F1F says Brawn’s not going to meet Button’s base salary demands, but McLaren might! (Can anyone imagine the Ice Man in a chilly-white Brawn next year? When you factor out the diffuser advantage, was Jenson’s championship any more noble than Kimi’s?… Though I’d wager Jense is more sponsor-accessible.)

F1F says Brawn’s not going to meet Button’s base salary demands, but McLaren might! (Can anyone imagine the Ice Man in a chilly-white Brawn next year? When you factor out the diffuser advantage, was Jenson’s championship any more noble than Kimi’s?… Though I’d wager Jense is more sponsor-accessible.)

> I find it unimaginable that Japan
> might not be represented at all in F1

Sentiments like these convince me that Formula One has much in common with the United Nations. Both organizations offer promises of trans-national devotion to decency and excellence above petty glory. In reality, each is a pandering enterprise wherein profoundly self-interested parties scrap and cheat with abject skulduggery to get their needs met.

(For the record, I think think F1 –which is indisputably, definitionally a private enterprise– is ethically the cleaner of the two ventures.)

Of course I wish Japan were a success in Formula One, instead of a decades-old Bridesmaid. Japan leads the globe as a producer of motor cars. But their organizational excellence is only a part of the human experience… The individual dynamism of a successful F1 team, even one like the relatively cohesive Ferrari of the early 2000′s, is something Japan should be able to master as well.

> In a sense, you can see this current
> phase as the F1 equivalent of
> a market correction.

I don’t think this is merely equivalent, and I don’t think it’s just “in a sense”… It’s a straightforward, genuine market correction in a time of global economic suffering. Politics in the States are taking a taking a profoundly non-capitalist direction, and most every nation is feeling abject pain from these shared contractions.

Much as we might applaud Renault’s “real heritage”, it is in fact an economic enterprise by which investors are rewarded and in which employees are paid. Ditto Toyota, BMW, and Honda. It’s just not in my heart to fault these guys for thinking carefully about the rewards from an investment such as F1… Especially in light of the capriciousness from Bernie’s CVC and Spanky Mosley. (I will never forget Max’s sarcasm towards Howett earlier this year.)

(Also, let’s not forget that Renault’s four recent championships came under the command of Briatore, a non-engineer often denigrated as a pretender in F1′s ‘heritage’ of excellence.)

F1 is expensively rarefied; to what end? It’s no longer about horsepower; Senna & Berger each commanded as much torque as any two drivers in Abu Dhabi. And thank God in Heaven, it’s no longer so much about safety… During radio coverage of the a practice last weekend, Stewart spoke about the heartbreaking losses of life no longer routinely suffered in Formula One. (It was those deaths caused me to turn to rock ‘n roll as a teenager in search of heroes; Even if the long-hairs did drugs, they weren’t as likely to die as a race driver.)

There’s much to be said for backing off the technology. Selling F1 as a tool for development of conventional cars is a joke… The delicacy of the cars, from the exotic materials to the absurd engines (19K rpm!) are completely removed from the experience of conventional markets. And let’s not even talk about design costs.

(Whether you’re a greeny or not, please insert your own thoughts about the KERS debacle in the space provided: ___________________________)

The engineering and expenditures for F1 teams are so comically exaggerated that I think you could silently cut their budgets in half, and perhaps half again, and perhaps AGAIN, and still the average race-goer wouldn’t see any difference from the stands, not by the speeds and not by the reliability. Those engines are so brittle and elegant that they might as well have been crafted by Martian gnomes from the tears of an angel and the winks of a Pope. How can any fan feel distinguishing admiration for one power plant or another? Let’s say Cosworth powers two-thirds of the field next year (no small probability): Will anyone care?

F1 could specify 4-cylinder power plants, perhaps stock ones from popular lines, at conventional revs… They could readily be goosed up to our present power levels with turbos and minor refinement.

