Why the British GP's peril is becoming more real

After all the posturing by Bernie Ecclestone in his battles with the BRDC down the decades, there is a possibility that the British Grand Prix will be lost from the calendar on Liberty Media's watch. Nobody wants that to happen, but it remains a possible scenario.

This will be a critical year for Formula 1's management as it fights battles on several fronts and the clock runs down towards 2021 and a new era for the championship.

Along with its interactions with the teams and the painful progress being made towards a new Concorde Agreement, the calendar is the biggest challenge Liberty faces. And, by a coincidence of timing, the contracts of several races - including those at Silverstone, Monza, Barcelona, Mexico City and Hockenheim - expire in 2019.

Liberty has always said that it wants to protect the classic European events, and we will learn this year how that promise will play out. F1's bosses also have to secure the delayed Miami race for 2020 or '21, or risk losing a lot of credibility, having made such a big commitment to making the Florida street race happen.

That commitment has been costly. By basing Miami on a unique risk-sharing arrangement, without the traditionally high upfront sanction fee, Liberty created a rod for its own back. Naturally, other promoters, each paying tens of millions of dollars for the privilege of hosting a race, wanted to know what was special about Miami - and why they couldn't get a similar deal.

In public they were coy about it, in private rather less so. Then last week came the bombshell statement from the Formula One Promoters' Association, the body that formally represents 16 of the 21 races (missing are Russia, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Japan and Monaco).

Along with some general observations on the state of F1 was the unsubtle reference to the Miami deal: "New races should not be introduced to the detriment of existing events although the association is encouraged by the alternative business models being offered to prospective venues."

One of the intriguing aspects of the FOPA intervention is that the organisation has always enjoyed a low profile, to the point that a lot of people in F1 had probably forgotten that it even existed. In fact, it was formed back in May 2012, with its statutes outlining that its role was to "represent, promote and defend the interests of its members".

At the time, it seemed that the last thing Ecclestone needed was an organisation that allowed his key customers to get together, compare notes, and have a united voice. He'd built the F1 business on the circuit deals, and each one was different - why would he want everybody to find out just what the others were paying?

But the driving force behind its foundation was Australian GP supremo Ron Walker - one of Ecclestone's closest friends. As such, FOPA's focus was never likely to be to take on Ecclestone and push for better deals with some form of collective bargaining position.

"Silverstone got a contract which suited them at the time they signed it. Otherwise they wouldn't have signed it. Nobody made them sign it" Bernie Ecclestone

Indeed, at the time of its formation, Bernie said, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, that Walker had assured him that FOPA was on his side: "He said to me it's better to have an association in case the FIA starts to do silly things against me. He says he put this together to protect me in case I need protection."

But times have changed. Walker has sadly passed away, and Ecclestone is no longer in charge. Meanwhile, as their fees have risen - thanks to annual escalators built into long-term deals - F1's promoters have come under ever more pressure.

The relationship between Liberty and the promoters has been a very different one. Indeed, the current management encouraged more contact between the promoters by creating an event where they all came together in London, first held in January 2018, and repeated last week.

Although intended to allow Liberty to explain its plans for F1 and so on, the London gatherings have also afforded the opportunity for promoters to meet each other face-to-face, and further cement their FOPA links.

FOPA's current chairman is Silverstone boss Stuart Pringle, and the frustration that led to last week's statement is obvious from the British track's point of view, especially given that the race logged the highest attendance and spectator satisfaction levels in 2018.

As a private entity Silverstone receives no public subsidies, and it is competing in a market where pretty much everybody else does to some degree - even if in some cases it's a relatively modest amount of local government support.

Even races arguably closest to Silverstone's business model, Suzuka and Hockenheim, receive strong backing from Honda and Mercedes respectively, while Austin's Circuit of the Americas - a privately owned venue - is in the enviable position of having its sanction fee paid by Texas state funding.

It was back in July 2017 that the BRDC triggered a break clause in its British GP contract, originally signed with Ecclestone in 2009. A 5% escalator meant that the cost of hosting the race was destined to spiral way out of reach - something that Ecclestone says he anticipated when the deal was agreed.

"They got a contract which suited them at the time they signed it," he said last week. "Otherwise they wouldn't have signed it. Nobody made them sign it.

"They wanted a long contract, I didn't want a long contract. And in the contract, it was foreseen that the escalation clauses would have put them possibly in a position where they couldn't afford to pay, and that's why I put a clause in there that they could cancel. If they thought they couldn't make it commercially workable, they could cancel. So, they decided that's what they should do.

"Now there's no contract, and it's a case of negotiating for a new contract. If somebody else wanted to take it over and run it, they'd also have to have a new contract. If you and I decided that we were going to run it, we'd negotiate a contract."

When that break clause became available in 2017, the BRDC could not commit to the future financial numbers, and so opted out of the 2020-24 part of the original deal so that it could renegotiate with Liberty.

"This decision has been taken because it is not financially viable for us to deliver the British GP under the terms of our current contract," BRDC chairman John Grant announced. "We sustained losses of £2.8million in 2015 and £4.8m in '16, and we expect to lose a similar amount [in '17].

"We have reached the tipping point where we can no longer let our passion for the sport rule our heads. It would not only risk the very future of Silverstone and the BRDC, but also the British motorsport community that depends on us."

