Here is an interesting story that has Gerhard Berger publicly calling on Red Bull owner Mr. Mateschitz to up his funding for the junior team.While that’s interesting in and of itself, I took note of the comments from Mr. Ascanelli, STR’s Technical Director, regarding what is really needed at STR.
“We’re trying to grow and define the engineering level we need, however, the FIA and the FOTA should decide once and for all the model,” he told Autosprint. “I need rule stability in order to allow the team’s ownership to decide a definitive plan for the future.
“If we need to build the entire car, it’s clear that to do that I can’t wait until 2010, I will have to start before then, and I will need more people. From the 160 staff we are now, to build and produce the entire car in 2010 we’ll need to grow to 230 people.”
Again, the FIA is supposed to be providing rules and regulations that provide stability and a model for teams to invest in and build upon but as usual, the FIA seems intent on changing the rules frequently creating more costs to the sport and pulled a complete reversal on their customer car position after facing opposition from the likes Of Williams F1 and Spyker etc. This makes sense to me and I would like to put the customer car issue to bed as well. I think Ascanelli is a large part of STR’s success and I happen to agree that the FIA needs to get off their Max legal defense mode and start governing the sport with real, meaningful decisions and not the skulduggery they seem to be engaged in lately.
interestingly, Mr. Ascanelli has signaled that perhaps FOTA could be of assistance in this matter. I know, i keep hoping but you have to admit, the earmarks are looking good. ;)
