by Max Mosley
A combination of the teams’ conservative approach to radical technologies and Bernie’s belief that very loud noise is an essential element of Formula One made it a struggle to bring in a high-efficiency engine. Such engines are inherently quieter because a greater proportion of the fuel is used to propel the car rather than produce ear-splitting noise. I always disagreed with Bernie about the noise. I thought for the less than 0.1 per cent of the audience who watched a race live, the attraction was the extraordinary and almost violent speed of the cars, while for the 99.9 per cent who watched on television the noise was almost entirely irrelevant.
Nearly ten years later, new engine rules introduced in 2014 incorporated many of the elements we wanted, although the variable aero is missing and there was an unfortunate compromise that resulted in a six-cylinder engine rather than the more modern and efficient four originally proposed. Also, vitally important restrictions on costs were missing. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how things develop and it’s pleasing to see Formula One finally more in tune with major research areas for road cars. With any luck, this will make the car manufacturers slower to pull out when the next economic downturn comes. It will also encourage more of the sponsors to stay in Formula One. Almost all these big companies are concerned about corporate social responsibility and find it much easier to support a Formula One that makes a real contribution to research into energy efficiency. Making a very loud noise with inefficient and obsolescent engines is not a priority for modern society.
Also in 2006, we persuaded the teams to accept (albeit very reluctantly) an energy recovery and reuse system (KERS) similar to the hybrid systems increasingly seen in modern road cars. KERS was revolutionary in Formula One terms, but was plainly relevant to all wheeled vehicles. Recovering energy currently lost as heat when a vehicle brakes and reusing it to propel the car is necessary whether the car is driven by fossil fuel, hydrogen, electricity or any other means. We hoped that bringing the technology into Formula One would accelerate its development, and that has indeed happened.
But even KERS could only save part of the one-third of the fuel that propelled the car. The other two-thirds mentioned as wasted by Professor Göschel was still to be looked at. Before we could start trying to convince the teams with the professor’s help, they fell out among themselves as usual. The breakaway eventually faded but so did the search for energy efficiency, at least temporarily, when Professor Göschel moved on. Work in this area continued within the FIA and thanks to pressure from my successor, Jean Todt, Formula One finally acquired more efficient engines in 2014 and now uses up to 40 per cent less fuel while achieving the same speeds.
KERS was dropped in 2010, but under pressure from sponsors, who understand more about image than most of the teams do, it was brought back a year later. KERS is now firmly established in Formula One and increasingly on the roads. The arguments I had with two major car company CEOs ten years ago, when I was trying to convince them it was certain to be used in road cars, now seem part of ancient history. It seems extraordinary today that, back then, most major European manufacturers thought KERS pointless. The CEO of one very big company told me it was no good on a motorway! Toyota was way ahead of them.
Formula One KERS systems are like those on hybrid road cars. They depend on converting some of the energy that is otherwise lost when a car brakes into electrical energy stored in a chemical battery, to be used when the car needs to accelerate again. In this way, with a road car, some of the petrol a motorist pays for is effectively used more than once. The problem is that the rate at which energy can be fed into a chemical battery is very limited. Unless the braking is very light, most of the energy is still lost as heat. For really high amounts of energy in and out you need a flywheel or perhaps a super-capacitor.
A major regret in all this was my failure to bring flywheel technology into Formula One. Flywheels can store large amounts of energy for a short time by spinning very fast and had been in development by parts of the car industry for some time. The safety problems had been overcome and, because of their ability to absorb and release large amounts of energy very quickly, flywheels were ideal for Formula One. I believe they will have a big role in future road vehicles, where the ability to store a lot of energy quickly is necessary if it is not to be lost.
Had we been able to introduce flywheels or other high-energy-in/high-energy-out systems to Formula One, there would have been a huge boost to the development of the relevant technology. A flywheel for a car needs to be small, light and fail-safe, even when running at extreme speeds. Making mechanical devices small and light is what Formula One is really good at, and the fail-safe technology already existed. But in order to fit a flywheel in a Formula One car without giving a non-flywheel car an aerodynamic advantage, we needed to increase some of the minimum chassis dimensions slightly and there was no way to get the teams to agree to that. Interestingly, car companies involved in long-distance racing are less conservative than the Formula One teams, and flywheels are now appearing at Le Mans and other endurance races.
Uniquely among the Formula One teams, Williams saw the potential and began a significant flywheel R&D programme in parallel with their Formula One commitment. They also achieved a tie-up with a major manufacturer. The Williams flywheel technology (since sold to GKN) has now been successfully deployed in long-distance racing, and is likely to be seen increasingly on road cars and heavy vehicles in cities, including buses. Eventually, apart from minor losses in the system, all the energy currently lost in heat when a vehicle brakes will be recovered and reused, even when it brakes hard. To its shame, Formula One will not have played the key role it should have in making that happen quickly.
