Why F1’s single launch will succeed where the last one failed

Maybe there weren’t enough adults in the room. No, scratch that – 15 years ago in Formula 1, adults were such a rare commodity that, in the unlikely event you could put a couple together, the chances of them reaching a consensus on the location, size, or even the existence of the room would be remote.

Even viewed through the finest rose-tinted glasses money can buy, these were not halcyon days. So while the opinionati greeted the announcement of a collective launch event at London’s O2 Arena this February with much-disgruntled harrumphing, the very fact such an event is happening illustrates how far F1 has travelled.

That will hold true even if ‘F175 Live’ (imagine the orgy of self-congratulation which greeted the coining of that zinger) amounts to little more than the proverbial sound and fury, signifying nothing but the presence of some painted show cars and disengaged, put-upon drivers unspooling tired PR bromides in response to soft questions pitched by professional rent-a-gobs.

No doubt there has been much push-and-pull and do-I-have-tos behind the scenes, but everybody is going to be in the same place at the same time – and that’s progress. Everyone wins. Unless you’ve bought a resale ticket on Viagogo or whatever.

The last time F1 attempted to stage a single launch it was the brainchild of FOTA, that short-lived alliance of teams which began to dissolve the minute it achieved its aim. That purpose, of course, was to put Max Mosley’s head on a platter, which meant that as plans for the single launch were floated in the autumn of 2009 the organisation was already beginning to fragment.

FOTA came together against a background of disputes over the Concorde Agreement – at that point being renewed year-on-year because no long-term consensus could be achieved – wrangling over customer cars and the philosophy of F1 as a category, and of course the eternally thorny issue of who should be in charge. It was widely known that ‘ringmaster’ Bernie Ecclestone and FIA president Mosley, colleagues of old, largely acted hand-in-glove while retaining the outward appearance of often being at loggerheads.

Mosley and Ecclestone were in charge of proceedings when the last joint launch was proposed

Photo by: Motorsport Images

After a decade in which Mosley had ‘leased’ F1’s commercial rights to Ecclestone for a fraction of their worth and Bernie had proceeded to hawk them around like a tray of cakes, the competitors wanted a little more action than was being shared with them. In his autobiography – an egregiously self-serving tome even by the standards of the genre – Mosley likened them to restaurant customers who felt entitled to a share of the profits because they dined there often.

Come 2009, amid the fall-out from the global financial crisis, and Mosley’s threatened imposition of a budget cap along with an unwanted tender process for three new teams, old enmities were being set aside for the purposes of tackling the greater threat. Leading the protagonists were Ferrari and McLaren, unlikely bedfellows after the events of ‘Spygate’ in 2007, but such are the politics of mutual advantage.

At the Belgian Grand Prix in 2007, immediately after the FIA world motor sport council imposed a $100million fine on McLaren, Mosley staged a photo op on the stairs of the McLaren ‘brand centre’ in which he shook hands with team boss Ron Dennis as a public display of turning the page. As he did so he leaned in and said, sotto voce, “$5million for the offence, $95million for being a c**t.”

FOTA only gained impetus when Martin Whitmarsh took over from Dennis as team principal, a new face signifying a public healing of the perceived breach between McLaren and Ferrari

A milder variant of this sentence has been quoted elsewhere but this, complete with noun of Old Norse origin, is how it was reported to me by one who was both present and within earshot. This petty settling of an old score – Dennis had long stood in opposition to Ecclestone and Mosley’s manoeuvrings with the commercial rights – chilled the blood, even of those who didn’t hold Dennis in high regard.

Thus the knives were out for Mosley before he scored the Pyrrhic victory of getting rid of Dennis altogether in the aftermath of the ‘Liegate’ scandal during the 2009 Australian Grand Prix weekend. Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo reached out to the other teams in the summer of ’08 to form FOTA, the Formula One Teams’ Association, with a mandate to present a united front in matters of rulemaking and commercial policy.

This was FOTA’s true purpose although in public it endeavoured to present itself as “the voice of the fans”, campaigning for better access in a world then shut off to anyone not wearing a VIP pass.

FOTA only gained impetus when Martin Whitmarsh took over from Dennis as team principal, a new face signifying a public healing of the perceived breach between McLaren and Ferrari. Disgruntlement with Mosley built to a peak in those opening months of 2009 as the controversial ‘double diffusers’ were waved through. No less an eminence than engineering guru Adrian Newey has said this was clearly a political move to punish McLaren and Ferrari – who had failed to spot the double-diffuser loophole – for their involvement in FOTA.

