The Roar
The Roar

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A way to reshape Formula One for the better

Lewis Hamilton can help cement Mercedes as one of the all-time great teams. (Red Bull Content Pool)
Expert
21st May, 2015
7

Monaco is Formula One’s happy place. The impractical and dangerous streets of the cash-loaded principality have no real business forming a Formula One track, but this rusted-on race has come to represent that anything is possible for Formula One.

Now, few motorsport words pair more naturally than ‘Formula One’ and ‘Monte Carlo’.

But ‘F1’ and ‘crisis’ are becoming increasingly well acquainted as the sport lurches from problem to problem, from declining audiences to financially unstable teams, and desperately grasps at any idea dressed as even a half-convincing solution.

So it is that the strategy group, the primary rule-making body, assembled last week, but again disappointed with its lack of meaningful change. For all its talk of “spicing up the show” and “for the good of the fans”, the sport’s key stakeholders have been largely ignored.

However, criticism is for nought if it is not constructive, so in this week in which no fewer than two all-encompassing fan surveys have been launched – albeit neither by any body with any rule-making authority – let’s have The Roar get the ball rolling on what might make an ideal formula for the future.

Equality: Budget cap and money distribution
Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit. With two teams folding in the last three years – three in the last five if you include USF1 – and almost all of the midfield and backmarker teams on the financial brink, cost control must be introduced as a matter of urgency to save, and eventually bolster, the grid.

But how to settle on a figure? We first need a revenue distribution model that is fair and equitable. At the moment this isn’t the case with the commercial rights holder taking money off the top and awarding payments to Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull Racing, Mercedes, and Williams before distributing prize money – with Ferrari earning more than any other team every season, regardless of performance.

Look instead towards the more equitable EPL model, which divides half its domestic TV revenue equally among its teams, uses 25 per cent incrementally as prize money, an spends the remainder based on the number of live matches broadcast.

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Assuming the commercial rights holder takes that final 25 per cent, and working with Autosport’s approximation that Formula One’s revenue sits at around A$1.5 billion, each team would earn a base $76 million each year.

The 25 per cent prize pool – worth $300 million – would be distributed with the top-ranked team earning $72 million, for a total of $149 million, and the lowest-ranked team earning $15 million, for a total of $91 million.

Setting the budget cap at $149 million would preserve the champion’s right reap its monetary rewards and keeps even the lowest-placed team within reach of a comparable budget with a little extra sponsorship money.

It could simultaneously end the stigma of the pay driver tag while giving small teams an opportunity to vie for big points with the big hitters. Competition from back to front would make for some seriously exciting racing.

Overtaking: Aerodynamic overhaul
Aerodynamics have been the secret to speed in this modern era, and the regulations have slowly tightened around just how much bodywork aerodynamicists can exploit.

Compare today’s clean and tidy cars to those of 2008, which were characterised by a colourful array of aerofoils – see Lewis Hamilton’s title-winning McLaren as an example.

Development has since been focussed on the front wing particularly, but the sophistication of the modern front wing has left it unable to cope with following another car’s wake. The rapid expiration of Lewis Hamilton’s tyres while following Sebastian Vettel in Spain was largely due to this effect, for example.

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Front wings must be simplified, with the lost downforce being recovered by way of mechanical grip generation via wider tyres and by reintroducing ground effect cars by allowing more development on the car’s floor.

The result? Cars that can race in close quarters, leading to more exciting wheel-to-wheel action.

Heritage: Stop pricing out classic circuits
There is a romanticism about Formula One transcending continental boundaries to become a global sport, and races in far-flung corners of the globe lend it a certain exoticism.

There is undoubted value in such exposure, but few will disagree that world domination must not come at the price of Formula One’s European homeland.

Yet Europe, once representing the vast majority of a season’s races, now makes up little more than a third.

A calendar without Monza and Silverstone ought to be similarly unthinkable to a grid without Ferrari or McLaren – yet Ferrari continues to be given special treatment while Monza is threatened with Formula One oblivion.

These circuits add value to the endeavour of Formula One itself by presenting a consistent yardstick by which we can compare and contrast the development of the sport as a whole.

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To lose some of these classic tracks against which the sport’s all-time greats have measured themselves would be a heavy blow to this historic category, and the slide of Europe from the category must be halted.

Accessibility: Less pay TV, more direct access video
Australia in 2015 became only the latest country in a long line of nations to lose outright free-to-air Formula One television coverage, with much of the rest of the world having already made the switch.

The move to pay TV is easily understandable: subscription television providers can effortlessly outbid their terrestrial rivals, and Formula One is all too ready to snap up the quick cash.

It needn’t be this way, however – Formula One can still boost its revenue without the necessary throttling of audience potential. It just requires a bit of legwork on the part of Formula One Management.

Sport in the United States has realised the potential of cutting out the middleman to sell coverage directly to the audience. For as little as US$40 any American can watch the entire NFL season live and in high definition. A similar deal is available to international fans for A$50 – the minimum monthly spend for a standard definition Foxtel contract with the sports package.

Subscription television has low adoption because it doesn’t represent value for money – all subscribers are forced to pay for a basic package comprising largely filler programming.

This is one of those rare occasions on which Formula One can have its cake and eat it too. It might find a great many wallets open to it if only it were to offer value for money.

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Could this be a formula for the future? If you wielded the power of Bernie, what would you change in Formula One?

You can follow @MichaelLamonato on Twitter for occasional F1 whimsy.

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