A waste of bits and bandwidth

In a stunning, yet not unforeseen turn of events, FOTA has stayed united and told the FIA to bugger off. In 2010 Ferrari will not be in the FIA F1 World Championship. The first time in 60 years.

BBC F1 teams drop breakaway bombshell

Autosport FOTA teams to launch breakaway series

Grandprix F1 teams set to form breakaway series

Now stories have sprung up that the tracks will follow FOTA too. Monaco would not be happy to be hosting a lesser series. An Italian GP at Monza where there are no Ferrari’s doesn’t bear thinking about…

I do feel bad for Williams. They left FOTA to return to the FIA and got booted for their trouble. At least Williams can expect to start winning in 2010…

F1 fans the world over are cringing at what is going on with the future of their beloved sport.

This came to a head over the FIA’s insistence on a budget cap for the the 2010 season. FOTA has rejected the idea and submitted provisional entries for 2010 based on the cap being set aside. The reality is that has nothing to do with a budget cap and everything to do with who is in charge.

The deadline is June 19th for all the FOTA teams to remove the conditions attached to their 2010 entries. As of June 16th it appears that the FIA and FOTA remain steadfast in their stances. If this comes to pass, the FOTA teams are going to set up their own World Championship. The FIA will continue on with the Formula 1 World Championship.

Open wheel fans will recall when the same thing happened in North America and the CART/IRL split took place. That brought on a ten year FAIL for open wheel racing in North America resulting in bankruptcy for CART and NASCAR becoming the most popular form of racing in the US. The Indy 500 was not enough to support an entire series but the defections reduced CART to a shadow of it’s former self. Now the two series have made amends but no one cares.

Initially, I was in favor of FOTA leaving F1. I don’t care for all the manufacturer involvement in F1. I miss the days of Formula 1 when independent teams like Williams, Lotus and March were the norm and not the exception.

However, can a series without the likes of Ferrari and McLaren be considered Formula 1? Here is how the spilt series might shape up:

FIA Teams
AT&T Williams
Force India F1
Campos Grand Prix (New)
Manor Grand Prix (New)
Team USF1 (New)

Several more rejected entries like Prodrive, Lotus, March and Lola would be granted access to bring the numbers up to a respectable level of teams.

FOTA Teams
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro
Scuderia Toro Rosso
Red Bull Racing
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
BMW Sauber
Renault F1
Panasonic Toyota Racing
Brawn GP

Would the FIA series really be worth watching just because it is called F1? It seems unlikely. The benefit of the FOTA series is that Ferrari and McLaren would be there and FOTA would have much more control over the revenue distribution and costs.

One need only look crowds, or lack thereof, at many of the Grand Prix this year to see that tickets are too expensive for the average fan. In addition, hosting a race is a solid 20 million dollars a year with something in the area of 10% per year increase written into the contract. Hence the ticket prices.

It’s starting to look inevitable that the series is going to split into two camps. This is even more upsetting when there are finally new teams be allowed to enter the World Championship. Of course the addition of new teams for the 2010 season is no coincidence. There will be 18 cars on the grid next spring, come hell or high water.

It should make for an interesting British Grand Prix

As I begin this entry, I have no idea of what it is that I want to write. I guess I could leave it at that; frankly we’d all be better off.

It would also have the added benefit of not giving Meege any lines to read between. Well where would be the fun in that?

Ok, so 10 minutes have passed and I’ve made a trip to the bathroom. Still nothing. I’ve now browsed my vast repository of blog ideas and have come back with bupkis. Googled bupkis to check the spelling. Shocked to learn that it can also mean: small round fecal pellets, referring to the shape of goat droppings.

Well, that’s not what I meant at all… This is really going to hell… How about a word count to this point?

user@busan:~/Desktop$ cat blog.txt | wc -w
140

140 words. Yeah, that’s enough. Meege, you suck. Stop reading my blog.

Fun weekend. Our refrigerator decided to stop refrigerating. We were making brunch on Sunday and noticed that the bacon didn’t really need much in the way of defrosting. It was limp right out of the freezer. “What the hell? This thing never stops running, how can the meat be thawed in the freezer?”

We got the manual and I was in there fiddling with the knob to no effect. Then in the evening it just stopped. I was able to buy a bag of ice and Mihwa took all the meat to Jesse’s for emergency freezing. At least it had been a few weeks since the last Costco run…

Today, a strange little Asian guy came to have a look. He took everything apart and spread the parts all around the kitchen. “You have ice build up. No air flow in the freezer…” Alright then. 45 minutes later he was done. “I didn’t put your food back.”

Now for some housekeeping…

• Neil, Happy Birthday. Sorry about the Meat and Blood
• I seem to have accidentlied my database; at least it wasn’t the whole thing… As such, I don’t get an email about new comments or comments needing moderation. Of course this isn’t much of a problem, I’m just saying in case that chick wants to get a hold of me…
• We saw Terminator this weekend. It was pretty good. There were three cheesy parts. Overall 7 out of 10
• The Snuggie is a robe you wear backwards. Figure it out…