FORMULA ONE: A NEW SEASON: JUSTIN HYNES sees real changes in this year's Formula One season, so, it won't just be all about the usual big teams
MELBOURNE IS used to Formula One invading it’s city centre with all the low-key class of a night out with Liberace and Elton John, with both being chauffered by Evel Knievel. A puff of fairy dust, the acid tang of Vegas-tinged glamour and a wallet bursting with opportunities to show just how far conspicuous consumption can be pushed as a design for life.
This year though is different. Largely gone are the lavish opening-night parties, the florid promotional gestures. This time out there are no overpaid pop stars lazily miming cheesy hits to fellow B-list celebs, no beachside barbecues to promote the latest lines of team merchandise, no photo opp fighter jet flybys for the multi-millionaire drivers. This year F1 will set up its stalls with the minimum fuss, and get working on how to make their cars go faster for less.
If there’s an analogy here, it’s almost as if Formula One has been through some kind of Betty Ford clinic, emerging a more reflective, sober sport, focused on the things that really matter, not the fripperies. There has, afterall, been a massive wake-up call.
In the five months since Lewis Hamilton became the sport’s youngest ever champion, the world in which F1 thrived for the past 15 years has collapsed. A sport which grew fat on the crumbs dropped from the tables of bloated banks and over-indulged billionaire benefactors has been left reeling as cash drained away, circuit’s backed out, sponsors shied away from renewing costly deal and even teams withdrew to safe distance to lick their wounds.
While teams such as Williams were hit hard as major Icelandic sponsor Baugur and pantomime villain Royal Bank of Scotland imploded in splurges of bad debt and worse publicity, it was, of course, the withdrawal from the sport of major manufacturer Honda that sent the biggest shockwaves through the paddock.
The Japanese company’s December announcement that in such economically turbulent times it could no longer afford the luxury of F1 set alarm bells ringing. Belts needed to be tightened, a change would have to come. Indeed, only last week Toyota motor sports chairman Tadashi Yamashina revealed that his company too had come close to exiting the sport too, until its own Formula One budgets were slashed – massively.
“Our Formula One budget was cut again and again from its original figure,” Yamashina said. “It was cut again after Honda’s announcement they were leaving. In all my time at Toyota I have never seen cuts like it.”
To be fair, the sport had been aware of its profligacy for some time and had taken steps towards prudence. Last year, in the face of changing times, a raft of rule changes designed to cut costs and improve racing were approved and will come into effect this weekend.
The changed Formula One landscape could provide the best, most open season the sport has seen for some time. Although Formula One is often criticised for treating its rule book like some sort of work in progress, if this season’s tearing up of the book has one major bonus it is in the overnight eradication of the advantages McLaren and Ferrari have built up.
To some degree, that has been borne out in pre-season testing. McLaren have struggled badly, while previous midfield outfits such as Toyota, Red Bull Racing, as well as Williams and Toyota – who, respectively, finished 5th, 7th and 8th last year – have shown far better than expected.
However, any upset to the status quo inevitably invokes loud protests. In time-honoured fashion the sport could this weekend again shoot itself in the foot as the legality of elements of the cars of Williams and Toyota are disputed by the regular front-runners.
However, trusting to providence that sense prevails, what state is the grid in? Perhaps the most romantic story is the potentially victorious rebirth of Honda as Brawn GP, under the stewardship of former Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn.
Rescued from the ashes of Honda’s withdrawal at the 11th hour, the arrival of the team at the final group test of pre-season in Barcelona was greeted with unanimous goodwill by rival teams – the health of the sport, the salvation of some 700 jobs and the presence of a 10th team on the Melbourne grid was only to be applauded.
Until, that is, drivers Jenson Button and veteran Rubens Barrichello took to the track. Running over a second quicker than any of their rivals, the fruit of Honda’s final investment at the moment looks a potential early-season race winner. This will be somewhat embarrassing for Brawn GP’s new engine supplier, Mercedes, who are currently staring down the barrel of mid-grid times for defending champion Lewis Hamilton and McLaren team-mate Heikki Kovalainen. They are now facing the possibility of being eclipsed not only by its customer teams, Brawn GP and Force India, but also by its main rivals, Ferrari and BMW, in the season opener. Hamilton though remains optimistic of a recovery.
“At the moment, this year’s car is a little behind the rest in terms of development, but I’m absolutely confident we will get stronger and grow as the year progresses,” the champion said. “My plan is to be at the front of the grid in Melbourne.”
At the moment that’s a big ask. If testing has revealed anything, it is that, for the first time in a long time any one of a dozen drivers has the potential, and more importantly, the car, to take the laurels this weekend. From Red Bull Racing’s radically designed RB5 at the hands of former Toro Rosso wonder-kid Sebastian Vettel, to the ugly-duckling but improving Renault R29 driven by double champion Fernando Alonso and the ever-present threat of Ferrari, driven by last year’s runner-up Felipe Massa and 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen, the new rules have allowed the “also-rans” of recent years to gamble in an environment where currently there is no such thing as best practice.
For the first time too, Formula One has attempted to address one of the major criticisms constantly levelled against it – that beyond strategic decisions, nothing happens. In a bid to improve overtaking, this year’s rear wings are narrower and simpler, designed to provide a bigger wake behind the car, a slipstream allowing a chasing driver to get closer. Add to this the overtaking aid that the new Kinetic Energy Recovery System represents – whereby drivers using the system will get an energy boost of up to 80bhp for around 6-7 seconds once per lap – and the reintroduction of slick tyres to provide more grip and all the indicators point to closer, more exciting racing.
Perhaps the biggest single change occurred last week when a short FIA press statement revealed that it would defer the controversial “most wins takes all” title deciding system which was rushed through by the governing body and commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone the week before. This is the real evidence that the Formula One landscape is changing. No longer do the teams sit idly by as the powers that be dictate terms. Increasingly it is the competing teams that are defining the shape of things to come. The balance of power is shifting as Formula One seeks to assuage the concerns of manufacturers it desperately needs to fill the grid.
Formula One, so used to setting its own agenda as hungry promoters, manufacturers and even countries demanded a seat at the table, has suddenly become a buyer’s market. It’s not only going to be unpredictable on track this year but in the corridors of power, it could soon be open-season too.
