The Weekly Grapevine

Changes to the F1 political map

In the course of Max Mosley's recent luncheon with the British media, it was confirmed that six of the 11 teams contesting this year's Formula One World Championship had signed up to the revised (apparently as yet undefined) Concorde Agreement.

At no stage did the FIA President divulge the make-up of the sextet, yet immediately thereafter the buzz was that Ferrari, Red Bull Racing, Midland, Williams, Scuderia Toro Rosso and Super Aguri were signatories to the document intended to govern Formula One from 2008 through to 2012.

To confirm the signatures of the first four operations was, of course, the work of a moment, for all had formally declared their signatures shortly after putting pen to Bernie Ecclestone's paper, but announcements from Toro Rosso and Super Aguri had been conspicuous by their absence.

Logically, thus, in the absence of formal announcements from the two, the additional signatories could well have come from any one of McLaren (Mercedes), Sauber (BMW), Renault, Honda or Toyota - all of whom have direct links to the Grand Prix Manufacturers' Association.

It has since come to light that the terms and conditions of the 'new' Concorde Agreement had proven acceptable to the suspects as listed in the opening paragraph, that the two unannounced teams were, in fact, Scuderia Toro Rosso and Super Aguri.

Thus, the integrity of the GPMA remains, for the moment, intact.

Scuderia Toro Rosso owners Gerhard Berger & Dietrich Mateschitz © XPB

All of which raises two questions: why did STR and SA (or, for that matter, Ecclestone's organization) not trumpet the signatures - as occurred in the instances of Ferrari, RBR. Midland/Jordan and Williams' signings - and what are the effects of the most recent signatures on Formula One's future make-up?

Questions put to the respective media officers of STR and SA were met with extremely courteous but rather curt emails; both admitted only to having signed the CA. STR refused to indicate the date, whilst upon a second asking the spokesperson for SA responded 'it was (signed) last year', adding 'the management team here do not wish to give any more details'. Why the curtness; why the secrecy, particularly when both teams are operated by entrepreneurs apparently devoid of ties to the GPMA?

STR signature was a foregone conclusion, which only adds to the mystery: Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz has long aligned himself with Mosley's visions for the future, and, in any event, led his original team down the Concorde path within a few months of purchasing Jaguar Racing; equally saliently, within a month or two of procuring Ferrari engines for this year and next.

Last November the Austrian completed his purchase of Minardi; then, a fortnight ago, immediately after singing Mosley's praises, compatriot Gerhard Berger acquired a 50% stake in STR via a share swap. Given this transparency, the secrecy and silence surrounding STR's signing seems slightly sinister...

Super Aguri's reluctance to release details is equally interesting, for here is a team which, until January 26 instant, was unsure whether it would be racing in 2006, yet admits to having signed a contract covering 2008-12! Somewhat strange, to say the least, particularly given that five teams (including Honda - of which more anon) seem intent upon waiting until September at earliest before committing to Ecclestone.

So why the haste and secrecy? Could a sense of urgency and expedience been dictated by Aguri's failure to lodge the statutory $48m bond by due date; did the signature ease the way for 2006?

Recent reports indicate that Honda, Aguri's engine supplier and technical mentor, guaranteed the bond - which appears to have been lodged rather later than due date - suggesting the motor giant certainly gave tacit, if not total, approval, to the newcomer's signature. Given that Honda seems fully committed to the GPMA, further questions are raised, for, after all, Aguri's acceptance of Concorde was which tipped the scales from five-all to six: five against GPMA, with the imbalance directly attributable to Aguri's signature, and, thus, Honda's support of the newcomer.

Yuji Ide testing the Honda powered Super Aguri at Barcelona © Reuters

The Big H's motorsport directors may, of course, argue they had little choice in the matter for two reasons:

1) Having wooed Rubens Barrichello to the then-BAR team, plus having pushed Jenson Button to acquire a Get Out Of Williams card at great expense, the company faced massive onslaughts from the Japanese media corps when it became apparent that Takuma Sato was scheduled to spend Grand Prix Sundays in a dole queue, and

2) Toyota, Honda's major market competitor, had extended their deal to supply engines and technical support to Midland F1 - thus facilitating a doubling up of test and race data via an operation with, significantly, a foot in Ecclestone's camp.

Honda's solution: provide the impetus for a second team - preferably one running, like Toyota and Midland, Bridgestone tyres - using Honda engines and providing a berth for Japan's driving hero. If such scheme requires Super Aguri to sign up to the 2008-2012 Concorde Agreement, so much the better, for Michelin-contracted Honda would have, in one swoop, access to all the above, plus an insight into Bridgestone's modus operandi a year ahead of an enforced switch to the Japanese rubber.

