Originally Posted by Assa2:
“With all the controversy from the race, the interesting bits coming out of the strategy group meeting before the weekend have got somewhat lost. It sounds like the mood has swung against refueling again as team bosses realise that it did little to improve racing before and was just expensive and dangerous.
The more interesting stuff has been around customer cars. Bernie has proposed a change whereby the three teams who receive the most money (Ferrari, McLaren and currently Red Bull) would build 2 extra cars each which they would donate to customer teams should the grid fall to 16 cars. However Lauda told Sky he suggested to the group that they shouldn't wait until 2 more teams die, do it now!
Apparently this is actually about equality of money. Mercedes don't expect the grid to fall to 16 anytime soon. They also think the three big teams would rather change how the money is shared out rather than build extra cars for others, but while the risk of that happening is remote nothing will change. If Mercedes could force through customer cars now they hope to get the three big teams to change their view on money earlier. They want this sorted now because by the end of next season Mercedes should be in a position to replace Red Bull as one of the big teams (as it's worked out on a rolling 5 year basis who's been most successful) and they definitely don't want customer cars (ironically). Bloody F1 politics.”
interesting comments from Bernie this weekend outright said franchise cars won't happen.
Then he said that we won't ever have four competitive teams again until everbody had a similar power unit again.
As for how the money is split up he says that it how it has always happened and it is in everybodies contract and so get on with it.
The EU want to flex some muscle because it was the Americans who have got to FIFA first. Much of F1 takes place outside of Europe so I wonder how firm their remit is or what might be done by F1 bodies to change registered offices etc to frustrate intervention.
