Formula 1 never sleeps. It’s only been a short few months
since Lewis Hamilton won his second world championship and already the teams
are preparing to commence battle once again as testing kicks off tomorrow at
Jerez in Spain. The preparation started long ago, and developments will be
coming thick and fast from the first test onwards.
Of course a sport that never sleeps sometimes suffers from
sleep depravation which is why Formula 1 seems to make so many issues for
itself. Bernie Ecclestone has been brilliant in building Formula 1 up to the
global phenomenon it is today but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t got some things
wrong.
In fact as the 2015 machines take to the track there’s a lot
of issues still raging. How can a sport which generates billions not keep 12
teams on the grid? Why are classic races being forced off the calendar making
way for countries which have no hope of filling the grandstands? Why are the
tickets so outrageously expensive?
The answer to most of these is money and the private equity
firm CVC which Bernie sold the promotional rights to while still running the
sport himself. They do little promoting though but are more than happy to suck
every last penny out of the sport while seeing it go to pot.
We should’ve been rejoicing about what sensational power
units were created last year, how efficient but fast they were not how quiet
they were. Yes, the noise takes away a little impact live, but once the race is
underway you soon forgot it and on television it doesn’t matter.
We should have been
remarking how excellent the racing was, how close the wheel to wheel combat was
and what a brilliant fight to the end of the championship we had. But we didn’t,
we talked about the sport losing viewers, teams falling off the grid, the
uneven distribution of money for the teams.
These make people question the product, but there’s nothing
wrong with what’s on the race track. They need to take a look at how it’s
promoted. Reach out to the fans, to the younger viewers (note to Bernie, they’re
important for the future) through social media, which even now is only just
beginning to be looked at by the sport properly. Also maybe if you don’t want
to lose viewers, don’t sell the television rights to pay TV channels. Now there’s
a thought.
This has all been created by Bernie, or if you want to go
further back to 2000 by the FIA’s then president Max Mosley selling the commercial
rights to Bernie for a cheaper than cheap fee and for 100 years at that. It
enabled Bernie to do what he does best and make money and dividing the teams
with various commercial deals that split the grid into haves and the have
absolutely nothing.
There’s plenty of detail that can be gotten into, but the gist
of it is that Formula 1 which has the fastest cars in the world supposedly
driven by the best drivers now has less than 20 cars on the grid, many of which
are driven by drivers who have to bring a tremendous amount of sponsorship to
even get a seat, usurping many better drivers who simply don’t have the
backing.
That’s not right for the supposed pinnacle of motor sport.
Not that the teams will come together to thrash out appropriate cost reductions
or the FIA will step in even though it is technically their championship. The
FIA is weak while the teams mainly think only of themselves. It’s a survival of
the fittest sport and none will want to give up an advantage.
I’m a huge fan of the sport, I love the idea of the best
drivers, driven by such focus and desire to be the best in the world climbing
into their state of the art machines and taking them to the edge. This is
Formula 1 at its purest.
But it hasn’t been pure for a very long time, and there will
continue to be clashes. In the end I just want to enjoy what’s on the track and
as a fan I’m in mind to just ignore it and hope the problems go away and
concentrate on the racing, which I think is the basic premise of most teams
attitudes and particularly Bernie Ecclestone and CVC.
That’s not the way though, it’s time for a change and a fresh
approach at the top of the sport, give the money to the teams, let them pick
the best drivers, not the biggest wallet and open the sport to the fans and
reduce costs for circuits so you don’t rip a hole in the traditions and soul of
the sport. But the racing? Leave that alone, it’s great, time to start shouting
positively about it as the cars hit the track.
all photos taken from autosport.com
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