“There is no doubt that it’s better today than it’s ever been, and we are all
better looked after.”
Christian Horner, the team principal of Red Bull, who has been effectively
anointed by Ecclestone as his preferred successor, perhaps unsurprisingly
sees the 83-year-old as the “only guy” to continue despite his legal
quagmires. “It’s in all our interests that he’s around as long as possible,”
Horner said. “Bernie is absolutely the best and only guy to do what he does,
to take Formula One to the global reach that the sport has achieved.”
Although some teams grumble about Ecclestone – albeit only privately on
account of the reach of his power and influence – a future without him is
inevitably an uncertain one. Few in the paddock can remember life without
him.
One possible outcome, according to Mark Gallagher, the former Cosworth F1
general manager and senior executive at Jordan and Red Bull, is something
closer to resembling a committee rather than autocratic rule.
“Bernie’s departure, whenever it comes, will of course change Formula One.
Whether it’s Peter Brabeck [chairman of Formula One], or some other
executive they head hunt, it will be run much more by a collective
management, and I can see it being structured quite differently. In five
years’ time, you may well see a director of Formula One TV, someone for race
organisations, someone for central marketing, and so on.”
Whenever or whatever the post-Ecclestone era holds, Formula One is a sport
which is creaking, where the suggested solutions vary widely from
stakeholder to stakeholder.
The teams protest that CVC takes too much profit, sucking money out the sport,
leaving them
hard-pressed to survive and compete, particularly as costs explode ahead of a
season which will see a raft of technological changes, including the switch
from 2.4-litre V8 engines to 1.6-litre turbocharged V6s. Even Lotus, one of
the sport’s premier teams who had the second fastest car for much of 2013,
were struggling to pay their leading driver, Kimi Raikkonen.
Meanwhile Stewart, among others, retorts that there is a lot of poor financial
management, while Gallagher blames the endless pursuit of aerodynamic
perfection, as well as the rule makers, the FIA, for creating a show which
has become too predictable and too remote from viewers’ understanding. “It’s
a war [in aerodynamics] which leaves the average man in the street feeling
numb,” as Gallagher puts it.
Although Formula One commands vast TV rights deals, it is not on a par with
the Premier League or the National Football League – it does not even have
its own YouTube channel, symptomatic of the sport’s impenetrable, closed-off
tendency – and its global audience fell in 2012. Almost empty stadiums in
Malaysia, South Korea and so on, embarrass Formula One, at least from a
branding perspective if not commercially, and its reliance on governments to
fund race venues appears unsustainable. The opening up of the sport and some
radical innovations are required if it is to hold people’s attention in the
digital age.
Ecclestone, who denies all charges against him, is a fighter and is unlikely
to simply fade away. But regardless of whether he survives this latest saga,
Formula One is a sport in need of reform. The question of who will lead and
champion that reform, and what direction it will take, still needs to be
answered.