Why does the FIA keep double-booking itself?

Mathematically-speaking it should be easy. Each year offers 52 weekends, while the sum of FIA world championship motorsport events in Formula 1 (21), World Endurance Championship (nine), World Rally Championship (14) and World Touring Car Championship (12) amounts to 54 events. Therefore, in an ideal motorsport world, there should be but two clashes across these calendars.

It should be noted that the fifth world championship, the World Rallycross Championship has not been considered for the purposes of this column. While it is undeniably emerging and has many key ingredients, it is a relatively new player and has not yet gained a major audience.

True, a case could be made, and often is, that Christmas and (Gregorian) New Year should be exempt. But, on that basis, exemptions could be argued for all major holidays celebrated by whatever nations, creeds or religions.

Forget not that grands prix and other series have been contested over Easter (often in Islamic countries), while the South African Grand Prix was variously held on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Equally, Dakar starts just as the festive period ends.

Indeed, in 2000, amid rumours of 'punishment' against Silverstone for investing in BRDC member facilities rather than the circuit, the British Grand Prix was staged on Easter Sunday, coincidentally a day with statistically the highest rainfall on what is already a very wet island. Clearly, then, no date is sacrosanct when it comes to FIA calendars.

Let us, though, accept that 50 active weekends it is, providing for four clashes. However, analysis of the four calendars shows there to be no fewer than 17 conflicting weekends, three of which have three of the key world championship series going head-to-head-to-head.

Attempts have been made to minimise the effects of clashes by staging races on Saturday or Sunday respectively, even Friday in one case. But the overall effect is that a little over one-third of weekends feature clashes, while the period from the end of November to the third weekend in March - the F1 opener - lists three events in 14 weeks, all of them WRC rounds. Surely a GP or WEC race could have been slotted in there?

True, it would nonsensical for the Nurburgring, snaking through the icy Eifels, to be granted a February F1 slot. Equally, a GP at Austin in July would be utterly unbearable, given Texan temperatures regularly exceed 40°C in summer.

A Monte Carlo Rally in July would be daft, although the Sanremo Rally did once masquerade as 'Summer's Monte'. But there is no reason why Rally Germany must run in July/August, or Malaysia's GP in October. For that matter, Singapore's night race could be run on New Year's Eve.

Scheduling finales for Melbourne would be commercial suicide due to sub-optimal TV audiences in Western time zones - as blighted season closers in Japan and China a decade ago prove. But racing in Australia in January? Why not? If Antipodean summers were good enough for F1 drivers contesting the Tasman Series during the sixties, they are good enough for today's stars.

Yes, F1 has certain regulatory restrictions, such as a minimum period between the last race of the previous year and the first of an incoming season, while the minimum number of races to be held within Europe is also stipulated. Then there are 'protected' events - Britain, Italy, Monaco, France and Belgium - that are deemed to hold historical importance, and must be included unless their promoters are unable to commit.

However, the words 'will' and 'way' spring to mind. Events such as Qatar's WTCC rounds are listed for the same weekend as the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - albeit on different days - while Germany's WEC round clashes with Hungary's F1 race and is scheduled for a week before the German Grand Prix. Ditto Japan: the WEC and F1 are staged on consecutive weekends.

While the promoters of the FIA's various championships may be zillionaires who pay scant attention to anything other than their bank balances, they surely should realise that most rank-and-file race fans have limited budgets, and simply cannot afford two (or even three) consecutive events. Family commitments, too, play a role in attendances. One event a month is acceptable for motorsport widows(ers), but two or three?

For events to be inscribed on the F1 calendar they need to fulfil two primary requirements: hold valid hosting contracts with FOM (and, of course be up-to-date on fees), plus be in possession of FIA Grade A circuit licences, issued after inspection by suitably-qualified officials, usually the FIA's safety delegate and race director Charlie Whiting, or be in a position to qualify for said document. Such races are inscribed with an asterisk.

F1, though, last year experienced the farcical situation of four calendars being 'confirmed' by the FIA World Motorsport Council, one after each quarterly WMSC meeting. Not only did this play havoc with team planning, but F1 fans in many countries were left with worthless travel bookings. Clearly, then, the WMSC and Oxford University have vastly different understandings of the word 'confirmed'.

This writer made 12 alternate, fortunately cancellable, hotel bookings during the course of last season for this year, so often did the schedule change. Imagine, then, the impact on fans, and it is not as though F1 currently has an excess of these, as grandstands can attest. Given that most grands prix are sponsored by local or national authorities, that surely is no way to treat one's customer base.

An oft-heard argument is that fans can be compartmentalised into F1 or WRC or WEC or WTCC supporters, and therefore clashes have little effect on attendances or viewerships. However, true-blue fans follow engines wherever they may run, and gladly attend other events when the racing is good, accessible and relatively local. That was borne out during last weekend's WEC Spa 6 Hour race, when fans toffed to the nines in F1 gear arrived in droves.

