Is F1 a Good Shop Window?
25.8.00

The following article written by Michael Harvey was published in the Financial Times of 19th August:

"Why Jaguar should follow me and kick the F1 habit"
Michael Harvey says motor racing is not necessarily a good shop window

On the Monday after the recent German Grand Prix I found myself in a position I hadn't known for 20 years or more - I had no idea which driver had won.

This was no self-imposed media exile to enable me to watch pre-recorded highlights "as live". More simply than that, I didn't care. After more than two decades of structuring my summer Sundays first round a late BBC radio report, then the occasional live television broadcast, then eventually the BBC's, and finally ITV's regular transmissions, I had cracked the habit. I had cured myself of Formula One and won back approximately a day and half of my life each year, most of it summer Sunday afternoons.

Getting out of the F1 habit has not been difficult. It's ironic that it should have been this year's German Grand Prix that finally marked the end of my F1 affair - it was apparently one of the best races in years, but only because it rained on and off, and because those intermittent showers showed that, just like many another motorist, even F1 drivers go to pieces when it rains. That, and the fact that the 2000 German Grand Prix was notable for the intervention of F1's first protester to run on to the track. Only this streaker made-for-tele kept his clothes on.

Yet precipitation and protests apart, this race would have been as dull as any other where double former champion Michael Schumacher isn't competing (he got barged off at the first corner).

And when he doesn't get barged off, he usually wins - team orders making sure his Ferrari team-mate doesn't - and if it's not Schumacher then take your pick from the charmless duo in the Mercedes-McLarens, Scot David Coulthard or Finn Mika Hakkinen.

To understand the extent to which these two teams dominate proceedings, look at the championship table for constructors; Mercedes/McLaren has 112 points, Ferrari 111 points. Their next rival, BMW/Williams, has just 24 points. A spectacle F1 ain't. And it's been this way for years, the comprehensive level of control imposed by Bernie Ecclestone, and the complete level of submission to that control from the teams and media keeping it that way.

Standing up and suggesting that the emperor's clothes are, despite the technological beauty of the fabrics from which they are woven, excruciatingly dull to watch, results in immediate exclusion for the reporter responsible and, like any club, F1 is made up largely of individuals who feel a need to belong to it.

The F1 media, much like the fashion press, enjoys a mutually beneficial and uncritical co-existence with the sport. Much like fashion "reporters", F1 journalists all ache to belong and the myth is therefore perpetuated.

And right now the F1 myth could not be stronger. In the past few years Mercedes, BMW, Honda, and Jaguar have all directed hundreds of millions of pounds towards making their presence felt. Over the next two years Renault and Toyota will join them. Peugeot has just announced its withdrawal from F1 after blowing a sum roughly equivalent to that required to develop a brand new niche model like a roadster. After achieving absolutely nothing, it must be wondering why it didn't.

But F1 does have an extremely powerful pull right now. It all begins with Ferrari, of course. The red cars are the lifeblood of F1. Without them, the sport would rapidly become anaemic and die.

Without Ferrari the competition would be meaningless. Like cricket and the West Indians and soccer and the Brazilians, not being on top of one's game is largely irrelevant; it's their being in the game that matters. And Ferrari's being in the game proved enough for Mercedes, and that in turn proved enough for BMW. And both of its main rivals being in F1 proved irresistible for Jaguar. How it must wish that it hadn't.

All Jaguar has been able to show on the track this year is that its cars are, by and large, no match for a Mercedes or a BMW. We knew that already. Jaguar claims its poor performances are a result of it being new to F1, yet the team is last year's successful Jackie Stewart team painted green - same buildings, new website. Much of the criticism of Jaguar - mostly unpublished of course - has been directed at its drivers, the over-the-hill Johnny Herbert and the all-over-the pages of any men's magazine you choose to open Eddie Irvine.

With Irvine - newly bleached blond - Jaguar has secured pole position. Jaguar looks like a publicity-fuelled team. If magazine pages not pole positions mattered, it would be leading the championship, and it's the mouthy Irvine who's garnered most headlines. If simply letting people know that it is competing in F1 this year is this year's objective, then Jaguar is doing a great job. If real success against Benz or BMW and even Ferrari is required then Jaguar needs to rethink its F1 strategy.

And internal research prepared by Volkswagen and reported in this month's Car magazine suggests it will need to do just that. Car reports that VW analysts are predicting an almost complete erosion of the middle market - Vauxhall Vectra, Ford Mondeo, Nissan Primera - in less than 10 years. We will, say the VW insiders, instead be buying either Golf-sized cars or smaller (45 per cent of the market) or prestige branded cars (also 45 per cent). If Mondeo man is to graduate to a (Ford-owned) Jaguar and not a Benz or a BMW, then Irvine better stop gassing and start getting on the gas.

Or maybe Jaguar should take a look at F1 and see if it really does want to compete. Aside from being stupefyingly dull to watch, F1 does have some other fairly serious structural problems, most crucial of which is that it has no profile in the US. Moreover, in America's crucial East and West Coast markets, all motor sport is regarded as unfailingly blue- collar.

And I wonder even in Europe if the average F1 fan is the kind of opinion former the marketing men of Jaguar - and other manufacturers - want to have on side. I've always found the crowds at F1 races a sad bunch, not as knowledgeable as cricket fans, not as funny as soccer fans.

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, organisers of last weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix felt it appropriate to sanction a five-acre temporary red-light zone for prostitutes drawn to the eager market of "spectators revved up by the smell of gas and gripped by speed". I'm not surprised.

The English Premiership announced last week it was to venture into motor sport in 2002 as part of a new series called Premier F1, where 26 identical cars supported by the big football clubs in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain will compete in a 12-race series around Europe.

Making the cars identical might make it more exciting to watch - at least results will depend more on driver skill than on car specifications - but you can't help thinking Real Madrid vs Manchester United is a game best played with 22 men on a grass pitch. I don't see Premier F1 rekindling my interest in racing, nor do I see it threatening F1. And judging by the fact that he's given it his approval nor does Bernie Ecclestone.

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