Formula 1
Mosley disappointed with McLaren & Williams
FIA president Max Mosley has replied to the letter submitted by the McLaren and Williams Formula One teams, in which they argued against the new rules and stated their intention to take the matter to arbitration. In his own letter, Mosley said he ...
Published: Feb 26, 2003, 11:54 AM
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FIA president Max Mosley has replied to the letter submitted by the McLaren and Williams Formula One teams, in which they argued against the new rules and stated their intention to take the matter to arbitration. In his own letter, Mosley said he was 'very disappointed' by the teams' response and claimed their reasoning was confused.
"Your response is unfocused," Mosley wrote to Ron Dennis and Frank Williams. "It wanders through the measures announced on 15 January and touches on my letter of 7 February, confusing the two. It makes no attempt to say which, if any, of the January measures you agree with or why you think the Concorde Agreement prevents the FIA enforcing its rules in this way."
Mosley went on to say no case was presented against any of the proposals objected to, nor were any alternatives suggested: "It is impossible to have a dialogue if the response to a carefully considered set of proposals is a collection of vague claims and confused criticisms with no discernable attempt to address the arguments."
In regard to the claim that the FIA was 'dumbing down' F1, Mosley disagreed strongly: "If you truly believe the public want to see computer controlled cars guided from the pits by anonymous engineers, please think again. If you don't believe me, hire two halls in any city, anywhere in the world and put, for example, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya in one, with both of you plus your electronics experts and your technical chiefs in the other. Invite the public to both halls and see what happens." Mosley concluded that 'the public are interested in drivers and sport, not electronics'.
To the suggestion that the FIA was taking an unnecessarily pessimistic view of the financial situation in the sport, Mosley's reply was: "This is exactly what you hear from the old guard in a failing company. You would not find any independent observer or serious businessman who would agree with you."
He gave equally short thrift to the idea that limiting time to work on the cars and doing away with telemetry was unsafe: "You are saying that after less than 150km of free practice on Saturday morning your cars cannot safely race for 300km without an 18 hour overhaul. This is obvious nonsense."
Mosley rounded off his lengthy letter by saying McLaren and Williams had publicly accused him of 'acting in a dictatorial fashion and without proper consultation'. He countered by saying back in October last year, when the first meeting on the subject of cost cutting was scheduled, teams decided at the last minute that the FIA should not be present and would not meet with the sport's governing body.
Consequently, Mosley said that with no decisions forthcoming from the teams, the FIA had no choice but to act as it did.
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