Formula1 political saga continues as teams decide to quit the sport

To all those people including me that thought formula1 has become boring to watch because the cars are not fast or spectacular enough, there is too much politics, etc, etc. there is no need to whinge anymore because change is here. The eight members of the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) alliance including Ferrari, Mclaren, Renault, BMW, Toyota, Red Bull, Toro Rosso & Brawn GP just a have decided to abandon formula 1 and form their own ‘breakaway series’. Williams and Force India (Formerly a member of FOTA) will remain in F1 since they have contractual obligations with their sponsors and Formula One management (FOM)

How the hell did this happen??

Long story made short, in the wake of the economic downturn and Honda’s exit from F1 Max mosley (President of FIA) decided to take things in his hands to make teams reduce their spending so that other manufacturers did not leave the sport. He put a budget cap of €45m/£40m on all the teams and published it in the regulations for 2010 without the consultation of the teams. This pretty much was the break in the ice block that preceded the avalanche. The FOTA teams protested immediately saying that it is virtually impossible to cut back budgets to €45m and sack factory staff over just one season. They suggested that they were willing to do it over a couple seasons instead. According to Max, a budget cap would be beneficial to the existing teams and would make F1 more attractive to new teams wanting to get into the sport. Following n number of discussions Mosley decided to exclude driver & chief designer salaries and other marketing costs from the cap. The FIA also said that they could not change the published regulations unless the teams signed up for 2010 and unanimously changed the regulations after. FOTA threatened to the quit the sport and form a separate series which everyone including Bernie Ecclestone thought would be ridiculous. Also, the European Automobile Manufacturer’ Association (ACEA) issued a statement backing the F1 teams in their war against the FIA adding weight to the FOTA case. The ‘ego’ of Max Mosley and the demand of more ‘transparency of regulations and management’ of the FOTA teams finally lead to the issue spiraling out of control leaving us with this situation today.

What Next?

The FOTA teams intend to reduce costs but want to do so in a way that is viable to both their organizations and the sport. They are sick and tired of being run by dictators in the form of Bernie Ecclestone (CEO of CVC – The F1 commercial rights holder) and Max Mosley. Only half of the revenue generated in F1 (about $2Billion) goes to the F1 teams and the remaining is swallowed by CVC to pay off the debts when they took over the shares from Bernie Ecclestone in 2005. FOTA argued that if the teams got more money from the income of F1, there wouldn’t be a necessity for drastic cost cutting. FOTA is now in talks with the commercial rights holder of MotoGP to help them organize a separate championship. One option is to purchase the existing A1 GP series which only managed to put on a good show on its opening ceremony.

Who will race in F1 in 2010?

After introducing the budget cap, 10 new teams applied for a spot on the grid for 2010 some of which are existing GP2 teams and some are teams of the European Le Mans series. If FIA don’t succeed in convincing the FOTA teams in stay in F1, along with Williams and Force India, the other three teams who have a confirmed spot on the grid are USF1 (based in North Carolina), Campos (Based in Spain) and Manor F1. The rest of the teams will be amongst the remaining 7 that applied for 2010.

Who will race in the new series?

The eight FOTA teams will occupy 16 places on the grid, each team running two cars. Lola Aston Martin, Prodrive & Brabham had filed for an entry in F1 for 2010. Deeply disappointed in not being selected the first time and, them wanting to race in a series with more credibility and competition, they withdrew their application from F1 so that they could join the new breakaway series, if there is to be one.

The worst is yet to come!!

If you thought that politics in F1 could not get any worse after seeing Ferrari and Mclaren battle it out in the courts in 2007, and the FIA and FOTA stuck in a public brawl lately, think again. There are a lot more players in this battle than ever before and but for the contractual obligations, the FIA seems to be on the losing end. Ferrari and the two Red Bull teams have contracts with the FIA to race in F1 till 2012. Also Ferrari has a special contract with CVC and FIA thanks to which they get a big chunk of the F1 revenue, much more than any other team gets. First we will see the FIA sue Ferrari and Red Bull for breaching their contracts which will be followed by a series of law suits and court hearings between various parties. At this point FIA does not care if they lose teams like Renault, Toyota and BMW as far as Ferrari, Mclaren and new entrants to the sport are present. A breakaway series is beneficial for the organizers of the Canadian GP, North American GP and all those historical venues like San Marino, Mexico, Portugal, etc. from who Bernie Ecclestone parted ways for more money in the middle east and far east. So they will definitely want to make their voices heard.

My Opinion….

Screw the FIA and do whatever you have to do to form a new series. I don’t want to see parades but cut throat competition and wheel-to-wheel racing on the track. I don’t want to see ugly ‘green’ technology laden cars that are slower than their counterparts nearly 20 years ago. Racing in state of the art but half empty circuits is no fun. The new series run by FOTA will deliver what the fans want. If it’s 4 cylinder turbo charged engines that we want, we will get it!

