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We Need A Revolution

FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
27/05/2016

There is widespread discontent about F1 and you find it everywhere: in the viewing figures; in the media, general, as well as specialist; and you find it down the pub. There is widespread agreement that all is not well. It is like someone going to the doctor with a list of symptoms which do not seem to fit a diagnosis and unless you have a diagnosis, you cannot have a treatment, let alone a cure.

'Who will replace Bernie?' is a question that has been asked for at least 25 years. There has been a long list of candidates, some from within racing, others from the wider world of business. None has seemed remotely credible.

Bernie cannot be replaced by an individual. He has been in and around motor racing since 1950; he is owed favours by many and he knows where all the bodies are buried. I doubt whether much is written down, his memory is prodigious. There is, however, his age and then the only end of age.

The time has come not to think of a replacement, but to consider how best to run the sport. One thing that has not been considered is that Formula One may actually cease to be relevant. It has happened before to other sports, motorcycle speedway is one. In the immediate postwar years speedway was Britain's second most popular spectator sport.

At one time things were more simple, the FIA issued edicts and national clubs worked within them. Almost all sports were run by men in blazers, well-meaning amateurs who may have once been competitors. Many sports were bound by an amateur code, which was anyway much abused with under-the-counter payments. In the Soviet Bloc, sports stars were often professional, and heavily doped; while American colleges offered spurious scholarships, and still do.

Some bright people began to revolutionise sport. There was Jack Kramer and his professional tennis circuit. Kerry Packer, an Australian media mogul, shook cricket to its foundation. Bernie, from a more modest basis did the same for Formula One. All three had to fight the men in blazers, but all three made their sports more popular.

These men tapped into other changes, like the proliferation of television channels and increased leisure time and disposable income. Over time, there was also the breakdown of shamateurism.

There had been a time when F1 teams negotiated individually with race organisers. Bernie, with Max Mosley, persuaded them to allow him to do it, for a modest commission, which was less than a literary or theatre agent. He made the teams money and became stinking rich himself because he took a small cut from many deals.

Bernie was also an innovator. He guaranteed race organisers a grid of at least twenty cars and chartered Jumbo jets to take them to non-European races. He introduced on-board cameras and sometimes, when the organisers of a race pleaded poverty, he underwrote it himself. He even charged champagne houses for the privilege of supplying free bubbly.

As with any enterprise, there was a degree of luck. The epic Hunt/Lauda drama of 1976 had caught the imagination of the general public and television wanted a slice of the action. There was Bernie and he was prepared. He had a TV expert, Alex Deffis-Whittaker, on board.

All Formula One races have been televised since 1978. The coverage varies from country to country, but on one thing Bernie has been clear: F1 should be free to view. Teams need sponsors and sponsors need viewing figures. That did not preclude other streams and twenty years ago Bernie invested north of two hundred million pounds in a pay-to-view digital service. Despite this personal investment he remained firm that races should be free to view. It is like booking on an airline. One plane carries all, but you can chose different levels of comfort and service.

In Britain from 2019 you will have to subscribe to Sky to watch F1. So much for Bernie's pledge, but I doubt whether he had much say in the matter.

In 2005, the FIA, under Max Mosley, sold Bernie the rights to Formula One for a hundred years. In his autobiography, Max defends the deal on the grounds that the FIA needed the money and it was not selling a tangible asset, like land, more a notional one, the idea of Formula One.

Pretty soon F1 was involved in the bankruptcy of a major German media corporation. There was a dubious deal with a bank which landed one executive lengthy gaol time. In 2014, Bernie paid sixty million pounds to have bribery charges against himself dropped. Paying to be cleared of bribery? You could not invent that.

Most people caught in a position like that would be dropped, but Bernie makes too much money for his investors who have put nothing back into the sport. Most sports have a controlling organisation so if a deal with, say, a television channel is struck, the money goes to the governing body who may retain some for such as youth training schemes, with most of the rest going to participants.

In the quest for profit we have seen France, the home of Grand Prix racing, lose its own race and last year there was no German GP. Races at Montreal, Monza and Spa have been under threat, yet tin pot countries like Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and, now, Azerbaijan are welcomed with their Mickey Mouse circuits and stacks of cash.

Every sport needs its history and traditions whether it is the yellow jersey in the Tour de France or the green blazer awarded to the winner of the US Golf Open. Any tennis player will admit that Wimbledon is that bit special because it is the home of tennis and you cannot visit Monza (or Indianapolis) without being awed. For the sake of a quick buck motor racing's history is being eroded.

Not only that, but major new motor industry countries like India, South Korea and Turkey have built facilities and have been priced out of Formula One. In case you have missed it, Turkey now makes more cars than Italy.

Then there is the distribution of the cake. In the last two seasons Ferrari was runner-up to Mercedes F1 yet received more money. There is the notion that Ferrari is essential to F1, but no team, not even Arsenal, can be bigger than its sport. Since technical advance is fuelled by money, giving Ferrari extra cash is like teams in other sports being awarded bonus points ahead of a season. No other sport would countenance that.

The FIA selling the rights to F1 is one source of discontent. Another is that the FIA has stopped governing the sport. We all had hopes of Jean Todt after the Ferrari years but he has been as much use as chocolate brake pads. What has happened is the Formula One Strategy Group which favours a few leading teams.

