Manor F1 Team Goes into Administration

[ronniej]

Hard to ignore this trend across ALL motorsport....

 

[thewarmer]

Toyota will not return to F1 anytime soon , they pull millions into their F1 attempt any saw next to nothing in return.
Where has in other classes of motor sport they have won at all levels.

Bernie would love to get Audi into F1 so he could hype the return of the an Auto union v Mercedes battle again.

Getting sick of RB filling gaps in Motor sport their logos is everywhere these day's ,& they are even bank rolling the TV coverage of several sports .

Fiat ( Alfa Romao ) would be nice but would ultimately soil their racing history having to be a 2nd string team to Ferrari would be an insult to the historic team the Enzo got his start in.

I think BMW is better served in Sport car racing that suits their brand better than F1.

MotorSport has lost its way . it is now more than ever a play ground for the super rich , even roots level sports like rallying its very hard to get a drive unless you bring some big money with you.

All the traveling cost have sent budgets spiraling upwards alone with the amounts of staff needed to run a team both at their base camps while another one is always going from one event to the next.

The unbalanced profit sharing is not helping , why is Ferrari still getting the most , after all when did it last win a Championship.
Let us face it the money been shared out should at least based on performance & not on how big the name is.
All the bigger teams should be willing to put some money into a pot to help the lesser teams stay in the sport.

You could say some already do that in a way with supplying engines however they are not free so still the smaller team have to suffer the costs in buying engines & many other items.

But this is the world we live in these days.

 

[Valrys]

Max Mosley must be elated he ignored better entries for the ill-fated teams he brought in.

Who out of the applicants was a better choice? Epsilon Eukadi's one attempt to construct their own car was fairly dire, Lola had severe financial troubles just a few years later, and as good a company as Prodrive is we'll never know what their financial arrangements attached to the application was.

Everyone else was essentially taking the piss by applying. Correct me if I'm wrong though, it's been a few years...

 

[Deleted member 130869]

@Valrys
It has been a while but from what I remember, he only considered applications with the weak Cosworth engines and X-Track system, regardless of background. USF1 never existed and Hispania was basically bankrupt before it started, Euskadi and especially ProDrive were better structured. ProDrive had a Mercedes deal.

 

[Andy 'Mars Bar' Graham]

Caterham, HRT and Virgin all entered under the promise that a cost cap would be introduced (something Max Mosley wanted to introduce and he has said about an opt in-opt out system which would be perfect)

I blame Jean Todt

 

[Valrys]

Caterham, HRT and Virgin all entered under the promise that a cost cap would be introduced (something Max Mosley wanted to introduce and he has said about an opt in-opt out system which would be perfect)

I blame Jean Todt

Saying that, it didn't go quite as badly as some people like to make out even without the cost cap. Virgin managed to last longer than a lot of other dead F1 teams and their main problem was being saddled with an awful car to begin with, and only after that a lack of funding. Caterham did a great job to even get on the grid in 2010 only to have their semi-decent funding ruined by mismanagement, while Colin Kolles did the almost unimaginable and kept HRT going for three years with pennies he'd been scooping out of gutters in Bucharest.

Of course that doesn't excuse the USF1 debacle and the almost complete lack of cost controls. Shame, it could all have been so much better.

 

[Terry Rock]

I wasn't campaigning for equal pay. I believe the bonuses should be distributed equally to the teams as a base payment and then they get the prize money for how well they perform on top of that. McLaren finished 2015 9th and got paid more than teams who outperformed them just because of a constructor championship bonus they didn't deserve

I also believe in a cost cap and in making the sport cheaper, but them two scenarios are unlikely.

I 100% agree with the first part of this statement.
All teams should be awarded an equal bonus/competing stipend.
The prize money should then only be given to teams for result-based achievement.
As it stands now, we will continue to see small teams failing every few years.
All teams pay a massive fee to compete in F1, the small teams pay for engines, gearboxes, staff travel etc... because they already do not have the resources to do them in-house.
It's no wonder they're always struggling or close to bankruptcy.
Cost caps will never be enforceable in any form of motorsport.
That's the 'hard' cold truth.

