Friday, March 16, 2007

Matchett slams spec chassis

Steve Matchett correctly “prattled” on about the still smoldering row over the customer car controversy, pointing out how Williams and Spyker are spending millions to produce their own chassis and why should another constructor be able to simply buy their way to the top? (Such as Prodrive in 2008)

Interestingly the Super Aguri outpaced its “big Brother” Honda “works” team on Friday. And jokes were made about how “Jense” and Rubens might wish to return to last year’s RA106, which the Super Aguri SA07 essentially is a copy of…

And while I certainly don’t want to see Formula 1 regress into a “suto spec-series” a la Champ Car, I think that the stink over customer chassis is a bit funny. Recall that there were actually two McLaren teams racing in identical equipment in 1972 as the Yardley Team McLaren served as a “secondary” squad with driver’s Denny Hulme, (1967 World Champion) Chris Amon and Peter Revson.

Also Pete Lovely as an example campaigned year’s old ex-works chassis as a Privateer. Or what about the Cosworth era? Did this water down the grid? Yet I strongly agree with Matchett’s opinion that one of F1’s virtues is that each Constructor has to build and race its own chassis…

Is this simply another changing of the guard in Formula 1 as Bernie and Max thoroughly enjoy upsetting the apple cart. I presume that some sort of “compromise” will be made. Most likely in a last minute rules “tweak.”