If doing so would help Mr. Renault or Mr. Honda stay enthused about the sport, it would be a worthwhile trade. It would certainly help privateers fight competitively. (And it might drastically increase the market for old race cars, as they could be owned and operated by typical garage hounds & moderately wealthy men, instead of gazillion-aires who can pay for the team of laptop-equipped physicists and molecular scientists required to fire up a 2007 MP4-22).

> I find it unimaginable that Japan
> might not be represented at all in F1

Sentiments like these convince me that Formula One has much in common with the United Nations. Both organizations offer promises of trans-national devotion to decency and excellence above petty glory. In reality, each is a pandering enterprise wherein profoundly self-interested parties scrap and cheat with abject skulduggery to get their needs met.

(For the record, I think think F1 –which is indisputably, definitionally a private enterprise– is ethically the cleaner of the two ventures.)

Of course I wish Japan were a success in Formula One, instead of a decades-old Bridesmaid. Japan leads the globe as a producer of motor cars. But their organizational excellence is only a part of the human experience… The individual dynamism of a successful F1 team, even one like the relatively cohesive Ferrari of the early 2000′s, is something Japan should be able to master as well.

> In a sense, you can see this current
> phase as the F1 equivalent of
> a market correction.

I don’t think this is merely equivalent, and I don’t think it’s just “in a sense”… It’s a straightforward, genuine market correction in a time of global economic suffering. Politics in the States are taking a taking a profoundly non-capitalist direction, and most every nation is feeling abject pain from these shared contractions.

Much as we might applaud Renault’s “real heritage”, it is in fact an economic enterprise by which investors are rewarded and in which employees are paid. Ditto Toyota, BMW, and Honda. It’s just not in my heart to fault these guys for thinking carefully about the rewards from an investment such as F1… Especially in light of the capriciousness from Bernie’s CVC and Spanky Mosley. (I will never forget Max’s sarcasm towards Howett earlier this year.)

(Also, let’s not forget that Renault’s four recent championships came under the command of Briatore, a non-engineer often denigrated as a pretender in F1′s ‘heritage’ of excellence.)

F1 is expensively rarefied; to what end? It’s no longer about horsepower; Senna & Berger each commanded as much torque as any two drivers in Abu Dhabi. And thank God in Heaven, it’s no longer so much about safety… During radio coverage of the a practice last weekend, Stewart spoke about the heartbreaking losses of life no longer routinely suffered in Formula One. (It was those deaths caused me to turn to rock ‘n roll as a teenager in search of heroes; Even if the long-hairs did drugs, they weren’t as likely to die as a race driver.)

There’s much to be said for backing off the technology. Selling F1 as a tool for development of conventional cars is a joke… The delicacy of the cars, from the exotic materials to the absurd engines (19K rpm!) are completely removed from the experience of conventional markets. And let’s not even talk about design costs.

(Whether you’re a greeny or not, please insert your own thoughts about the KERS debacle in the space provided: ___________________________)

The engineering and expenditures for F1 teams are so comically exaggerated that I think you could silently cut their budgets in half, and perhaps half again, and perhaps AGAIN, and still the average race-goer wouldn’t see any difference from the stands, not by the speeds and not by the reliability. Those engines are so brittle and elegant that they might as well have been crafted by Martian gnomes from the tears of an angel and the winks of a Pope. How can any fan feel distinguishing admiration for one power plant or another? Let’s say Cosworth powers two-thirds of the field next year (no small probability): Will anyone care?

F1 could specify 4-cylinder power plants, perhaps stock ones from popular lines, at conventional revs… They could readily be goosed up to our present power levels with turbos and minor refinement.

If doing so would help Mr. Renault or Mr. Honda stay enthused about the sport, it would be a worthwhile trade. It would certainly help privateers fight competitively. (And it might drastically increase the market for old race cars, as they could be owned and operated by typical garage hounds & moderately wealthy men, instead of gazillion-aires who can pay for the team of laptop-equipped physicists and molecular scientists required to fire up a 2007 MP4-22).