Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Crucial meeting set to take place between senior Formula One management and teams on Thursday

(© Ben Johnston 2015)

Formula One teams, the sports senior management and the commercial rights holder are set to meet in England on Thursday to discuss changes to be made to the sport.

On the agenda is certain to be the allocation of power units which currently stands at four units per car per season which is likely to be increased to five power units after teams agreed in principle to increase the allocation of units per car per season for the remainder of this season on the grounds of reliability.

The Independent in the UK reports however that the decision to increase the power unit allocation is likely to be rejected by Mercedes customers, Williams and the Sahara Force India Formula One Team are against the idea.

Among the issues are the spiralling costs involved in running a Formula One operation which was has seen the demise of the Caterham and HRT racing teams in recent seasons and the loss of manufacturers BMW and Toyota due to the huge costs involved in Formula One. 

Ferrari Team Principal Maurizio Arrivabene has been very vocal about the current state of the sport and the he and a number of mechanics joined fans in the main grandstand at the second Barcelona test as a protest against the restriction in paddock passes issued to the teams.

This has meant that teams have had to reduce the number of staff that they bring with them to Grand Prix events.

The meeting will most likely also involve discussions on the best way to engage with young fans and possibly the cost of attending Grand Prix events for fans. Bernie Ecclestone recently stated that young fans are not able to afford to attend Grand Prix because they have no disposable income and this did not go down well at all with fans of the sport.

© Ben Johnston 2015

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