How Pollock got his hands on an FIA man

During the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend there were three major points of interest, namely the 'discussion' 2012 calendar that circulated among teams - hardly without some ulterior motive, as we shall see - the BBC/Sky broadcasting partnership, and Gilles Simon's defection to Craig Pollock's PURE Corporation.

While first named is of passing interest until the FIA's World Motorsport Council finally approves the calendar (having confirmed a 21-race schedule on June 3 that has turned out to be everything but), sources suggest Turkey could next year return to the fray in place of one of the two grands prix currently based in Spain, as both races are financially embarrassed - with locations and dates (within 200 miles and six weeks of each other respectively) compounding their situation.

As F1 broke up for its four-week summer break, talk in the paddock had it that the calendar had been distributed to put the fear of Bernie Ecclestone into the Turks, who seem reluctant to commit to a contract extension and who now own a superb (and costly) facility with no dates for F1, the World Touring Car Championship or MotoGP.

On the other hand, Barcelona and Valencia are believed to be desperate to bottle out of their deals in favour of contracts similar to the myopic Nurburgring/Hockenheim rotational arrangement. What better way of pressuring them than through inclusion on the calendar?

Thus all parties - Turks, Catalans and Valencians - are likely to squeal extremely loudly, begging for either inclusion or exclusion, which of course plays perfectly into the negotiating hands of Ecclestone; for on one hand he could charge a premium to reinstate Turkey's round while on the other demanding compensation from the Spaniards. No wonder he robustly stomped on suggestions by Martin Whitmarsh, chairman of the Formula One Teams' Association, that the calendar would change?

As regards BBC and Sky, enough has been published here, leaving little to add other than to say that a similar deal was struck between SABC and Supersport in South Africa way back in 2001 after the state-controlled broadcaster baulked at Bernie's fees and went the football route. Thus subscription broadcaster Supersport picked up live coverage rights, with SATV transmitting grands prix in full after midnight.

Did viewer numbers increase? On the contrary. Was the arrangement better than the alternative, namely zero coverage? Absolutely.

There are suggestions that future sponsor acquisition will be jeopardised, with some sponsors said to have expressed concern at potential drops in eyeballs. By the same token, why should British taxpayers be called upon to effectively subsidise teams' marketing budgets via the BBC's charter arrangement?

Simon was formerly an employee of Todt's at Ferrari, and is now off to PURE © LAT

So to Simon, who has kept rather a low profile of late, having chaired a meeting of all engine suppliers at Silverstone three weeks ago, during which the concept of a Resource Restriction Agreement for engines was discussed. On Thursday in Hungary it was confirmed that Simon - initially recruited to the FIA from Ferrari by the governing body's president, Jean Todt (who was his mentor at Peugeot and Maranello) - had elected, with the FIA's blessing, to jump ship to join Pollock's nascent PURE engine project as head of technology. With an effective date of August 1, that means no gardening leave either...

As reported here following a question posed to Renault's Rob While during the FIA's Friday conference and here, considerable unhappiness exists in the paddock about the situation, and understandably so. It was somewhat surprising therefore to see Pollock, who came into F1 as manager to Jacques Villeneuve (whom he now refers to only by surname), the 1997 world champion.

Thereafter Pollock sweet-talked a $500m stipend plus eye-watering annual budgets out of British American Tobacco to found British American Racing as stable for his charge. The resultant operation had arguably the worst bang-for-buck record of any big budget outfit in F1 history and mutated, first into Honda's marginally successful F1 operation, then into Ross Brawn's eponymous outfit that won both 2009 titles, albeit with help with a demon double-deck diffuser. Today the team masquerades as Mercedes.

When Pollock's project was first announced by AUTOSPORT back in May, many were quick to discount it as 'PURE buls**t', but Simon's recruitment made F1 folk sit up and take note, for not only does his appointment endow enormous credibility upon PURE, but in his previous role the engineer requested and received much information from engine suppliers.

According to Pollock, at the time of the 'inline four' v V6 engine controversy in early June, Simon was aware he was heading to PURE. On Sunday this column interviewed Pollock. Here's an extract:

Grapevine: We obviously welcome the opportunity of you putting the record straight as far as [Simon's recruitment] is concerned from your side.

Craig Pollock: Well, it's very simple. The way I went around about this with Gilles Simon, normally if I was a team principal and I was having a top technical person leaving my team, the minute I heard he'd signed a contract or was about to sign a contract I would have negotiated that he goes on gardening leave. So what I made sure that I did in negotiating with Gilles was to make sure Gilles had spoken with Jean Todt, had the benediction of Jean Todt, and also that I had gone to see Jean Todt and put the cards on the table. Jean was very, very clear that he had no intention of holding back Gilles, that he was a great loss to him personally and also the FIA, and that he fully understood that his passion was in designing and building engines. It wasn't in making rules, but he asked me to maintain silence until this weekend, which we did.

Pollock with PURE operations manager Jan Cantryn © sutton-images.com

GV: So when did you do the deal?

CP: The exact date I can't remember.

GV: June, May, March?

CP: No, it was a few months ago.

GV: So while this four-cylinder v six-cylinder thing was bubbling under, Gilles was at the FIA but he knew that he was going to be moving to you, yes?

CP: He knew exactly where he was going to go, as did the FIA.

So Simon, 53, chaired meetings of engine suppliers (including his future boss) in June and July without disclosing potential conflicts of interest. While the information-gathering process is said to have been utterly transparent, one wonders whether the quartet of engine suppliers (Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault and Cosworth) would have been as free and easy about imparting (technical or financial) information had they had an inkling of his pending career adjustment. Still Simon should not be prejudged, which White was at pains to point out.

