CHRIS HARRIS
Monaco might be a stern test of an F1 driver, but what about the rest of us who have to watch?
“FORMULA ONE CARS OUTGREW MONACO BEFORE ROGER MOORE BECAME 007”
“That’s a poor advert for the game.” What a phrase that was in the Eighties – the cornerstone of all terrestrial television sports commentary. Just reading those words, I hear David Coleman and Richie Benaud politely admonishing the sports they loved, without resorting to outright harshness.
Does it matter if some or any part of a sport consistently falls into that category? It should do. Sport is now one of the most valuable commercial commodities and it has to alter its plot to satisfy the crowd. Football now uses a lighter ball and the game is faster. Cricket has the bombastic T20. And yet every year the Formula One rabble traipses back to Monaco knowing full well that unless there’s a colossal thunderstorm around lunchtime on the Sunday it will deliver a spectacle that makes a Serena Williams press conference seem exciting. I just don’t get it.
Formula One cars outgrew the principality before Roger Moore became 007, and yet the layout and track width is largely the same as in the Fifties. So why would a sport that is quite literally fighting for its existence not do something about it?
The money thing doesn’t wash. As Bernie proved, there are any number of tinpot countries willing to write vast cheques in the name of some weird, false global verification and, being the arch hypocrite that I am, they mostly work for me.
People who disagree with me say that Monaco is Formula One. But that’s like saying a fifth day draw at Headingley in horizontal rain is test cricket. Yes, it could be considered an important component of a total season, or that only those who can appreciate the full complexity of a sport, the thrills and the lulls, can truly claim to be a fan. But we live in an age where teenagers switch off three minutes in if something doesn’t blow up.
The great sadness is that Monaco is celebrated as the pinnacle of F1 because, rightly, it is considered the ultimate test of a driver. But it just doesn’t translate for the viewer. It’s a commentator’s nightmare – all they can do is remind us how difficult it is, how much skill is being deployed. Their football equivalents just have to sit back and grin when Messi is doing his thing. When you have to tell someone that something is exciting, it probably isn’t.
An F1 calendar with 21 races can easily support a few that people know won’t erupt into five-abreast dicing, but the way F1 clings to the notion that Monaco is the jewel in the crown makes me worry for its future. If the people who run the sport thought that this year’s race was a sporting spectacle to match the Champions League final or, more tellingly, the British Touring Car Championship, then they must be a little out of touch with reality.
The solution? Almost certainly something that was suggested in jest and rejected accordingly. Monaco needs a twist – sprinklers, or a reverse grid, or a joker lap, or frankly anything that alters the sense that once qualifying is over, there’s not much point watching the rest of the race weekend. Or, maybe, we go old school and give them all a manual gearbox to wrestle with. Watch that Senna onboard and absorb the potential for a mistake, a mistake that could be capitalised on by a following car. Now there’s a thought.