We have a hybrid formula which few of us can understand. There have been, we are told, amazing advances in thermal efficiency. While that will be good for everyone in the long run, it is not what Formula One is about. Le Mans introduced an Index of Thermal Efficiency in 1959, but then it has always been sports car racing that has pioneered technology.

To appreciate F1 thermal efficiency you have to know about stuff like turbulent jet ignition whereas what most of us want to see is great driving and close competition, There are plans to make 2017 lap times faster, but the human brain cannot perceive that.

A contributory factor to the Hamilton/Rosberg fiasco in Spain was that Nico's car was in the wrong power mode. How are we at home to know that? What does it mean? In my car the power mode is dependent on what gear it is in and if I, the driver, have gone from second to third and not to fifth.

Formula One ignores spectators and then wonders why TV audiences are dropping. Among the countries worse affected is Italy, home of the tifosi. If you listen to many commentators, the tifosi are more passionate than any other when actually they are just more noisy.

The tifosi are fans of one team, they are not fans of motor racing. Besides, you cannot measure passion, there are no units you can use. The most dedicated followers are Brits and Germans, you only have to look at the camp sites at races, and not only at Grands Prix, look at the support for Historic racing.

We have an ineffectual governing body. We have the owners of Formula One interested only in milking it. Bernie, the great showman, has been sidelined. A circus is controlled by a ring master, it is not run by a committee. The F1 Strategy Group is a nest of self-interest and should never have been set up in the first place. You do not have the stunt director or head geek of CGI writing the script to a movie, they are there to serve the script.

Here is a question that none of them seem to have addressed: what if Formula One is past its 'sell by' date? What if nothing anyone can do can save it?

For a time, chariot racing was immensely popular in the Roman Empire, especially in Rome where supporters of rival teams were known to rampage for days at a time, and then the sport faded. Horses still pulled carts and a few still owned chariots, but the sport of chariot racing withered and died.

The fading away of Formula One is something that has not been contemplated because nobody thinks that the gravy train they are on will stop rolling. For at least twenty years it has been possible to programme a Formula One car to lap a circuit at a speed most of us could not achieve. Tesla already sells a package which can make a driver redundant in many conditions and every major manufacturer will have a comprehensive package by 2020.

Against what mainstream industry is doing, Formula One should be pursuing simplicity, not technical innovation. We should be able to admire both the skill of the drivers and the skill of the teams. Where drivers can go balls out and not worry about either economy or the rate of fuel flow.

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READERS COMMENTS

 

1. Posted by Spindoctor, 06/06/2016 7:21

"Another insightful piece which gets to the heart of F1's most serious problem: lack of clear leadership & direction.

Personally I'd nit-pick a few points.
I've never been a fan of Bernie's approach to F1, and his "innovations" have largely been copied from other sports years, or decades after their introduction.
I think Bernie's influence since Mosley's departure has been almost totally negative: his reprise of George Cole's role in "Minder" is both banal and damaging.

I'm also not interested in a return to naturally-aspirated motors. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt etc.

Where I agree with Mike is that the introduction of Hybrid PUs has been very poorly handled, and the rules surrounding their usage impenetrably complex and fan-unfriendly. I may be in a minority, but I also find the technology, even the "turbulent jet ignition" both fascinating and worth pursuing in F1.
Aerodynamics too is constantly pushing-up costs and diminishing the spectacle.

As Mike rightly says, looming over all this is the need to integrate solutions to the problems he identifies (particularly "tradition") into a positive plan to move F1 forward as both Sport and Business, without, as Bernie has done, swamping the former with the latter.
As he suggests, failure to realise that we don't need another "Bernie", but a whole new game-plan will almost certainly lead to the demise of F1 as a major spectator sport.
"

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2. Posted by karel, 06/06/2016 7:10

"Crying out loud for years now , watch MotoGP much more fun (although regulations are also rolling in , a bad sign ?)"

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3. Posted by copit, 06/06/2016 5:29

"So...where are the bodies?"

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4. Posted by Jumpy Bob, 05/06/2016 20:48

"Mike,

The revolution will probably not happen.

And I busted a nut with the chocolate brake pads line... Ha!

Well done!"

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5. Posted by father guido, 05/06/2016 9:45

"Replacing Mr Ecclestone would be like trying to replace The Rolling Stones."

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6. Posted by audifan, 03/06/2016 9:44

"so F1 should have just stood still should it ? 3 litre normally aspirated engines indeed ...you don't think that the world has moved on ? and must move on further ?

F1 is the pinnacle of motor racing for one reason and one reason only ...technical advancement ; and to have that we need to have the money from the motor industry , and the technology should be of use to them ; if it didn't have that saloon car racing would be more interesting
"

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7. Posted by Francis, 30/05/2016 8:17

"One minor thing... The US Open is the most democratic of Golf Opens it would never award a green jacket for winning. The Masters, the one that actually awards the Green Jacket, is a bastion of elitism, exclusivity and privilege - much like Formula One! "

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8. Posted by auto56489, 28/05/2016 8:21

"Excellent article! Hope indeed that the people in charge are listening and reading this!!??"

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9. Posted by Willie, 27/05/2016 13:36

"YOU tell 'em, Mike. Is there anybody out there listening????"

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