It was during that event - one of the most scintillating WEC rounds of recent times, enjoyed under sunny skies by a 40,000+ crowd at £25 a head - that the thorny issue of Le Mans and F1 clashes again reared its head.

Two years ago the governing body decreed that the Le Mans 24 Hours would be a 'protected' event staged during a dedicated mid-June weekend. Then, no sooner was it won by an F1 driver (Nico Hulkenberg) to great fanfare, than the winner is unable to defend his stunning success due to an 'unavoidable' clash with a grand prix in, of all places, Azerbaijan.

Not only that, the start time of the grand prix clashes with the finish of the 24-hour classic, despite promises from the FIA that this would not be the case...

During the past 20 years there have been but four occasions when Le Mans and F1 did not clash, and that smacks more of deliberation than "unavoidable coincidence", particularly given that Formula One Management acquired F1's commercial rights exactly 20 years ago.

During the Spa weekend a source in the loop suggested that FOM had tried every which way to stage this year's British Grand Prix on the very weekend requested by Formula E for its London finale in Battersea Park. When Goodwood's Festival of Speed got too big for its perceived boots, it discovered the British Grand Prix clashed, regardless of how Lord March moved his garden party's dates about.

Moscow's ePrix was cancelled after the mayor of the city failed to approve the event despite it having been successfully staged last year. Was it coincidental that the race was canned immediately after FOM CEO Bernie Ecclestone enjoyed cosy chats with President Putin at Sochi, shortly after Formula E staged a very successful, inner-city Paris ePrix?

Consider the latest FE and F1 skirmish. No sooner is FE finalising its Battersea ePrix than Ecclestone states F1 could next year be racing on the streets of London. Coincidence or deliberation?

Whatever, it is this competition between championships that results in calendar crowding, as each series goes all out to prove that it has bigger appeal than the next. Surely F1's commercial enemy is not the WEC or WRC, but other sporting genres. Or even the "13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from", that Roger Waters sang so eloquently about on The Wall.

Surely all FIA championships, led by the governing body, should band together to strengthen all of motorsport rather than picking each other off through internecine warfare. To provide a parallel, imagine if the Volkswagen Group's various volume brands - VW, Audi, SEAT and Skoda - engaged in marketing warfare with each other rather than going after Toyota or GM or Ford customers.

Instead the four brands co-operate via technology and platform sharing, with each cultivating a niche for its own products. Households could conceivably choose Audi for dad, Skoda estate for mum, SEAT for son and VW for daughter. If the family is particularly prosperous, dad drives a Porsche or Bentley on weekends. This strategy elevated the VW Group to market leader, a position it holds despite the ravaging effects of the emissions scandal.

Imagine, then, how much stronger would the FIA world championships - and, by extension, global motorsport - be if all series concentrated on sharing where possible. Complementary sponsors spring to mind, as do technical and operational partners, cooperating on operational issues such as calendars, all while broadening the appeal of their series.

There will, of course, be clashes of sorts - just as VW prospects may plump for Skoda or SEAT, but at least remain within the VW family, rather than sending customers to the opposition - and it is surely not beyond the wit of promoters and the FIA's sporting department to thrash out such issues out. Here the FIA could and should play an active role, just as the main VW board takes final decisions on product planning.

Consider how the VW Group launched its revolutionary MBQ platform, a shared construction for front-engined sedans. Did the brands cannibalise each other? No. Instead models were phased in over a period of a year, with the introduction of medium-size SUVs following the same strategy. First it was VW's Tiguan, then Audi's Q3 followed by the recently-announced SEAT Ateca, with Skoda's Kodiaq to follow later this year.

Imagine the bloodshed had all brands launched together. Worse, consider how fragmented media coverage would have been. Series promoters could take a leaf out of VW's book, as media outlets allocate space and time to various genres. If three world championship events are held at any one time, it stands to reason that space will be shared (invariably inequitably), if, that is, or one or other does not lose out totally.

For fans it is either feast or famine. Zero motorsport fix one weekend; overdose on F1/WRC/WRC/WTCC/FE the next. Any wonder interest is dwindling, TV ratings dwindling and sponsorship income dropping? Consider that F1 has (officially) lost a third of its viewers in a little over five years despite the calendar expanding 15 per cent during that time, which further compounds the real drop.

The FIA hosts its annual sports conference in Turin on June 21-23. This provides the governing body with a perfect opportunity of instituting a full-blown motorsport calendar commission, charged with co-ordinating all world championship dates in order to allow all its series to take on the real competition as a block, rather than squabbling among themselves.