Formula 1’s Managing Director of Motorsport, Ross Brawn has claimed the sport’s bosses will not back down from changing the engine regulations for 2021 to appease Ferrari.
The Briton, who is a former Technical Director at the Scuderia, was responding to the threat by the Italian team and also Mercedes to pull out of F1 if they don’t agree with the direction it is taken in, particularly pointing to what it sees as a standardisation of certain elements as well as the financial aspect of another change.
However, Brawn admits he was taken aback by the ferocity of the backlash by the current manufacturers who he said agreed to the ambitions F1 bosses had with the proposals they announced.
“I was pretty surprised by these reactions,” he told Germany’s Auto Bild. “I was in some of the meetings and I thought the direction was clear. Everyone agreed unanimously on the new goals that the engines should achieve and we based the new rules on that.”
He is confident there is room for negotiation and compromise with the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes but was keen to make one point clear.
“It’s like a restaurant where some like the appetiser but not the main course and vice versa,” Brawn believes. “That’s why there are new discussions taking place now. If the manufacturers offer better solutions we are open, but staying with the current power units is not an option.”
Explaining why, he suggested “60 to 70 percent” of F1 fans wanted to see a return to a noisier engine while also trying to attract new manufacturers, with the likes of Aston Martin and Porsche linked, with simpler and cheaper units to produce.
That means Brawn continued, the sport has to put its own interests at the top of the priority list rather than bowing out to keep the likes of Ferrari happy.
“That’s a rhetorical question,” he said when asked about Chairman Sergio Marchionne’s quit threat. “Of course we do not want to lose Ferrari. Ferrari benefits from F1 and F1 benefits from Ferrari but every partnership has limits.
“So it’s a matter of what Ferrari can accept and what we can accept. We want to find solutions that keep everyone in F1 and above all, we don’t want to lose any iconic teams. They are an important part of F1 and we must respect and listen to them.”
