30/01/2013
FEATURE BY MAT COCH
Adam Parr, one of the most outspoken people in the Formula One paddock, has left the sport as he came in. From a mining background, working for Rio Tinto in Australia, he was head hunted by Frank Williams at the end of 2006. Originally chairman and ultimately CEO, Parr's tenure in Formula One was as fleeting as it was vocal.
A businessman without the motor sport grounding many of his peers within the paddock had enjoyed, Parr caused a stir among his contemporaries, providing the media with regular sound bites. "When I spoke during my five years in Formula One I didn't speak because I wanted to express an opinion, I spoke because I needed to represent the interests of my team," he says.
However, his views are contradictory. On the one hand he claims he spoke on behalf of the team, arguing for its best interests, but in the next breath he suggests the sport needs to pull together for the greater good.
"What is important is that people participating in the sport have the ability to look at the interests of the sport and that should be the criteria by which the decisions are made," he responded when asked if Formula One had too many vested interests.
Formula One must pull together for the greater interests of the sport, so long as they were in Williams best interests, it seems.
He defends his stance by citing weight of numbers, implying his efforts were for the benefit of the sport as a whole. "Let me go back to the simple example, customer cars," he began. "If there was a move afoot in the sport to introduce customer cars, and that is patently not in the interest of quite a few of the teams, by the way, then I think you have a duty to try and stop it.
"That involves putting forward the arguments and so forth," he continued. "When I spoke at a team principals meeting, a FOTA meeting, about customer cars, it wasn't because I think my opinion is important or even needed to express it, it is because the interests of Williams were very clearly defined and they were very different to the intentions of other people.
"It's not about opinions, it's about policy," he continued. "It's about clarifying what the policy of your team is and ensuring that that is fractured in to a decision making process."
Parr is an interesting character; he appeared vulnerable when dealing with the political infighting within Formula One while his outspokenness seemed to put him at odds with some established players, despite his claims otherwise.
"It's just horses for courses," he claimed. "You form alliances with people with similar views on a particular issue, but you may disagree with them very profoundly ten minutes later on a different issue."
To his credit he stands by the decisions he made while at the helm of Williams, rightly or wrongly.
"There were very few issues over the five years where I was, or Williams was, alone," he insists. "On budget caps, on the introduction of DRS which we advocated, the decision to go with Pirelli, we always had other teams with us. If I use the example of Pirelli the two people who fought most fiercely with us on Pirelli were Christian Horner and Bernie Ecclestone."
Ecclestone and Parr locked horns several times over issues ranging from television deals to the teams' share of Formula One's profits. Now Parr seems to hold Ecclestone with some regard, especially for his accomplishments in developing Formula One, and is more subtle in his criticism of the sport's billionaire boss.
"I regard Bernie Ecclestone as a very, very effective businessman," he said when asked if Ecclestone is the best person to run Formula One.
"(Bernie is) someone who's created, not by himself, but has created a tremendous sport and a very large part of it does reflect his vision and his way of doing things. The attention to detail, the exquisite presentation of the sport, the control of access, the sense that it is something special, all those things are driven by Bernie."
Yet in this acknowledgement there is a caveat, Parr believing there are opportunities the sport has not harnessed or exploited to their full. In June 2011 he lamented the fact Formula One extracts only $500million in television revenue, while "by comparison (American football) is $4.2 billion and Turkish soccer is a little bit more than us."
Ecclestone's response spoke volumes about his opinion for the then Williams boss. "Adam is a genius the way he runs his team," snarled the F1 supremo. "There's no room on that car for any more sponsors…"
Parr claims all he wanted was equality and a better deal for the teams, appearing to try and paint himself as a Formula One martyr. He didn't like the shape the sport was beginning to take, suggesting it was becoming exclusive and elitist to the detriment of those further down the pecking order.
He remains convinced Formula One can do better and offer fans, the people he believes fundamentally bankroll the sport, greater value. "As much as I admire Bernie, it is not him and it is not the teams that fund F1 - it is the fans," he said recently before clarifying his statement.
"The income in Formula One comes from four sources: sponsors and licensees (of the sport or teams); fees from broadcasters; fees from race promoters; and the purchase from F1 or the teams of merchandise," he explained. "Directly or indirectly, these revenues are all derived from people who watch the sport live or on television; or who buy F1 or team products.
"The Formula One Group puts no money into the sport. Some of the team owners subsidise their own teams either (again) for marketing reasons like Red Bull or a car manufacturer or because they have to fund the gap between costs and revenue. Overall, however, it is the fans who directly or indirectly fund F1.
"Towards the end of my time in Formula One Bernie appeared to be moving towards a world where a small number - two or three teams - had a disproportionate share of the finances, the say in the sport, their status in the sport and so forth.
"To me, very simply, if you take that principal and you apply it you stop having a sport, because a sport is something where all competitors come in with more or less the same opportunity to win. That doesn't mean they have the same capabilities, it doesn't even mean that intrinsically they have the same amount of money available to themselves.
"There will be differences between teams," he continued. "For example being based in Switzerland is a disadvantage compared with being in motor sport valley in the UK in terms of access to people. So it may be, for example (being based in Switzerland) means that you have a stronger currency which makes it more difficult financially if your sources of revenue are not in Swiss francs. I'm not saying that everything has to be the same, because it can't be the same, but what I'm saying is that the regulators of the sport have a responsibility to ensure the sport is fair as far as they can.
"What I felt, towards the end, was that that was not the direction that the sport was going in."
Even now he has left the sport Parr has not gone quietly. He is allegedly being sued for plagiarism over an article contained within his 'graphic novel', The Art of War - Five Years in Formula One, and has returned to the media spotlight to promote it.
Yet one struggles to shrug off his claim that he must fight for his own team's best interests. Parr's comments therefore seem contradictory, and it is difficult to attribute a great deal of value to his arguments and opinions as a result.
Parr left Williams in a better state than he found it he boasts, and perhaps that's the best he could have hoped for after his brief spell in Formula One. However, the fact of the matter is that in twenty years' time his name won't be mentioned alongside those of Ken Tyrrell or Ron Dennis, men who have created lasting legacies. He never seemed to be accepted within the paddock by his peers, almost certainly because he was prepared to voice his opinions, and his time in Formula One was fleeting as a consequence.
To check out previous features from Mat, click here