The Young Ones

03/12/2013
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE

There is a new term in Formula One: The Young Teams, What a picture that conjures of feisty kids out to show the world: 'We're gonna put on a show right here!'

'Young teams' means poor teams, though poverty is relative, It costs more than a million pounds to prepare one Marussia or a Caterham for a single race in the certain knowledge that it will be on one of the back two rows of the grid and not only is it not going to win a point, but it is not going to receive any TV coverage either.

When football is screened, both sides receive equal coverage, it cannot be any other way. The names on their shirts have equal air time. Furthermore, the average wage in the top clubs in several countries is likely to be higher than the average in Formula One, and club owners mostly make a profit.

We know that a few star drivers earn big money, but some on the grid have to bring sponsorship to a team and are paid from the money they bring. In other words, they pay themselves.

Recently, it was announced that Sauber had settled its electricity bill, a fairly fundamental thing for a factory to do. That should have sounded alarm bells, but it did not because we have become used to such crises.

If a friend of yours could not pay their energy bill, or their mortgage, you would feel concern, maybe try to help out. Formula One has made us hard and cynical. CVC Capital Partnership makes squillions from a sport into which they have not invested a penny.

The simple, if unpalatable, fact is that Formula One employs too many people and pays them too much. A team is a business and every business needs to make a profit. Pastor Maldonado has just been signed by Lotus and it is no secret that Lotus wanted Nico Hulkenberg. Maldonado is no chump, he has won a Grand Prix, but all other things being equal, would you select Maldonado over Hulkenberg?

All other things are not equal, Maldonado had a reputed forty million dollars in Venezuelan oil money to bring to the table.

It is hard to blame Lotus, they are caught in a trap. When Bernie owned Brabham, he frequently paid a star driver, and accepted a pay driver. He made no secret of his reasoning which was that the money the pay driver brought was of more value to the team than the driver's ability as a Number Two.

I bet that you cannot quote the achievements of Richard Robarts, but he was once a Brabham works driver (in 1973) who drove in the same races as Jackie Stewart and Niki Lauda.

Bernie has transformed the sport and made multi-millionaires along the way. I know a guy who was a designer for Frank Williams in the early 1970s and he arrived at work one day to discover that his drawing board had been repossessed by bailiffs.

Bernie's instance that everything has to be bigger and brighter means that when a team races, it has to lay on the corporate hospitality glitz. Circuits can recoup money by hiring out their suites, which are now mandatory. Look at the redevelopment of Silverstone, millions were spent on new hospitality suites most of which are used just three days a year.

On average, hiring suites costs 187,000 pounds per team per race. The Young Teams cannot be seen to be lagging in this department, they have to put on a confident air. It is no longer a case of the sandwiches arriving. I have been with a Formula One team at a Grand Prix (in 1982) when this happened, and the sandwiches were for the sponsors as well as the mechanics.

We have mandatory pitstops, to make the action more appealing to the viewer. This not only involves every team in flying otherwise superfluous mechanics to every race, but training them, back at base. Ever seen a Marussia pitstop on TV? I bet they are as good as anyone, but we are unlikely to know.

The FIA constantly ignores a rule of motor racing: expenditure shall rise to meet the available money, When restrictions were placed on track and wind tunnel testing, BMW installed Albert 2 which, at the time, was the most powerful (and expensive) supercomputer in industrial use in Europe.

McLaren's simulator is so sophisticated (and expensive) that the team has decided to replace Sergio Perez with Kevin Magnusson on the strength of their relative performances in the simulator.

I know from my mail box that I am not the only long-time enthusiast who has been losing interest. It has nothing to do with Vettel's superiority, it has everything to do with the FIA's meddling. Take tyres, the difference in compounds and strategies might interest me, were I a teenager or a geek.

Granted, all kinds of information is available on-screen, but this is like watching Hamlet while referring to one of those books designed to help students pass exams. I want to experience the rhythm of a race, not try to work out who is really where after pitstops and whether their tyres might go off after 19 laps, or 23. That is the stuff of videogames.

In order to explain all this, the BBC's coverage of qualifying at Interlagos lasted eight minutes longer than the movie, 'Rush', and that was worth the investment in time. I didn't watch a minute of qualifying, I just looked up the grid and times on the Net.

If the FIA wanted to spice up racing, grid positions could be chosen by lot as they were in some early Grands Prix. The thinking behind the fastest starts on pole is that everyone will try their hardest during practice and it is safer if the quickest drivers start at the front.

The FIA abandoned the notion of safety when it started to penalise drivers by dropping them down the grid for fitting a new gearbox or some misdemeanour in the previous race. Since the FIA has abandoned the safety angle, there is no reason not to ballot for places.

No reason except for contracts with TV companies and the air time sponsors receive.

For years adjustable aerofoils were banned, now we have DRS zones, an artificial concept. I reckon that drivers should have more, much more, rear wing adjustment and be in complete control. That would sort them out, we'd see who was able to corner with less downforce, but more speed..

Any desire I might have to do away with rear wings altogether is too silly to express. The advertising space on the rear wing is much too valuable to let go.

We have large rear wings which are of no relevance at all to everyday motoring, but we have will shortly have hybrid cars they being somehow relevant. I wish someone could explain this to me.

Between them, Bernie and the FIA are killing Formula One; Bernie by demanding ever more bling, the FIA by fiddling with the rules. The weight of drivers is an issue under the 2014 regs. Unless you want only small chaps, like jockeys, do the sensible thing and increase the weight limit.

Jockeys have to be small because you can't modify a horse, but the average person in the West has grown taller. Part of the attraction of Formula One is that we can all fantasise about being a Grand Prix driver, but you cannot fantasise about riding a Derby winner unless you are unusually small and light.

There is a Technical Subcommittee and the problem is that it is made up of engineers all of whom support whatever advantage their team has. Getting F1 teams to agree on anything is like trying to herd cats. The only time it has ever been achieved was when Bernie got some of them to agree to leave the negotiating with organisers to him.

The FIA is supposed to be the governing body, except that it doesn't govern, it sublets its authority to sub-committees. It's like political parties with their polls and focus groups which abdicate leadership. Henry Ford once said, 'If I had asked people what they wanted, they'd have said, "a stronger horse."'

Bernie and the FIA act as though there is no economic crisis, yet every European country with a Mediterranean coastline (except Gibraltar) has severe problems, and that includes France and Italy.

France, which instigated Grand Prix racing, is without a race and there have not even been rumours that it might have one in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile Bernie hunts for new countries to stage what have become vanity events and established races are under threat if they do not meet his exacting demands. The trouble is that his demands are all about glitz and glamour. That's fine if it helps the sport become more attractive to movers and shakers, who might invest in it; less fine if it places unreasonable pressure on organisers. The two races believed to be most under scrutiny are Canada and Belgium, yet they are among the most popular with enthusiasts.

On the other hand, one does not hear a peep from Bernie about Monaco, which is beyond criticism.

Having spoiled F1 racing, the FIA has introduced a new engine formula which will add between ten and twelve millions pounds a year to the expenditure of every team, for the powertrains alone. Fundamental redesign will add even more, especially in the development of aerodynamic packages.

Meanwhile Jean Todt regrets the fact that there are so many pay drivers, We know that Nero didn't fiddle while Rome burned, because the violin had not been invented, but the old saying will do.

Between them, Bernie and the FIA are driving expenditure ever upwards while in the everyday world, whole countries are facing bankruptcy.

Mike Lawrence.

Learn more about Mike and check out his previous features, here

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Published: 03/12/2013
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