27/05/2009
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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It has been some time since I have posted on Pitpass, but I have not been idle. The problem has been that things have been happening so fast in F1 that by the time I have nearly finished refining an article, the position has changed. It has been like trying to complete a moving crossword. Here are some random observations.
It is clear that the WMSC's hearing on Lie-gate was decided in advance and that plea-bargaining took place. Like so much which has been happening, the essential work was done in secret. I have seen no record of arguments presented. You will notice that while the world and his dog have had things to say about budget capping, McLaren and Mercedes-Benz have been strangely silent, as anyone would be if on parole.
Max won that part and it is clear that part of the deal was the sacrifice of Ron Dennis, so Max won that skirmish as well.
It is my opinion that Ron is a great man. He must go down as one of the most able team managers in motor racing history. By contrast, Max Mosley's handling of March in 1977 was one of the most inept, ask Alex Ribeiro or Ian Scheckter who had the misfortune to be the drivers. The degree of the calamity was part of the reason why Max left hands-on motor racing at the end of the season.
Lewis Hamilton, who lied to Stewards, was not even charged at the WMSC hearing though Dave Ryan, who did exactly the same, was sacked after 35 years with McLaren. I guess that Lewis draws viewers and Dave did not, it is a case of the immunity of celebrity.
I thought that McLaren-Mercedes got off lightly, a mere tap on the wrist. Honda was suspended for two races for a fuel tank infringement which was marginal. Mercedes-Benz, however, supplies three teams with engines and brings enormous prestige to F1, not only because of the quality of its road cars, but because of its distinguished history in motor racing. I wonder whether McLaren-Hyundai would have got off so lightly.
Before the hearing, Anthony Hamilton gave a non-attributable briefing to journalists representing some of the national newspapers. Politicians do this all the time, but it is unusual for the manager of a driver. He may be Lewis's Dad, but his official status in F1 is as a manager.
I think that Anthony Hamilton has got way too big for his boots. Part of the incompetence of ITV's Lewis lovefest was to seek out Anthony on every possible occasion, it gave Louise Goodman something to do. ITV succeeded in turning some people against Lewis because they got tired of the sycophancy.
Anthony found Ron 'arrogant and prickly' - and his point would be...? Ron did not get where he is by being fluffy and you have no idea of the man's achievement until you visit the McLaren Technical Centre. He founded Rondel Racing in 1972 with fellow Brabham mechanic, Neil Trundle, and Ron Tauranac, then sole owner of Brabham, thought so highly of them that, for the first time ever, he allowed credit. From running cars in Formula Two, mainly for pay drivers, to what McLaren is today is some journey.
Anthony Hamilton even had the brass neck to say he disagreed with Ron's management of Lewis's career. That is not only ingratitude, that is stupidity. Anthony has also claimed that he helped get Ron ousted and if that it true I want a tar and feather party. Ron is a man of enormous achievement but, from what I hear, you cannot claim to have met pushiness until you have encountered Anthony Hamilton, the Alpha Karting Parent, though Scott Speed's mother may disagree.
I bow to nobody in my admiration of Lewis on the track, but he really should keep quiet. He got up all our noses when he said he was moving to Switzerland because he could not stand the pressure of public exposure. That may be a good reason for leaving home, as Valentino Rossi did when he decamped to London, but there is only one reason for moving to Switzerland. Now Lewis has sounded off about the peripherals of Formula One. This is like a Mafia hit man saying, 'I love my job. I love all the planning and the rush I get from killing people. What I do not like is being employed by people who make their money from extortion, prostitution and drugs.'
Lewis is one very lucky man. Had it not been for Ronzo, he might now be a trainee manager for a supermarket chain, or similar. There are thousands of young hopefuls in karting and there will be many who might have progressed up the ladder, but whose parents ran out of money. Ron Dennis backed Lewis to the tune of a reported five million pounds and he does not deserve what he has received in return.
