TED KRAVITZ

Bernie Ecclestone’s departure from Formula 1 is causing ripples through the sport – not least at one of the top teams

IT’S SUMMER. THAT MEANS FLYING-ANT DAY, HAY fever and the sense of wonder on discovering your air con still works despite lying dormant since September. It also means the annual appearance of two Formula 1 stories: the future of the British Grand Prix and the future participation of Red Bull Racing. Both could disappear, for very different reasons: the former because it doesn’t have enough money, the latter because it’s got better things to spend its money on.

Red Bull has threatened to quit before, most recently when it tried to dump Renault for a better engine, only to stay with the French marque (on worse terms) and claim it was never serious about leaving in the first place.

But this time the quit-threat is quieter – and more considered. Under its current contract with F1, Red Bull is committed to competing until the end of 2020, but that’s not to say it couldn’t leave early and accept the financial penalty. Motorsport is a marketing device for Red Bull. Its owners, Dietrich Mateschitz and the Thailand-based Yoovidhya family, love F1, but need to win to justify their spend.

Not only are they not going to win this year’s championship, but since Bernie Ecclestone was ousted they’ve lost their political leverage. Mateschitz and team principal Christian Horner were key allies of Ecclestone and benefitted from that association on and off the track. Indeed, this year’s rules were changed according to Ecclestone’s idea that the cars should be faster and harder to drive. This was eagerly supported by Red Bull, as the only way to achieve that would be to prioritise aerodynamics over power, and it had the pre-eminent aerodynamicist of the modern era on its books: Adrian Newey.

But with the political hard work done, Newey failed to deliver because he had other things to concentrate on: fulfilling a childhood dream of designing a hypercar, namely the Aston Martin Valkyrie. In Newey’s absence, his deputies underachieved, leaving Red Bull behind Mercedes and Ferrari. The team is partly blaming Renault, as usual, but while that tactic arguably worked in the past, Renault is back in F1 properly this season and isn’t going to be pushed around by its customer team anymore. Horner let slip recently that Renault Sport pays its engineers on the Red Bull cars less bonus money than engineers doing the same job on the works cars, with ‘ understandable motivational results’. Renault isn’t messing around here – the physical engines are the same, works to customer, but that’s where its generosity ends.

In the past, Mateschitz and Horner would have got Bernie to sort it out, but Bernie has no power anymore. Faced with declining influence as well as declining competitiveness, Red Bull could finally make good on those previously hollow threats to walk away and spend its marketing billions on extreme sports instead.

It would take much less than a billion to save the British GP. In 2010, the British Racing Drivers’ Club began a deal with Bernie Ecclestone to keep F1 at Silverstone for 17 years. Bernie put into the contract, as was his practice, an ‘escalator’ clause, upping the race hosting fee every year. That meant that if the cost in 2010 was, for example, a just-about-affordable £12million, the BRDC would have to find £600k more in earnings every season, with only one realistic way of doing it: putting up ticket prices. The danger of that, of course, is fewer people come and Silverstone loses more money.

On a really good year, Silverstone breaks even. But the escalator is starting to bite. And it’s reckoned that soon the BRDC will have to make a decision: keep staging the race as per its contract and risk going bust, or give it up at the first opportunity (a break clause at the end of 2019) and stay solvent. Tough one. Bernie’s gone, of course, so the BRDC could appeal to Formula One Management’s new owners Liberty Media, but Ecclestone’s replacement Chase Carey has already said he won’t cut Silverstone’s fee, despite his commitment to maintaining classic European races and the fact FOM co-director Ross Brawn is a proud BRDC member.

Liberty says it’ll help make the customer experience better, so that the circuit can put up ticket prices and give guests more for their money. That’s true, insofar as the fan experience at European races this year has been much improved, and British GP audiences are promised even more, with increased access to drivers, competitions to win garage access for the race, festival-style concerts every night, more fairground rides and, of course, the Red Arrows. But will that be enough to justify a hike in the ticket price? We’ll see. Government support is even less likely.

So if you haven’t been to the British Grand Prix before, go. It might not be around too much longer.

‘ Red Bull could finally make good on those previously hollow threats to walk away’