The BMW Pit Lane Park is descending upon the Trafford Centre in Manchester in July. But not at just any old time in July, the 4th, 5th and 6th. Hmm, sound familiar? That’s because it’s at the same time as the British Grand Prix.
As an F1 nut, I would love to go to the Park and experience it. I’ve heard great things, and any opportunity to get closer to the cars, and the team is something I want to be doing. Plus, there’s a pit stop challenge, and we all know I can’t resist a challenge. It seems like a really fabulous way to spend some time, and I’ve been wondering when they’d turn up at location I could get to.
Max won his vote of confidence and upset a lot of people along the way. I suspect the majority of us are disappointed, if only because it would have been great to see what happened without him. I was not at all happy with the result of the vote, but it didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that he’s never going anywhere, so we may as well make the best of it.
It’s been two weeks now, since he was re-voted. And have you caught a glimpse of him recently?
You can understand why he kept a low profile before the extraordinary meeting. Aside from the fact that no one wanted to be seen with him, he was probably doing his best to stay out of the papers as much as possible. It didn’t work, but he kept his job. Now, however, is he still trying to keep that low profile? Did he not hear the criticism of him not being able to do his job properly?
If it was me, and granted, I’ve never been in that situation (!) then I would be grabbing the bull by the horns and ramping up my efforts as head of the FIA. I would turn up at the MSA/McLaren launch and say Go Motorsport is the best idea since sliced bread. I would be near the podium at Le Mans clapping and cheering and saying what a triumph the event is. I would be shooting Bernie Ecclestone down (again) and saying there is no threat of a breakway.
Welcome to Sidepodcast’s series Days that Shook the F1 World. So far we’ve looked at the US Grand Prix in 2005, Ayrton Senna’s death in 1994 and more. Today we’re looking at a pivotal moment in Formula 1 history, and the date was 9th October 1991.
It’s fair to say that Max Mosley is not the most popular person in F1 at the moment, and his tenure at the top of the FIA may soon be drawing to a close. However, when he first got the job back in 1991, he was definitely the preferred option.
It was the events of the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix and the subsequent fallout that first promoted Max to stand against the then president of the FISA Jean-Marie Balestre.The FISA was the sporting part of the FIA, and they were suffering from a case of bad reputations. Already we have discussed the lacklustre attempt at banning ground effects, which ultimately led to more accidents and deaths.
In Japan, an accident between Senna and Prost caused the Brazillian to be excluded from the race, handing the ’89 World Championship to Prost. Further to that, an appeal by McLaren served to see Ayrton’s super-license suspended and he was given a fine for $100,000. Predictably Senna spoke out about the decision and his comments claimed championship manipulation by the FISA. This angered Balestre, so much so that Senna was called before the World Motorsport Council to explain himself. The courts decided to take away Senna’s superlicence altogether, and he wasn’t going to be allowed it back unless he apologised for his comments.
The following February, Senna was finally persuaded to make the apology and his licence was returned. Max Mosley started to solicit support to become the FIA President. Although this obviously had something to do with the incident with Senna, it may also have had origins in the history between Mosley and Balestre. A vicious war had been raging between the FISA and the FOCA.
The FOCA was headed up by Bernie Ecclestone with Max Mosley as his right hand man. They were working on the team’s behalf to increase revenue share and make sure that everyone had their say. The FISA was fighting against them.
Eventually, the war drew to a somewhat amicable resolution, with Balestre taking over as President of the FIA and continuing to make the rules for Formula 1, whilst Ecclestone took over the commercial rights for the sport and divied up the cash.
In 1991, Balestre’s FIA presidency was up for renewal, and Max Mosley stood against him. Mosley easily gained the presidency. For a while, teams were satisfied. Max was working with them instead of against them, rule changes began to happen and everything was hunky dory. Teams and drivers felt so comfortable that Senna was able to speak out against the former President without fear of losing his licence. He denied making any apologies about the manipulation claims.
Of course, the happiness couldn’t last, and you’ll find politics rearing up almost every day now. But it’s safe to say that at the time, Mosley was the best thing that could have happened to the sport.
That’s all for this episode of Days that Shook the F1 World, and all for this series. Please visit Sidepodcast.com to leave your comments about this and any of the other shows in the series. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Sidepodcast. This is the first part in our latest mini series – Days that Shook the F1 World. The idea is to pick out some specific dates in Formula 1 history that made drivers, teams, fans and the media sit up and take notice. Days that quite literally shook the F1 World. Our first date is June 19 2005.
The 2005 Formula 1 season proved to be a refreshing break from the Ferrari dominance of previous years. Fernando Alonso took his R-25 Renault and made it work out on track, and Michael Schumacher was left struggling in the distance. Only Kimi Raikkonen could match Alonso’s pace, but the McLaren suffered from reliability problems.