No new deal has been concluded, and there appears to be no sign of one being announced any time soon

The timing was a little embarrassing for Liberty, as the confirmation came just a day before the huge London Live event - designed in large part as a promotional tool for that year's British GP.

July 2017 therefore signalled the start of discussions over a contract that would come into force in 2020. The BRDC played a valuable card when it invited F1 CEO Chase Carey to its annual awards lunch in London that December.

The American enjoyed a taste of the thriving UK motorsport scene, and became aware of the clout of the BRDC. Junior single-seater champions and F1 testers Lando Norris and George Russell stepped up to receive trophies for their Formula 3 European Championship and GP3 titles, and an appearance by Lewis Hamilton was the icing on the cake.

When he was invited onto the stage, Carey had some positive words to say to the high-powered audience: "This is the home of F1, it's where we're based, and the fans here are fabulous. This really is the foundation of the sport. We've got some things to work through, but Britain is second to none in importance for us."

"We didn't just invite him because we thought it was the right thing to do," Pringle said that day. "We invited him because we want him to understand us.

"Of course we're going to have commercial differences. He wants more money, we want to pay less money. I have total empathy with their requirement to deliver value for their shareholders, but I'm under pressure to deliver financial returns as well. He needs to understand us, and we absolutely need to understand him."

At the time, Pringle was optimistic that a more favourable new contract could be agreed. Given that there was more than two and a half years from the first race under such a deal in July 2020, there was no great rush.

"As they well know, our door is open," he said then. "And when they want to engage, we will engage. We have agreed that they need to get through their first season and understand what they've bought, and it will pick up in the fullness of time. On a very selfish basis, some of my conversations would be easier if I had clarity on the future. But equally, I'm not in control of that, so it is what it is.

"There are some things that we disagree about and I will challenge them on, and there are some things that I do that they don't like and they will challenge me on. But it's a good working relationship."

Some 14 months later, and the position has changed somewhat. No deal has been concluded, and there appears to be no sign of one being announced any time soon - and Liberty's deadline for publishing the 2020 schedule suddenly doesn't seem to be so far away.

Most significantly, the Miami deal has changed the landscape, to the bemusement of Silverstone and others.

Until now Pringle and his BRDC colleagues have played their cards close to their chest in public, understandably not wanting to jeopardise any delicate negotiations with Liberty.

The fact that Pringle was the spokesperson for last week's FOPA statement, and in its slipstream made some pretty strong comments to Fleet Street, was a clear indication of the frustration in the Silverstone camp. It looked like a last roll of the dice by an organisation that had tried everything else to get Liberty's attention.

"You can't blame Silverstone doing what they did," Ecclestone said last week. "Because they obviously tried to do things in a much more peaceful way to get a deal. That's obviously what they tried to do. It didn't succeed."

"Silverstone is a world class venue, that does not require an F1 Grand Prix to have a very bright future" Stuart Pringle

In contrast, the Mexico City race, which is also in discussions for a 2020 contract, was quick to distance itself from the FOPA statement, issuing one of its own that was a clear attempt to curry favour with F1's management.

It will be interesting to see which approach pays off. Carey has always made it crystal clear that one of the biggest frustrations with his job is that so much information reaches the public domain, and he will have hated, and been embarrassed by, the FOPA statement. On the other hand, it may have hit its target.

"There is every indication the message has been received," Pringle told the BBC after the promoters met with Liberty.

"We were frustrated that we felt we had no option but to take this sort of action. But, actually, we have had a very positive day.

"We believe our concerns will be looked at and we as a group of promoters do recognise that ultimately we are all striving for the same thing - a healthy sport. We want to work in a meaningful way to achieve that, so we will work collaboratively with them going forward."

Pringle went from the Liberty discussions to a BRDC board meeting, and for the moment, the flow of comment has stopped. But one thing is clear: the numbers have to make commercial sense.

"Silverstone is a world class venue, that does not require an F1 grand prix to have a very bright future," he stressed at the end of 2017. "It is very much our preference to have one, because everyone is passionate about the subject matter. But if we have to have a future without one, we're entirely relaxed about that. In fact, we're extraordinarily confident about that.

"In some ways it's the preferable option. It's not the preferable option, because this is the British Racing Drivers' Club. But not having the race substantially reduces the risk. What this one weekend a year puts into our business is a shed load of risk, and a very small return, and a decreasing return under the old contract - and indeed negative, when you look at it in totality."

In other words, Pringle accepted back then that a worst case scenario could mean the race fell off the calendar in 2020. He had to put the health of his business first.

"We are 100% sanguine that one of the outcomes of our action is that maybe there is no British GP, and there is nobody who will be more disappointed than me," Pringle continued at the time.

"But if that is the outcome, I will also sleep extremely soundly. Because I know that what we have done is the right thing for Silverstone, and the right thing for the BRDC. It's not going to help anybody if we go bust."

The tantalising prospect of an alternative venue in or around central London remains so much hot air, and Ecclestone - who tried hard to make that happen - is adamant that it would be impossible. But the man who was for so long in the middle of British GP controversies is watching events with some interest.

"They've been dealing each other so they know what they want," Ecclestone said. "If our friends at Silverstone are prepared to go along with what Chase wants to give them, or Chase wants to give them what they're talking about - I have no idea. People negotiate in very funny ways these days..."