 

[TomcatMF]

Toyota will not return to F1 anytime soon , they pull millions into their F1 attempt any saw next to nothing in return.
Where has in other classes of motor sport they have won at all levels.

Bernie would love to get Audi into F1 so he could hype the return of the an Auto union v Mercedes battle again.

Getting sick of RB filling gaps in Motor sport their logos is everywhere these day's ,& they are even bank rolling the TV coverage of several sports .

Fiat ( Alfa Romao ) would be nice but would ultimately soil their racing history having to be a 2nd string team to Ferrari would be an insult to the historic team the Enzo got his start in.

I think BMW is better served in Sport car racing that suits their brand better than F1.

MotorSport has lost its way . it is now more than ever a play ground for the super rich , even roots level sports like rallying its very hard to get a drive unless you bring some big money with you.

All the traveling cost have sent budgets spiraling upwards alone with the amounts of staff needed to run a team both at their base camps while another one is always going from one event to the next.

The unbalanced profit sharing is not helping , why is Ferrari still getting the most , after all when did it last win a Championship.
Let us face it the money been shared out should at least based on performance & not on how big the name is.
All the bigger teams should be willing to put some money into a pot to help the lesser teams stay in the sport.

You could say some already do that in a way with supplying engines however they are not free so still the smaller team have to suffer the costs in buying engines & many other items.

But this is the world we live in these days.

This hits the nail on the head here. What is happening in F1 is a microcosm of what is taking place throughout the motorsport world. In NASCAR several teams have folded this year, IndyCar struggles to fill the grid, and WEC has lost Audi and Nissan. There is far too much money needed to compete these days, and the sponsorship dollars that were there dried up with the 2008 financial crisis and they never came back. I think that the peak of this sport has long passed. It was always a niche for gear heads (or petrol heads for our Euro friends). And with people looking more carefully where they spend their money, something like racing cars around a track seems pointless and far too expensive for what you get out of it. (I don't feel this way, but I'm a gear head). I don't think it will die, but it will certainly continue to fade to obscurity over time.

 

[Erwin Greven]

Audi pulling back has a different reason than why Nissan left the WEC.
Audis retreat has everything to do with the VW scandal and the pathetic way of how the "I sue you"- culture works.

 

[Will Mazeo]

^ What he said.
Also if Nissan went with a conventional LMP they'd still be racing. After all their adventure was just a marketing plan, the LMP1-PR subclass

 

[TomcatMF]

All you have to do is look at the livery of the cars to understand the issue. Big name blue chip companies are not really sponsoring motorsport teams (especially at the elite levels) anymore like they used to. Remember 7-Up sponsoring Jordan, you don't see them all over a car anymore. Maybe the WEC teams are leaving for different reasons, but what about Peugot? They dominated LeMans for a few years and then quit, and I believe money was the issue. The lack of sponsorship is really hurting the entirety of motorsport. No doubt they think the price is far too high for them to see a profitable return on their investment. Even the NHRA is having issues keeping teams going due to the excessive cost to run, and that is a small fraction of what it takes to run in F1. The money is just not there anymore. That is why the manufacturers dominate the sport, because they are the only ones willing to spend the money, and that is why they demand road relevance too, they want to maximize ROI. As the old saying goes in motorsports, you can go as fast as your wallet will allow.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

There has been an inversion on who seeks who. For about a decade now even the top teams are pursuing companies, making presentations and trying to sell all that revolves around F1 and the car exposure, for a buy-in. But the costs greatly outgrew the potential max revenue from F1 racing alone, and the current trend is just as it happens in other areas - finding new money.

It's not sustainable long-term for more than one or two (at most) teams. The new income will be absorbed into the operating costs and then a crash will happen. This can come sooner if the current trend that alienates viewership remains. Surely there are a couple of knowledgeable people aware of this, possibly at Liberty Media. Budget limitations must be adequately enforced but so must be revenue sharing, because what's the point of getting into F1 nowadays unless you're a billionaire growing your brand, or someone laundering money?