Lewis came into the limelight as a publicist's dream: talented, handsome and articulate. As a Brit, I was delighted for the simple reason that he raised the profile of F1 in the British media. I thought that the guy had everything, but if he is not careful he will lose public sympathy. His reputation took a big knock over Lie-gate.
So to the 'double-diffuser' debate. I loved it when counsel for Ferrari called Ross Brawn 'arrogant' at another WMSC hearing. That is why Ferrari paid him squillions. Progress is only ever made by people who are arrogant enough to challenge the status quo. The reasonable person conforms, advances are made by unreasonable people.
BBC TV, whose coverage of Formula One has been excellent, had Mike Gascoyne talking about double-diffusers and he was illuminating. Mike pointed out that some teams seem to be pursuing a double-diffuser as the answer to their problems whereas Red Bull has been doing pretty well without them.
It's the Purple Pole Syndrome: if a car wins a race and it has a purple pole in its cockpit, come the next race, every car will have a purple pole. Engineers will say, 'We are still trying to work out what it does, but it's quicker, for sure.' (Does anybody outside of motor racing say, 'for sure?')
Incidentally, after Gascoyne was sacked by Force India, he threatened legal action. Then that threat was dropped as he moved to Brawn for a while. He had been working on the installation of Mercedes-Benz engines at Force India and Brawn, which had been expected to use Ferrari engines, suddenly switched to Mercedes-Benz. I guess that Mike Gascoyne was a handy guy to have on board for a few months.
There was no long-term future for him at Brawn, you do not put two bulls in the same field, but I would love to know exactly what Gascoyne did for Brawn.
One feature of recent weeks has been that Bernie has been unusually communicative, he is only a step away from conducting a 24-hour rolling quote and opinion service. For years, he has been like a clam, now you cannot escape him.
We have learned, for example, that FOM gives Ferrari more money than other teams. Many suspected that to be the case, now we have it confirmed. Bernie's openness seems to have coincided with questions being asked about CVC, the hedgefund which owns the rights to F1, and which takes the lion's share of the profit without putting anything into the sport.
A financial institution owns much of F1 because the FIA, under Max Mosley, sold the rights for a hundred years. In the present economic climate, when many people are unhappy, and rightly so, with the way that financial institutions operate, the role of CVC, and the FIA, has to be questioned.
Mosley sold the rights to a title, but it is the teams who provide the entertainment. It is the teams who employ people and who make things. I cannot see why an outside company is allowed to take without giving anything in return. Everyone in the pitlane is working to pay the massive interest on the debt that CVC took out, with RBS, to buy the rights. I cannot see how this can be right.
Max and Bernie disagree on one thing, the presence of Ferrari as essential to the sport. I do not think that Ferrari is essential, F1 continued without Team Lotus, the great innovator. I do not believe that any individual or team can be bigger than a sport, not even Arsenal.
What would Formula One be without Ferrari? Like this season, actually. I did warn that, having got rid of adult supervision, in the persons of Brawn and Todt, Ferrari would revert to being Italian. It has become Scuderia Shambles, its natural default.
Of all the manufacturers in F1, Ferrari most needs motor racing. It is why they can charge what they like for their road cars. Buy a Ferrari and you buy into a legend. Like most legends, there is an element of truth which has been inflated.
I understand teams not liking a two-tier system, but it has happened before, in the days when you could run a normally aspirated engine or a smaller supercharged or turbocharged engine. In 1988 there were two championships, for turbo and non-turbo engines and the latter was won by Jonathan Palmer for Tyrrell.
For a few seasons afterwards, teams could go for more power with a V12 or better economy with a more compact V8. The ideal was clearly a V10, but everyone knew that theoretically impossible so it was just as well nobody told Renault. Then everyone had to run V10s, now everyone has to run V8s, and I cannot think of one good reason why. For years in Formula One, and in Grand Prix racing before it, the main rule was the maximum capacity of an engine and that, surely is enough.
Max claims that it is possible to police a budget cap and I do not believe him, not because I believe him to be dishonest, rather to be uncharacteristically naive. Take the parallel with technical rules, the first thing that any designer does is to look for loopholes, hence the double-diffuser. Turbochargers snuck in under rules framed with superchargers in mind.
