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LinkedInRoss Brawn criticises principles of F1’s new regulations
New F1 boss Ross Brawn has criticised the process of the sport’s new regulations, saying if the principle of them was to stop Mercedes from winning, it has backfired.
Brawn, managing director for motorsports at Liberty Media, which acquired Formula One at the beginning of the year, has said it was naïve to think F1’s new regulations would ‘destablise Mercedes’.
Speaking about the new rules during an interview to Sky, the former Ferrari and Mercedes boss said: “We expose ourselves whenever we make changes like this. Fingers crossed, it is going to work out but l think it is a good example of where we didn’t go through the right principles to begin with. And if this was a principle to stop Mercedes winning, you could argue the exact contrary.
“A team that strong and with that resource will relish change. It was naïve to think it would destabilise Mercedes. If anything it gave them an advantage.”
Brawn has said he ‘dreams’ of staging a non-championship race in F1 to experiment with different race formats but could be hard to introduce due to F1’s ‘interia’. He commented: “It won’t be perfect because F1 is a bit of an oil tanker so you nudge it but l hope we can get it going in the right direction.”
Following Manor Racing’s collapse last month, Brawn said F1 has to make sure “the teams have the capability to compete.”
He commented: “At the bottom of the grid, the commercial consideration of the driver is much stronger than it is at the front of the grid. If we can put the smaller teams on a sounder footing then l think the whole sport will improve and you will get more Verstappens coming through than you do now.”
The self-confessed ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ priorities are now close racing, which is different to his objectives for the last 30 years that was to, “compete a level where nobody can beat me.”
Brawn has fought off suggestions that teams should be on an even keel with those winning having their development frozen until the rest catch up. He said something like would not happen because, “the fans will just see straight through it and become disillusioned.”
With F1 testing only on day three in Barcelona, early indications show that the new rules have made the leading teams, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull even faster.
