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Austrian GP: Friday Press Conference

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20/06/2014

The World Motor Sport Council meets next week, it's the deadline for regulations for 2015. In yesterday's press conference with the drivers they all said that cost control was the first order of priority for the sport. Are you wher you hoped to be on that subject as the deadline approaches? A question for all of you. Eric maybe you'd like to start.
Eric Boullier: Well, I think it depends on where you want to put the shift. There were some discussions, they was some real will to do something for the sport from some teams and I think at the end we achieved some decisions. I don't know yet obviously how much we are going to save. Is it enough, is it not enough? I think it's a bit to early to say. But at least let's say there was a commitment to do something and we tried to.

Monisha?
Monisha Kaltenborn: Well, in my view we are clearly not there, where we should be and where we wanted to be, at least from our team's perspective. I also don't think we have achieved so far any measurable cost cutting. For us the situation is a little unclear actually at the moment, at least in my understanding if you mention the World Motor Sport Council there was a decision taken last year by the Council in which they endorsed cost-cutting as a target and they also agreed in principle to the cost cap and the FIA was mandated to implement that. Since then other decisions have been taken by other groups going in a different direction. Following that amongst other teams, ours as well, the non-Strategy Group teams I'd say were asked to bring proposals in about how you can achieve a sustainable cost base while still promoting competition. We did that, we also didn't get anywhere on that. In my understanding I really wonder what the FIA is now going to do and how Formula One is going to be governed in this respect.

Christian, do you have any comment on that?
Christian Horner: We spent quite a while talking about things and so on and we've agreed a couple of things next year which will save money. Testing is reduced, testing will be in Europe rather than overseas, wind tunnel time and CFD ratios have been further reduced. But I think what's important to say is that everything that was agreed in the Formula One Commission meeting earlier this week was agreed unanimously. That means every team was around the table and every team had the right to vote against it but everything that went through went through on a unanimous basis. We've got what we've got. I think the most important thing now going forward is stability.

Marco, are you where you hoped to be on cost control?
Marco Mattiacci: First of all, I think it is remarkable that the drivers are underlining this point. At the same time, yes, I think we did some progress. Probably we could have achieved some more. But I keep stressing the point that according to me Formula One should focus at the same time on how to appeal to a broader audience, because I think there is a huge potential for this sport. So I guess even cost reduction has to be faced in a much more complex point of view, a large point of view: how to make this product more appealing, how to attract more sponsors. I guess yes we are working extremely hard to see where are the opportunities to reduce the cost. I would like to work even harder to see where we can increase the appeal to wider audience.

Toto?
Toto Wolff: Yeah, we had lots of meeting about finding out where we could reduce costs. It's an ongoing saga. You know it's not the case that some teams are against cutting costs and other are for. We are all for sensible cost cutting because even the big teams need to make sure we keep it within a certain framework. We need to make sure that Christian is not running away with the costs. Christian needs to make sure that Ferrari is not running away with the costs. This is why we are all in favour, but it is a tricky thing and it's difficult to get everybody under one umbrella. So I guess that what we have done for next year in reducing the in-season testing again, probably to even less the following year. We came back to Europe. All these are sensible steps and this must be on our constant agenda to further reduce the costs.

Thank you for that. And finally Franz: your thoughts?
Franz Tost: We have achieved some goals to reduce costs, like Christian mentioned before, with less testing and testing only in Europe and the reduced costs on the aerodynamic side. And we will also in future discuss possibilities to reduce costs. I think this is a longer process because this year we are coming up with a new regulation, and as we all know a regulation change is always in connection with costs increasing. I just hope that in the future we will always continue to discuss how to reduce costs and I am convinced that sooner or later we will come to a target where all the teams are satisfied.

OK and second one to all you. There have been extensive discussions on wider changes on things to things like format and regulations in recent weeks, things like altering the Friday programme at race weekend and tyre blankets - all that kind of thing. Which measure would you personally most like to see implemented? Maybe we'll start with Marco.
MM: Again I want to have a wider view about how to improve Formula One and the appeal. According to me, if I could push the button tomorrow, I would like to see a much deeper, wider engagement toward the audience with the drivers. In the end, Formula One is innovation but at the same it's entertainment and I think that it has huge opportunity for improvement, for revenues, in engaging the audience, the fan more to Formula One. All the other initiatives sound to me OK to reduce some costs but they sound to me tactical and they don't see the bigger picture, the bigger potential in Formula One.

Christian?
CH: I think foremost and utmost Formula One is a show and it has to entertain. I think a race like we had in Montreal is Formula One at it's best. That's what we need to have and more of it - week in, week out. We need to give the public more access, more behind-the-scenes information and engage them more in what we do. I think we need more of Montreal. How we achieve that of course is the difficulty.

Franz?
FT: The most important thing about Formula One, which we should not forget, is the entertainment and when we came back to the Friday running which we have in this year and as we had it in the past, this is something which was quite important for the organisers. We have to think how we can bring the cars together, because as we can see today there are two cars far ahead and as long as the parity of the power units is not at a similar level it is difficult to achieve interesting races, apart from the fact if something happens, which was unforeseen. Once more it's a new regulation, it's the first year that we are in there. I think we also have to work for the public to understand it better, what we have produced; how this new power unit works and how the new regulation has to be interpreted. I think we will do this in future just to increase the interest of the people in Formula One.

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