17/12/2002
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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Just when you thought that the political machinations which are not far beneath the surface of Formula One were taking a break, things flare up again. Morgan Grenfell seems intent on nailing Arrows to the barn door, EM.TV has risen from the ashes to negotiate its share in SLEC, and a meeting between representatives of the GPWC, ('Grand Prix World Championship', the series proposed by a consortium of manufacturers) and Bernie has been called off at short notice. Is it SLEC or is it FOM, or FOCA, or the FIA? I have lost the acronym.
According to grandprix.com, a website for which I have the utmost respect, the GPWC proposes to run its series outside of the umbrella of the FIA.
This raises all sorts of problems. The FIA consists of clubs representing every nation with an interest in motor sport. In turn, these clubs sanction and control most of the motor racing in that country. In Britain it is the Royal Automobile Club which licences both circuits and drivers, and the RAC represents Britain at the FIA. Where would the GPWC find the circuits, the organising clubs, the marshals and medicos?
If a driver raced in the GPWC and then wished to end his career driving in an FIA-sanctioned sports car series, it would be possible for the FIA to refuse him a licence. Since the FIA is now based in London, it comes under EU law which includes a prohibition of restricted trade practices, so the FIA's ban could be opposed. There is enormous potential for litigation and the last thing that the image of motor sport needs is even more visits to the court room.
I have pointed out many times that a basic flaw in the GPWC is the fact that while Williams and McLaren exist to win races, major manufacturers come and go as participation fits a wider agenda. We are now on our third spell of Honda, for example, and the second spell of BMW. Mercedes-Benz is back again, but it was out from the end of 1955 to the beginning of 1994.
The World Championship, Formula One and Grand Prix have become synonyms in the popular imagination, but Grand Prix racing has existed from 1906; Formula One (aka Formula A) appeared in 1948 and the World Championship has existed only since 1950. On many occasions, 1950-64, there were often many more non-Championship races than there were Championship rounds.
Drivers such as Ascari, Moss and Clark won many more Formula One races than the FOCA media machine credits them with (Ascari and Clark each took 12 victories in a season) while Nuvolari, Rosemeyer, Caracciola and Lang never won anything worth speaking of. Caracciola was European Grand Prix Champion three times, but that does not count even though it was, in all but name, a World Championship.
In 1952-52 the Championship was run for 2-litre Formula Two cars and the Formula One which replaced it, was actually Formula Two with an extra 500cc (or an extra 250cc if the supercharged option was followed.) There was no other rule change until 1958 when fuel was defined for the first time.
My trouble is that I respect history, whereas the mass media is interested only in sound-bites. Away from motor racing, I am an academic with a PhD. Everyone knows that witches were burned at the stake, but it never happened in England. It is a fact, it is an important fact. There were executions when, say, someone was considered to have committed murder using witchcraft, but the charge was murder, and witchcraft was merely the method. The punishment for most types of murder was hanging so people who committed murder using witchcraft may have been hung, though, in England acquittal was more usual.
One Englishwoman, Margaret Jourdain, was burned for treason using witchcraft (the crime was treason) and one, a housewife in Norfolk, for 'petty treason' (the murder of a man by his wife or servant.) Barbaric people such as the Germans and Scotch burned people for being witches, but the English never did.
Tell a falsehood for long enough and everyone will believe it. Grand Prix, Formula One and the World Championship are not synonyms.
Why do the manufacturers feel that they need an alternative championship? They want a bigger slice of the cake, which is what happened during the FISA/FOCA War of 1979-82.
Bernie Ecclestone, may his gaskets never blow, together with Max Mosley, had reorganised the Formula One Constructors' Association. FOCA guaranteed to deliver to race organisers a package of 20 cars for a fee. The money, minus an agent's cut for FOCA, was then distributed to the teams using a complicated formula which took account of qualifying positions and race positions at a quarter, half, three-quarters and full distance. FOCA also negotiated television rights and chartered aircraft to take member teams to races outside of Europe.
Race organisers welcomed the package. They knew precisely how much they had to pay - even if Bernie (Bad Cop) and Max (Good Cop) did wind up the price year on year. Bernie would go into a meeting with outrageous demands, which were impossible to meet. The phone would go, it was Max apologising for being delayed. Bernie would lose his temper and stomp out.
Shortly afterwards, Max would arrive. He would be told of the terrible demands and would say, "I think Bernie got out of bed on the wrong side. Leave it with me. You offered 500 clam shells, and Bernie is demanding a thousand? That's not right, that is definitely not right, but I am sure that if we play this cleverly we could get him to settle for 750."
The organisers were generally so relieved that Max was on their side that they were happy to rise from 500 clam shells to 750. In 1985 I had the scenario confirmed by Max.
Everyone benefited. Time was when some people would turn up to a race, make the start, to qualify for starting money, and then retire so they didn't wear out their cars. At the 1956 German GP, the mechanic of Horace Gould, who raced a private Maserati 250F, was positioned at the place where Horace was going to retire so he could get the car loaded up and be on his way to the next race while the roads were clear.
New teams could enter the fray and if they were among the top ten, they got a mass of benefits. The air-freight deal alone was worth a packet. Those outside the top ten had severe financial obstacles to surmount just to get on the grid. If they had solid sponsorship they were better off failing to qualify than to scrape on to the grid at the back.
