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Archive: CVC

Disaster averted — there will be one Formula 1

25 June 2009 02:12

Categories: News, Opinion

A deal has been struck between Max Mosley, Fota and Bernie Ecclestone, and the threat of a breakaway series has been averted. I think there were a lot of people out there who quite liked the idea of a breakaway series. Indeed, given the choice between Max Mosley’s rotten vision and a Fota-run series, I would have gone for the Fota series every time.

But a split would have been a calamitous situation. The new series, despite having all the big names and probably some decent circuits, would still have taken some time to find its feet. Plus, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Fota series would have got good television coverage. Don’t forget that for the vast majority of fans, television is the only way we can consume the sport that we love, so this is an essential element.

In a lot of ways, the roots of the current problem in Formula 1 lie with Bernie Ecclestone. Or, to be more precise, CVC. They are the ones who suck the money out of the sport in order to pay the interest on their debts. That is why F1 ends up visiting sterile circuits with minuscule crowds — because those governments will pay huge sums of money for the privilege of holding an F1 race. That is probably also the reason for the fervour over cost cutting. If the teams spend less, Bernie can get away with giving the teams less of the sport’s revenues, and giving CVC more of them.

But despite that problem with CVC, I can’t find it in myself to be too angry with Bernie Ecclestone. In truth, he has done a great job of promoting the sport, and F1 may never have appealed to me were it not for Bernie’s efforts. Sure, there are a lot of areas where he can improve, particularly on the dire online offering.

But under Bernie Ecclestone, the television coverage of Formula 1 has been revolutionised. He got his fingers burnt with the adventurous F1 Digital+ endeavour. But while those innovatory days may be no more (and it is notable that F1 is still not broadcast in HD), today’s FOM-produced World Feed (used for all races except Monaco and Japan) is based on many of those innovations and television coverage has improved immeasurably over the past fifteen or so years.

We seldom have to deal with relatively amateurish efforts from the host broadcasters. Just compare these two videos of the same incident as it unfolded live. One is from the FOM F1 Digital+ World Feed, and the other was from the host broadcaster. (To view them side-by-side ‘as live’, start the second video when the first video reaches 17 seconds.)

The difference in quality is massive. F1 Digital+ caught the accident live so viewers knew immediately what happened. This was no coincidence. It happened because a system of sensors around the circuit could detect when cars were running close together, and coverage automatically switched to those cars in the expectation of some kind of incident unfolding. Later, replays from multiple angles enhanced the viewer’s understanding of the incident.

Meanwhile, the host broadcaster cut to Ralf Schumacher climbing out of his car ten seconds after the incident originally started. And it was a long time until viewers found out that the accident also involved Jacques Villeneuve — and there was only one angle of the incident. Note also how Martin Brundle had to rely on the superior coverage which he could see outside his commentary box window to tell viewers that Villeneuve was unhurt.

The Australian host broadcasters were not dummies. They just did the best job they could with the resources they had at their disposal. “Bernievision” was only good because of heavy investment and years of experimentation.

Bernie’s television operation was pretty impressive even in 2001, though not all of the innovations remain in today’s coverage. But it is thanks to Bernie Ecclestone that today’s coverage is more like the first video than the second one. A Fota-run championship would not have had such a slick operation going from day one, and the fans would have been worse off for it.

(For more on the amazing “Bernievision”, check out these decade-old articles on GrandPrix.com: Inside Bakersville and Inside the F1 digital television centre.)

Then there is the question of whether it would have had any coverage at all. The BBC would have been scared off, and television executives would have been confused. They want the World Championship, whether or not an alternative series is better in the eyes of the fans. Take, for instance, the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, which I hear is better than the FIA’s World Rally Championship. Not that I’d know, because the former is ghettoised on Eurosport while the FIA’s weak WRC gets terrestrial coverage.

No matter if it has all the current teams and good circuits — signing up to show a new series is a risk which television executives wouldn’t want to take. The prospect of the best F1 series being on some pay channel and having no terrestrial coverage was a real one. That aspect of the breakaway scared me.

On the other hand, the proposed breakaway presented the opportunity to create a great new version of Formula 1, unshackled from the financial needs of CVC or the warped politics of Max Mosley. Fota had some crazy ideas, but they carried out market research and were far more receptive to the views of fans than the FIA have ever been.

