It is fate some in the sport would care little about. Bernie Ecclestone, the
sport’s embattled supremo, appears to prefer to deal with teams individually
to negotiate himself, and Weingarten even struggles to get a season pass
from Formula One to attend all the races (he proudly hangs his individual
passes for each race from the last two seasons in his tiny office near
Oxford Circus).
As Bob Fearnely, deputy team principal at Force India, puts it: “Naturally
Bernie would have seen it as a threat, when you’re looking at doing
collective bargaining. But when we’re looking at building fan forums and
working for the promotion of Formula One, then obviously we’d like to do it
in conjunction with Formula One Management. We’re trying to align ourselves
with them and enhance the process.”
Despite Fearnley’s optimism about FOTA’s future and the chances of bringing
Red Bull, Ferrari, Sauber and Toro Rosso back on board, sources at the
association have told The Telegraph the future is extremely bleak.
In recent years it has been forced to focus on much less contentious issues in
the sport. In 2013, on behalf on members and non-members, it negotiated with
Pirelli a deal for tyre blanket branding, sorted out taxation issues in
India, ran fans’ forums across the world (one of its most successful
ventures), and produced a carbon reduction analysis and report, among other
things.
But fundamentally, the chance to negotiate as one body with the commercial
rights holder has well and truly gone.
As Fearnley explains, the cause is historic: “FOTA was set up in order to
unite all the teams to be able to do collective bargaining, in terms of
working with the commercial rights holders and being able to get into
position where the teams could collectively agree a process for the new
concorde agreement.
“Unfortunately, as you know, Red Bull broke away from that and signed a
separate agreement, and that’s obviously well documented. That effectively
broke that need for FOTA..”
Fearnley is big enough not to hold grudges, and says there can still be a
future for FOTA with all the teams. But fundamentally the question remains:
why can’t Formula One teams get on?
First, it must be said, on a personal level, many of the teams do get on.
Mechanics, engineers and designers have often worked for several teams, and
good personal relationships are shared up and down the paddock. But on a
wider, more political level, agreement is much harder to find.
As Graeme Lowdon, CEO of Marussia explains, everyone has such diverse goals
that in a way, the sport is simply not set up for the 11 teams to coalesce.
“If everyone was simply a racing team, then there’s a higher chance that we
would have all the same goals. The problem at the moment seems to be that
the teams are presented with such varying objectives, that the areas of
overlap become less and less, which I think is a shame.
“The teams should have common objectives. We certainly experience a lot of the
same things. We all work to the same rules, go to all the same places. In a
truly efficient structure, there would be very much an important role.
He adds: “It’s difficult when you’ve got some teams whose primary objective is
financial survival, and others is to promote a product. The primary activity
in Formula One should be racing. It’s the FIA Formula One World
Championship, and that’s what it should be all about.” But in reality
Formula One is so much more than that, which in some senses is part of its
appeal.
It took Sir Jackie and the rest of Formula One until the trauma of losing
Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger in 1994 to galvanise collective action
on safety. With Ecclestone’s trial on the horizon, some sense an opening
now, but if recent experience is anything to go by, it could be a long time
before the teams embrace collective bargaining and are a united force. Don’t
hold your breath.