The Weekly Grapevine

The testing disagreement

Is Formula One's voluntary testing agreement, as entered into by nine of the sport's ten 2005 teams, about to be binned?

Last year all teams bar Ferrari tested for a maximum of 30 days between the first and last races of the season. The deal was reached on October 23rd 2004 by what became known as the Group of Nine in Sao Paulo during that season's Brazilian Grand Prix, and, against all odds, survived through the season past.

Yes, it was close at times, with, particularly, BAR-Honda and Toyota challenging the spirit of the agreement, but, come China's race, not a single G9 signatory had run beyond 30 days' testing, while Ferrari tested when, where and how they liked - with up to three programmes running at three circuits simultaneously.

Had, though, Ferrari been more competitive, matters could have been drastically different. Due to a combination of recalcitrant chassis and Bridgestone tyres not able to consistently perform at Michelin's level, the G9 teams were able to keep the red threat at bay. Would the deal have remained in place had Ferrari pulled ahead by, say, Bahrain? Doubtful...

As much was admitted at Toyota's launch, with Honda sources indicating that they, too, would have withdrawn from the deal had they been close to the Prancing Horse in the points' standing at mid-season. So, despite appearances of adhesion, two of the nine could so easily have about-turned. Under those circumstances, how much longer before the likes of Renault, McLaren and (BMW-supported) Williams, too, about-faced?

(True, Sauber, Midland-Jordan and Minardi would doubtless have adhered to the deal on account of budgetary constraints; while Red Bull admitted in July they had budgeted for less than the 30 days' testing permitted in any event...)

That said, what chance, then, of the self-imposed restrictions being carried over to the new season? According to three well-placed sources, less chance than the square root of zilch, while one added there were fears that testing would escalate beyond all reasonable levels; with the genie working herself out of the bottle, there was little chance of stuffing the mythical creature back.

The 'genie' is, of course, the previous agreement, which voluntarily banned testing (bar 50 kilometre shakedowns) during the week immediately preceding a Grand Prix and restricted teams to testing on circuits within Europe unless prior agreement to venture to continents afar had been universally granted.

Last year Ferrari, having refused to accept the G9 deal, went the whole nine yards and withdrew from the original agreement, too. Thus Maranello's best cars and drivers tested whenever the need arose - regularly - and wherever the mood took them, which, for a week, was Bahrain in November, and could turn out to be the same place or even Malaysia in early March. Having tasted total testing freedom for the first time in a decade or more, and given the performance deficit Maranello desperately needs to plug, what chance Ferrari's acquiescence to restricted running?

Sources suggest that a 2006 deal has been tabled, one designed to appease Ferrari by permitting their cars to test at their owned Fiorano facility - which has every testing aid known to the sport, and then some - but to no avail: Ferrari have demanded a distance limit per tyre manufacturer on account of the fact that they will once again be bearing the bulk of Bridgestone's testing, albeit with assistance from Toyota and privateers Williams.

Michelin's big money teams - Renault, McLaren, Honda, BMW and, despite not having motor manufacturer backing, Red Bull - are rigidly opposed to such suggestions as they would effectively be voting themselves out of the championship. As too often happens in Formula One, vested interests have produced yet another stalemate.

During BMW's F1.06 launch, optimistic talk was of a deal still being struck, but that would be on the basis of G9 sticking together once again. Given that Honda and Toyota seem hell-bent on beating Ferrari before taking on each other, they need to compete with the Italian team on equal terms in every sense (with Toyota already having switched to Bridgestone for that reason).

Indications are that the two Japanese teams, whose financial firepower is such that simultaneous 24/7 testing on all seven continents presents no fiscal challenge, will strongly favour open testing regimes - regardless of economic impact on operations run or supported by Renault, McLaren, BMW (and, no doubt, to ratchet the economic impact upon Ferrari...).

So why no official restriction on testing - combining old and new agreements, plus amendments, and including these in future sporting regulations? An FIA spokesperson previously stated that such test agreements fall outside the scope of their championship, yet private testing (in far-flung corners) by rally teams is controlled in that world championship genre, and there exists no technical reason why similar restrictions cannot be introduced to F1 in the near future.

With Alistair Darling, Britain's State Secretary for Transport, intending to monitor the movements of millions of passenger cars on motorways via global positioning systems, surely the FIA, which, after all, prescribes engine centres-of-gravity in the interests of cost-saving, can capture time and motion data on a handful of cars competing in a multi-billion dollar sport, thus saving teams millions via mandatory use of commercially available GPS kits - which the governing body trusts sufficiently to stipulate the use of in a World Rally Championship, one contested predominantly in remote areas.

Far from priding itself on the successes of a test-restricted 2005, G9 should concern itself with the harsh realities still to come. With Formula One's future regulations aiming to introduce parity while simultaneously reducing costs, the major teams can be expected to switch focus to the softest target of all - unrestricted testing. What use prescription centres-of-gravity, six-event engines or stipulated gear clusters when teams are able to run for days on end before empty grandstands in foreign lands, at $25,000-plus per lap?

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- The Autosport.com Team

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