27
RESIGNATION
By 2004 I was beginning to tire of spending all my time trying to solve other people’s problems. None of the things I was trying to put right in the sport affected me personally. I had taken on the job so I had to do it, but I had been working under considerable pressure for 13 years, much of the time in the teeth of fierce opposition, sometimes even litigation, from the very people I was trying to help. The utterly irrational opposition to the elimination of qualifying cars in Formula One discussed earlier is a prime example. Moreover, as far as I was concerned, the constant attempts to cheat, or at least game the rules as set out, were wasting a lot of time to no useful purpose. Leading the FIA had been fascinating and a great privilege but the time had come to quit.
A particularly irritating meeting of the F1 Commission at the end of May 2004 had convinced me that my decision to resign was the right one. Unusually, there was an FIA General Assembly on 1 June, which was the right occasion to make the announcement. Having first told the senior members of the FIA staff and some of my closest associates, I duly announced my resignation to the FIA membership in the assembly. For the previous 13 years, Formula One had been the key that opened so many political doors. It had enabled really significant changes to road safety but the necessary structures were now in place.
Formula One for its own sake had no appeal any more and I went to very few Grands Prix. There is always a certain satisfaction in making something that dysfunctional work (if you can), but after a while I began to wonder if there were not more interesting ways to spend my time. It seemed to be always the same old arguments with the same old people. In some other role I could perhaps try to help people who actually wanted to be helped. And I felt the rest of motor sport, not just Formula One, probably also needed someone fresh.
I had been lucky enough to be in a position to work unpaid because of family resources and money I had previously earned. I have never been entirely comfortable with the concept of inherited wealth. It seems somehow wrong (though no more so, I suppose, than winning the lottery) but without it, or the prospect of it, I would not have been able to do any of the things that I now see as significant in my life. For various reasons, almost all the family money came to me, which I could justify if I did something useful with my time and passed
at least as much on to the next generation as I had been fortunate to receive myself. But it seemed utterly pointless to continue as president of the FIA if I was no longer enjoying it. Eleven years was enough; I no longer had the patience and I was determined to quit.
I confirmed my resignation to the media during a press conference at the French Grand Prix a day or two later. Inevitably, some commentators suggested the resignation was some kind of elaborate ploy. It wasn’t, and there was immediate pressure from the FIA Senate to rescind it because there was no obvious successor. They said I should at least continue until the end of my current mandate, in the autumn of 2005. The only dissenter was Bob Darbelnet, the head of the American AAA, the biggest of the FIA clubs with nearly 50 million members. He had his heart set on the presidency for himself and came to my office immediately after my announcement to ask if I thought he could succeed me. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything negative, even though it was not clear to me how he could deal with the sport. Who could he get to do that part of the job? He knew nothing about motor sport and it seemed unlikely that anyone capable of running the sport would be prepared to work under him.
In the end, I had to agree that there was currently no obvious successor and would therefore see out the remaining year of my term so one could be found. I approached Jean Todt about putting his name forward with my support in 2005. His extraordinary record in both racing and rallying spoke for itself, and I was confident that he would be as enthusiastic as I was for road safety and the interests of the ordinary motorist. He had, after all, founded the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Épinière (Institute of the Brain and Spinal Cord), a major research centre in Paris of which I became a founder member at his invitation. As it specialised in brain and spinal injuries, the institute’s research was very relevant to the FIA’s safety work. Jean and his friends raised the money and Professor Gérard Saillant, who succeeded Professor Watkins as head of the FIA’s medical team, was in charge.
I also spoke to Sebastià Salvadó, the president of Catalunya’s RACC, one of the most successful of our member clubs and the promoter of the Spanish Grand Prix. He is outstandingly able and would have been ideal, but a combination of being several years older than me and the magnitude of his job running the RACC led him to decline.
Just as I was beginning to worry, Jean Todt accepted my proposal and all seemed set – I would finally be able to stand down in October 2005. But then Jean was offered the job of running not just Ferrari’s Formula One team but the entire company, including the road cars and Maserati. Quite understandably, he wanted to accept and postpone our deal, yet maintained that he would probably be ready to stand at the end of the next presidential term in 2009. We decided this would be the plan and I would carry on for four more years.
Looking back this was a major mistake on my part. I should have said to Jean that I was going to stop come what may. If he were willing to refuse the Ferrari offer and stand for election for the presidency of the FIA in October 2005, I would support him fully. But, if not, I would retire anyway and it would be up to the members of the FIA to choose a successor without any suggestion from me.
Except for our successes with road safety, my last four years were to prove every bit as difficult and frustrating as any of the previous 14. The only real motor sport achievement in that time was the introduction of energy recovery and the concept of energy efficiency as a performance differentiator in Formula One. Apart from that, I spent my time trying to solve other people’s problems in the usual, exasperating way. If Jean’s time as president turns out to be a success, I suppose I would have to say it was worth hanging on, but from my own point of view it was four years too many.