Plus, crucially, Honda has the home advantage of a Japanese driver - something Toyota has lacked, whether by design or not, since entering the formula in 2002. Under these circumstances, the provision of a $48m guarantee (no cash required) is small beer, and certainly explains Aguri's reluctance to 'give any more details'.

In the process, of course, both Japanese teams - if such a term could be applied to operations very much based within Europe - have stolen a valuable march on their GPMA brethren. Where BMW, Mercedes and Renault are, through their concentration upon wholly-owned teams and no more, totally excluded from participation in matters Concorde, Honda and Toyota would appear to have a level of indirect participation via their associations with Super Aguri and Midland respectively.

Although the week's hottest paddock rumour centres around Renault's possible breaking of ranks to 'jump ship' from GPMA to Concorde, Honda and Toyota may well opened Concorde's doors without the need for defection from the manufacturer body. None of which, though, explains the secrecy behind TSR's Concorde dealings, though...

Team Schumacher-Brawn

If Renault's possible defection from GPMA and the French company's alleged suggestion that engine development should be frozen to save costs were the hottest discussion points of the week just past, then Eddie Jordan's suggestions that Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn were planning to start their own Formula One team in partnership with Audi were the most inexplicable.

Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn © Reuters

True, the seven times world champion has applied himself to the art and craft of Grand Prix racing like virtually no other before him, and, equally true, Brawn has been the brain behind all but three of Schumacher's 84 F1 victories, but just why would they risk their formidable reputations for the sake of a race team? They after all, know just how fickle can be Formula One success when just a single member of a team as much as retires...

Of course, over the years many of the sport's former racers, winners and champions have attempted to do just that, and, without exception, their efforts have ended in tears (or worse). No need to trot out the entire list, a precis more than proves the point: Chris Amon, Jack Brabham, Dan Gurney, Emerson and Wilson Fittipaldi, Graham Hill, Gerard Larrousse, Bruce McLaren, Alain Prost, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees all gave it their best shots.

Count the race winners and champions in that lot - eight Grand Prix winners with 16 titles between them - yet only Brabham, Gurney, McLaren and Stewart experienced the joys of victorious cars, and fairly strong cases could be made that Gurney and Stewart's singleton wins were fortuitous rather than fought-for.

Why should this peculiar situation exist; why the difficulty in transferring cockpit skill sets to the pit wall? It would appear to boil down to psyche: a driver's duty is to acquire for himself, and himself only, the best of equipment; a team boss' to unselfishly provide the best equipment, and the more selfish the driver, the more difficult it would appear to provide the goods.

That Willi Weber played a massive role in Michael's rise to fame and not inconsiderable fortune is a given, so the colourful former nightclub owner's recent attempts to establish his own winning A1 Grand Prix team, one racing for the better good of the German nation, should provide Schumacher with sufficient pointers.

Despite the name and contacts and reputation, despite low-tech nature of the series, despite their low-budget running costs, supersalesman Weber - to whom the moving at astronomical prices of a million red caps or so is no more than the work of a weekend or two - has conspicuously failed to procure sponsorship for the venture, or, for that matter, seen his driver on a podium. In fact, the team lies 16th on the points' log.

If anything, Weber's endeavours prove that driver management skills and successful race team operation are poles apart, and so it is with driver-turned-team principals.

Willi Weber and A1GP Team Germany team manager David Sears © LAT

As for Audi, why should the luxury car manufacturer even consider Formula One - with or without Michael, with whom they share, after all, no heritage of any sort? Planning to shed 20.000 jobs over the next few years, owner Volkswagen has regularly investigated the formula, most recently with Sauber, and just as regularly rejected all thoughts of participation.

True, Mosley's 2008 regulations will change Formula One's cost-structures - but whether for the better is, on the basis of present evidence, debatable - but Audi is without doubt the most engineering-driven of all German manufacturers (think five cylinder and W16 engines, think Quattro, think aluminum hulls, think double-clutch transmissions, think Vorsprung Durch Technik), and, thus, the least likely candidate for attraction by the standardized technology envisaged for the future by the FIA's president.

After all this, should such a venture still truly attract Schumacher, Brawn and company, all they need do is scour the list of entrants in Michael's debut year (1991): McLaren, Tyrrell, Williams, Brabham, Footwork, Lotus, Fondmetal, Leyton House, AGS, Benetton, Dallara, Minardi, Ligier, Ferrari, Lola-Larrousse, Coloni, Jordan and Lamborghini. Of the listed 18 teams, exactly three have remained as-is (tellingly, only one of the trio was established by a driver...), with just four of the rest having made it past various changes of ownership over intervening 15 years. Oh, and Andrea Moda, Pacific, Simtek, Sauber and Stewart have come and gone since then, too.

No, Michael and Ross, your reputations and families deserve better. As for Audi - their diesel-powered sports racers are chugging along very nicely, thank you very much, Eddie.