25/02/2011
FEATURE BY GLEN CROMPTON
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The centerpiece lake of my hometown Ballarat is brimming again after years of drought rendered it a grassy field. I am enjoying a sit in the morning sun at my favourite cafe and regarding this ecological renaissance. The ducks are ducking, the swans are swanning, the fisherpeople are fishing and the platypus is still seeking an audience with its creator apropos its absurd mix of features. The cafe is named Racer's which reminds me to open the laptop to and catch up with F1 news - Kubica is convalescing, Schumey is sicking, Pirellis are peeling, Lotuses are litigating, WilliamsF1 is fund-fishing and I'm still seeking an audience with the sports masters apropos the dearth of overtaking.
Bemoaning the lack of overtaking goes back to the earliest days of my F1 writing, back when the editor was unforgiving in terms of his grammarly review of my work. Back then those in charge refuted any such assertions. Some even questioned the collective memory of fans, asserting F1 hadn't ever been that thrilling. Reality disagreed of course. The 1971 Italian GP featured over 100 overtaking manoeuvres while the 1999 Spanish GP featured 2. At least there is now acknowledgement of this lack of overtaking from on high. Was it whispered in the right ears that if the sport's fans so universally craved overtaking it would be as well to at least pay them lip service? Sadly, it seems acknowledgement is about as far as it's gone.
I wonder if there were 100 overtaking manoeuvres in the entire 2010 season. Did I find the 2010 F1 drivers' championship exciting? Well, yes, but only in a statistical, number crunching, down-to-the-last-race kind of way. Perfect if Bernie has set his sights on wooing spreadsheet lovers. I cannot decide if it is mendacity, sycophancy or plain dimwittedness but I was particularly annoyed by those hacks pedalling the non sequitur that an exciting spreadsheet equated to a season of exciting racing. With the exception of some climate-effected events I found the lack of overtaking for most of 2010 just as soporific as any other season of the last decade.
In 2006 the FIA called the "Overtaking Working Group" (OWG) into being. It was populated with the teams' best and brightest which I regarded as slightly less lucid than recruiting Al Capone to enforce prohibition. The OWG quickly identified the key problem as aerodynamics. That was a good start but nearly 5 years on and there's not much to show for it. The final race of 2010 saw Webber and Alonso snatch world title defeats from the jaws of victory when both pitted early. Despite cars capable of winning and both drivers having every reason to take big risks, they ran line-astern to the chequered flag unable to advance through the field, much less tackle each other. Unlike Mike Gascoyne, I do not apportion blame upon the track for this.
I shan't devolve into the boring technical rant I have so oft visited upon readers, preferring to opine that Blind Freddy, his dog and the OWG accept that drastic reductions in downforce are required. Supplement that with some obscenely hard tyres to increase braking distances and the overtaking drought should end. It's not that difficult.
So if it is that simple why was there a need to create to OWG? Since it was created and it did identify aerodynamics as a large part of the problem why the absence of successful changes to date? Was the working group merely a clever ruse? The teams would feel like they had a say, the fans would feel that something was being done and marketers of the sport could point to its existence when confronted with the awful truth.
Buzzword lovers call them "stakeholders" while I'd choose a less flattering term. Whatever they are, those with a spoon in the bubbling cauldron of F1 must either see no need to act or suffer a profound resistance to. Perhaps there are just too many of them. Would F1 be better served by some decisive autocracy? I'd be more than happy to shove some "stakeholders" in the cauldron to that end!
Over the decades Mr. Ecclestone's little idea grew into a large and lucrative business. Many passengers on Bernie's wagon benefited as did some who hitched up later on. F1's success saw the golden feed trough become ever deeper, servicing ever more snouts and the bodies attached to those snouts grew plump. So plump it appears they can no longer see behind themselves. They have lost sight of the fact that had F1 not been an exciting sport, even Bern's unquestionable acumen would have struggled to sell it, much less turn it into an empire. Enough muddled metaphors and silly similes, I'll just spell it out for the porcine snouts are apparently blinkered by their own girth.
Bernie was able to sell F1 to the world because it was exciting. TV loved F1 and the feeling was mutual. New fans embraced it because it was exciting to watch. You didn't need a team of commentators trolling out endless insights telling you what to look for because right there on the screen were cars changing places on the track. Every single dollar that's been made out of F1 since is a function of that early success which, in turn, was underpinned by exciting racing. Success that would never have happened were the racing as deadly dull as it consistently is these days.
True that Bern has delivered some pleasing chunks of revenue to the sports owners more recently but this cash largely appears to stem from the selling the F1 "franchise" into new territories. Finding new nations to write large cheques seems a short-term strategy to me. The appetite for F1 will likely wane in its new homes just as surely as it has in the former heartlands when the glamour fades and the realisation dawns that the racing is lacklustre. It should also be remembered that the list of new territories replete with sufficient funds and will is far from infinite. The queue at Bernie's door wanting a GP may outlast the man himself but it won't last forever. And a look in the direction of the country originally booked to host the first GP of 2011 reveals a whole other set of problems implicit in using nation-hopping as an alternative to repairing the core product.
And in the end, that's all F1 is, a product. Grands Prix sell as entertainment and as such, compete with all other forms of entertainment. If the entertainment factor is lacking, which I wholeheartedly believe it is, then it becomes ever-less valuable and the market will eventually respond accordingly. This should be the most compelling reason for all of the "stakeholders" to overcome their resistance to act on the lack of overtaking.
Regard a possible apocalypse. SLEC will own unsalable commercial rights. The teams won't have millions to fund the joyous indulgences of their engineers. The FIA will have a lot of spare time to devote to whatever else it does. Sponsors will be happily branding other platforms. Governments will find new homes for their F1 budgets without offering tax relief. In short, the stakeholders will be bone holders. At least Bern will be able to smile, after all, he's long since sold-on that family farm!
Remember that cafe I mentioned at the beginning of this article? Why is it my favourite? Well, the view is great but as I said, that's something that has only recently returned. It's pretty simple really. The coffee is good as is the food. The staff and owners are friendly. It's clean, bright and well maintained. In other words Racer's Cafe is just doing what F1 seems to have forgotten - taking care of business.