Latest meetings has been persuasive that Sergio Marchionne, Ferrari F1 Team president, feels “encouraged” by the recent talks between Liberty Media and other stakeholders.
Marchionne had been expressing his concerns over reshaping the game from 2021.He had even threatened to leave the sport, if he does not share the same vision with Liberty Media.
But “change in the attitude” of Liberty Media, which owns F1, has been encouraging and persuasive to engage Ferrari in meaningful discussions.
Marchionne said, “The biggest sign is the recognition that engine regulations need to reflect the nature of the sport.”
He had been skeptical of the proposed changes in the sport, which includes standardization and changes in power plants currently in service.
F1 owners and its governing body FIA, wanted to bring new entrants to the sport. They have proposed simpler, cheaper and noisier power plants to replace the expensive and complex turbo hybrid currently in-service.
“We can’t really dumb down engine development just to accommodate new entries, right?” Marchionne said to an analyst on Thursday.
Teams were given a presentation by the Liberty Media about its vision for the sport at Bahrain Grand Prix last month. The discussions were also made over reducing Ferrari share in bonuses from $100m to $40m in 2021.
He said: “The stuff that’s on the table now is potentially workable as a system. The economics are not. That’s something we need to go back to Liberty with.
“I think we now have enough of a basis to try start having meaningful discussions. And hopefully, we’ll get it all resolved by the end of this year one way or the other.”
FIA and Liberty wanted to cap budget so that new entrants are encourage to participate in the game but Ferrari wants the engines to be the same.
“The important thing for us… is that we don’t touch the nature of the technical development of the power-trains because that is at the heart of what Ferrari does for a living,” he said.
“We need to continue to work with Liberty with the commercial rights holders and with the [governing] FIA to try and bring about a sensible equilibrium. If we can’t, as I said before, we’ll just pull out.
“But we’re not there today. We owe the sport a phenomenal effort to try and bring about closure of these items. We’ll try and get that done before the end of this year.”
