Once upon a time grand prix racing stood for glamour, risk and thrills. Its heroes were men of courage and style who drove into the mouth of danger without flinching. No one knew or cared how much they were paid. Their fans were happy to sit in long queues on their way to the circuit as they knew that they were going to see something that could justifiably call itself a grand prix. That is no longer the case.
The sight of Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari at full speed provokes gasps of awe, but every grand prix is full of questions about the future of formula one racing. And, although not all of them concern Schumacher’s apparent invincibility, that is certainly where the sport’s current problems are most clearly visible.
There have been 13 grands prix this season and Schumacher has won 12 of them. The one he did not win, at Monaco, was over a circuit laid out on public roads 75 years ago, following the natural contours of the land and with corners that were not designed by a computer. The races he won were held on tracks looking more like Scalextric layouts, interchangeably bland and practically risk-free. In such a setting Schumacher’s superiority faces no challenge.
At Monaco the unexpected happened, as it used to happen all the time in grand prix racing. But in all the furore surrounding formula one, amid the debate about curbing the technology, no one is paying attention to the fundamental problems, and to the way the sport has been ruined by men whose priority is their own enrichment.
Silverstone has been in use for half a century. Laid out on the runways of a disused aerodrome, it was not in any way picturesque, but it had a rough charm of its own. Now it, too, has been standardised and much of its character erased. The paddock, where the drivers were once accessible to any fan willing to pay for a pass, has for years been surrounded with wire.
Access to the pit lane is open only to sponsors and their guests, who pay £1 000 a head or more for entry to the Paddock Club, an institution which, like the trackside advertising, is one of Bernie Ecclestone’s many revenue streams.
Since Ecclestone sold 75% of formula one to a German company for about £2,5-billion four years ago, the commercial orientation of formula one has come into sharper focus. Now money is the chief talking point.
Ferrari, according to its rivals, dominates the races because it has more money. So a way must be found of making it spend less money to give the other teams a better chance. And ways must also be found to subsidise the smaller teams, to avoid defaulting on Ecclestone’s contractual pledge to deliver no fewer than 20 cars at each race.
But formula one has never been about equality of opportunity. In the 1930s and the 1950s no one complained about Mercedes-Benz’s vast expenditure. Nor did anyone make a fuss when financial hardship forced smaller teams to leave the scene. It was all part of a process of natural selection. Ironically, since formula one prides itself on being the epitome of high capitalism, much of its current malaise is rooted in an unwillingness to accept the consequences of market forces.
What was once a sport now seems to be about ensuring that the participants are maintained in the style to which they have become accustomed. It is about organising more and more races each season to compensate for the fall in the value of the dollar.
Extra races enable Ecclestone to solicit additional millions from race promoters in countries where tobacco companies continue using the cars as mobile advertising. Fans in the new territories — Malaysia, Bahrain, China, Turkey — are also less likely to make criticial comparisons with earlier eras.
It is also about enabling the teams to reduce their expenditure by framing regulations, which ensure that the cars will not break down. Gearboxes used to disintegrate under the abuse of the more ham-fisted drivers. Over-stressed engines would explode. Now it has been made virtually impossible for a driver to push an engine beyond its breaking point.
What would be good news for a family motorist is death to the spectacle. But it certainly pleases the major manufacturers who do not like seeing cars with their names on the side blowing up in front of a worldwide television audience. Thus the role of luck is reduced, removing one crucial element of the drama.
Formula one is intended to represent the pinnacle of automobile technology, but it is also supposed to be a competitive spectacle that makes a fan’s heart beat faster.
In race after race Schumacher outwits opponents by overtaking them when they are stationary in the pits. This is both a distortion of his driving talent and no substitute for the sight of equally matched cars battling it out.
Going back is not the answer. This is not the 1950s and technology cannot be un-invented. But the balance between art and science has been lost and there seems little genuine willingness to restore it. A perfectly sensible attempt to revise the qualifying format to give spectators better value for money foundered when two of the smaller teams exercised their right of veto, arguing that their cars would receive less exposure on television if the proposal were adopted.
Formula one’s problems could be fixed, given vision and goodwill. But recently Max Mosley, who helped Ecclestone build the modern formula one before and during his presidency of the FIA, motor sport’s world governing body, announced his retirement, partly in frustration at the refusal of the teams to accept a new set of rules aimed at making the racing closer.
Yet by granting Ecclestone a 100-year lease on formula one’s commercial rights, expiring in 2101, Mosley ensured that his successor will have limited room for manoeuvre in the work of framing new technical regulations and ensuring that the cars are required to race in a wider variety of environments. —