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F1 Teams Revolt Against Another Ridiculous Decision by Liberty Media

Published 06/27/2018, 6:20 AM EDT

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via Imago

Liberty Media has faced flak for a number of their decisions and their proposal to ban virtual garages is no different. Force India is the latest F1 team to join the bandwagon of opposing the idea.

The F1 owners had put forward the idea in their bid to reduce costs and increase the unpredictability of races. But Force India COO, Otmar Szafnauer, was vocal in his opposition for the ban.

“Here is the thing: What cost? We have the virtual garage already and so does everyone else. So what cost? That cost is sunk. Getting rid of it is only going to cost everyone. We already have it”, he said.

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Virtual garages are set up by teams as they are restricted to having only 60 staff members in the paddock during race weekends. The strategists operate from their factory or another remote base. Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff was the first one to call it a ‘bad idea’.

via Imago

Szafnauer cited the most recent example of the team’s tech director, Andy Green missing the French Grand Prix. “The people that we employ for that virtual garage are people that we already employ.”

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“Andrew Green is the technical director. He isn’t hired to sit in the virtual garage. But when he doesn’t travel, he’s there. We run two strategists, one per car.”

“If one of them doesn’t travel, he is in the virtual garage. Now if they get rid of that, we’ll have them travel. It costs you more”, Szafnauer pointed out.

Another point he brought up was of the financial income which could be lost by them. “We have sponsorship for it. We’d lost that too. So then you’ve got to ask yourself.”

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“If there is no cost benefit for getting rid of the virtual garage, are they [Liberty] asking us to get rid of it because we compete with them on sponsorship?”, he asked.

Liberty Media is certainly racking their brains to come up with ideas to make F1 more fun. But its unorthodox decisions are not finding a lot of fans and they need to work harder to convince all parties involved.

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Written by:

Rahul Venkat

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