I particularly liked the idea that the new series could have been particularly focussed on attracting an American audience. The FIA Formula 1 Championship has dumped on US fans time and again, and today there is no race in North America even though it is a major market for the manufacturers.

There would also have been a careful look at ticket prices and the fees circuits have to pay to hold an F1 race. No-one (apart from Bernie apparently) likes to arrive at sterile circuits with a dozen people in the grandstand. It comes across on television too, whether or not FOM’s cameramen are instructed to avoid shots of empty grandstands.

I could feel the atmosphere of the passionate British crowd on the television. The difference could hardly be more stark from the previous race at Turkey, where the crowd was around 10% of the size. And Silverstone is a circuit that Bernie wants to move away from.

Even the little things that are wrong with F1 could have had the magnifying glass applied to them. Such as, why can’t a driver keep the same number for his whole career. In other categories such as Nascar or MotoGP, a driver’s number becomes part of his legend, every bit as important as, say, his helmet design. Even in the history of Formula 1, the number 27 car is almost synonymous with Gilles Villeneuve. Imagine the marketing potential too. But in the clinical world of Formula 1, driver numbers are determined by the positions of last year’s Constructors’ Championship.

In short, the breakaway could have been a great opportunity to fix everything that is broken with F1. I doubt the breakaway would have been a true ‘split’, and it probably wouldn’t have had the same consequences as the Cart / IRL split. It was pretty clear from the fact that the FIA never released a finalised 2010 entry list that the FIA didn’t have a 2010 F1 Championship to speak of, and Fota’s would have been the only show in town.

That, I think, is why the deal must be seen as a victory for Fota. It has turned out to be a powerful organisation that did after all have the ability to at last stand up to Max Mosley’s dictatorial authority.

There is a part of me that suspects that the FIA as an organisation simply isn’t fit for the purpose of overseeing motorsports. We will eventually see how things develop with Max Mosley’s successor. I think today is just the starting point though, and we will see some more loose ends being tied up in the coming months. There will be power struggles there too, I am sure.

It looks like these negotiations will in fact be handled by Michel Boeri. That in itself is interesting because he is the promoter of the Monaco Grand Prix. It was reported that he would take the Monaco GP with him to the Fota camp if the breakaway went ahead.

What we need now, most of all, is someone in charge of the FIA who is not a glorified politician, constantly interfering. I remember Maurice Hamilton making the point once that everyone knows who Max Mosley is, and many people can tell you that Jean-Marie Balestre was his predecessor. But not many can tell you who Balestre’s predecessor was (for you history buffs, on the Fisa side it was Pierre Ugeux, and in the FIA it was Paul Metternich). Yet the sport still ran.

It sounds like from now on there will be more checks and balances in place, with the F1 Commission being given more of a say from now on. No doubt Fota will continue to play its role too, and I think it would be best for everyone if Williams and Force India re-joined and USF1, Campos and Manor all joined too. That way the teams, who create the sport, can have a say in its governance too.

Speaking of the new teams, I think as we sit here today, with much of the damage repaired, the biggest shame of this episode is that two capable teams have been denied a place on the entry list as a result of Max Mosley’s petty politicking. I think many of us can’t wait to see Prodrive finally get a chance to enter F1, and Lola were a promising prospect too.

No doubt the FIA actually had a tough choice to make, as according to Joe Saward at least the Manor Grand Prix team is actually a seriously strong prospect. With costs set to be cut and a more stable future for F1 promised, and with that troublesome Max fellow out of the way, at least we know there are capable teams that are ready to fill any potential gaps that appear.

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Honda's withdrawal in context

8 December 2008 00:01

Categories: Opinion

I had planned on my next post being the second part of my driver rankings. Unfortunately, real life events have intervened. In the meantime, events have overtaken me as Formula 1 was hit by a huge news story on Friday — Honda’s sudden withdrawal from the sport.

Now, normally such an announcement wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. Ever since I started watching Formula 1 in the mid-1990s, I have watched teams and manufacturers come and go on a regular basis.

