It has been branded the ‘nuclear option’ for Formula One’s commercial and governance structure, but Force India and Sauber showed no hesitation in pulling the trigger.
The weapon in question is a formal complaint to the European Commission on competition grounds with the intended outcome being a detailed investigation into the sport’s operation.
“Sahara Force India is one of two teams to have registered a complaint with the European Union questioning the governance of Formula One and showing that the system of dividing revenues and determining how Formula One’s rules are set is both unfair and unlawful,” said the Silverstone-based team in a statement.
It is the latest of many stresses loading the sport in a particularly brutal season in 2015, all of which are speeding to an unclear but almost certainly ugly climax.
Indeed, in the very week Force India and Sauber called time on their silences in the face of what they are alleging is discriminative business practice, Formula One finds itself on the brink of losing a borderline catastrophic six cars from its 22-car field in 2016.
History will also record that in September the sport was contemplating dropping the historic Italian Grand Prix at Monza from the 2017 calendar – a move that would equate to “ripping our hearts out”, as quadruple world champion Sebastian Vettel summed at this year’s event – and that Silverstone, home the sport’s other great classic in the British Grand Prix, is paying its race host fees one year in arrears because it can’t keep up with its standard contractual repayments.
And 2015 is the year during which there was no German Grand Prix, two teams had to run their 2014 cars for significant parts or the entirety of the season due to financial constraints, and one team was hauled before Victoria’s Supreme Court over a contract dispute while another frequented London’s High Court over unpaid taxes.
But this myriad of unseemly events should not be viewed as an escalation to a European Commission inquiry – this is par for Formula One’s course.
Formula One is sick. While the governing body, the commercial rights holder, and the teams bicker with each other and ultimately cancel themselves out – how are those 2017 regulations coming along? – the real world, the world in which the sport happens to operate, is passing it by.
This has a very real effect in the form of sponsorship drying up, television viewers switching off, and ace attendances dropping away.
Such problems hit weakest teams first, but the economy of any other competitive franchise has financial safety built into its backbone to ensure what wealth might be available – and despite its many problems, Formula One still accumulates massive wealth – is spread throughout its various organs to keep itself healthy.
Formula One lacks such a facility. Where other sports function by propping up its worst performers to push them back towards success – think the draft pick system in the AFL, as a basic example – in the last five years Formula One actively courted its best-heeled teams and cashed them up in exchange for the agreement to compete through to 2020.
Sure, sign-on bonuses are nothing special, but when the smallest teams – and in the case of Force India, Sauber, Lotus and Manor, all of which exist only for Formula One – are deprived of such money that might otherwise have been distributed via the prize pool, the structure starts to sting.
Most unfortunate of all is that there are no winners in this situation. Even the commercial rights holder is a loser, of sorts, in its own structure – guaranteeing the big teams was a way to boost the sport’s value ahead of an initial public offering it could never execute – and it is now burdened with a complicated asset for which it has no obvious endgame.
The FIA has been burnt. The teams have been burnt. Even Bernie Ecclestone, who has had a hand in the sport’s fortunes for longer than seems possible, has been burnt to some degree, having made deals for his employers that the sport has been unable to cash.
But most of all it is us who have been burnt. Fans pay more to watch at home, pay more to watch at the track, pay more to use the website, and pay more for merchandise, but all the while what we’ve been getting in return has decreased in value.
And so it is that two teams – two teams, I reiterate, that have existed for the sole purpose of racing in Formula One, each for almost 25 years – have decided their sport cannot continue down the path it is travelling.
The question now is whether the European Commission agrees with this assessment, and whether anything can be done to mend the sport before it hurtles beyond help.
But where to begin?
Follow Michael on Twitter @MichaelLamonato
most likely botched
Guest
I agree with the law suit. F1 is so rigged that one year there's one car winning all races and next some other. There's no single race with lot of mixed action. Pretty mundane silver or red or blue cars on podium.
Craig
Guest
F1 finally eating itself..... its a totally floored process that was always going to end in disaster. This is now further compounded by the rise of the World Endurance Championship. I'm a WEC fan first, but have always been a F1 fan, went to numerous GPs as a child and now would like to take my kids to the F1, but I can't afford it, even on a half decent income. However, I go to the WEC race at Silverstone every year with my eldest son. He loves it, lots of close racing, lots of access to teams, drivers and the fans are treated as fans and made to feel part of the event, not like in F1 where you are made to feel like you are lucky to be allowed to watch the event, despite paying through the nose for it. F1 has become a 'premium' product, without the premium offering. It seems to be the showcase event that is in rapid decline. Supporting your most successful teams while neglecting the rest will result in one thing, failure. Just look at what happened to Caterham. And that didn't affect just the F1 team, there were multiple small suppliers who were left without the money they were owed and struggling to survive. F1 is an industry supported by many 'boutique' suppliers. Lose half the teams, lose F1 totally.
woodart
Guest
F1 reminds me of americas cup yachting. an ego trip- advertising ploy masquerading as sport, that also has no strong foundation. it has a trophy and history but nothing else. various different shady characters have pretty much driven away most interest. and rules that are designed by the haves to disadvantage the havenots have pretty much driven away the competition. right now, fiat, owner and billpayer of ferrari are keeping F1 going. if they go sports car racing instead,,,,,,,
Pilot Mark
Guest
I think F1 is losing me. Why should I even know that Bernie paid 150M US for a house for his daughter. There is no way I want to pay $1000 for a ticket to the US F1 race. And the racing has become very boring!! Even I can pick the one out of three that will win. Next year better be more exciting or I'll be following other more exciting road racing.
Michael Lamonato
Expert
I think "putting itself out of reach of its fans" nails it. I thought discussion around Formula E's first season was interesting on this point. You can let the market decide how much a ticket is worth, for example — you charge the maximum price before losing spectators, and adjust accordingly — but there's an invisible side effect to this method, namely: are the sort of people buying expensive tickets the fans motorsport needs? Motorsport needs fans, don't get me wrong, but traditionally the hardcore fan base aren't super-rich, so while the stands look full, they're full of casual viewers that tend not to contribute to the sport in the long term. I think F1 is way past that point at the moment.
Not convinced
Guest
Remember when I said that F1 was heading in the same direction as the Olympics, where no one would be enthusiastic about bidding for rights? I also said that as this continues to manifest the question would then become "what would the commodity of F1 be worth and to whom? With the farce continuing seems I wasn't too far off the mark. I firmly believe that the most stupid thing any sport can do is to put itself out the reach of its fans. Seems F1 is managing to put itself out of the reach of its fans, circuits and participants. To what end?