MOTORSPORT: Amazing times in F1, V8 Supercars

Who would have envisaged just a little while back that, despite the comments several years ago by British judges and the reservations of the V8 Supercar fraternity, Tom Walkinshaw (pictured) would end up with Holden Racing Team again -- and the green light to run two other V8 Supercars next year?

Who could have envisaged consensus between the Formula 1 teams and with the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) that will see at least 30 per cent cut from spending in the world's premier series next year, with promises of more to come?

Things agreed for next year include longer-life engines, 18,000 rpm limits, customer engines at half this year's prices, no testing during the season, curbs on wind tunnel operation, factory closures for six weeks a year, and sharing of tyre and fuel information on race weekends. Fuller details are here ...

FIA president Max Mosley claims it will be F1 "as we all know it, but clearly much less expensive" (more here ).

But the enormity of the changes, and what's happening in the motor industry and motorsport, make us wonder what is next.

Particularly when we learn that Toyota, the healthiest of the big carmakers, is going to lose US$1.7 billion in the six months from October 2008 to March 2009.

Honda has already pulled the plug on its F1 team -- and a buyer is needed by December 31 if there are to be 20 cars on the grid in Melbourne on the last weekend of next March.

Surely Toyota won't follow suit and pull out? Despite the loss now looming, it's in comparatively good shape -- and has declared that Honda's withdrawal will not be a precedent for it.

There are rumblings, and must be doubts, about smaller teams though. We'll wait to see what happens there, rather than just speculate.

And if F1 and NASCAR are in the shape they are, what's going to happen in V8 Supercars?

Thankfully there is no evidence of any massive problems yet, although we wonder what might happen if General Motors and/or Ford end up in bankruptcy in the US.

On the global motorsport scene, what amazes us in this environment of F1 cost-slashing is that there has been no public mention of/calls for the cutting of staging fees that F1 races -- i.e. the cost promoters, circuits or governments (sometimes a combination of two or even all three) -- pay Bernie Ecclestone for the right to host a Grand Prix.

And we wonder if the fact that there has been no mention of these fees is yet another smoothly-executed victory for Ecclestone and his long-time mate Mosley.

Mosley has been talking about the need to cut the costs of F1 teams for yonks, and he's finally got agreement on that. But perhaps the outcome is not so much a result of Mosley's statesmanship but just come about because of the economic and motor industry meltdown(s).

Maybe it's just a reflection that the carmakers will do what suits them at any particular time -- enter F1, spend more in the sport, cut back at times, even pull-out, as we're seeing with Honda.

But if Mosley is concerned for the future of motorsport, and F1 in particular, how come he has not aired any concerns about the costs of F1 races to promoters, circuits and governments that shell out many millions of dollars, and cumulatively hundreds of millions, to Ecclestone?

Clearly many of the promoters, circuits and governments around the world struggle with these race fees.

Indianapolis could not justify Ecclestone's fees and did not renew the US GP contract, so there was no race in the US this year. Now Canada is off the calendar too, so next year there will be no GP in North America for the first time in half a century.

France, which hosted the very first GP, also is gone from the calendar too for at least a year or two.

Germany's Hockenheim and Nurburgring are struggling even to stage a GP on an annual rotation basis.

There have been reservations about the GP cost in China's Shanghai as well, although most of the newer additions to the calendar, many bankrolled by Arab oil money, are happy to pay top dollar -- up around $50 million a year.

In Australia our GP is now running at a loss of $40 million a year. The fee the Victorian government pays for its yearly race in Melbourne's Albert Park is thought to be in the range of $25-30 million -- and around, perhaps a fraction below, the average that all venues around the world pay.

If the global average fee for GPs is $25 million and the F1 championship has 18 rounds that would gross Ecclestone and his private equity partners, CVC, $450 million a year (and their costs would be a small percentage of that).

If the average fee is $30 million the gross take would be $540 million.

Now Ecclestone is never going to volunteer to reduce his fees, even in the horrific global economic environment we're now enduring.

And equally, perhaps even more so, CVC doesn't want any reduction in those fees, because it needs those fees -- and the annual increases that come with them -- to fund its massive debt on the billions of dollars it borrowed to buy 75 per cent of Ecclestone's F1 empire a couple of years ago.

