Spanky and the Troll
 

Spanky and the Troll have for years and years, been greedy, money grabbing sell out to anyone and anything power freaks who are finally, maybe going to get whats coming to them. They have soured everyone who is or ever was a F1 fan. Too much control and too much meddling. Those two, with all their baggage should stay well out of the limelight and let the racers do their thing. IMO. They took out Canada, IMO one of the best and "funest" race of the year and are a constant threat to all the best race tracks in favor of the new boring, lifeless mideast and Asian tracks just for more TV rights and more Billions for their bank accounts. That felt good.

Recent headlines from Planet F1:


Mosley: Breakaway teams are 'loonies'

FIA President Max Mosley has lit the fuse for another ugly row in F1's ongoing civil war by describing a faction of the breakaway teams as "loonies" and suggesting that Renault boss Flavio Briatore wants to replace Bernie Ecclestone as the sport's head honcho.

Max: FOTA chaos may force me to stay on

Max Mosley has said the words many Formula One fans were hoping not to hear: I'm not quitting.

Mosley: Teams just want more money and power

FIA President Max Mosley has reputedly threatened a '£1 billion legal war' against the eight teams threatening to form a breakaway series and savaged their motivation in declining to sign up for the 2010 season, claiming they are only interested in acquiring more money and power.

I don't know if this has anything to do with Mosley but today British GP was soooooooo boring.

Boring will happen even in a series with a minimum of interference. Consider the late great Can-Am Series. For most of the series history, if you guessed that the race winner would be an orange McLaren -- you would be right. They always showed up with one more bullet in their gun than the Chaparrals, Lolas, Shadows and assorted other manufacturers and customer cars. They really only missed the boat once -- but that was in a big way when Porsche showed up with the turbocharger on their cars. Once that happened the McLarens were merely "the best of the rest" as Porsche cleaned up. So there were no rules and the races were inevitably walkaways.

The reality is that sometimes walkaways happen. In the case of Sunday's race, it appears that the Brawn aero package was not quite as suited to the high-speed circuit as Newey's new Red Bull package. Personally, I'm happy to see Vettel win another race. I'm pretty sure that as the series moves back to some medium speed curcuits (like Nurburgring and to a lesser degree Hungry) that the Red Bulls will not be quite as strong. Hungry is often called "Monaco without the houses", and if you look at the RBR teams results in Monaco, they were their worst results of the year. Either way, it still looks like at least the RBR team is close enough to give the Brawn team some competition. Who'd have thunk a year ago that Honda would be leading followed by Red Bull, with the McLaren struggling at the back of the pack???

Anyone care to guess if any other teams will win a race this year?
- Toyota?
- Ferrari?
- Renault? (In Valencia, Singapore or Hungry on the shoulders of Alonso?)
- Williams?
- BMW?
- Force India?

The analogy to Can-Am seems apt. Glorious as it was, Can-Am was short-lived, dying out after 8 years. I think a "truly unlimited" F1 would be in danger of the same fate.

The difference is that in order to maintain the technical challenge (for F1 is supposed to be that) the rules need to evolve and pose new challenges to the teams...otherwise dominance + boredom will result...

Those changes need to be on such a level that the existing teams can only bring their techncial problem solving experience, building and running experience to teh party.. but none of their previous design work.. this opens the window to new teams to get a jump on others...a bit like Brawn this year....a return to slicks was a pretty tall order and Brawn threw last year in order to win this year... a pretty good return I'd say.

Maybe require that at the end of each season, the top teams' cars for that season are made available to the other teams for inspection and teardown. Combined with engine supply agreements, this could help the other teams at least stay close.

I think there are ways to make it competitive within a reasonable set of solutions. A totally wide open set of regulations, while wonderful mental masturbation, will like work as well as unfettered financial markets have worked in the banking industry, ultimately it will implode.

I think using the current rules as a basis (which ought to be possible), going through them with a reasonably balanced point of view as a group and then coming up both with a set of rules that make sense now and a process by which rules can change will lead to a sustainable series. I think the issue is not that FOTA cannot live with rule making and having to change, it is their inability to find a workable set of compromises and the threat to their installed assets by an irrational FIA/FOM that is forcing this to happen.

I get a huge kick out of Bernie and Max right now, they are right up there with the King of France before the revolution (which one is Marie Antoinette you can guess) in suggesting that the peasants are revolting. Let them eat brioche...

The sabre rattling is not going to work this time (or at least I hope so), Bernie suggesting that there will be legal action without giving any insight as to the source of the action (e.g. breach of contract etc) suggests that he is trying the scare tactic.

Personally, both he and Maxie Pad make me wish that birth control was retroactive and I most definitely can see the parallels in behaviour and world view between Maxie and his dad...family facism...

Dennis