Just the time to run out of cash.... in the middle of nowhere

I was traveling from Nasik to Mumbai yesterday. One of the now frequent leave in the morning and return in the night trips. As soon as we started out, my driver indicated to me that we are going to have to gas up the car at some point. Fair enough I thought, knowing well that I had only Rs. 800 with me and that a full tank on the Mahindra Scorpio takes up around Rs. 1500 worth of diesel usually. And I did not intend on stopping by at a cash point. The credit card was going to be useful as always. Yes that American tool of mass financial mismanagement.

We pulled into a fuel station which displayed that they do accept Visa's and Mastercard's. I assumed that although we are in the middle of a work in progress NH3, with pretty much nothing but the bush and barren landscape around it, they obviously would have a working credit card terminal. We filled diesel worth about Rs. 1380 and when I flashed my card at the chap he casually informed me that the terminal is out of order. Bollocks!!! My first reaction. But they displayed that they do accept credit cards! Highway works have ripped the telephone lines he informs me. Who uses landlines anyways in India these days, with the mobile revolution well and truly in.

Out comes the supervisor after unsuccessfully trying to resuscitate the credit card terminal and he has no intentions of letting me off his pump without the money. I offered to pay him the cash I had and the rest later that day when I returned from Mumbai. Obviously he wasn't going to fall for it, not that I was not going to pay him on the way back. After haggling and bantering with him about the faux pas he informed me that we could to a bank 1 km down the road and use their telephone line for the terminal. No ways did I want go through the embarrassment of having to go to village bank and ask for their telephone line due to lack of cash in my wallet.

Thats when I realised that I have always needlessly carried my cheque book with me in my office bag. Needless?? Not anymore. I offered to pay him by cheque for the fuel which he accepted. Infact he offered to return me the cheque when I would come back and pay him the cash later that day. I did return to the pump in the evening and the guy who had filled my car was literally jumping with joy as soon as we drove in. He was quietly embaressed about the fact that he did not tell me that the credit card terminal was out of order beforehand. I paid him the cash and got my cheque back which is now headed from the paper shredder.

I really wonder what we would have done if not for the chequebook in my bag. I actually almost offered him to remove the diesel from the car and only leave how much I could afford at the time.

Moral of the story - If a fuel station on highways in India indicate that they accept credit cards, do not take it for granted unless you have a chequebook in tow!!

Final thoughts on IPL 2.0

Before this blog and my thoughts become overrun by all things IPL, here is the final dose of post-IPL thoughts, promise.

• At the end of the day, the IPL is a commercial profit driven enterprise. So let us not mix national pride with it. So the shifting of IPL 2 to South Africa should not dent our pride in any way but merely highlight how much is at stake for all the parties involved. Modi will ship out the whole circus to the Moon if their newly discovered inhabitants were to provide a more profitable scenario for him. In short, its all about money honey.

• No matter how much the commentators praise the supposed beauty of the winners trophy, it is not a work of art but absolutely hideous. It could not have been less thoughtfully created. Stick a map of India, the title sponsor and the IPL logo together. Add a lot of gold and diamonds to bling it up. It kind of sums up the culture of excess and shallowness that seems to accompany the IPL.
• Coach John Buchanan is not quite the forward thinking visionary and genius that he talked himself up to be. He was a good coach who had an outstanding set of players during his time in Australia, no more. 2 yrs at KKR have proved without doubt that his theories are best left on paper and that he has a gift for making complicated the most simplest of arts. And lets not get into the ambidextrous players and multiple captains theories.
• Another case of greed, golden eggs, hen and knife is that 2 IPL’s a year. Just not on. In the case of T20 its not more is less but less is more.
• For an organization as opaque as the BCCI, it just gets murkier. They need to come open on the apparent conflicts of interest. On why the owner of Chennai Super Kings is also a Secretary of the BCCI and why the Chief of the national selectors panel is so openly the brand ambassador for the Super Kings. Also it would be naive to believe that Lalit Modi is in no way connected to the Rajasthan Royals franchise. I think the Taxman’s visit may be beneficial for everybody involved.
• Form is temporary and class is permanent. Give a great player from either the Test or ODI format enough time to acclimatize and they will more often than not end up cracking the T20 format as Dravid, Kallis, Kumble, Warne, Gilchrist and Hayden have ably demonstrated. Exception seems to be VVS Laxman and I feel he is a bit in the T20 format. However that should not be a blackmark on his career as he is simply too good for it. To further add, failure in T20 should not belittle achievements from Tests and ODI’s the same way that success in T20 will not necessarily be followed by the same in Tests and ODI’s.
• Atmospheres at sports events cannot be manufactured but are generated out of spontaneity, passion and enthusiasm. Something evidently visible in Indian cricket grounds and something I experienced first hand at Old Trafford watching Manchester Utd play Arsenal. So no amount of DJ bugles, short skirted cheerleaders, incessant hamming from presenters and organisers can help the mood of the viewing public if the quality of the contest is not upto the mark.
• Teams should not put all their foreign eggs in one basket. Distribute your foreign players across batting and bowling resources unless you have a strong local pool of players. Case in point KKR who played Gayle, McCullum, Hodge and David Hussey/van Wyk to strengthen their batting most of the time while Langeveldt, a more than useful bowler in local conditions, languished on the bench. Most successful teams had a second rung of domestic players apart from their international counterparts which reduced the dependence on foreign imports to a extent.
• There are 3 things that sell in India, Cricket, Bollywood and Politics, in no particular order. Combine any of the above 2 and you have a potent mix. Combine all 3 of them and you have dynamite!
• Last but not least, IPL and Lalit Modi please take some lessons in class, subtlety and humility. Especially in wake of the ridiculous after events of the final. When the players were made to wait for more than an hour before they could get their hands on the trophy in front of a half empty stadium.