In June, Formula 1 descended upon the USA, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Speedway features some of the only high banking in the Formula 1 calendar, as the cars leave the infield section and rejoin the Speedway oval. The critical corner is Turn 13. During Friday Practice, Ralf Schumacher suffered a left rear tyre failure at the turn and crashed heavily. After close inspection by Michelin of both the tyres in use, and spare tyres flown in from Spain, they advised their customer teams – seven out of the ten teams competing – that they couldn’t guarantee safety through the banking for a full race distance. On Saturday, Michelin informed the FIA that they didn’t know what the problem with the tyres was, but that it could be solved by slowing the cars down at Turn 13. The teams proposed several options: new spec tyres to be flown in, or a temporary chicane to be built, but Race Director Charlie Whiting would not allow either of these amendments. According to him, Bridgestone would be unfairly put out by a chicane, and essentially it was Michelin’s problem if they couldn’t bring the correct tyres to a race.
The teams met up, discussed the options, and all except Ferrari, who weren’t there, agreed that a chicane really was the best way to go, despite the FIA’s concerns that any changes to the track layout would render the race outside of the championship. Bernie Ecclestone offered to ask Jean Todt for Ferrari’s position on the proposal but returned with bad news. Todt believed the problem was between the FIA and Michelin and didn’t want to get involved.
Discussions continued, and the proposals went back and forth, with the teams beginning to come round to the idea of running a non-championship event, if only for the fan’s entertainment. The FIA and Ferrari continued to disagree to all the options presented to them.
With only moments to go, and confusion reigning supreme, the teams decided that they had no options left and would be forced to complete only a formation lap and then retire from the race. Ferrari were going to race, and Jordan decided to race also. Minardi team principal, Paul Stoddart, who was running on Bridgestones decided he needed to race, to keep the fight up with Jordan, but announced he would retire his cars if the Jordan’s were out of the race.
And so, twenty cars took to the grid, twenty cars completed the installation lap, then fourteen cars peeled off into the pit lane. Six cars took their places at the start line.
The crowd booed.
Obviously Ferrari won the race, and it helped them considerably in both driver and constructors championship. But any benefits the team had were outweighed by the many, many complaints. Anyone attending the race was absolutely furious, the race was rubbished and the future of F1 in the United States looked very shaky.
The fans blamed the FIA. The FIA blamed Michelin.
It was a very dark day in the entire history of Formula 1, and still provokes reactions today. Although the FIA eventually decided Michelin was not solely to blame, it was too late for the company, and the sport is now supplied by a single tyre manufacturer. Although the US Grand Prix battled through the bad feeling in both 2006 and 2007, it is off the calendar for 2008. Michelin eventually gave refunds to anyone who had attended the race.
That’s our first topic covered, a day that really did unsettle F1 to its very foundations. Join me again tomorrow for part two, featuring another day that shook the F1 World.
‘Tis the season for new podcast clients, it would seem. Earlier this week the Participatory Culture Foundation released version 1.0 of their free open-source desktop video application, more commonly referred to as Miro.
Miro has been designed with the primary goal of letting users control how they watch Internet television. Unsurprisingly this means the primary focus is video, although it will happily play audio should you want it to.
Unlike the Zune Marketplace we looked at yesterday, Miro isn’t a replacement for iTunes. For one thing, it doesn’t sync to any of your portable devices. What it is designed to do however, is offer the best all-in-one solution for watching Internet TV.
Alongside the facility to manage your video podcast subscriptions, is the ability to search multiple sources of online content (including the likes of YouTube, Dailymotion and many others). This means, not only can you find all of this years Sidepodcast TV shows easily, but you’ll also be able to keep up with the latest episodes from the likes of Honda Racing TV.
We’ve been using this application throughout its gestation period (which feels like forever). It used to be slow and clunky, but the 1.0 release has brought with it speed and stability. It looks clean and runs on almost any platform you can think of.
Internet video is big news these days, especially in the world of Formula 1. If you’re looking for a way to manage it all, you could do a lot worse than checking out Miro.
Welcome to F1 People. This is the second in a Sidepodcast series giving you an insight into the names that have shaped Formula 1. Yesterday we took a closer look at Mr Ecclestone, and today we will be introducing his partner in crime, Max Mosley.
Max Mosley was born in 1940 to Sir Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford. Oswald Mosley was a former leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Adolf Hitler was a guest at his wedding to Diana Mitford.
Mosley spent the majority of his childhood in Ireland and was sent to school in France, then Germany and then Oxford. By 1961, he had graduated from a college in Oxford with a degree in physics. He qualified as a solicitor after studying in London.
Visiting Silverstone in the early 60s convinced Mosley to join in the fun, and he raced in a few club events, before moving on to Formula 2, where he founded his own London Racing Team. He retired from racing in 1969, but stuck around in motorsport to become one of the founders of the March team. During the 60s, Mosley was an election agent for his father’s Union Movement Party. He ran as a candidate for a constituency in London but withdrew before the 1964 elections.
March was modestly successful within Formula 1, with three wins under their belt, most notably Jackie Stewart in 1970. The company was more successful as a production company for the Formula 2 series, and March cars won many championships below the top Formula.