I saw Renault withdraw from the sport as engine supplier to Williams and Benetton in 1997, only to return as a fully-fledged constructor when they bought the Benetton team just a few years later in 2000. Ford came to the party when they bought the Stewart team in 1999, only to leave the sport entirely a few years later in 2004. Peugeot left the sport in a huff at their own lack of success in 2000, having only joined the circus in 1994.

I learnt quickly, therefore, that manufacturers’ interest in F1 is almost always transient. For every Mercedes that appears fully committed, there are a handful of Renaults and Hondas who will enter and exit the sport according to the wind direction.

Honda’s announcement was shocking partly because of its suddenness. The speed with which the decision was taken is made clear when you read James Allen’s account. There is also the fact that at the start of this year Honda owned not one but two F1 teams. Now they have dramatically trimmed right back to zero, and will not even offer an engine supply to any teams next season.

There is also the fact that Honda were massive spenders in F1. This appeared to signify a magnificent commitment to the sport, despite the relative lack of success. But the flipside of this is that it made Honda an absolute laughing stock within the sport.

The huge amount of money the Honda F1 team spent also made it more vulnerable to the red pen of the bosses. No other manufacturer will save as much money by axing their F1 team. It may be true that Honda’s withdrawal is for political reasons, as former BAR-Honda driver Jacques Villeneuve posits. But it is Honda’s huge costs, coupled with the utter lack of success, that made it vulnerable to such political manoeuvring.

As such, the withdrawal of Honda is not such a shock when you think about it, even though I wouldn’t have predicted it. Moreover, Honda is not a fixture of Formula 1 like Ferrari, or even Mercedes. The current incarnation of the Honda F1 project only got the nod in 1998, and even then it was quickly reigned in to become a mere engine supply deal with BAR. Honda bought the team when tobacco sponsorship left the sport just a few years ago. Despite having run a team in the 1960s, and the huge success of the corporation as an engine supplier in the 1980s, an F1 institution it is not.

What makes people worried, though, is the economic climate in which this news has come. Whereas Ford found a buyer for Jaguar Racing easily enough in Red Bull in 2003, buyers for Honda will be thin on the ground due to the lack of credit that will be available to interested parties.

Next season’s Formula 1 calendar has already lost two races — Canada and France — and China and both German circuits currently in use have recently warned that they may not hold races for much longer. Again, it all comes down to money, with circuit owners being unable or unwilling to pay Bernie Ecclestone’s fast-increasing costs of staging a grand prix at the same time as attendances are tumbling.

Meanwhile, car sales are in freefall on a global scale, with a number of large car manufacturers seemingly in serious financial danger unless drastic action is taken. In the backdrop of these events, participation in motorsports looks like an extravagance. Even if the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” mantra holds true in normal times, right now western consumers are tightening their belts meaning that any increase in sales may be too small to be justifiable.

As such, Honda’s withdrawal is seen as just another sign that Formula 1 faces a crisis. We have a slimmed-down calendar that relies increasingly on flyaway races away from the sport’s European heartland to help pay CVC’s bills, and no races in the vitally important North American market for the first time in five decades.

Now there is a slimmed-down grid of just 18 cars — a number that is getting smaller. When you consider that the 2008 season was originally destined to contain 24 entries, F1 has essentially lost a quarter of its teams in a matter of months. Formula 1 is beginning to look like a shadow of its former self.

Now the question everyone is asking is, “who is next?” Initially the finger pointed at Toyota. Many pointed out that Toyota are only really in F1 because Honda were there. Toyota are also, like Honda, huge spenders with little to show for it.

But Toyota quickly put the lid on the speculation by issuing a statement that appeared to affirm their commitment to F1 — although, as James Allen pointed out, the word “currently” in front of “committed” looks like a carefully worded way to give them an easy exit should things take a turn for the worse. After all, if Honda’s decision was so sudden, why would a decision from Toyota not be?

BMW and Mercedes-Benz have both also affirmed their commitment to F1. But one manufacturer has spoken with a deafening silence.

I always suspected that the first manufacturer to go would be Renault. Its CEO, Carlos Ghosn, is said to be sceptical of motorsport participation, and there has been a question mark over the team’s future ever since he joined Renault in 2005. Besides which, Renault’s history in F1 has shown that it will come and go as it pleases.

