What Jean Todt, le président of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, lacks in height he makes up for in experience spanning 50 years in motorsport.
It shouldn’t come as any great surprise that the 70-year-old Frenchman’s formative years were spent as a rally co-driver, his strengths for calculation and strategy hinting at what was to become an illustrious political career at the very top of the racing tree.
Running the Peugeot-owned Talbot team in the World Rally Championship and later managing Ferrari’s Formula One team led him to his current post at the FIA in 2009, which rocketed him into the role of Special Envoy for Road Safety at the United Nations. Dizzy stuff.
In short, he knows his stuff, and he knows it from all angles, having been involved in competing, managing and regulating.
This broad and varied experience has informed his approach to his presidency, a central part of which has been to make the world of Formula One less autocratic and more open to discussion, in contrast to the preceding Max Mosley era of open warfare and perpetual stand-off.
Part of Todt’s new democracy is listening to the various interested parties and responding as best he can, which is no bad thing – but in keeping with this democratic approach has been the FIA’s approval to water down its own power.
The outline of the governance structure has been well chronicled, and certainly those wielding some percentage of the power know how it does (or does not) function – which is why Todt’s response to questions regarding the open letter from the Grand Prix Drivers Association (GPDA) demanding a governance overhaul was interesting.
“I can sympathise with the drivers, with them saying, ‘We love our sport, help us to ensure we have a healthy and transparent sport’,” he said.
“[But] with all due respect to the drivers… if you ask them how governance works, it would be doubtful they know.
“Maybe I’m wrong. But unless they have very specific advisors, they don’t know what the governance is.”
There are therefore two conclusions to be drawn: either the grand prix drivers are all idiots incapable of understanding the three-tier system, or the system itself is too complex for this diverse group of professionals to grasp.
But this is the GPDA we’re talking about – a GPDA led by Alex Wurz, a man once described as being too smart to be a racing driver, and members of which include the likes of Nico Rosberg, whose back-up plan if Formula One didn’t work out was to become an aeronautical engineer. Idiots they are not.
If the GPDA, with its inherent intimate access to the sport and its regulatory organs, cannot understand how Formula One works without “very specific advisors”, what hope do the rest of us plebs, never mind the sport’s posse of regulars, have deciphering it?
Looking back at Formula One’s recent history of awful decisions – think double points, its various calendar shenanigans, and now qualifying, to name just three – the question we are invariably left asking is ‘why?’.
How is it all these things manage to be voted into the regulations unanimously, are unanimously disliked, but then cannot be undone via a unanimous vote? How are the questions posed to those sitting at the various regulatory levels? How are they voted upon, and who gets to vote?
There are plenty of ‘well-placed sources’ out there that can suggest responses to these questions, but the fact that we cannot answer them without resorting to back-paddock whispers relayed by the press is what is most troublesome about the way Formula One works.
Unfortunately for Todt, it is his well-intentioned democracy that has in part brought us here. We now have so many different voices with power clogging the process behind the scenes, but no-one is truly any the wiser as to what is happening – meaning when shambles like the sport is currently enduring do crop up, the loser is the FIA, which is pinged with blame despite having only a fraction of the ultimate say.
Already the teams have re-united in the face of this qualifying fiasco to point the finger at Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA for not delivering the solution that is both the simplest and the most popular with fans. Again that question: why? How has this happened?
It’s time to open things up. If the regulatory structure cannot be changed until 2020, that’s fine – but Jean Todt, Bernie Ecclestone, the teams and the rest of the stakeholders at very least owe the public, who ultimately pay for this power trip, a look behind the curtain to see exactly how and why the sport they love is being run into the ground.
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