Hamilton is bigger than a world champion for F1 chief Domenicali
STEFANO DOMENICALI does the job Bernie Ecclestone made famous. That is to say he is F1’s chief executive, its head honcho. As he puts it: ‘The buck stops with me.’
Never was this authority over the £2billion-a-year sport more necessary or evident than last week when he briskly called off what would have been today’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola in response to the apocalyptic flooding in the region of his birth.
He had travelled out to northern Italy on Tuesday to assess the destruction at first hand, staying with his parents and hearing the rain tip down on the family house as he tried to sleep.
Next morning, he called together the relevant parties and cancelled the event at the cost of £15million-plus in hosting fees. ‘It is not about who owes who what in those kinds of circumstances,’ he reasons. ‘It was important to do what felt right in my soul, in my heart.’
As a boy, Domenicali worked on the car parks at Imola, directing the likes of Ecclestone to their reserved places. He later studied for a business administration degree in Bologna, capital city of Emilia-Romagna, where at least 14 have died. Twenty-one rivers have burst their banks, as whole towns lie submerged.
As he speaks to Sportsmail, Domemicali’s sense of devastation is palpable.
‘It’s very difficult,’ he says. ‘A lot of things happen in our world and you experience them only from the distance of not being there. When you are touched personally the dimension of the tragedy seems even bigger.
‘It is an incredible calamity for everyone, including my friends and family. I know a lot of people who lost everything — the house, the car. And it was the same for members of Alpha Tauri (the Red Bull sister team with a factory at nearby Faenza). The team are doing an incredible job to help them, and we’ll do the same.
‘There are 30,000 people without electricity and thousands evacuated from their homes. A river burst a mile away from where my sister lives. It is worse than an earthquake, but people aren’t complaining, which is typical of our area. They were remaining positive and reactive.’
Formula One have donated €1m towards alleviating the disaster. The unscheduled gap in the now 22-race programme has provided this chance for Domenicali to give one of his frankest and most wide-ranging interviews since taking over Grand Prix racing’s reins from the moustachioed American Chase Carey two years ago.
One thing that’s been said about the 58-year-old Italian, a former title-winning Ferrari team principal, is that he is too nice to
rule F1’s piranhas. Yet, before we sit down to talk in his office on the fifth floor of his HQ off Regent Street, he demonstrates his understanding of power plays.
He points out the chair opposite his desk is deliberately designed too narrow and too hard for visitors to sit comfortably, and little egg timers, beautifully presented, that can be deployed however jocularly or menacingly to give guests, say, five minutes to spit out their arguments and go.
But he kindly dispenses with the apparatus of mild torture, and we sit instead on a couple of armchairs.
After the gravity of Imola, we move on to other topics. One such is Lewis Hamilton (right), with whom Domenicali developed a profound relationship after the Briton lost the title so agonisingly to Max Verstappen in Abu Dhabi two years ago. Their understanding was founded on shared experience of last-day woes, for Hamilton’s first championship success in 2008 came at the final bend at the expense of his man, Felipe Massa.
So should Hamilton, aged 38, stick at Mercedes, seek a drive elsewhere or retire? ‘I’d like him to stay in the sport 100 per cent, 100 per cent, 1,000 per cent!’ declares Domenicali.
‘I don’t want to give Lewis any advice because that would be disrespectful to Toto (Wolff, Mercedes’ team principal). And Lewis has such deep experience that I’m sure he doesn’t need my input because he knows what he wants.
‘He loves our sport. He has been in it since he was a child. Now his role in F1 is getting bigger than any F1 world champion, given the way he gets involved in a lot of things outside the sport and takes an active role in society.
‘He takes us towards new dimensions.
‘But his love is Formula One, and, of course, he wants to achieve his dream of being the only driver to have won an eighth title.’
Whatever ending is written to the great Hamilton story, Domenicali sees a bright future ahead. He talks glowingly of Lewis’s team-mate George Russell as a ‘protagonist’ for the title in years to come. He is aged 25, as is Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. McLaren’s British hope Lando Norris is just 23.
Dutchman Verstappen threatened he might quit if too many sprint weekends were introduced, saying the format trialled in Azerbaijan — with Saturday dedicated to sprint qualifying followed by the sprint race — runs contrary to the DNA of the sport.
Losing Marauding Max, wouldn’t that be a blow to the show?
‘I discussed things with Max (before the last race in Miami). He said he loved the sport and what he was doing. He is world champion and is fighting for a third title. I would say he is likely to stay longer than me. It’s not a problem.’