Even though some news websites have reported that Renault is committed to F1, I have seen no quotes which the other manufacturers have been happy enough to provide. Was the media palmed off with a stock answer from a Renault spokesperson?

Meanwhile, rumours circulate around Red Bull. Dietrich Mateschitz recently re-bought Gerhard Berger’s 50% stake in Toro Rosso, but many think he did this so that he could sell it more easily. But with billions to play with and no car sales to drop off a cliff, I see little reason why he would pull the plug on both teams.

Williams has been perceived to be in a vulnerable position for a few years now. It is the last brave privateer team that is in it not to sell cars and not to sell drinks, but purely for the love of racing. It has been hit hard, but it doesn’t have to be seen to be reducing costs for political reasons like the manufacturers have to. Ironically, Williams may be safer than some of the manufacturers now.

We will just have to wait and see. It’s clear that Formula 1 is currently undergoing a massive change. Could the ground be being laid for a return to a privateer era? If so, you won’t find me complaining too much, no matter how painful the current events are in the medium-term.

5 comments

Bernie and Max are penpals!

23 May 2008 18:42

Categories: Opinion

I always had a little suspicion in the back of my mind that Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley didn’t quite see eye-to-eye as they’d have us believe. The 2005 United States Grand Prix was a case in point. Bernie Ecclestone — of course — wanted the race to go ahead in a way that would allow the Michelin teams to compete. But Max Mosley stood in the way of any such plans.

Bernie Ecclestone must have been spitting feathers. I know I would have been (hell, I was anyway). Furthermore, the whole saga just went to show that Max Mosley does not care about the interests of Formula 1 in general. He is only interested in throwing his weight around and helping out Ferrari.

Now they are engaged in a public war of words through the medium of the letter. After Max Mosley’s stunt last week of sending a letter to the FIA club presidents in a last-ditch bid to save his bacon, Bernie Ecclestone yesterday returned the favour to try and dispel Mosley’s claims.

By now it is pretty clear that Max Mosley’s decision to hold a General Assembly in June was a ploy to buy himself some time. He will be hoping that a combination of the time spent to let the scandal die down a bit and his new conspiracy theories will be enough for him to see off a confidence vote in just over a week’s time.

But Max Mosley is surely mistaken if he thinks his letter will help put him in the clear. Keith Collantine has already cast his eye over the letter, and I have to agree with the points he has made.

Mosley claims that he has received 62 letters of support, and only 13 asking him to resign. But this total represents a small proportion of the 222 votes that are eligible to be cast in the confidence vote. And, as Keith has pointed out, those who want Mosley to stay are more likely to write to him and say so. Mosley’s attempt to demonstrate that he has widespread support falls flat.

He then goes on to suggest that allowing the next FIA President to be chosen democratically would be detrimental to the interests of the FIA. Beautiful. I would have thought that the FIA clubs would find that quite insulting.

In the letter he goes on to bring up some spurious allegations about negotiations between the FIA and the Formula One Commercial Rights Holder (CRH) (who is, to all intents and purposes, Bernie Ecclestone). Mosley reveals that the 100 Year Agreement between the FIA and the CRH is currently under renegotiation. Quite how Max Mosley has got himself into a situation where he needs to renegotiate a “100 Year Agreement” which was supposedly settled back in 2001 is glossed over in the letter.

Mosley alleges that the CRH is angling, “in effect to take over Formula One completely”. This includes giving the CRH the right to determine regulations.

However, as has been pointed out today by Pitpass, such an arrangement would not be allowed by the European Commission anyway. And this fact is the very reason why the FIA and the CRH are separate. Max Mosley seems to be suggesting that Bernie Ecclestone intends not only to ignore the EC’s demands and take over F1, but also that Bernie thinks he will get away with it. Bernie isn’t that stupid. The allegation simply doesn’t add up.

In the next sentence Max Mosley asserts that such an arrangements would be detrimental to the FIA’s ability to protect “traditional Grands Prix”. For one thing, this is clearly an attempt to gain votes from some countries whose Grands Prix are currently under threat. I do wonder exactly what powers the FIA has to protect “traditional Grands Prix”.

