Joe feels that Formula One’s commercial and regulatory bosses need to consider the human cost of their global aspirations.
There’s been talk of late about the Formula 1 calendar expanding into December in 2016. Needless to say, this wasn’t a popular idea with the teams – and Bernie Ecclestone quickly moved to kill the story. That was sensible, but there’s no doubt that Bernie wants to expand the F1 calendar in the years ahead.
We know this because of the Concorde Implementation Agreement in the summer of 2013, in which the FIA agreed to a championship calendar “that may comprise of up to 25 races per season.” The deal was a secret one, but it leaked. The federation agreed to this expansion of the calendar because it would gain $1 million for each extra event – and Jean Todt cared more at that time about getting in money than he did about whether this might be good for the sport. To be brutally honest, I don’t see 25 races being a good idea. I think 20 is probably too much. If one has to ‘live’ the F1 calendar, as the teams do, it’s really tough. It’s not like it used to be when there were only a few intercontinental events. Today, more than half the calendar is long haul travel. And that does two things – it wears out the people involved, and it creates complications for their family lives.
Bernie, CVC, and Jean Todt don’t care about this sort of thing. They are moving pieces on chessboards, and they don’t have to ‘live’ the calendar they create. The teams like getting extra money, but they know there are limits to what team members can do. Already, the turnover of staff in the race teams is at a higher level than ever. There was a time when F1 people stayed forever, but there is less of that today. People come, do five years, and then go off to lead more sensible and sedate lives.
I’m not against the sport growing – I’m all for it. But growing simply by adding races in irrelevant countries with no strategic value is not the way to do it. There are loads of other ways to generate revenues that F1 never touches. The thing that I find hardest to cope with is that the motivation behind the extra races is not about growing the sport, it’s simply about generating more revenues. CVC Capital Partners don’t care about what the future holds for F1, it’s just squeezing the business to suck up every last cent that it can extract from the business. There’s no strategic thinking beyond the money. They don’t see the absurdity of going to Azerbaijan and not trying to expand the sport in the world’s biggest consumer market – the United States. And that’s what I hate. Formula 1’s commercial rights may belong to these people, but the sport does not. The sport belongs to the fans – to all of us with an interest, and we can kill it if we stop being interested.
For the moment, there’s no way out of this mess – as the FIA has been completely toothless in its defence of the sport. It’s had its tummy tickled by the financiers and has rolled over. I hope that this situation will not last. I hope that we get an FIA President who will fight to preserve the sport as it should be – and not what it suits him to be. I hope that whoever buys the sport (and it is inevitable that someone will) will have the foresight to understand the difference between stripping cash out of the business and real investment to create growth.
Growing the number of races without any thought about future strategy is simply a sign of the state of the sport at present. Hopefully, it’ll pass! And quickly too, before too much damage is done. The people involved are doing what they’re doing because it suits them, but no-one is really looking out for the sport in the long term. It’s sad of course, but hardly surprising. We need new blood, new ideas, new ambitions, and, above all else, new respect for the product. Formula 1 could be so much better than it is today. And, yet, despite all the griping, it’s still a great sport. It’s still a great show. It still has an extraordinary international following.
It could do better – and it will do better with a little time and the proper kind of attention. It’s still an exceptional promotional tool, with global market penetration that most sports would die to have. It still delivers the goods for the manufacturers and sponsors – if they’re allowed to use it as much as they should be allowed to use it.
Change will come. The clock is ticking. People move on, ideas change. As far as F1 goes, the faster that happens the better things will be.
Joe Saward has been covering Formula 1 full-time for 27 years. He has not missed a race since 1988.
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