And that is it for this years IPL. Before we even know I am watching England play Netherlands in the T20 World Cup while I type! Timing certainly is not a forte when it comes to the powers that be in cricket.

More thoughts on IPL 2.0

Following up the previous post, here are some more thoughts on the IPL second season,

• Charity really should begin at home. As honorable as the intentions may be, handing out money to schools in South Africa will only buy temporary goodwill and cheap publicity. If you are really serious about making a difference for the stakeholders of the game, please start by using that money to improve some of the pathetic facilities that spectators have to put up with at most Indian cricket grounds.
• I could not talk about commentators and not mention Rameez Raja. He has to be confined to the bins for the sheer banality he brings in terms of cricket acumen and sorry for the snobbishness, for the fact that he has got all the phonetics of the English language completely wrong. Notice the next time you hear him say ‘air’ and ‘there’. Also shaving your moustache and trying to be retro-cool with that 1970’s Amitabh Bachchan hairstyle blowing in your face is not going to make you a better commentator. Its going to make you only more unbearable if anything.
• A few owners have shown that they have more money than sense. Case in point Shahrukh Khan trying to outbid Preity Zinta for Mashrafe Mortaza to US$ 600,000 so he can sell some more shirts. Who then goes on to concede 26 runs in a final over to lose a game the Kolkata Knightriders should have sleepwalked to victory. Also Pietersen and Flintoff, for all their reputations, were not worth to be the most expensive players in the auctions largely because they are untested and unproven in the T20 format. It was also a travesty that Shakib al Hasan, the no. 1 allrounder in the world as per the ICC’s rankings, could not find a buyer at the auction. He could have potentially been the bargain of the season.
• Also owners must learn to separate ownership from management. Wanting to sleep with all your players (SRK), hugging each one of them (Preity Zinta), throwing alcohol, parties and models at them (Vijay Mallya), publicly admonishing your captain (Mallya last year), cozying up to them in the dugout (Deccan Chargers owner and Nita Ambani), calling a fast bowler a spinner in a press conference (Shilpa Shetty) amongst others is not going to help your team win. What will help them is a clearly defined leader, strategy, unity in the dressing room and the hard yards on the field. Simple
• T20 as a format has enough action packed in itself to form an entertainment package. So the traveling circus and sideshow comprising of Lalit Modi himself, larger than life owners, incessantly loud commentary team, PR people and performers must know when to step aside and let the cricket do the talking. I would add cheerleaders to the list, but thats only a personal opinion.
• Strategic time-out. That great novelty under the pretense of innovation must be done away with. Modi might even convert each innings into 4 quarters should the credit crunch really start affecting the IPL. But its only a hindrance. T20 is about constant flow of play and action. The super over seems to be even worse that the penalty shootout from football. Nothing to spoil a hard fought drawn contest between 2 equal teams than batsman/bowler who loses his marbles in one ‘super over’. A draw not only can be a satisfying contest some times but also adds another dimension to the league table through the splitting of points.
• Some of the team branding from the franchises has been pretty poor. Mumbai Indians! Geographically my closest franchise but one I refuse to support because of the name they have. Kings XI Punjab! To put it simply, WTF. Royal Challengers Bangalore is merely another platform for Vijay Mallya to further his brand of whiskey. But then they could have done worse like Force India F1! Rajasthan Royals have got it right in terms of geographical representation of culture and Kolkata Knightriders for sheer innovation and wackiness. The rest are ok, neither here nor there.
• Change the second game start time from 8 pm to 7 pm. I just cannot conjure up the energy to stay upto midnight watching cricket anymore, as much as I want to. And the strategic timeouts don’t help.
• The great innovator that he may think he may be but Lalit Modi must not forget that he was beaten to the city based T20 franchise concept by the Indian Cricket League formed by Zee. It helped that the BCCI is a law onto themselves who then awoke from their slumber and banned the ICL so that their blue eyed boy could steal a march over them to go on and hastily create the IPL. This was all conveniently helped by the fact that India also managed to win the first T20 World Cup in 2007. All this ironic since it was the BCCI who pooh poohed the T20 concept in its infancy and was the last take it up seriously amongst all the playing nations.

To be concluded......