FIA President Max Mosley’s plan to reduce Formula One costs looks set to benefit at least part of the UK’s motor sports engineering industry with increased business and jobs. Mosley said on Wednesday that the sport had to “stabilize” spiralling costs with a standard, inexpensive engine and gearbox. Northamptonshire engineering firm Cosworth, Berkshire-based Xtrac, and Ricardo Engineering, which has three sites in the UK, are Formula One’s preferred bidders in the tender to produce the standard specification machinery.
This follows the optimistic note sounded by Northamptonshire Enterprise head of investment Tim Bagshaw in an interview with the Financial Times this week, in which he said he was still hopeful of finding a buyer for the Honda team by the end-of-January deadline. Honda’s shock withdrawal from Formula One has jeopardised over 700 jobs at its Brackley base.
However Mosley warned of the possibility of more Formula One manufacturers pulling out, during a keynote address at the Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco,. “Honda pulled out because of falling car sales and there is no guarantee that these falling sales, which affect all manufacturers, will not drop further.” The UK would be particularly exposed should the fortunes decline of more Formula One teams – it is home to seven of the 11 Formula One teams, including Honda Racing, and some of the smaller teams, such as Red Bull, Super Aguri, and Force India.
Mosley said that Formula One’s problems predate the current economic downturn. Restrictive rules, he said, were squeezing engineering work into the extremely expensive area of refining the chassis. One team is spending $1 million per season on special lightweight wheel nuts imported from California at $1,000 a piece.
Mosley said he wants Formula One engineering to return to “innovation” as opposed to expensive refinement. An example of the future, he said, was the mandatory introduction of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems in Formula One cars from next season. The technology uses energy captured during braking to provide increased power moving the car forward. Mosley criticised the reaction of the Ferrari team that the system was “too complicated”, at the same time paying tribute to the UK’s engineering pedigree, saying, “Could you imagine the great F1 engineers like [Colin] Chapman or [Keith] Duckworth saying, ‘I can’t do that because it is too complicated’?”
Mosley said that the future of the sport lies in the development of smaller, “ultra-efficient” engines with energy recovery systems which would keep the sport “relevant” in an increasingly environmentally-conscious age. The introduction of the single-specification, low-cost equipment is designed to ensure the sport has a future.
