Formula One agrees to disagree

The countdown is well and truly on. Today marks 16 days until the first Formula One race of the year – or 14 days until a Formula One car takes to the race track, if you’re feeling particularly keen.

But we can also consider today by a different set of numbers. It has been 89 days since the closing date for entries to the 2015 Formula One season and 57 days since the FIA was due to publish a final calendar. Granted, both documents detailing the competing teams and the scheduled races have been published to the best of the FIA’s ability, but has this made the situation any clearer? Hardly.

Today, little more than two weeks out from the 2015’s curtain-raising event, we still do not know how many cars will make an appearance this season nor how many races will be contested.

That we find ourselves in this very Formula One sort of situation should probably come as little surprise given the general lack of certainty regarding the direction of the regulatory framework that has gripped the sport for some time. That the regulations changed in 2014 is a minor miracle given the lack of agreement between all parties concerned in the immediately preceding years, and it was unsurprising that bickering began as soon as those regulations were implemented as to how quickly they could be changed or even dramatically reversed.

But while these arguments at very least concern themselves with the short term future, this season seems totally unprepared to burst from the blocks with any sort of coherence on 15 March. Who will be competing when and where – matters any sport should have no trouble answering – continue to confound Formula One in 2015.

Let’s start with the ‘who’. On 5 January last year, the Formula One Strategy Group agreed that, subject to referral and ratification by the World Motor Sport Council, either of the two teams then at risk of collapse, Marussia (now Manor or Manor Marussia) and Caterham, would be allowed to compete using the 2014 regulations. This was an attempt to assist their financial survival and, hopefully, their long-term viability. This was the outcome of months of internal agonising in the aftermath of Caterham and Marussia’s synchronised fall into administration late last year.

It took just one month for the resolve of the strategy group to falter. It simply could not unanimously agree on a rule change that would enable Manor to race for a period of time under the superseded regulations while it recovered its disbanded team and resources and bring certainty to the paddock in the process.

That said, Manor says it’s continuing with what it was originally told and that work proceeds at full pace to both modify its 2014 car to meet the agreed requirements and build its 2015 car to appear at some stage – ‘when’ that will be is another question entirely – during the season. That we cannot say for sure which party is right, or even what each party believes, is telling.

One could argue that Manor is of relatively little consequence to the grander spectacle. This is not to discount the very real effects the closure of a team has – employees are made redundant and parts suppliers continue to be out of pocket for costs accrued prior to an administration period – but the appearance or otherwise of a Manor/Virgin/Marussia/Manor Marussia car likely to be even further from the pace than it was last year brings little to the broad narrative of the world championship.

Far more concerning for Formula One in 2015 is the instability of the confirmed-not-confirmed 2015 calendar. Again, the Ecclestone Rotating Door policy of Grand Prix is something to which we have become immune – think India, Korea, Turkey, Valencia etc. – but the imminent loss of two historic European circuits has illustrated like nothing else so far the era of discord into which Formula One has passed.

The German Grand Prix, scheduled to be held on 19 July, has the mighty asterisk beside its name. Should that asterisk, as it often does, become a ‘cancelled’, 2015 will be the first season since 1955 – and just the fourteenth season since 1926 – not to feature a race in Deutschland.

The Nürburgring was supposed to host the race this year, as per its agreement to alternate with the Hockenheimring. Mired in its own financial strife, it appears to have withdrawn from its hosting obligations. But then Hockenheim has its own money woes and seems incapable of funding two races in succession.

What can we say for certain? Has the Nürburgring counted itself out of future races by breaking its contract? Will Hockenheim’s attempt to fill the 2015 void jeopardise its finances in the long term? Will the midyear races be shuffled to accommodate the missing round? Is the loss of a stalwart grand prix a sign that the current calendar strategy is unsustainable?

Will Formula One chug along this season either way? Almost definitely. But can it continue to do so for two years, or five, or a decade? Not without some serious strategic changes – but change requires agreement, and more than money, time, or horsepower, Formula One stakeholders lack consensus.

The clock is ticking.