Force India and Williams were expelled and then reinstated to FOTA during a turbulent time

Photo by: Rainer Schlegelmilch

Another inflection point came in June when the identities of the three new teams joining the grid in 2010 were announced, two of which clearly had no proper infrastructure or business plan, while more realistic candidates such as Lola and Prodrive were rejected.

Of the existing teams only Force India and Williams had lodged entries for the 2010 season and, as ‘splitters’, were ejected from FOTA while the remainder presented a united front and announced plans for a breakaway series. By now Ecclestone was no longer willing to stand by his old ally, a quiet word was had, and Mosley made it known that he would not stand for re-election as FIA president.

While Force India and Williams were subsequently re-admitted to the FOTA circle of trust, the ties of mutual interest between the teams were loosening as they got back to the age-old business of squabbling over their shares of F1’s commercial revenues.

Nevertheless, FOTA secretary general Simone Perillo, a Ferrari appointee with a background in the Italian business association Confindustria, pushed ahead with FOTA’s public mandate of cuddly fan-friendliness, the jewel in the crown of which was the plan to hold a unified launch event in an accessible place the following January.

It’s understood that FOTA got as far as negotiating a deal with the local government in Valencia to host the event and subsidise the costs, on the grounds that it would attract substantial visitor traffic and revenue. The community’s Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias had provided the stage for McLaren’s season launch in 2007 and been used in publicity materials for the city’s new street circuit, which hosted the European Grand Prix, though the reality of that was the jejune and cluttered backdrop of a container port rather than glitzy modern architecture.

Following the group unveiling, testing was scheduled to begin at the nearby Ricardo Tormo circuit on 1 February. Local hero Fernando Alonso’s move to Ferrari that season, along with Michael Schumacher’s much-vaunted comeback, virtually guaranteed interest would be strong.

By early December, though, it had become clear the event was untenable. Only Mercedes was prepared to commit to being ready for day one of testing and, what with Schumacher’s presence in a car only recently painted silver after the acquisition of the Brawn team, this was an outfit determined to be in charge of its own messaging. Other teams were pushing production deadlines too close to the start of testing to commit.

Red Bull signalled that its new car wouldn’t be ready and it wasn’t prepared to pay to send a show vehicle, which in any case would be in an old livery.

The Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias that hosted McLaren's launch in 2007 was the mooted venue for 2010 launch that never happened

Photo by: Edd Hartley

There were pettifogging quibbles, too, over who was paying for what, who got to decide on issues such as catering and VIP facilities, and of course the matter of how much exposure could be guaranteed to whom. It was as tawdry and excruciating as that moment at the end of a group meal when the bill is being divvied up and someone announces they’d only imbibed soft drinks and hadn’t ordered a starter.

With this farrago FOTA announced to the world its imminent self-destruction. Perillo moved on that summer, replaced by sports lawyer Oliver Weingarten, who somehow kept the lights on for another four years.

Ecclestone finally split the teams’ unity by appealing to individual greed and conducting separate negotiations, picking them off one by one. The Concorde Agreement that followed was a clutch bag stuffed with bipartite agreements, locking in competitive and financial inequalities for a decade until the next owner of F1’s commercial rights reached a more politically and commercially sustainable deal in 2020. 

By then, thanks in part to the matter of a bug going around, most teams were ready not only for a more equitable share of the takings, but also to commit to the once-hated budget cap.

In the Drive to Survive era, it seems, the public is content with a degree of fakery and the fact that many if not all of the cars will be show vehicles is not the problem it might once have been

In this context returning to the concept of a single launch makes sense. While the united public face of F1’s present stakeholders is often obviously fake, there are fewer major fault lines on important matters of policy.

In the Drive to Survive era, it seems, the public is content with a degree of fakery and the fact that many if not all of the cars will be show vehicles is not the problem it might once have been. Transport costs are also less of an issue given the location (for most of the participants at least). It is clear none of the teams will be left out of pocket.

Journalists may chafe at lack of exclusive access and, in the 24/7 media age, the splurging in one event of material which in other years would have spread ‘content’ over days and weeks. Tough. It’s not for you.

Is it ‘for the fans’ though? We’ll have to see what transpires. The show is being organised by Brian Burke Creative, the company behind the Las Vegas Grand Prix opening and closing ceremonies. Burke was also executive producer of American Idol and Britain/America’s Got Talent. What to divine from this? Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari be damned. If Lance Stroll turns up on stage with a singing dog, I’m in.

Will there be the same glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas Grand Prix's opening ceremony from 2023?

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images