Then, in October 1978, Jean-Marie Balestre was appointed head of the Federation Internationale du Sportive Automobile (FISA) and he saw FOCA as a threat to his authority. It was a classic case of a traditional ruling body not keeping up with the times and we've seen the same thing happen in lots of sports, most of them, in fact.
Balestre was a volatile man, full of his own importance. He always wore a blazer. Have you noticed how the old fogies who control moribund sports being dragged into a new era have always been Men Who Wear Blazers.
During World War II, Balestre had served in the Legion de Charlemagne, which was a French regiment in the Waffen SS and photographs have been published of he, in uniform, stretching his right arm, as one does when one gets cramp.
He later pleaded that he was a member of the French Resistance acting as a double-agent. If Balestre is right then he was the only French double-agent in the Waffen SS so the fact he has not been hailed as a hero by former members of the Resistance is pretty small-minded of them.
In contrast to Balestre, Ecclestone and Mosley were cool customers and they had the backing of the majority of the teams. They controlled most of the cars and you need cars if you are to have a race.
Behind the FISA/FOCA War was Balestre's view of himself as the official head of the sport; the fact that the FOCA supporters all used the Cosworth engine and were worried by the advent of turbocharged engines; the fact that Ferrari with its flat-12 engine could not exploit ground effect as effectively as teams with Vee engines; television rights; and money, money, money.
Balestre took the view that money from Formula One should go into the sport as a whole. He could point to the fact that he had been elected by national bodies all over the world, even if some of them had virtually no motor sport, and the money could be distributed.
The FOCA teams took the view that they were the star performers and so they should get the lion's share of the loot. It's like the star of a TV show who expects, and gets, the big cheque while the acts who warm up the studio audience are paid a pittance.
We also have to remember that it was only in the late 1970s that Formula One became a regular television sport. There were more channels in every country and they had air time to fill. Further, new technology allowed images to be beamed from any country in the world to any other country. Ecclestone was on the case.
Over the winter of 1978/9, Indycar teams had organised themselves into CART and broke away from the official controlling body, the United States Auto Club. During that winter, Penske's star driver, Rick Mears, tested for the Brabham team, then owned by Bernie Ecclestone.
The final two rounds of the 1978 USAC Championship took place at Silverstone and Brands Hatch and, at Brands Hatch, Roger Penske told me that he hoped that this sort of arrangement would become usual for Indycar racing. In the event, FOCA saw CART as a threat, but CART had demonstrated what could be achieved. It seems that, in 2003, CART will again return to Europe because it is desperate.
It was late in 1979 when the first rumblings of the FISA/FOCA War were heard. Then Balestre started to say that he wanted to ban sliding skirts from 1981. The Cosworth teams were appalled, because ground effect aerodynamics had kept them competitive, while Ferrari and Renault were all for the ban.
Balestre began to lay down new rules and among them was that all drivers should attend a pre-race briefing, or face a fine. Some teams persuaded their drivers not to attend, promising to settle any fines. Balestre then declared that any driver who had not paid their fine by 30th May, 1979, would have their licences withdrawn.
The teams arrived for the Spanish GP, due to be run on 1st June, and the matter was still unresolved. Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Renault took part in the first practice session and then withdrew their cars in support of FISA. Twenty two cars, all powered by Cosworth engines, took the start, but the race was dropped from the Championship and all the drivers who took part were threatened with a loss of their licences. Loss of licences? Do we speak of 1980, or the formation of the GPWC?
It was a hollow threat since the World Championship needed the likes of Jones, Piquet and Reutemann. In response, FOCA began to mutter about a breakaway series, as CART had achieved.
During the winter of 1980/81 FOCA members gathered in a hotel in the Austrian town of Kitzbuhel and in the dining room was a mural showing a cow being painted. A local legend had it that the town was once besieged and was down to its last cow but the wily citizens would paint the cow different colours and let it be seen by the besiegers who assumed they had a whole herd and so gave up. Colin Chapman looked at the mural and said, "We need a painted cow!"
Thus the 1981 season kicked off with the FOCA-only South African GP which was designed to bring the others to their senses and since it passed off successfully, with full television coverage, it had the required effect although behind the scenes, Ecclestone and Mosley had already reached a secret agreement with Jean-Marie Balestre of FISA but both parties were continuing the 'war' until the hearts and minds of the factions they represented had been won over.
The 1981 South African GP proved that Formula One needed the grandees and the grandees realised that they were hurt by missing out on the television coverage, which was the reason why most of them were in Formula One. These factors focused the minds of everyone and both sides signed the 'Concorde Agreement'.
In very simple terms, FOCA agreed to FISA's ban on sliding skirts, and FISA agreed to allow FOCA to continue to negotiate the television rights and other aspects of the commercial side of the sport.
Since then some team owners have become very rich (as have some lawyers). The manufacturers believe they have the whip hand, but the overall picture is much more complicated. A team such as Williams can source its sponsorship from anywhere, but Ford/Jaguar has a considerable more complicated agenda.
I keep banging about the fact that motor racing is fuelled by money, so follow the money.
To check out Mike's previous articles for pitpass... click here