No matter how tightly tax laws are defined, there is always the off-shore tax haven. You thought that when Lotus went to Indianapolis, it was a British effort. Actually, Team Lotus America was registered in the Bahamas and the paperwork said that the cars were constructed in Alabama in a workshop nobody has ever found.
If the budget cap option goes ahead, I can see teams looking for creative accountants. Accountants tend not to be the most exciting people, but stand by for the glamour and glitz of Formula One Accountant. Formula One Accountant will still have a row of pens in his breast pocket, but they will be Montblanc, not Bic. He will pull tasty birds with his talk of double entry book-keeping, the scamp.
There is one aspect of the budget cap which I have not seen addressed and that is that people will be laid off in their hundreds. I am told that one team has shed a lot of workers, in batches of 19. In Britain, if you make 20 or more workers redundant in any one week, a government department has to be informed.
Since all F1 teams, as employers, operate under EU rules, there would have to be redundancy payouts. Imagine, you have a sound, solid, senior engineer with years of service, and you have a really clever designer straight from university. who do you let go? Within the constraint of a budget, the youngster is cheaper to sack, but he or she may be the future, or perhaps they dazzle only to be disappointing in the long run.
Some of the greatest brains in computing have designed secure systems only to have some teenaged geek, break into, say, the Pentagon from his bedroom. The people who set the rules are always vulnerable to those who would break them. I know somebody who works in security for Microsoft. When there is a conference of hackers, Microsoft is there undercover. If they can identify someone who is really sharp, they do not prosecute, they recruit.
Editor Chris Balfe asks me about my pal, Turk Thrust, Hollywood mover and shaker and the jewel in the crown of FOSU (Formula One Script Unit.) Turk is in shock because he would not have dared to write the Button/Barrichello/Brawn scenario. He has been on to me. He said. 'I can't hack it, Mike, they all have beards. This has never happened before. We never had a single Sebastian in F1, now we have three. In nearly sixty years we have had the occasional driver with a beaver on his chin, never two in the same team. Even Richard Branson has a beard. Studios do not like beards, except in pirate movies.'
Ah, Richard Branson, we are told that he has no particular interest in motor racing. I met him once, briefly, in 1982. It was in the paddock at Thruxton after a clubbie. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Adrian Reynard, who had just come up with a new Formula Ford 1600 design.
Man with no interest in motor racing was at a Thruxton clubbie nearly thirty years ago, to watch FF1600, and is a mate of Adrian Reynard. Branson used to be at the Reynard Christmas parties in the 1990s. I was there as well, but I wrote the book.
Branson has got the cheapest sponsorship deal in modern F1 history, and the best. I think that we should look closely at Virgin. Putting your name on a car is one thing, exploiting that presence is another. I have seen no indication that Virgin knows what to do with its luck and that is bad news. A sponsor should gain benefit else the system collapses.
It is one thing to cap budgets, it is another to find sponsors. A lot of input comes from financial institutions and most are still there because of long-term contracts. Williams will have to find a replacement for RBS, Renault has to replace ING.
By the way, I read that Wee Jackie missed the Monaco GP yet, last year, RBS put him up at a cost of more than 10,000 Euros per night. I bank with RBS and you may be sure that the workers in my branch, who are pleasant and efficient, are informed of things not in the official newsletter. Creeps like Sir Fred Goodwin never take real life into account. My branch knows all about the RBS presence at the Goodwood Revival Meeting in the Jackie Stewart Pavilion. None of the people I deal with will ever be invited inside.
Those outside of the UK may not quite grasp what a figure of hate former RBS chief, Sir Fred Goodwin, has become. He has achieved status normally reserved for child killers and politicians. Even estate agents doff their hats.
I leave you with a problem. If you can find an answer to it, you will achieve money and fame, and passes to Grand Prix paddocks, and five star hotels, limos, lovelies, and private jets. It is this: who wants to sponsor a Formula One team? I will give you a clue, who needs to sponsor a team?
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
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