YOU CAN’T MAKE AN OMELETTE...
It costs almost half a billion dollars to run a topline F1 team. Five hundred million dollars a year, to fund an organisation of up to 1,000 highly specialised people, who’ll collaborate to create the fastest racing cars they can. Those who drive them earn a salary of anything from $20m per season (Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton) to the relatively paltry $500,000 of a Pascal Wehrlein.
These figures are bandied round in paddock vernacular as if they’re inconsequential, but even in the lower order they are staggering sums, out of kilter with those in any other endeavour, save advanced military research or global sports franchises such as elite-level football.
So it’s heartening to hear Brawn talk of ‘resource restriction’ and to know that the other members of
NEWFOM – marketing head Sean Bratches and CEO Chase Carey – are seeking urgently to address both the vast cost of F1 competition and the way its income from TV deals, advertising and race fees is shared out.
Already, though, they will have encountered positions such as those articulated by Red Bull team boss Christian Horner over the Australian GP weekend, when asked if he would countenance scrapping the ‘historical’ bonus cash sums received by his team, Mercedes, Mclaren and Ferrari on account of their ‘grandee’ status.
“There’s probably not a team principal in the paddock who would say they are happy to take less money,” he said. “If they are, they’re mad, so I think it’s a question of bringing the bottom up rather than the top down and hopefully that may well be achievable.”
So what Horner (and others, for he is not alone in his view) appears to be suggesting is putting more money into a sport that is already so awash with cash that an entirely respectable junior F1 team – Manor – went out of business at the start of this year because they couldn’t raise the estimated £100m they needed to survive. Is it any wonder that F1 can sometimes feel not so much like a beautiful travelling circus of free-spirited troubadours (though it does retain a semblance of that vibe), but more like an insane parallel universe where conventional rules do not apply and the lunatic becomes the norm?
One senior team figure recently used the following anecdote to explain the iniquitous nature of F1 team income and the ready adoption of la-la-land economics by those who benefit most. “Suppose,” he said, “it’s 1 January and there’s a knock at the door. You answer the door and a very nice man hands you £100. ‘Here’s a gift from the local landowner,’ he says. You’re delighted, shake hands and say ‘thank you very much’. Next day, same thing. A knock at the door, the gentleman is there with another £100, which you accept again. This goes on. After a month, you’re much richer and by now quite used
“F1 CAN SOMETIMES FEEL LIKE AN INSANE PARALLEL UNIVERSE WHERE CONVENTIONAL RULES DO NOT APPLY AND THE LUNATIC BECOMES THE NORM
to getting this cash every day. You start to expect it and factor it in to your financial planning. Life is good.
“Then, on 1 January the next year, you look out of your front window and see the man knocking on your neighbour’s door and handing over the £100. You rush out and shout: ‘Hey, that’s my money!’ He looks at you and says: ‘No it’s not, my friend. And it never was.’”
The man at the door used to be Bernie Ecclestone; now it’s Chase Carey – and there’s a growing suspicion that if he and NEWFOM are to deliver on their stated intent of reshaping F1 into a modern, sustainable business, with lower barriers to entry, perhaps a £150m budget cap and more equal competition between teams, sometime soon he’ll have to say: “Sorry, guys, that cash ain’t yours.”
And when that happens it’s going to be Jack Nicholson-joker time: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.”
We watch and wait.