THE NEED FOR SPEED

YOU make your own luck, apparently, but if you’re going to pledge $8bn on the future health of maybe the world’s biggest global sporting franchise – Formula 1 – you’d still better hope that your stars are aligned, a black cat has crossed your path and that every clover in the yard has four leaves.

That being so, Chase Carey, Sean Bratches and Ross Brawn – Formula 1’s ruling power trio – would have been formidable table partners in the Casino Monte-Carlo over the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, for right now ‘their’ sport is delivering on track in the most sublime fashion.

Nor for the first time this year, I’ve found myself stepping back from the barriers while watching trackside, such is the sheer velocity of 2017’s ‘full-fat’ F1 cars and the obviously huge physical forces being contained by the superheroes at the wheel. During FP1 at Monaco I stood inside the tunnel, just past the apex, looking back down the track towards Portier. Even on the brightest day it’s always gloomy here, but the cars explode into view, attacking your senses under maximum acceleration, nudging 170 miles per hour as they approach the fastest part of the circuit. Concrete shakes beneath your feet, sparks hover momentarily like fireflies as they pass; a breath of hot, pungent air passes over any exposed skin, prolonging the presence of what you’ve just witnessed. Drink deep; savour the speed. F1 2017 is fast.

The Monaco tunnel (above) has always been the craziest, most surreal and intense place to watch an F1 car, but elsewhere round the harbour – at Tabac and the super-quick Swimming Pool entry – this generation of car just dazzles. Anyone who might ever think ‘I could do that’, as regards taking an F1 car to its limit within such corset-tight confines, need only watch a session from these three corners to realise that, no, they probably couldn’t.

The more visceral, untamed performance characteristics of ’17 cars, blessed as they are with up to 20 percent more grip and downforce since last year, only serves to underline that fact and to remind that when F1 is serving up the right kind of on-track entertainment, front and centre, trouble at the fringes tends to fade away. For what’s not to like about seeing Kimi Räikkönen take his first pole in nine years around those storied streets, with the fastest lap ever recorded (1m12.178s) and in the context of an unfolding Ferrari-vs-Mercedes narrative that looks set to carry us through the season?

So while it’s probably unfair to say that Liberty ‘got lucky’ with the timing of their purchase of Formula 1’s commercial rights over autumn-winter 2016-17, the quality of the show they acquired has undoubtedly bought them a whole lot of breathing space. They’ll need it as they continue to formulate plans for more off-track entertainment, and for F1’s longer-term sporting and commercial direction, but when the racing’s right, everything else kind of falls into place.

This fundamental truth has served Formula 1, indeed, Grand Prix racing since before the 1950 start of the F1 world championship, extremely well over the decades. Why do the wild 1930s Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz race cars still transfix those who learn of their existence? Why did Formula 1 mandate a dramatic power increase for 1966? Why do we remain awed by the exploits of Mansell, Berger, Warwick, Prost etc in those lunatic ’80s turbo cars that could pump out more than 1400bhp? Why are big, fat slicks on wide-track chassis so much more alluring than skinny sleds on grooved rubber? It’s because all of these things speak speed and light up the exploits of those skilled and brave enough to meet their challenge.

This very message has come through loud and clear in the recently published global fan survey undertaken by F1 Racing’s parent company, Motorsport Network (the highlights of which you can read in this month's magazine). ‘Band-aid’ fixes such as DRS to remedy a perceived lack of overtaking; or artificially degrading tyres, reverse grids and changes to the race format were all regarded with deep scepticism by the 148,000 respondents, underlining yet again that the core appeal of this often magical sport is very simple: put the best drivers in the fastest cars at the most challenging circuits and let them race. You don’t really need anything else.

This is fine, of course, when two, or maybe three teams interpret a regulatory framework with sufficient aplomb to deliver cars of roughly comparable performance, because that brings true competition. Those able to do so are usually the biggest, best resourced operations, consequently able to pay the highest salaries to secure the most gifted drivers. 2017 is providing a happy model of how F1 can get it right, with a fair wind and a bit of collaborative endeavour over the rules ’n’ regs: we have Lewis vs Seb nip-and-tuck for rival tribes; two Finns contributing notable cameos and a third heavyweight, Red Bull, clawing their way back into contention.

A SEASON IN THE SUN

But much as Liberty must be enjoying this moment in the sun, their brains trust remain intent on the broader, global trends that swirl around Formula 1 and question its viability in a fast moving, voraciously consumptive age. So while it’s truly fabulous that F1 has by and large got it so right this year, on track, what of 2018 and beyond? How can ‘repeatability’ be built into F1’s culture, so that season after season deliver compelling sporting contests that satisfy not just the existing audience, but also those not yet turned on to motorsport; then, further, those plucky, risk-taking participants whose endeavours allow the whole thing to happen: the teams and circuits?

