NEW F1 OWNER EAGER TO ENGAGE MORE FANS
Chase Carey relaxing rules, allowing people to be more involved at races
When Kimi Raikkonen crashed out in the first corner in last month’s Spanish Grand Prix, the television cameras panned the crowd and focused on a distraught young boy dressed head-to-toe in Ferrari gear crying over his hero’s early exit.
Later in the race, the tears transformed into smiles after Raikkonen’s Ferrari team found the boy and brought him into the Formula One paddock to meet the Finnish driver.
In a few brief seconds, the child from Amiens, France, named Thomas Danel, became the face of the new fan-friendly F1.
Ask anyone in the paddock and they’ll tell you that his story would have never played out under former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone. The diminutive octogenarian’s legendary iron fist would certainly not have been loosened by the plaintive cries of a crestfallen 6-year-old. And posting a video of the whole thing on an F1’s official social media feed would have easily got someone fired.
That because Ecclestone kept tight control on everything related to Grand Prix racing in his three decades at the helm of F1’s commercial arm, Formula One Management, from the people granted paddock access to the television feed supplied to broadcasters. It was all about exclusivity, something Ecclestone believed added huge value to F1’s brand.
Many feel the sport’s snobby, closed door attitude championed by Ecclestone held it back, especially as it attempted to gain traction in the lucrative U.S. market. That all changed when U.S.-based Liberty Media bought F1 and sent Ecclestone packing before the 2017 season and encouraged the teams to embrace and engage fans.
“(Ferrari) did it on their own, having a sense a freedom that they wouldn’t have had a year ago,” said Chase Carey, F1’s new chief executive told reporters in Spain.
“I didn’t tell them to find the little boy. They thought it would be a special moment, and it was.”
Generally, there’s good feel surrounding the sport and most in the paddock believe it’s headed in the right direction. The paddock in Spain was also more packed than usual and the new Fan Zone in Barcelona attracted thousands during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend.
“I think the interaction with the fans was definitely better,” threetime world champion Lewis Hamilton remarked about F1’s engagement efforts in Spain.
“We’ve just got to keep coming up with ideas to try and bring people in and not seclude them. This is a sport where you just can’t really get very close ... we somehow need to do more.”
Another huge development that has raised F1’s profile in the U.S. has been the buzz created by twotime world champion Fernando Alonso opting to skip the Monaco Grand Prix to try his luck in the Indianapolis 500, a move Ecclestone said he would have moved to stop.
Now that Alonso has experienced the more open and friendly IndyCar paddock, he may take home a few ideas to help Liberty find success in engaging fans.
“I think there are things for sure that Formula One can learn from here (IndyCar),” Alonso told the Montreal Gazette in Indianapolis in May.
“The approach to the fans and the unpredictable races, I think is the key part of the success. That creates some good things, but on the other hand, they are two different worlds and you cannot completely copy things from here to there and the opposite is true.”
Making the races a little bit more open and finding a way to ensure that more than a few drivers have a shot at winning races would be a good way to guarantee a better show in F1, Alonso added.
As teams embrace social media more, Liberty is bringing some small changes that improve things for fans, such as the larger numbers mandated on the cars to help them identify their favourite drivers more easily. There’s even been talk of putting digital readouts on the cars that show each drivers’ position during races.
Like Alonso, Force India deputy team principal Robert Fernley, who was a team owner in the old CART (now IndyCar) during the 1980s agrees that a measured approach is best.
“I think we can learn a little bit from IndyCar, but overall we are Formula One and we’ve got to keep that identity as well — I think that Liberty understand that,” he said in Spain.
“They’re working to getting it more inclusive but, on the other hand, keeping it where it needs to be — which is slightly exclusive as well. So, it’s a balancing act and I’m sure they’ll do a great job.”
Many of these initiatives seem like child’s play to Montreal race goers, who have enjoyed a much more open experience at their grand prix than most other fans around the world.
The Thursday open house at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has become a tradition not to be missed while the city itself embraces F1 like no other, with street festivals and countless events happening downtown during the race week that attract drivers and team personnel.
There’s no plan to remake the Canadian Grand Prix model elsewhere, but that might change once the Liberty executives see how Montreal puts on a race.
One stumbling block may end up being the teams, which have a long history of serving their own interests rather than doing what’s best for the sport. Many believe the early changes and co-operation may amount to “window-dressing” if the usual infighting resumes as soon as Liberty begins to negotiate a new commercial agreement.
The existing deal expires in 2020 and the new owners have already begun to hint about big changes.
“Really what we’re doing is we’re saying we’re working as partners that compete on the track, but share a vision of where we’re going as a sport, and share the benefits of doing that together,” Carey said.
One of Liberty’s biggest tasks will be delivering on its plan to add races — and fans — in the U.S. So far, the F1 race in Austin, Tex., has found some success, but it really hasn’t helped the sport gain much profile with American racing fans.
Gene Haas, who owns the sole U.S. F1 team — Haas F1 — and coowns NASCAR’s Stewart-Haas Racing, told the Gazette that he feels a second U.S. Grand Prix is key.
“I think the biggest thing they could do is to add another race,” Haas said.
“They’ve talked about that and I think it sounds like a certainty there’ll be a race somewhere, whether it’s Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or New York.”