F1: Trials and Tribulations

F1 is not at death’s door, but it is looking a bit sickly. None of its problems are insurmountable, but action needs to be taken or they could lead to long term decline.

A few years ago the BBC hosted free-to-air, Bafta-winning coverage of the sport. Then the BBC and Sky decided to ‘share’ the coverage, a situation we have recently seen continue between Sky and Channel 4 (in reality, Channel 4 got half live and half highlights coverage, Sky being fully live). Next year, almost the entire sport goes behind the Sky pay wall (British viewers will get to see the British Grand Prix live on Channel 4. Everything else is highlights or Sky).

Why does that matter? Well, for the UK, more than half the teams are based in a small part of southern England. It’s great for the teams, because engineers can change jobs without moving country, and sometimes without moving house or forcing their kids to switch schools. It’s also great for the economy, as F1 brings in high end, well-paid jobs, and, beyond direct employment, there’s a large number of supply jobs. The less successful F1 is, the less money there is, which will hit the UK.

In terms of the sport itself, viewer numbers matter for sponsorship. With the sport drifting ever more behind the pay wall (and, football excepted, pay walls seem to lead to audiences shrinking), sponsorship declines for obvious reasons. This hits the smaller teams the most, because sponsorship revenue goes to the teams. Broadcast revenue, from the pay TV stations, goes to the sport generally, which doesn’t necessarily divvy up the cash in a fair manner. Some teams *cough*Ferrari*cough* get paid just for turning up. It’s a double whammy for mid-grid and backmarker teams.

Force India have come 4^th twice in recent years, yet this very season nearly went under due to financial pressure. If the most successful midfield team can barely hold its head above water, it means there’s something rotten in the state of F1.

The grid’s already pretty small, just 20 cars. Every one of the recent new teams has vanished. They were promised spending caps, to stop the big teams blasting money to guarantee they’d be faster, and it never happened. Now great drivers like Esteban Ocon are looking at being without a seat because the grid’s too small.

Another problem, a hangover from the Ecclestone era, is the rise of the identikit street circuit, which is bloody tedious. It doesn’t have to be this way. The track in Austin, Texas, proves that new circuits can be very good indeed. But when you cram a track into city streets you inevitably end up with a constricted, slow layout, usually festooned with right angles and bereft of places to pass. A track that’s slow and difficult to pass on is not a good racetrack (and, yes, I’ll commit F1 heresy and include Monaco in that. Monaco is the worst circuit on the calendar).

So the sport’s left trying to persuade viewers to pay for something that had been free for decades, to watch something on circuits that are increasingly boring (with perennial threats to end racing at Silverstone, Suzuka, Interlagos, and Spa), whilst making it financially more difficult for every team in the midfield.

Liberty are still in the early days of running the show, so there is hope that they might do things differently. We’ll see how they handle free-to-air versus pay TV coverage, whether they make things fairer for the teams financially, and if they’ll prefer racetracks over processions.

I hope so, because F1 can be absolutely fantastic. Who can forget the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix? The longest in history, over four hours total, saw Button go from dead last to passing Vettel, who had gone wide, on the final lap to win the unlikeliest of victories. Or the 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix duel in the desert between Hamilton and Rosberg, with the Mercedes drivers passing one another over and over again?

There are still plenty of good races, but also more processions, and fewer viewers. Things can be turned around, but Liberty are going to have to recognise the problems and have the gumption to do something about it, otherwise F1 will slowly decline.

Morris Dancer