MOTORSPORT: Formula One ... what a circus

COMMENT

It's Friday the 13th ... Melbourne is celebrating 20 years of hosting Formula One ... but it feels like April Fool's Day.

The new F1 cars are on the track now. The Mercedes cars are flying, a couple of rookies, 17-year-old Max Verstappen and 20-year-old Carlos Sainz Junior, are impressive, Daniel Ricciardo has hardly turned a lap. Sebastian Vettel is in a Ferrari for the first time, McLaren and Honda are having trouble with their new power unit, and the Saubers and Manor Marussias didn't run in the first 90-minute session.

In this second year of hybrid power units these machines still lack anything like the piercing sound for which F1 was always known; the efforts of Australian GP chiefs and others to improve that situation having come to nought.

But overshadowing anything happening on the bitumen at the Albert Park circuit are Sydney's move to grab the Australian Grand Prix and a squabble still going on in the Victorian Supreme Court over who should drive one of Swiss team Sauber's cars.

Then there's McLaren team chief Ron Dennis admitting he's been less than open and honest about the crash that has kept one of the very best, perhaps the best, driver out of the start of the world championship after a concussion.

Dennis has asked us to forgive his lack of medical expertise, in that he "didn't know, actually, concussion was an automatic result of unconsciousness", but has promised to be a better boy from now.

Anyone who thinks F1 is a crazy world will find an abundance of evidence of that today as a new world championship season gets underway.

Craziest of all is the NSW conservative government's play to steal Melbourne's GP, much as the Victorian capital did to Adelaide two decades ago, and run it over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, close Australia's biggest city's CBD and, of course, have the Opera House in the picture.

Really? Who would have guessed there's an election in NSW on March 28?

But will this ploy be a vote-winner?

Melbourne, or the Victorian government, already has the GP under contract until 2020, with an option to extend another five years beyond that.

The event now loses about $60 million a year – with revenue of about $40 million and costs of $100 million – and the Australian Financial Review points out today that the accumulated losses over 20 years will top half a billion dollars this weekend.

Ron Walker, chairman of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation throughout its life in Melbourne but handing over to World Cup cricket chief executive John Harnden after this event, insists the GP is great value, projecting Melbourne to the world.

Never mind that Walker stood beside then Victorian premier Jeff Kennett in December 1993 when it was claimed that the GP effectively would not cost the state a cent and ought to turn a modest profit.

Now Walker, who negotiated the latest contract extension for the former Victorian conservative government, which said it would only re-sign if it got a better deal, tells the Fin Review the losses won't lessen in the next five years.

Melbourne is not alone in this world in being unable to stage a GP on a temporary circuit at anywhere near break-even.

But that, apparently, does not deter NSW premier Mike Baird.

"I want the F1 to come to Sydney, because no other city in the world could provide a more spectacular backdrop for this event," Baird has told Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation Australian newspapers.

"We know that this event is watched by up to 30 million people around the world, and securing the GP would put our already successful events strategy in pole position. But we need to get all the facts, before we move to bid."

Baird already has got one fact right there – the global audience. The claim made by others, including the AGPC, of 450 million viewers in 185 countries is a number for the entire season, this year comprising 20 races.

Victorian sports minister John Eren is dismissive of Baird's move, claiming that Sydney is too congested to stage the GP and that it's safely in Victorian hands anyway.

South Australia is looking on at the fun and games with a smirk. Its tourism minister, Leon Bignell, says he most certainly wouldn't be interested in having the GP back while ever 84-year-old Bernie Ecclestone continues to run F1.

"He's just paid $100 million to get out of a [bribery] court case in Germany," Bignell told the ABC this week.

"Do we really want to give the guy running the sport over $50 million a year of taxpayers' money [as a fee for a GP]. I don't."

But Victoria does and it seems NSW is happy to too, certainly if Mike Baird remains premier.

Baird even has Rod McGeoch, a key player in securing the 2000 Olympics for Sydney, and News Corp's former chief executive in Australia, John Hartigan, lined up to work on Sydney's GP bid. Might there have been a connection with the "scoop" in the News Corp papers today?

Meanwhile, Sauber and Giedo van der Garde are still in court, with the Dutch driver's legal team urging Justice Clyde Croft to impound the Ferrari-engined C34 cars of Sauber – a German word which, incidentally, translates to clean. It can also be taken to mean toilet-trained, something this F1 team has hardly shown itself to be in recent times.

There's a chance in the contempt-of-court proceedings afoot that not only will the Sauber cars be seized but that team principal Monisha Kaltenborn will have to forfeit her passport to Australian authorities, and/or perhaps be fined. In extreme circumstances she could be jailed. Unlikely that though.

Sauber has stalled van der Garde for weeks now, after having contracted him in the middle of last year to race for it this season, then trying to ditch him. It preferred Swede Marcus Ericsson and Brazilian rookie Felipe Nasr as its drivers, although they didn't take to the track in first practice at Albert Park.

This morning Sauber relented a little and gave Dutchman van der Garde a pass to enter the F1 paddock and went through the formality of fitting him for a seat in a C34, but it's most unlikely he'll get to make any use of it this weekend.

There's also the matter of whether he's properly licensed for F1 at the minute. His lawyers say that Sauber is at fault there too, stalling again.

And then there's Ron Dennis, a former mechanic to Australia's late triple world champion Sir Jack Brabham, who as a team principal took McLaren to the dizziest of heights in the days of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost a quarter of a century ago.

Dennis had largely finished with the F1 team, concentrating on McLaren's broader automotive and technology interests, but didn't like the way his successor Martin Whitmarsh went about it, so he seized back control a year or so ago.

He hasn't been able to entice the big sponsors for which McLaren was renowned, but Honda is back as the team's engine supplier after a few years out of the sport.

The remarriage has had a rough start, especially when Fernando Alonso crashed his MP4-30 car in testing in Spain, spent three nights in hospital and was ruled out of coming to Melbourne, let alone risk another concussion by racing.

McLaren has done its reputation absolutely no good with its subsequent handling of what happened in that crash.

In an interview with a horde of F1 media several days after it Dennis even denied that Alonso had been unconscious at any point.

Now he has fessed up, somewhat.

"Putting aside the fact my medical expertise didn't know, actually, concussion was an automatic result of unconsciousness in the accident, it set me up, as I often do, for massive amounts of criticism for being inaccurate,' Dennis has now said.

"This is life. I take it.

"I understand why the press beat me up. I wanted to be open and honest. I failed. But it is my objective to try to be as honest as possible in future."

Honest. As possible.

Dear friends, don't waste too much time waiting for honesty and openness from within F1.

Console yourselves that, for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon at least, there'll be a race, and that Aussie Daniel Ricciardo might do damn well in it, even if his Red Bull-Renault won't be in the same "race" as the Mercs.