Representatives of these organisations are, F1 Racing understands, pushing Liberty very hard right now, both to secure their position with the new management and to influence decisions that might impact their businesses.

A number of circuit promoters are attempting to re-negotiate race-hosting contracts fixed with Ecclestone-era Formula One Management that they now reckon unsustainable, given their in-built year-on-year fee ‘accumulators’. Silverstone’s owners the BRDC, to take one example, are in a position to terminate their deal to host the British GP from 2019, so long as they give notice of their intention to do so by the time of this year’s race in July. The self-styled ‘Home of the British Grand Prix’ would not lightly jettison their blue-riband event, but neither do the BRDC wish to push Silverstone into bankruptcy for the sole honour of hosting their banner race. Meantime the British GP remains anointed as one those Liberty deem essential for the core health of the championship – part of the foundation upon which a global spectacle is built. Between these two positions something clearly has to give.

As for the teams, the notion of a cost-capped budget set somewhere around the $150m per season mark appears to be crystallising, although it’s far from being universally agreed. Under one model seen by F1 Racing, teams would receive $100m per season from Liberty as a ‘participant’ fund. They would then be free to source a further $50m from sponsors and other backing. Their total audited spend would not be allowed to exceed the notional $150m, with $10m ‘fixed’ as engine spend and driver salaries also bundled into that total. End-of-season prize money distribution, based on championship position, would be shared on a sliding scale from a maximum of around $70m, to a minimum of $10m.

The underlying principle here is that teams would receive more from Liberty to participate, but less performance-based cash, thus ensuring, in theory, that competent minnows such as Manor need not go bust. The promise of F1 team ownership being a viable business model for those not owned by global car manufacturers should then entice more new entrants to join, thus helping underpin F1’s longevity. Simples?

Not really, because there is no way the current major players will sacrifice their existing, extremely beneficial financial arrangements enshrined under the CCB (Constructors’ Championship Bonus) arrangement and operate in F1 on reduced terms.

So somehow, by the end of the current Concorde Agreement in 2020, some kind of accommodation has to be reached if terms for the future cost of competition are to be agreed.

There remain further, awkward philosophical questions for Liberty to wrestle with: what’s the future of free-to-air vs pay TV?; where might a digital live stream of the broadcast show sit alongside conventional programming?; what is the place of the manufacturers at the decision-making table?; how environmentally conscious must Formula 1 be?

These profound matters, reaching to the very heart of F1’s business and sporting function, were glossed over by the more opportunistic previous regime, as it remained focused on delivering profit for shareholders, having disavowed any other apparent strategy.

Almost overnight, however, that era has passed and initiatives such as the Fan Festival first staged at the Spanish Grand Prix are hugely welcome totems of a more modern F1. But that is surely just the start.

E’s ARE GOOD

It’s enlightening to note how much of this apparently new F1 fan-focused thinking has its roots in another of Liberty’s championships, Formula E. That series, now in its third year, is sucking in ever more more interest (and cash!) from major manufacturers, thanks to its enticing proposition of being a technology testbed that’s also eco-oriented and family-friendly.

At the Monaco ePrix, held two weeks before this year’s F1 grand prix, the waterside area given over to hospitality units when F1 is in town, was instead dedicated to Formula E’s own Fanzone. Here, manufacturers and series suppliers showcase all sorts of technological razzle-dazzle, such as 3D printing, the Roborace autonomous car, a race-games ‘arcade’ (where fans can compete against real, live Formula E drivers) and a ‘human gyroscope’ in which anyone brave enough can sit and be twirled in all directions, to experience something of what a race driver feels inside a cockpit. FE’s Fanzone is central to that series’ offering, as are city-centre circuits, an open paddock and ticket prices as low as €20 per day.

While F1 is unlikely to ever to pursue quite such an open-door policy – a degree of ‘aspirational unattainability’ is central to its own appeal, after all – it’s no coincidence that the cleansing winds of optimism that have swept through grand prix paddocks this season are blowing in from a region rather closer to home than many in F1 might have realised.

And there’s another way in which FE could do Formula 1 an almighty favour. Considering how difficult it will be to convince big-budget manufacturer teams to accept a cost cap and how fond they are of showcasing technological excellence through a hybrid engine formula, might it not be better for everyone if Formula E instead becomes the manufacturers’ playground, leaving F1 free to pursue the simpler, cheaper goal of delivering the best racing spectacle possible? After all, does anyone (manufacturers aside) really care which engine powers the world champion? As Fernando Alonso’s Indy adventure has proven so dramatically, it’s the human and sporting spectacle that matters.

FE already has support from Renault-Nissan, Jaguar, Audi and BMW, with others including Mercedes, Fiat group and “a major Korean manufacturer” all having expressed an interest in future participation. Let this series be where car-makers satisfy their corporate egos.

Leave Formula 1 free to shock and awe as only it can.

• This article appears in the July 2017 issue of F1 Racing magazine, on sale now











