Autosport Plus

MPH: Mark Hughes on...

...What price excitement

The outside world has come crashing in on F1 in recent weeks. A global economic crisis and the extravagance of F1 don't sit comfortably together. So here comes Max Mosley, reinvigorated, seizing the moment to push through his long-held vision of F1 as little more than a spec formula.

If F1 doesn't follow his vision, he implies, it will be dead by 2010. Maybe so. But F1 needs to be very careful at this crucial juncture that it doesn't throw the baby out with the cost-saving bath water. Costs do need to be cut urgently, and in the short term a measure of technical rationalisation will probably be the only way of doing this. But to extend that technical philosophy into a long term blueprint for F1 will surely kill it through lack of interest.