Formula 1 teams "fear expensive and closely-guarded secrets could leak to rivals" once the former head of the governing body’s technical department "has served a period of gardening leave," according to REUTERS. Marcin Budkowski, who worked at several teams before joining FIA, "quit this week and is barred from starting any new employment for the next three months." His "next move remains unclear" but team bosses said at the Malaysian Grand Prix on Friday that it would be "unacceptable for someone in his position to return with a competitor so soon after departing." Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner said, "We take major issue with that if he does end up with another team. In the role that Marcin has been responsible for, he has been in an extremely privileged position and extremely recently he has been in people’s wind tunnels and looking at intimate details of knowledge of next year’s cars." Horner and others "expected the matter to be discussed at the next meeting of the sport’s strategy group." Force India COO Otmar Szafnauer said that a year "would be a more suitable period of gardening leave to ensure that any technology transfer was no longer on the cutting-edge." He pointed out that the rules "already prohibited the sale of cars until they were at least a year old." Horner said, "I think industry standard for the type of role that Marcin has been performing would be anywhere between 12 and 18 months." Mercedes Motorsport Dir Toto Wolff said that "a lot of his team’s information was potentially exposed" (REUTERS, 10/1).
TOUGH SELL: REUTERS' Abhishek Takle reported Sepang circuit CEO Razlan Razali said on Friday that Malaysia "would not want to host F1 after this year’s final grand prix there even if it was offered to the country for free." Local organizers "have cited declining ticket sales, viewership and tourist numbers for their decision to pull the plug a year early" on a race that first appeared on the calendar in '99. Razali has also complained in the past "about the cost which he said made the government-backed event financially unviable." He said that he had "struggled to convince fans to turn up because the show had not been exciting enough." Razali: "I myself am not able to sit in front of the television and watch from lap one until whatever lap (for) two hours. It's hard to sell this kind of event and to get bums on the seat. ... And it’s not worth the investment at the moment." The promoter said that attendances and TV audiences had been on the decline since '14, "the year the quieter 1.6 liter turbo-hybrid engines were introduced" (REUTERS, 9/29).