The next major problem – exactly the sort of thing that made me feel it was time to quit – came at the 2005 United States Grand Prix. Arguments about costs, plus ongoing plans by the Formula One teams to form a breakaway championship, meant there was real tension. This came to a head at the race. Seven teams were on Michelin tyres, three on Bridgestone. Michelin had experienced no difficulty the previous year but their tyres proved to be unsafe on Turn 13, a very long fast corner, and the only one from the Indianapolis oval to form part of the Formula One circuit. Surprisingly, Michelin were unable to solve the problem. They had no safe back-up tyre at the race and apparently none in stock. The seven Michelin teams, backed by Bernie in alliance with Flavio Briatore (then team principal at Renault), demanded a chicane before the corner. They said this would slow the cars and eliminate their problem.
At home in Monaco, I refused. This was partly for sporting fairness: Bridgestone might well have packed a different tyre had they known a chicane would be used. They had brought a tyre that was able to withstand the stresses of Turn 13 and this might well have involved compromising its performance elsewhere on the circuit. Michelin had apparently not made any such compromise and might have had an unfair advantage if the circuit were altered to suit their tyres.
But the decisive reason was that changing the circuit without following our own safety procedures would leave the FIA exposed if there were an accident. Imagine trying to explain to an American judge hearing a case involving injuries to spectators that you had changed the circuit without following any of your own standard safety procedures and checks. Doing so because some competitors had brought the wrong tyres would certainly not impress the court, indeed quite the reverse – it would give the impression that those running Formula One were either incompetent or irresponsible.
We made various proposals to solve the problem, any of which would have allowed all the teams to race without us having to break our own rules. These included repeated tyre changes (the Michelin tyres were safe for a limited number of laps), running through the pits each lap (with the usual speed limit) instead of Turn 13, running at the bottom (the flat part) of Turn 13, or observing a speed limit in Turn 13 (with drive-through penalties for breaches). The seven teams – McLaren, Renault, Williams, Toyota, BAR, Red Bull and Sauber – rejected every one of our solutions. The measures we proposed would all have placed the Michelin teams at a disadvantage, but this was to be expected as they had brought the wrong equipment and could not run at full speed on all parts of the circuit for more than a few laps at a time. But running at a disadvantage was certainly better than not running at all. Their sponsors were paying them to race and that is what they should have done.
They also had a duty to the spectators, both live and watching on television. Looking back, I think Bernie and Flavio knew all this perfectly well but never believed for one moment that we would allow the race to go ahead with only six cars. They were convinced that, faced with seven teams who were prepared to stick together, we would have no alternative but to back down.
Perhaps if I had been there I could have made them understand why that was never going to happen. I spoke on the phone to all the main players including Bernie, Tony George (head of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway), Flavio and even, I think, Ron Dennis, but perhaps it would have been more effective had I been there in person. Then they might have accepted one of our compromise solutions for the ‘Michelin Seven’ rather than not run at all. Any of the solutions we offered would have added to the entertainment, even if they potentially left the Bridgestone cars in the first six places.
In reality, though, this was never truly about an unsafe tyre. The seven Michelin teams, led by Bernie and Flavio, probably saw it as a golden opportunity to strengthen their position. The teams were, after all, in one of their breakaway modes and Bernie may have seen it as an opportunity to appear to be in charge and on their side. With the threat of a breakaway, he and CVC, the private equity firm that owned his business, probably thought they needed to improve their relations with the teams. One way to achieve this was to present the FIA as the common enemy.
On Sunday morning it seemed the organisers would put in a chicane with or without the FIA’s consent. Tyre bundles were being moved to form a chicane, allegedly on Bernie’s instructions. Charlie Whiting, a
s the FIA race director, intervened and put a stop to it. Charlie and I agreed that if the organisers installed a chicane despite his ruling, all FIA personnel would leave the circuit immediately and we would declare it a non-championship race authorised by the local sanctioning body and not by the FIA. At least that way we would be covered if there were an accident. Also, the sporting unfairness would not matter if it were a non-championship race because no team would be obliged to compete and the World Championship would not be affected.
The international television coverage kept showing huddles of team principals and others in different parts of the paddock. They were supposedly having important meetings and there was much coming and going, possibly predominantly for the benefit of the cameras. But, in the end, all they could do was refuse to race or compete in a locally organised non-championship event. I decided the only course for the FIA was to ignore the threats and simply follow the start procedure on schedule. The teams could then do as they pleased.
It was almost the FOCA–FISA war all over again – it’s very difficult to take on the governing body in big-time international sport. The competitors and commercial people may have the ear of the media but when it comes to a championship, a sport’s governing body has the power and makes the decisions. As I had learned in the early 1980s, the FIA is where the real power lies in Formula One. But it should only ever be deployed in extreme situations and when absolutely necessary.
In the event, the cars all went out for the warm-up lap, then the 14 cars from the seven Michelin teams peeled into the pits instead of going to the grid. I learned later that they had told their drivers this would make the FIA buckle and, after a slight delay, agree to the chicane. I was watching all this on television and was quite surprised when the cars went out on the warm-up lap. I hadn’t known they’d decided to do this.
