Toro Rosso offers to settle Force India row
Quote selected text Published by clive March 27th, 2008 in Formula 1
Toro Rosso has offered to settle its long running dispute with F1 rival Force India over the controversial use of so-called customer cars.
Force India is still pursuing both the Red Bull junior team and Honda satellite Super Aguri in Swiss arbitration court, as the Silverstone based outfit argues that because its rivals are not traditional constructors, they are breaking the rules.
According to the German specialist magazine Auto Motor und Sport, Toro Rosso is now offering to provide to Force India half of its potential commercial revenue in 2008, providing the latter team is not itself inside the top ten teams on the constructors’ ranking.
It is suggested that while co-owner Vijay Mallya is receptive to the compromise, team boss Colin Kolles also wants about $6 million in compensation for the 2006 and 2007 seasons.
Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost insists that the Faenza based team is within the rules, but explained: “With the process that is going on at the moment, only the lawyers are winning.
“We want to put this affair into the past and make a clear path for a new Concorde Agreement,” he added.
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Force India will be in the top 10 in 2008 (Super Aguri seem to have P11 in the bag, unfortunately), so this is not really a compromise but an attempt to end the arbitration case before justice has been served. Since the different positions within the top 10 also have significantly different rewards, this deal won’t even recoup Force India’s financial losses for this year, let alone other years - also, it doesn’t punish Toro Rosso for breaking the regulations in the first place, which the Court of Arbitration surely would. What’s really needed is for all parties to tell the Court of Arbitration to get a move on with sorting the case out.
If precedent is established that allows teams to ignore the Concorde Agreement’s provisions at virtually no cost to themselves and considerable cost to those teams abiding with the regulations, then it is a total waste of time to negotiate a new version.
All true, Alianora, but Force India may want to get the case over and done with so that they can get on with racing. There is no doubt that they are losing money through lawyers’ fees at the moment and it could be worth their while just washing their hands of the whole affair, regardless of the loss they’ll make overall.
And don’t forget that Toro Roso is for sale. I think a reasonable settlement is in the best interests of maintaining the teams value in the market.
I think that’s the driving force behind this whole deal, Don.
Even if the loss is the long-term loss of the team and the rendering worthless of future Concorde Agreements? It would be incredibly short-termish of Force India to let go of the matter now because even the most expensive lawyers won’t be charging that much to pursue the case. The deal would certainly help Toro Rosso out in terms of finding a buyer - in fact, I agree with Clive that that’s what motivated this.
With matters as they stand now, Super Aguri and Toro Rosso are going to have to be constructors if they want to continue racing in 2010. Mallya may consider it pointless to continue the case (or at least be open to monetary persuasion to drop it) in the light of that. And hasn’t the whole matter put a big question mark over the future of Concorde Agreements anyway? The teams think the old one remains in force since no new agreement has been signed, whereas Max considers that the same fact means that there is no Concode Agreement at the moment. That looks like preparation for a whole new way of dealing with the problem coming into play.
Really, the whole thing is a complete mess and, if I were Mallya, I’d be very tempted to take the money and put it into making his cars better than anything SA and STR are likely to come up with.