Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn believes F1 teams will regret their split from FOTA – Formula 1
Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn believes Formula 1 teams might regret quitting Formula One Teams Association.
Last year in 2011 Ferrari, Red Bull, Sauber and Toro Rosso showed their dissent over the Resource Restriction Agreement. The disagreement over the policies resulted in the teams quitting from the association.
FOTA though at the time was quick to respond that there will be talks held and a resolution will be worked on. Although nothing has materialised so and it seems that the teams will continue their split.
Ferrari and Red Bull issued lengthy statements citing their issues with the association’s stance on the limited testing days provided to teams and the lack of transparency over financial budgeting of teams.
Mercedes team principal and Ross Brawn was not in favour of teams quitting FOTA and called upon them to set their issues aside for the greater good of the sport. He still believes that the teams have taken a short sighted view on the matter and will regret
their decision in the long term.
“We are very committed to FOTA and we think it's a great shame that we've lost the members from FOTA because I think we may live to regret that,” Brawn said.
“But I think we are very short-sighted in not recognising that FOTA has a very important role to play. I think it is an unfortunate feature of Formula One that we all find it fairly difficult to come together. I'm a great believer in FOTA but I'm disappointed,
obviously, with what has happened in the last few months.”
He further added that the RRA is very important and the need to restrain costs is imperative looking at the situation of the global economy. All the members need to adhere and commit to the system for it to work.
Ferrari and Red Bull though did mention that being cost effective is an important thing and the teams understand that. But the policies need to be much clearer in order to implement them there needs to be a set criteria and much more transparency.
The Concorde Agreement is also due for a revision and the teams needed to be united to be in a position to negotiate which looking at the situation would now be very hard.
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