Belgium will not be hosting a Grand Prix this year. Even though the cost savings should have been attractive to all the teams, not all of them welcomed the changes. The problem, according to the sport's impresario, and owner of 25% of its television rights, Bernie Ecclestone, was that "like in life, you have the haves and the have-nots. So the haves still want to keep eating caviar and the have-nots want caviar taken off the market."
The bosses of two of the "haves" — Frank Williams, head of the team that bears his name, and Ron Dennis, principal of McLaren — have said that they will legally challenge the way the new rules are being imposed. Dennis accused Mosley of behaving "like a dictator" and "dumbing down" the sport. Mosley dismissed the objections in a blistering reply, saying, "If you think that the public wants to see computer-controlled cars guided from the pits by anonymous engineers, please think again."
When the cars line up on the grid for the season opener in Melbourne this weekend they'll still look the same, but under the gleaming bodywork and multiplicity of logos the technology is set to disappear. Banned immediately is the pit-to-car telemetry, so engineers will no longer be able to prevent breakdowns from the garage while the car is on the circuit. Teams will no longer be able to build special "qualifying" cars just to grab a high place on the grid or use spare cars, unless the driver totals his race car. The FIA will impound all the cars after they qualify until shortly before the race, allowing only a couple of hours for the engineers to make final tweaks. Beginning with the British Grand Prix in July, launch control, traction control and fully automatic gearboxes will go too. (The delay is to allow the FIA to develop its own brand of high technology, to check that no one is cheating.) Next year car-to-pit telemetry goes too, and teams will have to make a single engine last the whole race weekend. And in 2005 cars will have to make a single engine last two races, and use standardized rear wings and braking systems. By 2006 one engine will have to stagger through six races.
 |
 |
|
|
L A T I N A M E R I C A
Lula Takes Off: Brazil's new President launches his war on poverty
F A S H I O N
Red Hot Cavalli: Revealed! Roberto Cavalli's Big Secret — Mrs Cavalli |
S P O R T
Fast Thinking: The crowd's bored, so Formula One is changing gears
B U S I N E S S
Get Back to Work!: European businesses are sick of absenteeism |
|
|
 |
|
