Today marks one week until the start of the first official session of the 2016 Formula One season – and it can’t come soon enough.
For all its good intentions and renewed optimism for 2016, in the space of three precious pre-season weeks the sport has lurched from problem to embarrassing problem.
World champions are decrying the sport they love for its suffocating lack of direction that has pushed even their tolerance to breaking point.
But even in saying that they’re only taking the lead from Formula One’s figurehead himself after Bernie Ecclestone slammed the sport he has a hand in administering as “the worst it has ever been”.
“I wouldn’t spend my money to take my family to watch a race,” he continued, rubbing salt into his self-inflicted wounds. “No way.”
The world’s fastest sport unravelled at record speed.
No sooner had Ecclestone made comments – which can hardly be described as infamous given his record of trashing his own brand – did the F1 strategy group, which can probably fairly be described as infamous, meet to yet to have another stab at the rule-making thing.
The meeting should have been an open-and-shut affair – the teams needed only to agree on the 2017 technical regulations, which they had been mulling over for years, by the annual deadline in order to give the smaller teams certainty in their investment in new machinery – but it was anything but straightforward.
The technical regulation deadline was pushed perilously late into the year – to the end of April, a mere nine or ten months before 2017 pre-season testing – and instead the teams agreed on an unscheduled change to qualifying, the one part of the grand prix weekend widely regarded as fulfilling and functional.
That the qualifying format is to be changed was never the problem, however – it was, once again, the bombastic method by which the sport goes about its business. The best, though, was still to come.
The qualifying format was changed five times in the space of a fortnight. After it was announced, Bernie immediately declared it was too short notice to have the necessary timing system changes implemented and therefore it couldn’t be done. Then it could be done in time for a Spanish Grand Prix introduction. Later a compromise solution that had the new format run during Q1 and Q2 before giving way to the current Q3 was floated.
Finally, out of nowhere, the FIA World Motor Sport Council approved the original format change – although it only went so far as to say it “should” be implemented in Round 1, subject to reconfirmation by the strategy group.
“I’m sad for the sport because it doesn’t look right from the outside when in one week we change the qualifying format three times,” Fernando Alonso said a little more than a week after that first strategy group meeting.
“I don’t think it’s right. There are too many changes, and the complexity of the rules for the spectators is quite high.”
Simultaneously, this time on the track, Ferrari was unveiling unannounced its ad-hoc rendition of the future of Formula One cockpit protection.
It was only ever supposed to be a display to get the ball rolling, but the shock factor was significant enough to get the likes of Lewis Hamilton and a myriad of other drivers offside in the entire broader debate for greater head protection, as outlined in this column on Tuesday.
Throw into mix Sauber being unable to pay its staff salaries on time in February due to cash flow problems and the Volkswagen Group’s unsolicited shutdown of speculation it could enter Formula One with the reason that the sport has no internal stability and you have the makings of a surprisingly ugly three weeks in the absence of racing.
So the time is ripe for Formula One to hit the track in anger and banish its amassing pre-season demons, because behind the abundant politicking is evidence that the grid has converged in 2016, and the hints are heavy that racing up the front, in the middle, and at the back will be a whole lot closer.
And to the best of my knowledge Giedo van der Garde has no intention of flying to Australia this year, so if the sport took the opportunity to tuck in its shirt, polish its shoes, and sit up straight for the next seven days, we could yet start what may be a season to remember untarnished.
There’s hope for Formula One yet.
Follow @MichaelLamonato on Twitter from Melbourne for the #AusGP.
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