Vatanen is publicly bad mouthing the Old Guard for making life difficult for the Manufacturers and puts the blame for their departure square on the FIA's shoulders.Making reference to the voting protocol,he says that the teams are "voting with their feet"

As more pull out, it will be like F1 of the past... one or two teams will ONLY win.... and more boredom. How about this non-unique idea... a HARD COST CAP per team... not the fake nonsense that exists now. I don't know what's worse... F1 or CRAPCAR.

The FIA can be unhappy all they want.

Toyota is the biggest and strongest car company in the world.

It's like a ninety pound guy screaming at a grizzley bear.

Huh, how about that, there is a downside to taking a hard line against the teams. Canceling venues they want. Vague rules. Odd penalties and sloppy stewarding. Inequity in the money. KERS in Kers out. Max and his girls. Difusers. More to come I bet.

I'm not surprised that Bridgestone is pulling out. There is little to brag about (advertise) with no other tire manufacturer to beat. Toyota's exit is understandable too. They are a conservative company in all other aspects of company operations.

jabrock - 06 November 2009 01:09 PM

Huh, how about that, there is a downside to taking a hard line against the teams. Canceling venues they want. Vague rules. Odd penalties and sloppy stewarding. Inequity in the money. KERS in Kers out. Max and his girls. Difusers. More to come I bet.

Exactly! The Troll and SadoMax think they are big fish in a big pond, until they are put in their places by the huge fish in the oceans! They have bad-mouthed the manufacturers for so long that the manu's are pulling out since it no longer suits their interests to be insulted by tiny people who have brought F1 into disrepute.

Sure, get rid of the manu's, then all the teams can be small fish, easily bullied, and all running Cosworths. But then, Cosworth would have all the power to pull out and leave F1 with no lumps (to quote Steve Matchett). Unless F1 wants to have wound-up springs as motive power, the FIA better shut up and try to attract interest in F1 instead of pushing teams, fans, sponsors and owners away.

New F1 indeed! Slot car racing has more integrity these days.

One almost gets the impression that in 2011 the drivers will be maddly peddaling their cars, a la Fred Flinstone on wooden tires, as there may be no supplier interested in paying extorsionist fees to the Troll.

Yeah! In this bear analogy the bear is busy tasting the honey (Bernie counting his money), the ninety pound guy -a very famellic guy- screaming at the bear symbolizes the teams (very upset) and there are bees missing, which should be the drivers, flying around the honey. In the end this is a drivers show. Hey! I can see Kimi in the front row with 2 heavy bags of honey.... errr... money I mean. Life gets multidimensional.
Oh! what about Toyota in the analogy?? Well, I think they have their own forest and laugh at what others might say... ha ha ha!!!

It isn't hard to connect the dots here, commercially. In 24 months, F1 has gone from 2 to zero races in North America. In the next 12 months it has gone from 2 (the biggest 2) to zero Japanese makers in F1. How many Abu Dhabi's & Bahrain's does it take to equal the North American auto market? There aren't enough weeks in the year! If F1 was a public company, Bernie would already be cellmates with Bernie Madoff, Jeffry Skilling & Conrad Black!

toyota had to sign the concord agreement cause if it didn't and found out they could do another year or two it would be too late they were just playing safe (timing wise )