Max Mosley joined Bernie Ecclestone within the Formula One Constructors Association, as legal advisor, and became very involved in the battle between the FOCA and the FISA. He was instrumental in the creation of the Concorde Agreement. After the agreement was signed and sorted, Mosley decided to take three years out of the sport but he returned as President of the Manufacturer’s Commission for the FIA in 1986. In 1991, he was elected President of the FISA – the motorsport subsidiary of the FIA – taking over from Jean-Marie Balestre. Mosley decided to resign after a year, but was re-elected for a four year term. He continued to be re-elected, and reigns to this day.
Most recently, Max Mosley has begin to lose favour within the sport, for many reasons. The relationship between Bernie Ecclestone, who gave him a break within the sport, seems to be falling apart slowly. The pair’s views and actions appear to be drifting gradually apart.
Max is not shy about making enemies. His previous success with Jackie Stewart in the March team is easily forgotten, and this year the pair have had a slanging match which includes lawyers. Stewart has called for Mosley’s resignation but he is not prepared to step down for anything he has said. Some think he has begun to say things that are completely unnecessary, and some of the things he says and opinions he shares are not really becoming to the President of the governing body.
Mosley’s current term expires in 2009, and he has announced that he will consider the options next year, but it is widely speculated that he will withdraw from the position. He has mentioned the absurdity of governing drivers who are young enough to be his grandchildren. But, at age 67, he is still going strong.
Thank you for listening to F1 People. Tomorrow we’ll have a look at our third important name in Formula 1.
Welcome to F1 People, a Sidepodcast series giving you an insight into the names that have shaped Formula 1. This is by no means a definitive list. In this first series, we’ll feature seven significant figures, starting with Bernard Charles Ecclestone.
Bernie Ecclestone was born on October 28th 1930, in a small village in Suffolk, and brought up in Bexleyheath, Kent. He left school at 16 to work in the local gasworks as an assistant, so he could pursue his passion of motorcycles. After the end of World War II, Ecclestone began to trade motorcycle parts, and formed a dealership with Fred Compton.
He had a go at racing, taking part in the Formula 3 500cc series, but a couple of accidents made him rethink his plans, and he returned to the business world. He bought out Compton, and turned the motorcycle business into a growing emporium, including auctions, loans and property deals.
In 1957, Ecclestone became the manager of Stuart Lewis-Evans, a racing driver from Wales. Ecclestone bought the F1 team Connaught to give Lewis-Evans a drive, along with a couple of other promising drivers. He even had a go himself at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix but did not get past qualifying. Bernie left the sport again, but returned in 1968 and 69 to manage Jochen Rindt in the Lotus. In 1972, he bought the Brabham team and put all his efforts into making it a winning constructor. The team cost him £100,000.
He gradually made Brabham more and more competitive through the 1970s and well into the 1980s, but by then, other concerns were taking up his attention. Ecclestone founded the FOCA, the Formula One Constructors Association in 1974, which he became chief executive of in 1978. His right hand man and legal advisor, was Max Mosley. The FOCA’s main purpose was to negotiate better terms for the teams than the FISA (the then motorsport division of the FIA) were offering. After furious battles were fought throughout the decade, for a different entry system, TV rights, and prize money, Ecclestone eventually won and gained control with the first Concorde Agreement. TV revenue would be split three ways, 47% to the teams, 30% to the FIA and 23% to FOPA – being Formula One Promotions and Administration, another invention of Bernie’s.
When the new Concorde Agreement came into force in 1997, Ecclestone had shuffled his companies around to create Formula One Management, FOM, and had secured a deal with the FIA to gather all commercial rights to the sport, and then dish out the prizes. The teams were initially upset at this, losing out on their rights, and some refused to sign the Agreement. McLaren, Williams and Tyrell held out and eventually the deal was shortened to only ten years rather than 15.
In 1999, Bernie underwent heart surgery, but continued to do business, buying and selling shares in his companies, and he was soon fit again.
He is married to Slavica Ecclestone, and they have two daughters Tamara and Petra. Tamara Ecclestone has made inroads into a media career, working for an F1 magazine, and presenting the Red Bull Air Race for Channel 4. Despite living in a house full of women, Bernie stirred up controversy in 2005 by making disparaging comments about women in the sport, specifically Champ Cars Danica Patrick, intimating their place should be in the kitchen. This was only days before the US Grand Prix spectacle of that year, and was thus a particularly low moment for both Bernie and the sport.
Ecclestone’s interests don’t lie purely in motorsport though. In September this year, it was announced that he had teamed with Flavio Briatore to purchase football team Queens Park Rangers. We have yet to see whether they will be able to turn the teams fortunes around.
Bernie is 77 years old now, worth £2,250 million, in charge of one of the richest and most global sports today and nothing seems to be slowing him down.
That’s it, our first biography is complete. Join me tomorrow when we’ll look at our next significant individual.
Theissen came up with an interesting and slightly surprising response by saying that BMW sells most of its cars on the east coast and on the west coast of the U.S. So therefore, he said, Indianapolis was not the best place.