If such a power exists, the FIA is surely not doing a very good job of it. Last year the calendar did not contain the German Grand Prix and it will be doing the hokey-cokey with the Nürburgring-based grand prix (whatever it gets called in the end) for the foreseeable future. The Belgian Grand Prix, held at the hugely popular historic Spa-Francorchamps, has been only a semi-permanent fixture in the calendar since the start of this century.

The fact also that the French and British (and now Australian) Grands Prix are constantly operating underneath the Sword of Damocles suggests that this ability to “protect traditional Grands Prix” is a very empty concept.

Sure enough, what exactly constitutes a “traditional Grand Prix” is not defined, and seems to be just a hazy concept present only somewhere in the darkest recesses of Max Mosley’s head. It is a meaningless fig-leaf.

Mosley goes on to point out that “there has been a struggle for control of Formula One that goes back to the original Concorde Agreement in 1981.” Pointing this out is presumably supposed to scare the voters into selecting the status quo option. But this seems like a very odd tactic to me.

Max Mosley has been in charge of the sport for the majority of that period — since 1991. The fact that Max Mosley himself admits that he has been unable to put a lid on this “struggle for control” says it all. Why should the voters be persuaded to keep someone in on the basis that they can see off this “struggle for control” when that person has evidently failed to do so for the past 17 years?

He then undermines these arguments by promising that he will step down in 2009 anyway! What a joke. Max Mosley’s letter seems to be a last-ditch, desperate attempt to save his reputation. The notion that Bernie Ecclestone was somehow involved in the News of the World allegations looks paranoid (especially when there is a rather simpler explanation — News International getting its own back).

The fact is that Max Mosley himself knows that his position is untenable. This is evident from the fact that — despite beating his chest about the fact that he is attending the Monaco Grand Prix — he is spending the entire weekend locked up in his private offices and, on his rare traipses outdoors, refuses to answer any questions from the media. This whole thing stinks of someone who can’t bear to go down without bringing others with him — hence his cack-handed attempt to bring Bernie Ecclestone into the centre of this whole sorry saga.

Yesterday Bernie Ecclestone responded with a letter of his own. In it, Ecclestone asserts his support for the FIA being the “sole body governing international motor sport” and confirms that the CRH “supports and concurs” with the European Commission’s requirements to keep the commercial and regulatory branches of F1 separate. He confirms that the CRH has no interest in controlling regulations, while pointing out that the FIA’s decisions should not be detrimental to the commercial interests of F1.

In fact, there is not anything very controversial in the letter at all — which you would expect, since Bernie Ecclestone had to defend himself. But it does add to the amount of arrows that seem to point to the fact that Max Mosley is not quite telling the whole truth in his letter of last week.

What is interesting about the letter is the constant emphasis on how it is in the interests of F1 for the FIA to be led by a “respected” President. And Max Mosley is anything but respected nowadays.

The sum of these two letters has been pointed out by Clive at F1 Insight: “Max either admits to lying or has to call Bernie a liar.”

Meanwhile, there are suggestions that the Thursday press conference at the Monaco Grand Prix was rigged. The panel was stuffed full of Max Mosley’s cronies, friends and allies. There are suggestions, too, that conference moderator Bob Constanduros was pressured into asking a question about Max Mosley. Funny how all this should happen at the last grand prix before the General Assembly.

Over the course of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, it is becoming clear that Bernie Ecclestone has completely withdrawn any support he had left for Max Mosley. First he pointed out that Mosley’s letter was just “a smokescreen to stop all the other nonsense”.

In the Telegraph he was even stronger:

Everybody’s wrong except him. Everybody was involved in the orgy except him. He is just lashing out at anything he can. If he wants me to be the enemy he should be very careful because if he makes me an enemy I could make sure that he never whips anybody again.

I’m not sure about the bravado at the end there, but Bernie is absolutely right about Max Mosley here. Throughout this whole saga, Max Mosley has been trying to build conspiracies, shift the blame, and try to make out that it’s the News of the World that has brought the sport into disrepute. But no-one forced Max Mosley to whip prostitutes in a basement. Say what you want about the privacy issue (and I certainly have my opinions there), but once the facts are in the open there is nothing you can do about it. And it is no-one’s fault but Max Mosley’s.

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