The key political battlegrounds that had F1 looking to the past and to the future

Formula 1 trumpeted the 75th anniversary of the world championship with a glitzy season launch at London’s O2. The first and indeed the last of its kind – for, while it was declared an incredible success by the commercial rights holder, there will be no similar events in the foreseeable future. Go figure.

To an extent, the F1 75 launch demonstrated how far the category has come since the last attempt to stage such a combined effort, 15 years earlier. In 2010 the Formula One Teams Association, the now-moribund entity set up to fight the corner of the competitors but even then collapsing under the weight of its internal divisions, tried to coordinate a joint launch, but the enterprise came to naught. FOTA had, more or less, been set up to drum FIA president Max Mosley out of office; with him gone, its sense of shared purpose had evaporated. Come 2010, the various parties of the first part, thoroughly divided and ruled by Bernie Ecclestone during negotiations for the next Concorde Agreement, couldn’t even agree what biscuits to serve at such a launch, let alone a date or time for the putative shindig.

Fast forward 15 years and Ecclestone has long since been escorted from the premises by a corporation with shareholders to which it must answer transparently, the latest Concorde Agreements have set all the teams on the road to being billion-dollar franchises, and the FIA has emerged from the financial pit in which it was left by Mosley. More to the point, relations between these stakeholders are largely peaceful – emphasis on ‘largely’.

It is perhaps apposite that the F1 75 launch took place in what is in effect a very large marquee, since all the stakeholders were at pains to put on a united front – being inside the tent pissing out, as it were, rather than the other way around. And yet there were already signs of strain: disputes aplenty had arisen over who should shoulder the expenses of putting on this show, and the more marketing-oriented teams felt disobliged by having to share a platform with the others, diluting their impact. This was all before the host, Jack Whitehall, took to the stage and began working his way through a script that managed to remain near the knuckle despite having gone through many blanderising iterations, said to have been more than 10 but fewer than 20.

It was a bruising night for Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, a Shakespearean foreshadowing of the fall to come. For all that Red Bull is a supposedly edgy youth brand, its home base is in Austria, among the most socially conservative countries in Europe. As Whitehall proceeded to the team’s ‘top table’ and unleashed more borderline badinage, the spotlight fell on Horner, wife Geri, and Red Bull managing director Oliver Mintzlaff, the last of whom wore a palpably unamused expression akin to that of a nun who had wandered into a Bernard Manning gig in error. After this microexpression of the political wrangling within the Red Bull organisation, Horner took to the stage ahead of his team’s slot in the running order and was roundly booed within the auditorium.

As his walk-on music – the Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up – faded away, Horner sternly informed the audience that this was the late Dietrich Mateschitz’s favourite tune. It was a masterfully passive-aggressive piece of crowd control, stunning the mob into silence. Well, here Horner had won a battle, but come summer he would lose the war, ousted from the team he had pretty much built. As with any regime change, following Mateschitz’s death a power struggle had broken out within Red Bull – and Horner, in trying to extend his influence during this period, made enemies who would ultimately take advantage of his team’s competitive slip.
All this lay in the future, though. As the FIA’s logo flickered across the big screens mid-evening, it too was booed. This did not sit well with the governing body’s president, who took to musing out loud on social media.

Horner's downfall was foreshadowed at the F1 75 launch

Photo by: Getty Images

“This week’s F1 launch in London has triggered a lot of positive discussion on the future of the sport,” he posted on Instagram. “While we look forward to the introduction of the 2026 regulations on chassis and power unit, we must also lead the way on future technological motorsport trends. We should consider a range of directions including the roaring sound of the V10 running on sustainable fuel. Whichever direction is chosen, we must support the teams and manufacturers in ensuring cost control on R&D expenditure.”

Well, the devil makes work for idle thumbs. It was a brazenly populist play, appealing to widespread sentiment that in embracing hybrid turbocharged powertrains, F1 has lost the visceral brutality that used to soundtrack the racing. Had Mohammed Ben Sulayem foreseen what a tumult he would set in motion, he might have left the post sitting in drafts.

In this era of relative peace between F1’s stakeholders, Ben Sulayem’s occasional tendency to venture off-piste has been a source of friction: first when he announced a tender process for new teams to join the grid without the say-so of F1 or the existing teams; and here when he ran ‘bring back V10s’ up the flagpole and rather more people than he might have expected rallied to it. Within a month the idea had gained so much momentum, and generated political fissures within teams and their power unit partners, that a summit had to be held during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend to straighten matters out.

Whether you care for his management style or not, Ben Sulayem is a canny operator, as those who would set themselves against him in the coming months came to learn

This issue proved to be another proverbial nail in Horner’s coffin, for it’s understood that he was effectively ‘patient zero’ in the hype epidemic, putting Ecclestone on speakerphone during an F1 Commission meeting on the morning of the season launch, giving ‘The Bolt’ a platform to make a stark pitch to kill off the hybrid powertrains he abhors. But whether you agree with the idea or not, getting excited about a potential future ruleset before the next ones are due to arrive in 2026 was not a good look – particularly if you had partners committed to substantial investments in the next-generation hybrid powertrains being held up for public derision. Ford, which is supporting Red Bull’s in-house engine programme, was one such, so Horner was compelled to curb his enthusiasm and slip his rose-tinted spectacles back into their decorative case. The whole idea of a return to natural aspiration has now been parked, largely at the behest of the engine manufacturers who arrived mob-handed for the Bahrain summit to state what should have been obvious.

This was not the only challenge facing Ben Sulayem that weekend – or the remainder of the season. Robert Reid’s resignation as his deputy president for sport, citing “a fundamental breakdown in governance standards within motorsport’s global governing body”, signified the onset of a prolonged period of political turbulence for the president in election year.

Ben Sulayem stood on a reforming platform when first elected in 2021, promising greater transparency and professionalism within the governing body, including the appointment of a CEO, and that he would be a hands-off president. His critics say the FIA has moved in the opposite direction, and indeed the CEO left after 18 months. The kerfuffle that culminated in Reid’s resignation began with representatives of member clubs being compelled to sign non-disclosure agreements before being admitted to meetings, a move that prompted several prominent figures to object.

Ben Sulayem was elected unopposed for a second term as FIA president, despite rivals coming forward to challenge him

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / LAT Images via Getty Images

But whether you care for his management style or not, Ben Sulayem is a canny operator, as those who would set themselves against him in the coming months came to learn. The maths involved in launching a challenge for the presidency are difficult: putative candidates must establish an exclusive ‘list’ of their prospective vice-presidents for sport from each of the FIA’s six global regions. When Carlos Sainz Sr floated the possibility of running, a response soon came in the form of an open letter of support for Ben Sulayem from 34 regional clubs.

Sainz declared himself out, but the feeling was always that he had been a stalking horse to gauge support for a challenge. A genuine candidate did emerge – Tim Mayer, controversially dropped from his stewarding role the previous season – but his bid would ultimately run aground when he was unable to assemble a ‘list’. Since there is only one eligible world council member from South America (Fabiana Ecclestone, wife of Bernie, who had declared herself for Ben Sulayem), Mayer withdrew. His ‘FIA Forward’ movement will no doubt continue to berate the incumbent from the sidelines.

Of more immediate concern to Ben Sulayem is legal proceedings in the French courts by another aspiring candidate, Laura Villars, on the grounds that the FIA election rules effectively block challenges to the incumbent, and are therefore inherently undemocratic. The full hearing is due to take place on 12 February, almost a year on from that eventful night in London. But this is one expression of disapproval that cannot be waved off with a post on Instagram…

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The FIA has a date in the courts to settle the election rules saga

Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Motorsport Images