American mass media company Liberty Media presented Formula 1 teams and governing body FIA with its proposal for the sport’s future at the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend in early April. While the proposal’s specifics were not released, the F1 commercial rights holder outlined in general terms in a press release a vision that included more raceable cars that emphasize driver skill, a prize structure more tied to current success than a team’s past history in the sport and team budget caps.
The process of change has begun, and F1 sporting director Ross Brawn rejects any suggestion that current F1 leadership does not understand the DNA of the sport is expecting a busy summer as the series and teams hammer out a new agreement for a new and significantly different F1 when compared to regulations set to expire after 2020.
At least one team — Scuderia Ferrari — has threatened to exit the sport if it doesn’t like the new direction. That leaves Liberty Media and the FIA to balance what they believe will be good for the teams against what they believe will be good for the sport: “It will be a tough negotiation.” – Ross Brawn says, as reported by autoweek.com – “(F1 chief executive) Chase (Carey) has a view, and I concur with him that everyone has to end up a little unhappy. If someone is very happy and someone else is very unhappy, then that is not the right balance. Ferrari’s priority is what they feel is right for them, and our priority is what we feel is right for Formula 1. These are broadly aligned, but there are some differences, and I have discovered these much more in my new position. But, in the end, what is great for Ferrari is great for Formula 1.” – the Formula One Managing Director of Motorsports and technical director explained.
Liberty Media officials believe that revenue distribution must be based on the “meritocracy of the current performance,” but at the same time hinted that Ferrari could still get a financial advantage over other teams because of its heritage. Scuderia Ferrari currently receives annual legacy bonus payments believed to be as much as $100 million from the series. There is a belief that Liberty Media may be out to cut that bonus in half: “The addition of bonuses a few years ago was where the whole picture got distorted. I think that the teams realize that it was an unusual set of circumstances, where the previous owners were keen to get a contract over the line and that is where we ended up. There was an increase in the proportion that the teams took, but nearly all of it went to a small number of big teams. The (new) proposal seeks to redress that.” –
Ross Brawn rejects any suggestion that current F1 leadership does not understand the DNA of the sport when it considers change. For example, the FIA, which is responsible for safety, insisted on the unpopular halo cockpit safety device for the 2018 cars. Many drivers and team officials say the halo is bad for the sport — it’s ugly, and it takes away some of the danger that attracts many fans and drivers to F1: “This is an amazing sport. It’s such an incredible combination of technology (and) the human side. It all adds to the unpredictability of what happens out on the track. What we need to do is to keep all those in balance. You need to have the right input from (Liberty Media), the right input from the FIA and the right input from the teams to keep that equilibrium. In the last few years, there has perhaps not been enough attention paid to that,” Brawn says. “The amounts the top teams are spending are really impressive, but we have a differential between what the big teams are spending and what the middle teams are spending, which is far higher than it has ever been. It annoys me when people say this is how it has always been. And that doesn’t mean it is right. It means that we have managed to survive. But is there not a better way of doing it, so we can take this sport and this business to another level?” – he adds.
The Liberty Media plan may call for a $150 million budget cap in 2021. Some teams critical of a cap — one that could mean budget reductions of 50 percent or more for the top teams — say this will lead to job losses: “It is not correct to use that as an objection. If we don’t do the cost cap, we would have several teams disappearing from Formula 1 within the next few years. If we are making the top teams spend less and giving the smaller teams more capacity to invest, it is logical that there will be a shift of staff. That is exactly what we want. There will not be mass redundancies; those people who will need to be redeployed to meet a cost cap will be absorbed by the other teams. It’s another in a series of balancing acts designed to improve competition and also attract new teams. We have to make the economics more viable so the teams can generate the budgets they need with the knowledge that they can be competitive with those budgets,” Brawn says. “Roger Penske won’t come into Formula 1 unless he thinks he has the chance of winning. F1 is in the stratosphere compared to any other form of racing, but we can bring it back to a good level, which is still spectacular, and more sustainable, without making any difference to the show or the spectators’ perception of technology or the magic of the sport. When we achieve that, then people like Penske and (Michael) Andretti will say, ‘Actually this is something that is worth looking at. The problem is that F1 is an oil tanker: It takes time to turn around. But I think we are pushing in the right direction. I think that we will have turned the vessel by 2021. In the interim, I think there will be some things that we can do on sporting regulations and how the teams operate that can contribute to try to reduce their costs. They only operate the way they do because other people operate in that way. Someone takes a different approach, raises the bar, and everyone has to go there.” – Ross Brawn concluded, according to autoweek.com.
Leave a Reply