What keeps Audi out of Formula one?

[John Cody Forbes]

Al Streicher wrote:
> I enjoy Formula One racing and have often wondered why no Audi
> chassis or engines? BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, etc. but no Audis.
>
> Al Streicher
> Mililani, HI
> 1990 80  Blk
>

Well to start with you can't just decide you want to be in F1. You have to 
pay millions of dollars to be CONSIDERED by the FIA. Thats just the 
application. Then if your app goes through theres tens of millions to be 
paid out in fees. Then you have to design and build a car, which is going to 
run waaaay into the hundreds of millions. Then you have to accept being 
laughed at for a few years because you are going to be a backmarker, and you 
are going to spend about $500 million per season to finish last and second 
to last. After a few years of experiance you may be able to start moving to 
the front of the pack, as toyota has recently done.

If you remember a few years ago when Toyota was joining in they failed to be 
ready for the season in which they were supposed to start and the FIA finned 
them in the $100 million range for not showing up to race.

Ok so we have determined that F1 is expensive. Now we must consider Audi's 
return on the investment. Thier US sales will not matter, because only a 
small portion of the US population even knows what F1 is. In the ROW market 
people will see Audi's total failure during thier first few seasons and 
scoff at thier "Vorsrung durch Technik" since thier "advanced technology" is 
failing them on the track. Then after a few years people see them going 
towards the front and then just can't see how F1 relates to thier road cars. 
The rules are so strict that new technologies that Audi can experiment with 
are or would be banned.

With the R8 and R10 programs they had a market for displaying technology 
that was actually going into thier road cars. The R8 demonstrated FSI in a 
wonderfull dominating way. This spins to "hey if FSI dominated racing, then 
it should dominate on the street too!". The R10 is now the powerhouse 
showcase for Audi's TDI technology, which is going to sell ALOT of cars when 
the new models hit US shores. The US vision of diesel is loud, slow, smelly, 
and smokey. TDI's are not well nkown in the US, so the R10 program is here 
to promote the TDI and prove that not only can diesels be fast, but they can 
be quiet and not make smoke screens.

-Cody Forbes
http://www.5000tq.com
'86 5k noT noQ
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