11/03/2013
FEATURE BY MAT COCH
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It was when pushing it away from a busy intersection during peak hour traffic I realised I probably needed a new car. The old girl had served me well for many years but, as my first car, it never quite got the love and attention it needed. Every now and then I would open the bonnet. The engine was always still there.
The tyres never got air, the oil went unchecked and I'd learnt how to use the throttle, clutch, choke and handbrake in unison to stop the thing from stalling when I got to a set of lights. The suspension knocked and rattled as though it had sheared off its mounts while the radiator was held on precariously by a single bolt.
Then, when trying to accelerate away from a set of lights I was engulfed in a cloud of blue smoke and became the subject of annoyed motorists whose drive home had been rudely interrupted.
If I'm honest the car's demise was my fault. I could have checked the oil and possibly even changed it once in a while. A service now and then probably wouldn't have killed me but not doing so probably did kill the car. What I saw as quirks ultimately became embarrassing, cataclysmic problems for the car.
The memory of that car got me thinking about Formula One and its current situation, and whether the sport now is in a position where some of its quirks are becoming genuine problems. Are we perhaps so enamoured with it that we just can't see them?
For example much has been made about the presence of pay drivers in Formula One. It's no secret that there are drivers on the grid who have less talent than others who are on the sidelines, the difference being the almighty dollar.
Of course this is not a new phenomenon; Niki Lauda started as a pay driver, as did Michael Schumacher. Bringing money to a team has always eased that final step, but has it now got beyond a joke?
There are drivers in Formula Ford who have mortgaged their houses, or more to the point their parents houses, to go motor racing. They're immensely talented and win races but when the money dries up so does their potential. I have seen it first-hand.
Last week the reigning GP3 champion Mitch Evans told me he doesn't yet have the funds he needs to see out the year in GP2. He has backing from a number of prominent New Zealand businessmen, but from a country with a population half that of the City of London his appeal is small on the international market.
The odds are stacked against him. Unless he is picked up by a Formula One squad's development programme, which at his advanced stage looks unlikely, it seems doubtful he can make the next step. It's a point he admits to having concerns over.
However I do not believe this lust of cashed-up drivers however is the problem; merely a symptom. The underlying problem in motor sport, and this runs true of categories from grass roots level to the very pinnacle, is simple: cost.
In 1971 Ron Tauranac sold Motor Racing Developments to Bernie Ecclestone. He couldn't justify the £10,000 a year it cost to run the Brabham Formula One team. That's about £120,000 in current money for a race winning Formula One team.
In the modern era even a small team will burn through £120,000 shortly after lunchtime every day. According to Formula Money a typical small team spends somewhere in the region of £55million a season while a top team spends more than four times that figure. They are not saving the whales or ending world hunger; they are putting two racing cars on track 19 times a year.
Costs are out of control, but it's been that way for years. The problem is, like my now-deceased car, it hasn't been addressed like it should. Rather than fixing the underlying issue the sport has just carried on as if nothing is wrong, that the world hasn't changed and that it's perfectly justified in what it's doing.
One need only take a cursory look at the income drivers receive as proof. In 1950 Juan Manuel Fangio took home a salary of $15,000. In 2010 it's believed Fernando Alonso pocketed $40million, a 2,600% increase in the intervening 60 years.
Interestingly, Fangio could have bought a house in the UK for about £1,900 back when he was racing, while for something similar Alonso would have to pay £163,000 today. In the period drivers salaries have exploded by 2,600% the cost of an average house in Britain has risen by little more than 86%. Spending in Formula One has out-paced inflation by more than thirty to one.
It's an industry where it is deemed perfectly appropriate to spend as much money as the team makes - more if it can be found. In any other industry the team's commercial boss would be out on their ear and probably held to public account for such financial mismanagement, and yet that is the way teams operate year in, year out.
As if realising that the sport has lost its way some years ago it changed from being about brave men in delicate machines showing supreme skill and bravery to the modern technologically focussed space race we know today.
The way I see it, the sport, in its current state, is a lot like my old car. When it was new it ran perfectly and didn't need much done. But now it's old and things have worn out.
Much of the problem is the teams themselves. Rather than agreeing and working towards a sustainable future they bicker and snipe at one another whenever the subject is broached. Team A doesn't want to give Team B an advantage just because its coffers aren't as well stuffed; why should the rich be penalised for the potential benefit of the poor?
It's a mindset and attitude which acts like a cancer throughout the sport because whenever costs rise in Formula One, so they do in every other category which feeds it. Motor sport has lost its collective financial marbles, but Formula One can play a key role in reinventing the financial side of the sport, but it requires leaders with insight, the ability to communicate, a willingness to compromise and the testicular fortitude generally only the drivers possess.
Of course some teams will feel the impact more than others. Any move to restrict what teams spend will likely be felt more in Milton Keynes more than Banbury, but if done correctly it will future-proof the teams and in turn the sport. If done really well it might even create the rarest of things; a profit making race team.
Lower costs with potentially greater income since the series would be more competitive, which in turn means less need (if any) for pay drivers. The talent pool in the sport would be increased and drivers with genuine talent can progress - the need for Gerhard Berger to redefine the pathway to Formula One is suddenly irrelevant as the savings propagate their way down the motor sport chain.
As such I am all for budget caps. Let's give the teams free reign to spend what they like on drivers, open up the technical regulations and let their brilliant designers minds run free, but limit what they can spend. Let's drive efficiencies and reward technical cleverness rather than commercial nous.
Stifling technical regulations is the sport's way of acknowledging that costs have got out of control as teams develop down dead-ends. It is Formula One's equivalent of keeping its engine ticking over at the lights using the choke and burning out the clutch. It works for a while but unless something is done there is going to be a rather large cloud of smoke. Pushing F1 out of the way of traffic will be a lot more embarrassing than my old banger.