Fumes

Monday

Apr042011

Monday, April 4, 2011 at 03:55PM

April 6, 2011

Bernie has a point.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. There is much hand-wringing going on in Formula 1 right now because Jean Todt, the FIA President, and Bernie Ecclestone, the perpetual impresario/l'enfant terrible of F1 are squaring off over the future direction of the sport. In one corner is Todt, the ex-Ferrari F1 team leader and now FIA chief who wants to embrace alternative technologies and smaller engines (specifically, the turbocharged 1.6-liter "Global Racing Engine") when the new F1 specifications are put in place in 2013, no matter how much upheaval it causes. In the other is Bernie Ecclestone, who has pretty much devoted his entire professional career to keeping F1 as the pinnacle of international motorsport (even though at various times over the last two decades it has been an embarrassing joke).

Bernie's disagreement with Todt - he refers to the FIA President as a “poor man’s Max Mosley” (ouch) - stems from the fact that the vertically challenged billionaire sees no point in going to 1.6-liter turbo engines in 2013, that it's just so much window dressing to appease the green hand-wringers and he wants no part of it. He has stated repeatedly that more than half the attraction of F1 is the incredible sound the high strung engines make at full song, and to take that away from the sport would be suicidal.

Todt, on the other hand, is fully engaged in getting his green on and is trying to anticipate where the winds of societal and corporate change are blowing, and he wants F1 to be perceived as being at the forefront of cutting-edge technology, as opposed to being dragged, kicking and screaming, toward the future. Ratcheting up the pressure, the European Commission has even asked Formula 1’s governing body to set up a racing championship series for electric cars, as a way of increasing public awareness and excitement about new-technology vehicles.

Todt has calculatingly avoided getting into a war of words with Ecclestone, telling the Financial Times that “It is important not to overreact. I feel with confrontation, unless it is necessary to achieve a result, you lose time. I prefer to achieve results with harmony rather than confrontation.”

Uh-huh. As if that's going to work.

But here's the thing, I respect both positions on this issue. As for Todt's position, I have been one of the leading advocates of advancing the technological envelope for all of racing. My "The Future of Racing" speech given in Detroit in January of 2007 to a stellar group of manufacturer and racing representatives, where I brought forth the Hydrogen Electric Racing Federation (HERF) and the notion of racing hydrogen fuel cell-powered electric vehicles at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, led to a fundamental change in the discussion about the future of motorsport and its role going forward. As a matter of fact it is well known that the planks in the American Le Mans Series current racing platform were triggered by my speech that day, as Scott Atherton, who was in attendance, saw the writing on the wall and wisely led the ALMS to its relevant technology-focused direction that the series promotes and enjoys today. So I am well aware that the sport needs to change, specifically that it needs to get back to proving and developing advanced technologies for our future production cars as a way of making the sport relevant again.

But Bernie does have a point.

Racing without noise is like American football without contact. It just doesn't work. (For the record, part of the HERF rules package required that all manufacturers design their own sound signatures using mechanical and wind-generated sounds, so that their cars would not only sound different from each other but that they would make noise, period.) I couldn't envision attending the Indianapolis 500 and having the crowd noise drown out the racing machines then, just as I can't envision attending an F1 race and hearing turbo 4-cylinders again now. I endured that era once and I don't care to go back. No matter what you do to a 4-cylinder motor, it's not going to have the unmistakable shriek to it that other engines generate.

So I hope there's some compromise here, because though I embrace moving this sport into the future, racing without that unmistakable spine-tingling sound just ain't racing.

Publisher's Note: As part of our continuing series celebrating the "Glory Days" of racing, we're proud to present another noteworthy image from the Ford Racing Archives. - PMD

(Courtesy of the Ford Racing Archives)
Indianapolis, Indiana, 1963. Ford executives anxiously look on as Jim Clark prepares for a practice run in his "Lotus Powered By Ford" during a private test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Clark would finish second in the sleek mid-engined racer in his rookie attempt that year, running behind winner Parnelli Jones in his No. 98 front-engined "roadster." Lotus team leader Colin Chapman vigorously protested Jones at the end of the race because his car was visibly leaking oil, but to no avail. The race would mark the beginning of the end of the traditional roadster at Indy, as the mid-engined "revolution" took hold. (A.J. Foyt would win the second of his four Indianapolis 500 victories with a roadster in 1964, but that would be the last for that car configuration.) Other finishers that day in 1963 were A.J. Foyt in third, followed by Rodger Ward, Don Branson, Jim McElreath and Dan Gurney, who finished in seventh position in the other Lotus-Ford team car. It was Gurney's visionary idea to bring Ford and Colin Chapman together to race in the Indianapolis 500 with the then radical mid-engined Lotus.

Publisher's Note: Like these Ford racing photos? Check out www.fordimages.com. Be forewarned, however, because you won't be able to go there and not order something. - PMD

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" with hosts John McElroy, from Autoline Detroit, and Peter De Lorenzo, The Autoextremist, and guests this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.