On the Road

…because the stakes are so low.” I once heard that phrase used to describe the world of academia and office politics.

But what I’m referring to now is the current bickering that threatens to tear Formula One apart. This time next year, or even later on this year, who knows what we’ll be watching going around the racing circuits of the world?

Far as we are from the epicenter of the crisis, Europe, the most I can tell is this : quarrels are nothing new to F1, but for the past twenty or so years, Bernie Ecclestone has managed to keep a cap on things, and keep most of the money too.

Unfortunately FIA president Max Mosely seems to have decided that a budget cap of 40 million pounds is the only solution to saving F1, and paradoxically endangering it immediately by making most of the Formula One teams very unhappy.

He could take a page out of MotoGP’s book – the FIM (motorcycle equivalent of the FIA) once tried the same thing, upon which the constructors and teams overthrew them. Now rule-making decisions lie with the Grand Prix Commission, a committee of all involved parties and MotoGP is all the better for it.

Budget caps can work, but not dropping from 400 million pound budgets (like Ferrari’s rumoured annual cost of its F1 programme) to 40 million in one year.

First of all involving ‘forensic financial analysts and accountants’ into a ’sport’ is just ridiculous. There are a thousand and one ways to make money and a million ways to hide it. Just ask any illegal business.

Secondly, as double-world champ Fernando Alonso has said, modern F1 is now probably more of a business than a sport. Cut the money and you’ll anger even more people: sponsors, suppliers, personnel, etcetera.

In contrast the weekend of June 13-14 saw yet another edition of the superb 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, with Peugeot finally grabbing a win and the past dominating Audi only in third place. It was also great to watch 24 hours of non-stop racing without a shade of politics interfering.

Back in F1 though, the bickering continues with no end in sight. Honestly as a fan of motorsport myself, if F1 were to break into two separate series, as happened to CART and Indy racing in America, I don’t think I’d watch either. Let’s hope that the fans still have one championship to follow at the end of this year.

Tags: budget cap, controversy, Formula One, Le Mans, MotoGP

What’s in a brand?

Sometimes a lot – perhaps the storied history of racing prowess earned since the days of yore. Think Ferrari, Porsche or even Audi.

Sometimes very little. What a brand name and symbol took so long to acquire is sometimes devalued by the latest owners when marques change hands. Harley-Davidson in the AMF era from 1969 to 1981 comes to mind, as does (sadly) Saab under GM and Chrysler under the Cerberus conglomerate.

But what do people really think of your favourite car brand? Well now you can find out, or at least in terms of the Net-literate with www.brandtags.net.

The premise is simple: what pops into a person’s head first when they see a brand? Part market research and part pop-psychology, Brandtags takes these responses and sizes them according to the number of times a word appears.

Why the research? Well it’s interesting. Also it explains an experience I had driving the new, very gorgeous BMW Z4. It’s a surefire way of catching attention since the new roadster is much better looking than the old one, which resembled a sneaker.

It attracts both good and bad attention though – alongside the craning heads and bulging eyes were a lot of angry glares and disdain. I was quite puzzled (no I wasn’t driving like Kubica) but what made me really curious was the amount of aggression it seemed to elicit on the road.

The worst bit was a silver car tail-gating me very very closely at around 90km/h in the right lane on the TPE. In open traffic that’d be fine, I’d just pull over and let him through but the problem was we were boxed in by other cars, it being around 7pm. And then Mr. Road Safety began flashing his lights even though there was no room to move in front, left or right.

I guess he must’ve been having a baby, a hernia, or both and I began wondering if I had ever insulted his extended family in past life. In any case, bewildered and rather irritated, I pulled over to let him through and spread the joy with the rest of the world.

Then I went home and remembered what word the brandtag for BMW had most memorably.

To save you a Google and a click, it began with ‘a’ and ended with ‘hole’. Clue: It’s not ant-hole.

And it’s really curious because other luxury German marques don’t have that word writ anywhere as large, although on a side note all the major sports car brands have at least one occurrence of ’small penis’ (I’m serious!). My only explanation is the BMW has always been, and still is, the yuppie-mobile of choice.

So thanks to the power of the Internet all the aggression directed at the lovely, female-designed Z4 was explained, and then some.

Yep, you guessed it: the silver car was a BMW as well.

Tags: BMW, brand consciousness, brands, Z4