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I found myself wondering as much over the weekend, having perused the FIA’s “updated provisional calendar” for the 2016 Formula One season.
If you haven’t yet had the chance to consider it in detail yourself, know that it is but a minor alteration to the confirmed, but apparently provisional, calendar ratified earlier in the year.
It still features a mighty 21 races, with modifications being made only to the timing of the grands prix to accommodate a mid-season break, which had been omitted in the original official-not-official document.
The season now starts two weeks earlier, which means teams will be pushed to have their Australian Grand Prix-specification cars ready ahead of time in exchange for a more leisurely schedule and, perhaps more pertinently for you, the accommodation you booked for the first weekend in April is now worthless. Melbourne’s lovely in the autumn, however.
But as for the original question – why? – the answer is more elusive than creating a marginally less brutal work-life balance for team personnel or creating last-minute logistical challenges.
Pushing us from this year’s 19 races into 21 is the reinstatement of the German Grand Prix, allegedly to take place at Hockenheim at the end of July, and the additions of the Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City and the much-publicised ‘European Grand Prix’ in Azerbaijan (check Google Maps).
The latter sits at the crux of the question as to why the sport feels the need to stretch itself across such a workload to put strain on an already overburdened workforce.
Azerbaijan serves no strategic advantage for Formula One. It is not a major market, it has not contributed anything of significance to the sport by way of teams, drivers, or sponsors, and could not be considered a particularly influential or powerful country which may benefit Formula One in the long term. Nothing against Azerbaijan – I’m sure it’s lovely in the springtime – but its presence on the calendar of a sport selling itself as all glitz and glamour is questionable.
The answer is money, of course, and this surprises no-one – the modus operandi of the commercial rights holder has always been about maximising profits. But the lack of a coherent end for the calendar for which Formula One is generating the means via some of the world’s more obscure territories is more confusing.
Currently occupying space on the calendar are races in Russia, but in the sluggish Sochi rather than Moscow, Bahrain, and Malaysia, and stricken from the schedule in recent years were races in Korea, but in the middle of a swamp rather than the dazzling lights of Seoul, and India, but at a facility that never seemed complete.
While these countries cannot be begrudged their opportunity to host a grand prix – hey, the World Cup’s going to Qatar, after all – what benefit have they had on the sport? Can those in charge of the events truthfully say the best of their nations have been on display at any of them, and can Formula One say that its attendance at any of those circuits has contributed to the fabric of the sport? I wouldn’t have thought so.
In the sport’s quest to increase profits it has lost its way. Under the dubious heading of increasing its global footprint there is only blank space – there is no strategy worth mentioning, and no reason or rhyme as to the calendar’s composition beyond minor geopolitical squabbles dictating how many weekends should fall between races in the same region.
Nothing exemplifies this lack of direction like the sport’s inability to close the deal for a race in New Jersey, an event that would have been a real boon for Formula One’s image. I regret to say that 2016 will be the fourth year in a row that it has failed to materialise in a season, not that anyone is genuinely expecting it to pull through at all.
Most painful of all about the current calendar, however, is not that in itself it is of questionable strategic value, or that it is of questionable strategic value at a time when Formula One’s stocks are dipping in light of falling attendance figures, television viewership, and sponsorship revenue, but that it is arbitrarily putting pressure on teams to deliver more often under increasingly difficult circumstances.
This is not the first time this column has highlighted the strain put on team members, who do the heavy lifting for an average working wage, by Formula One’s work schedule.
But it nonetheless begs the question, particularly as we head into what seems likely to be a record long season: if Formula One isn’t going racing for the sport, and it isn’t going racing for the teams, what is it racing for?