Last weekend offered sports fans worldwide plenty of excitement and sensational results: a 17 year old newcomer blew away the reigning Wimbledon tennis champion, and a country that had never previously won as little as an international soccer tournament match, grabbed the European cup. Oh, and in between those events Michael Schumacher won yet another Grand Prix. Atlas F1's Roger Horton reflects on Formula One's existing crisis, as TV viewership dwindles and the sport's leadership evaporates

If you are a keen sports fan, these past few weeks will have seen your eyes glued to your TV screen pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Wimbledon Tennis Championship has come and gone and seen the birth of a new lady super star in the shape of the stunning Russian Maria Sharapova, who provided the upset of the tournament when she blew away the twice champion Serena Williams in a gripping final.

Soccer fans have been marvelling at the rise and rise of minnows Greece at the Euro 2004, who one by one dispatched the cream of Europe's star studied teams with a quiet efficiency that has left most soccer pundits in some shock and struggling to explain what happened to their puzzled readers.

Match after match went down to the wire: there were last minute disallowed ‘goals’, penalty shoot outs, and the sort of drama that left entire nations drained of emotion.

And oh, in case you missed it, Michael Schumacher won the French Grand Prix in his Ferrari at a canter, smiled and waved on the podium, thanked his team, his tyre company, and his team boss opined that the next few races would be equally close.

A thrilling prospect, no doubt, for the spectators at Silverstone and beyond!

The harsh fact that formula One must face up to, is that its product offers very little in the way of spectacle and even less in the all important factor of surprise results. Greece went into Euro 2004 as fifty to one outsiders and shocked everyone - including, one suspects, themselves. The only surprise that F1 has served this season has been the sight of a three wheeled Ferrari emerging from that Monaco tunnel after Schumacher suffered momentary brain fade and brake tested Juan Pablo Montoya’s closely following Williams.

Of course there are many differences between tennis, soccer, and Formula One and they are not always in direct competition for either casual viewers or sponsorship dollars. But if a casual fan, who has been caught up in the drama of recent sporting contests, flicks over to watch a contemporary F1 race, the lack of anything remotely resembling a serious contest for a win offers a stark contrast.

The heart of Formula One’s current problems was sublimely (although, I am sure, inadvertently) summed up by six time Champion Michael Schumacher’s post race comment that the only reason he changed his strategy from a three stop to a four was to avoid having to actually overtake Fernando Alonso’s Renault on the track!

“We might have won on a normal three stop,” stated Schumacher, ‘but this would have involved passing cars on the track.”

And, as everyone involved in the sport knows - including the team bosses, the FIA, Bernie Ecclestone, the track designers and the long suffering fan - overtaking, especially overtaking for the lead, is so rare in contemporary F1 because it’s so hard. It’s so risky that only young chargers like Takuma Sato ever try it, because they haven’t yet learned to play the percentage game that is the modern sport.

So instead, Michael did his passing in the pits. How ironic that the sight of a car entering the pits - for generations the sign of failure and defeat - has become the preferred passing method for one of the greatest drivers of all time. Not for Michael Schumacher the wheel to wheel pass that will add to his legend and have the fans on their feet. Kudos instead to the faceless Ferrari ‘brains trust’ that designed and operated the computer programme that pointed the way to victory.

And where in the rules of modern motor racing is it written that the teams have to travel to the wide open spaces of rural of France to hold a race on a circuit that by its very nature makes overtaking virtually impossible? How fitting, then, that Magny Cours has its corners named after other circuits - most of which now bear the official stamp of the same mediocrity.

Formula One is a sport that has lost its way. Everyone involved agrees – both privately and publicly – that changes must be made to improve the show, but such are the constraints of the outdated Concorde Agreement, the binding document that governs the way the sport is administered, that most changes can’t get past the various voting criteria.

So the rule makers fiddle with minor rule changes because anything more radical can’t be agreed on. The ‘dirty air’ problem created by huge rear wings – the sole purpose of which are commercial, rather than technical, is locked in stone and so even Schumacher with the speed advantage offered by his Ferrari wouldn’t risk overtaking another car on the track because it’s too difficult, and anyway the rule makers have given him an easier and softer option.

The gradual changes that have eroded the spectacle and sent the sport so far up this blind alley are complex and now not easily reversed. The natural need for ever increasing safety kick started by the double fatalities at Imola a decade ago, have seen circuits almost completely emasculated, whilst the current level of driver aids have made the cars so easy to drive it’s all but impossible for even a knowledgeable fan to admire the artistry of a proper Grand Prix driver at work.

The current fiasco regarding the qualifying format underlines the existing leadership vacuum and reinforces the notion that F1 is out of effective control.

