Let me start with a general question to all of you if I may, about Formula One and the United States. Many of your teams have been involved in activities in the build up to this event. How do you assess the growth of Formula One here and what's the potential for Formula One in the USA? Eric, maybe you would start?
Eric Boullier: Well, good question. We have seen, obviously, after the first year, which was very well attended and crowded, you could see the interest in Austin went through the roof. We obviously have some American partners on our shirts but it is true that all the fans here... I mean, it's been fully crowded. You can see the activation and the activities as well in the city. It's just unbelievable how the weekend is built around F1 and it became one of the major events in the F1 season. It's very promising to see the interest massively growing around this race in Austin and obviously we all know that F1 is maybe looking at having another race in the US. It's very promising for F1, for the fans and I think F1 needs the US market.
Thank you for that. Toto, your thoughts on that and the possibility of other races here in the US?
Toto Wolff: It's a great place and it feels almost like it has been on the calendar, at least for me, since a long time. It's part of Formula One. They've done a really awesome job over here. We've had some events before coming to Austin. We've had Lewis and the Formula One car in New York. We've been with NBC and you can see there is a momentum in the US behind Formula One and that's great. Next year... 2016, we have an American team joining us and the interest in the US has grown. We have a new shareholder in Williams, who is an American entrepreneur and it's nice to see that Formula One is starting to make an impact in the US.
Vijay, your thoughts?
Vijay Mallya: Well, you know the United States is a large continent and could have more than one Formula One race. The motor racing culture and passion exists in this country, in terms of NASCAR, in terms of Daytona, in terms of the Indy 500, I mean motor sport is basically a very, very popular sport here in the United States and there is no reason why Formula One should not be equally entertaining and gather a lot of fans in this continent. I mean, if we can have as many races [as we do] in the geographical region of Europe then one or maybe even two races in the United States would hardly be enough. But more significantly given the overall financial situation of Formula One, I mean a market as huge as the United States can help revenues on one side and help those teams that need more and more sponsorships on the other hand.
What about you Monisha? Do you think that more races in this region would be the secret to growth?
Monisha Kaltenborn: Well, definitely that's something we are going to have to have a look at. If you look at the race here, the first race we had here was an excellent event and then we were concerned if next year is going to stay like this or maybe it will decline but the opposite happened and you still see it's a fantastic atmosphere, so many fans coming over. You look at the synergies which you can create with the race coming up in Mexico as well, so you see it's starting to grow on the continent itself. It's interesting to see when we came here earlier on, you landed usually at some other airport when you came in and then when they asked you why you were here and you said Formula One, people didn't really know much about it. This time when I landed the person said "well, that's taking place in Austin isn't it?" That tells you how it is expanding and the interest is growing in this country.
Gerard, a final words on this?
Gerard Lopez: I think everything has been said, but I would just say the US is the largest professional sports market in general and any sport that succeeds here tends to be economically viable, so I think it's a key market and indeed having one or two more races wouldn't be bad.
Okay, secondly, again to all of you, with the events of the last two weeks, with two teams going into administration, where should the initiative come from for controlling costs and is there a sense now amongst your peer group that this time effective measures must be achieved? Toto maybe you'd like to start with that?
TW: Why don't you start with Gerard - the other way round this time?
Okay, we'll start with Vijay in fact!
VM: I have been very vocal about this. I have said that you can't have Formula One with only manufacturer teams. You need smaller teams, it's part of the DNA of Formula One for several decades and the FIA on one hand, and the commercial rights holder on the other hand must both work closely to ensure that it is viable and sustainable going forwards. We've talked about cost caps a number of times and finally I think the large teams or the manufacturer teams were opposed to it. But I think that was a good initiative that didn't quite see the light of day to make any meaningful difference. On the other hand, as far as the revenue share is concerned, I think it's probably a unique sport, where the participating teams get the least amount of revenue as compared to the income. When you compare it to any other sporting activity globally, we unfortunately are at the rough end. I am very sad that two teams are no longer with us on the grid here in Austin and I think such a thing should not be allowed to happen and that's my firm view.
Gerard?
GL: Toto mentioned, because I tend to have a pretty brutal view on things, but I think the disappearance of two teams is pretty unfortunate but it actually... probably now is the time to say things as they are. Number one: the distribution model of revenues is completely wrong. Whether the size of what is distributed or not is right or wrong is debatable and Vijay has mentioned one side of the thing. But then, you know, when you've got teams showing up to the championship that get more money just for showing up than teams spending a whole season then something is entirely wrong with the whole system and so that cannot be allowed to happen, number one. And now is the time to not be talking about it but the time to be acting about it, so we will see what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks. The second thing is the cost cap. We always find excuses not to have a cost cap. There are reasons why certain areas should not be capped but there are also reasons why certain areas should be. And, again, now is the time to be acting rather than talking about it. And finally, this is an odd sport. We say things and then we tend to do the opposite. I'll just give one example. The birth of the new engines happened when we started talking about cutting costs and so forth. The fact is that the new engine, which from a technology perspective is a great thing, the costs were passed on to all the teams. In our case this year, between the engine and development we probably spent something like US$50-60 million. That's not cost cutting in our books, that's essentially throwing money out the window. So we tend to also do completely the wrong things in terms of... if we unfreeze the engines now, which is the next topic that is coming up. All we are going to do is again essentially force everybody to keep developing and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, the revenue split, the capping of costs, have an immediate impact on the sport and not taking decisions has had an immediate impact on the sport in the last couple of weeks with two teams disappearing. So, as far as I am concerned... it's really interesting to have the press conference but it's going to be really interesting to find out what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks around this topic.
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