One thing Simon could not, prevent, however, was F1's move to turbocharged and heavily-ERSed (from the end of 2012, F1's energy recovery systems will not be exclusively kinetic) V6 1.6-litre engines from 2014 as demanded by the sport's existing suppliers. While the procedure used to force through both the revised engine regulations and subsequent chassis parameters allegedly runs contrary to the 2010-12 Concorde Agreement - with sources increasingly talking of legal action in this regard - it seems that the the 'inline-four' concept initially championed by Simon is dead.

Pollock reckons this cost PURE an additional €10million (up from €30million to €40million) for the design and development of its unit, for not only has previous work mostly gone out the window, but the postponement of the new engines by 12 months to 2014 has forced the company to fund its activities for an additional year with no commensurate sales income. Pollock has needed to go cap in hand to investors explaining not only the changes to the engine regulations, but also to PURE's business plan.

The cost increases do not stop there either. Given F1's current capped costs of €8million per team for an engine and KERS supply and his projection of an annual budget of €40million for V6 engines (up from €25-€27million for inline fours), PURE would need to find at least five customers simply to break even. Is the project even viable? Having attended the RRA meeting as outlined here, Villeneuve's former sports teacher in Villars, Switzerland, is adamant the cap concept is unmanageable.

"Let's be absolutely clear: nobody can cap a company coming into a sport and say 'absolutely you have to stick to €8million in engine supply'," he asserts. "No company in the world is going into any business to lose money. When you are imposing a change in regulations and you sit around a table, as we did at Silverstone, and you talk about ways of controlling the costs... I came out of a four-hour meeting with my head spinning, not knowing how they were going to do it, and nobody does know how they're going to do it.

Pollock brought Mecachrome to BAR with Villeneuve in 1999 © LAT

"Just forget about that side, I think it's pie in the sky; it's a nicety. What I'm not going to do is divulge exactly how we are going to make a profit within our company, but we have a very, very clear vision and a very clear marketing strategy that is unique inside the sport. And the fact [is] that it is unique [and] will stay unique."

Pollock admits to nearly throwing in the towel when V6 engines were mandated, but says that legal action is not an option, no doubt recalling his 1999 court case against the FIA.

"It's the second time something like this [a regulation change] has happened to me," he recalls. "The first time was when we had dual-branding with British American Tobacco, a Lucky Strike car and a 555 car.

"There was nothing in the rules [preventing different liveries], but because of BAT pressure, I was pressured into taking them [the FIA] to court. We did that, and we lost - even though there was nothing in the rules. It was called 'an initiation into an exclusive club' [by the judge], so there is no way we would go down that road again. We'll just get on with it and work out what's best for the future.

During the interview he steadfastly refused to divulge the identity of his backers, laughing off suggestions that Middle Eastern money lay behind the project - much as Ron Dennis persuaded Saudi Arabia's Mansour Ojjeh to back McLaren's TAG Turbo engine in the early eighties:

GV: In terms of the initial funding, where did that come from?

CP: The initial [capital] is personal and it is funded by, let's just say by private [means].

GV: Would that funding be Middle-Eastern?

CP: I will not say where the funding is coming from.

GV: Because there's a very strong rumour that it's actually Mumtalakat, or one of those similar...

CP: From where?

GV: That tells me you know exactly, because you've been around the sport...

CP: No.

GV: So when I mentioned the name you would have...

CP: There you go.

GV: So it's not your own funding.

CP: I'm not saying anything about the funding.

V8s are in favour now, but will be outlawed for 2014, when PURE enters © suttons

He is adamant that the nuts and bolts of the project have not been derailed, with Mecachrome, which Pollock first came into contact with when Williams ran the company's ex-Renault power units in 1998 (he later contracted the French mechanical engineering giant as BAR's engine supplier in 1999), still scheduled to manufacture and assemble the engines in a ring-fenced facility - much as it does for Renault Sport. And if you have any doubt that Mecachrome can service both operations, consider that the company currently produces Porsche's Cayenne and Panamera engines, plus stuff for Mercedes AMG...

Pollock reckons ERS will account for a third of all budgets, and here the company has contracted IFP Energies nouvelles as partner. IFPEN is one of the world's largest developers of cutting edge technologies and materials for use in the energy, transport and environmental fields, so it is no Mickey Mouse operation either.

Back in 1999 Pollock surrounded himself with a stellar technical team - Adrian Reynard, Malcolm Oastler and others - and built a fantastic facility on the outskirts of Brackley. The problem is that none of the engineers had contemporary F1 experience, hence the operation floundering, JV or no JV.

Former teachers are seldom slow learners; hence Pollock's appointment of a man who knows F1's new engines inside out despite having former Renault F1 managing director Christian Contzen and aerospace expert Robin Southwell on board, plus a design team led by Jean-Pierre Boudy, who penned Renault's turbo F1 engine in the late seventies and was responsible for Peugeot's F1 engines.

Ultimately there is no restriction on FIA folk moving to competitors - despite Ron Dennis in 1999 blocking the employment of FIA safety and technical delegate Charlie Whiting by Benetton - and neither Pollock nor PURE should be blamed for the ease with which Simon exited the FIA. Rather consider why Todt willingly released a man - who surely was under contract - without imposing gardening leave. Remember that the existing manufacturers humiliatingly vetoed Todt and Simon's inline four project and that PURE was not of part of that cartel, and you may have the answer.