At the opening race of the season, in Australia, the team bosses were all pretty shocked and somewhat shamefaced at the mess that they themselves had created with the existing qualifying format. It was a mistake, and how hard should it have been to revert back to the Friday/Saturday combination that at least offered a two day qualifying contest with some much needed Friday media coverage?

And yet here we are, more than half way through the season and once again the sport is in public turmoil over whether it will be changed or not, even though everyone agrees the current format isn’t working and showing off qualifying to its best advantage. And whatever happened to the idea of qualifying on race fuel to spice up the show, which is not, of course, part of the proposed new format?

If a sport is to maintain its credibility with its fans it should be clear about its direction and what it aims to deliver. Is Formula One supposed to be the ultimate in automobile engineering or is it entertainment for the masses? At the moment it is neither and in dithering between the two we are getting the worst of both worlds. The cars are uninspiring to watch running solo, and when they run together it’s just a high speed parade.

The current battle in Formula One is now about slowing the cars down in the name of safety. For the past few years the main battles have been fought out over supposedly reducing costs and finding a more equitable revenue sharing formula. Now the teams have been given a final ultimatum to voluntarily agree to major technical revisions or have the FIA mandate their own changes and force them through. Although some of the FIA’s suggestions have been made public, others have yet to see the light of day - and in F1 the devil is always in the detail.

Will the final FIA proposals go far enough to finally change the aero realities that so dominate the design of a contemporary F1 car, and return us the days of more mechanical grip? Will the braking capabilities be reduced to enhance overtaking? Will driver aids be reduced to make driver skill and experience more of a factor? If the changes only slow the cars down and reduce the cost then a golden opportunity to reshape the sport for the better will have been lost.

But if there is going to be radical change, just who is going to drive it?

FIA President Max Mosley's stated reason for quitting his post a year early was because he became tired of the constant battle to get the teams to agree to anything more significant than the time of day, although some believe that the real reason was his recent defeats at the hands of the World Council.

Whatever the truth, Mosley’s early departure is likely to see yet more infighting in the corridors of power just at a time when strength and unanimity are required, and a lot will depend on whether the changes are signed sealed and delivered before Mosley departs. It could be argued that under Mosley’s watch many of the sport’s problems festered and were indeed fostered under his direction, although in the murky world of F1 politics it is often hard to be sure exactly whose fingerprints are on every document.

Last Tuesday, the streets of London echoed to the sound of F1 engines as Grand Prix cars staged a demonstration through the capital in front of crowds numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Various team bosses made encouraging noises about the allure of the sport and no doubt the F1 fraternity are enraptured at the commercial prospects of a street race through one of the great population centres of the world.

As we have seen during F1’s push east, the novelty of Formula One is an easy sell, it’s keeping them coming back for more that is the hard part. To do this, Formula One must surely offer more entertainment than in the recent past. Currently available early season TV viewing figures are a mixed bag with none of the main markets showing the sort of uninterrupted growth that once powered Formula One into the big leagues and largely funded its phenomenal growth through TV advertising.

Should Schumacher and Ferrari wrap up the titles well before the end of the season, then the viewing figures could well fall off the cliff as they did back in 2002. By the end of that season the powers that be were so spooked that all sort of weird and wacky ideas were being bandied around - including adding ballast to the winners by way of a handicap and forcing drivers to drive different cars in each race. It’s a pity that they didn’t grasp the nettle then and force through the kind of changes that would improve the show because this season looks awfully like a rerun.

The dominance of the current Ferrari team is often blamed for the current lack of excitement in F1, and obviously it is a contributing factor. Ferrari’s long term decision to build itself around just one driver is unprecedented and surely the law of diminishing returns has kicked in long ago. Schumacher will always have to live with the fact that he never has had to battle it out with another absolutely front rank driver in the same car, and in the final analysis his place in F1 history will always reflect that. But no matter how good a teammate Schumacher has under the current rules, as much would depend upon the luck of the refuelling lottery as anything else. Surely this is not what Grand Prix racing is supposed to be about.

The essence of all modern sport is that it must be exciting to watch and the fan must be engaged enough to care about the result. Let's hope that out of the current discussion concerning both the sporting and technical regulations steps are made to return the sport into providing the type of spectacle that has all but disappeared from the modern scene.

No major sport owes its existence to anything other than staying relevant to its fan base who overwhelmingly watches their sport on TV. For too long now F1 has assumed its place at the top table of sports based on a formula that looks increasingly outdated. For too long the ‘grand’ in Grand Prix racing has been a misnomer. It’s time for change.

Contact the Author Contact the Editor