Has F1 turned the corner?

F1 was once synonymous with glamour and allure, but years of scandal, chicanery and greed have plunged the sport into perilous disrepute. JUSTIN HYNESreports

IN A FEW weeks’ time, Formula One will once again attempt to make a case for itself as the epitome of sporting glamour, offering the billion-dollar smile and a get-it-before-it’s-gone promise of a TV car salesman in front of the glittering showroom of its latest outlet – Abu Dhabi.

But, behind the megawatt smiles, there’s more than a hint of Dorian Gray about Formula One. Peel away the facade and the sport is a bruised and bloodied thing. Like an out-of-shape prize fighter, Formula One is a sport on the ropes.

The most obvious and high- profile sign that Formula One is in perilously unhealthy state would appear to be the recent Renault cheating scandal. “Crashgate”, though, is merely a symptom of a wider malaise, one in which ideas of untouchable control, power and riches lead to the abandonment of best practice, the corruption of sporting ideals and a belief that inside Formula One’s ivory tower, the chosen few can do as they please without sanction.

The decision by Renault F1 boss Flavio Briatore to affect the course of last year’s Singapore Grand Prix can be ascribed to two things: first, fear that his Renault masters and the team’s major sponsors would waver in their commitment if results were not forthcoming; and, secondly, to an unshakeable belief that because of the privileged position he occupied within the sport as a close confidant of supremo Bernie Ecclestone, there would be little comeback if the conspiracy were to leak out.

But if that is one example of diseased ego getting the better of sport, it is a small one compared with a wider infection that has turned F1 into a sport whose sole raison d’etre is to fuel the lavish lifestyles of an elite few who have built the paddock in their own image and populated it with like-minded acolytes.

At its heart, now, lies the regime of the sport’s architects, Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley. Ecclestone has constructed modern F1 almost as a personal fiefdom. Distributing to teams lucrative TV revenues and rights fees from circuits and governments, he plays country against country, team against team, track against track, in a constant game of financial cat and mouse. The voracious pursuit of inflated rights fees from promoters has served to not only to divorce F1 from its core constituency but also to price the sport out of the market it wishes to control.

For every Abu Dhabi, there is a Magny Cours, a Montreal – tracks which have walked away from F1’s all-consuming greed. The result is that that greed has pushed the sport into a realm where only state funding can satisfy Ecclestone’s demands and in which the heartland of F1 can no longer compete.

In tandem with Ecclestone’s iron grip on the purse strings, Mosley’s incarnadine politicking has robbed F1 of credibility and engendered a startling lack of consistency in regulating the sport, leading to a now general perception of F1 as a tarnished environment.

Renault’s two-year suspended ban for an act which “compromised the integrity of the sport and endangered the lives of spectators, official, other competitors” seems massively out of line with the $100m fine meted out to McLaren over 2007’s spying scandal in which perennial thorn in Mosley’s side, Ron Dennis, was found to have been in charge of a team which had photocopied drawings of that year’s Ferrari.

Further contrast that with the $500,000 fine handed to Ferrari in 2003 for manipulating the result of the Austrian Grand Prix and it becomes harder and harder to trust in the governing body’s sense of justice.

Dennis, meanwhile, continued to trouble the president until this year, when in the light of McLaren being economical with the truth to a stewards’ enquiry at the Australian Grand Prix, the McLaren boss finally walked, almost as a pre-trial plea bargain in fear of the possible vindictive reprisals from the sport’s overseers.

And there is no sign of the murkiness clearing. The departure of major manufacturers such as Honda and BMW has allowed Mosley to pursue the inclusion of smaller teams to shore up the grid, all running off-the-shelf engines in a clear echo of the cosy 1970s paradigm he and Ecclestone enjoyed as team bosses at March and Brabham. The awarding of “franchises” to new teams itself has also been rich with controversy, with one unsuccessful candidate suggesting it was told it had made the wrong choice of engine supplier but that the application would be reviewed should it change its mind.

This month, though, Mosley will depart, forced out of office by the compromise agreement reached after the summer’s Formula One Teams Association battle with the FIA over a request for request for “stability, clear rules, a clear and transparent system of governance”.

Even so, however, there is no guarantee of clarity. Running for presidency are the non-aligned Ari Vatanen and former Ferrari boss Jean Todt. Todt’s steamroller campaign has been endorsed by the outgoing president and recently also received Ecclestone’s seal of approval.

Should Todt win, it will represent a resounding victory for the status quo, continuity and the immovable old guard.

Lumped together, Formula One’s internal machinations paint a depressing picture of the sport as machiavellian soap opera. F1 is hamstrung by its past, by its rulers’ refusal to relinquish control. And as their grip gets weaker, so the measures taken to retain control get ever wilder, ever more desperately personal. Earlier this summer, there was a small window of opportunity to break free of that stranglehold. In settling for the apparent exit of Mosley, that chance is now gone.

As ever, Mosley and Ecclestone have not.