As admirable as it has seemed on the surface, we wonder whether Mosley's campaigning against the spending of the F1 teams and carmakers involved with them has not been carefully orchestrated to mask or avert attention from Ecclestone/CVC's rake-off from the sport.

Amid all the backslapping in F1/FIA circles about the recent agreement on cutting costs, we noted that Ferrari's Luca di Montezemolo, who chairs the new Formula One Teams Association, made a little mention that there now also needed to be attention to the distribution of the F1 pie.

This is a perennial bugbear of the F1 teams -- that Ecclestone, now in league with CVC, get much more than half of F1's income from race fees and TV contracts.

We suspect some of them dare not even mention their gripe publicly for fear of retribution, but Ferrari -- which well knows its place as the centrepiece of the show -- does not always feel so constrained.

Clearly Ecclestone and CVC don't want to give up any of their massive revenue stream, but isn't it odd that in this environment no thought or scrutiny seems to be given -- by someone, somewhere -- to the burden of the race promoters in paying their enormous fees.

Especially as it has become clear over recent years that the global TV audience is nowhere near what was once claimed.

And that there is now the possibility, if Honda doesn't find a buyer for its F1 team within the next couple of weeks, there could be only 18 F1 cars on the grid in Melbourne in a little over three months.

So the TV audience is way short of what it was meant to be and the field could be eight cars shy of the 26 that was part of Ecclestone's guaranteed package for so long through the 1980s and into the '90s.

Much more could be said and written about all of this, but perhaps that is enough for today -- other than to point to some interesting reading material we've come across over recent days.

First is a letter from a former Honda F1 team chief operating officer, published in London's Financial Times , here

And an article by the blunt Mike Lawrence on pitpass.com, here

And an article, written before the weekend's F1-FIA agreement, saying the internal combustion engine's time is up in F1, here

And another in which Max Mosley says the public should decide whether F1 goes with Bernie Ecclestone's idea for gold, silver and bronze medals for drivers at GPs and that extending the points down to eighth place was a mistake. That's here

Mosley says market research will be done on the medals idea, but does not say where. Britain only? Europe only? Even if it were to be done in all countries that have GPs how extensively and how soon could it be done?

Some people seem to have got themselves in an unnecessary lather over this medals proposal.

There are already three drivers on the podium after a GP. What's the problem with them getting medals but, in the drivers' championship, points still being awarded to, we say, the top six (certainly if the field is only 18 in 2009)?

Ecclestone has always envisaged that points would remain for the constructors' championship.

The only matter then to be resolved would be how to decide the world champion if one driver had the most wins -- and gold medals -- but another had accumulated more points over the season.

But it could simply be legislated/ruled that the driver winning the most races took precedence, if that's what the rulemakers/sport want.

Lots more from around the world

Although it's now meant to be the off-season, still plenty of motorsport news ...

Five-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb won the Race of Champions in Britain at the weekend, beating David Coulthard in the final. American Carl Edwards, runner-up in NASCAR's Sprint Cup, beat Michael Schumacher, while a match-race between Lewis Hamilton and British gold medal Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy was cancelled on safety grounds. Australian F1 driver Mark Webber missed the event because of his leg. More on Loeb's win here

Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser Jr, who has had his share of problems -- including with alcohol - in recent years, has been the victim of an extortion attempt. More here

Alex Davison has won a $150,000 Porsche as the most successful privateer Porsche sports car racer in the world this year. More here

The award concludes a very successful year for grandsons of the late Lex Davison, a four-time Australian GP (before it became an F1 race). Alex's younger brother, Will, finished fifth in the V8 Supercar Championship and won two races this season, while the pair's cousin, James, was named the most improved driver in the Indy Lights series in North America.

And another Rossi is making a big impact in motorsport. No sign he's related, at least closely, to MotoGP superstar Valentino, but American teenager Alexander Rossi recently won the Formula BMW "world championship" in Mexico. Grandprix.com reported that the 17-year-old "drove a stunning race to pass three men ahead of him" on the way to his 10th win of the year -- three of them at F1 events. The boy might be going places.

To comment on this article click here