Motorsport: GP at the crossroads

Midweek motorsport reportMarch 14, 2007

For some days, even weeks, now there has been growing public disquiet about the cost of the event, with talk that the losses on it will be between $27 million and $30 million this year.

The front page of Melbourne's broadsheet newspaper The Age has a prominent pointer today -- with the words 'Why the grand prix is a waste of money' -- to a feature article inside about precisely that.

The rival, tabloid Herald Sun, Australia's biggest-selling daily newspaper, has splashed across its back page, 'Mark Webber's frank admission ... I can't win'.

The biggest drawcard the Australian GP could have for Aussie fans would be for Webber to have a chance of doing well in Sunday's race.

Webber is being honest. Very honest. For the likes of the promoter, far too honest.

By admitting his Red Bull RB3 will not be on the pace this weekend Webber is confirming what we've been reporting here from the pre-season testing for weeks.

As if all of the above is not enough negativity, Australian motor racing's elder statesman John Bowe wades in, again in the Herald Sun, with the comment that the support race line-up at the GP is the worst he's seen.

The F1 GP, remember has been in Australia since 1985 -- in Adelaide until 1995, and since then in Melbourne.

Bowe is adamant he is not bleating just because the V8 Supercars are not running at the GP in his final year of touring car racing.

Before we go any further, it must be said that there may yet be a saving grace.

Things are rarely as bad as they seem, and there could still be a miracle.

Perhaps Sunday's F1 race will be a demolition derby like in 2002, when Webber wound up fifth in a Minardi on his debut. Let's hope.

Even, if by some miracle, Webber does okay on the weekend, there is still likely to be the problem of how many people are there to see it.

There have been reports of very poor ticket sales, although the Australian Grand Prix Corporation has continued to predict a four-day attendance of 350,000.

Without V8 Supercars, that would be a miracle.

It seems that the GP organisers could pay dearly this year for perceived neglect of the interests of motorsport fans while making priorities of peripheral activities such as music bands and a dance party within the venue.

These latter activities may have some appeal to a small percentage, but the reality is that -- while the GP is "an event", not just motor racing -- the people who will buy tickets to go to what is, however you look at it, a motor racing festival, want to see top-class motorsport.

Sure, F1 is still there, but the traditional combination of F1 and V8 Supercars has been an attractive, even unique package.

There was never going to be a comparable replacement for the V8 Supercars, which say they couldn't have got to Perth for the second round of their championship a week later if they raced at the GP, but Bowe is right.

The support categories -- Carrera Cup, an unsponsored celebrity race, Aussie Racing Cars, Formula 3, V8 Utes, a historic demonstration and karts -- are ho-hum.

The GP is indeed at a crossroads.

Jeff Kennett, who was the Victorian premier when the event was snatched from Adelaide, has said it needs a freshen up.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone is likely to be in Melbourne this weekend and may well share Kennett's view.

Ecclestone may even have some ideas of how to liven things up, but there is one certainty with any of his ideas -- they will cost a lot of money.

And Melbourne, and indeed Victoria, seems to be wondering already whether it wants to be tipping any more money in the direction of the GP.

This is on the back of speculation that a new night GP is about to be announced for next year on a new street circuit in Singapore, and that Bernie Ecclestone is also urging that the Japanese and Chinese GPs become night races.

The rationale is that, because the bulk of the F1 television audience is in Europe, staging races in the Asia-Pacific timezones in the evenings would put them on TV in Europe at a better hour, rather than before breakfast.

Australian Grand Prix chairman Ron Walker is quoted in The Age newspaper today saying: "We are looking at it (for Melbourne) and when Bernie gets here (for this weekend's race), we'll talk to him about it again.

"He hasn't said to me that we have to do it. It's an option.

"It's not a fait accompli by any means. There are problems with the power grid in Albert Park. It will take a massive amount of kilowatts to light up the track for the drivers, plus there are also environmental issues."

Australia's F1 driver Mark Webber is an enthusiastic supporter of the idea of a Melbourne night race.

"It'd be absolutely fantastic -- a brilliant idea," Webber says. "It would be great for the sport."

Apart from lighting and any other engineering challenges, there is one other big issue in Australia.

Melbourne's GP is now fighting for its very survival beyond the existing contract until 2010.

Public discontent is growing about the race in daylight, let alone disrupting a big city at night.

A Sunday night final has worked well for the Australian Open tennis, but those tennis balls and grunting players don't make anywhere near as much noise as 22 F1 cars.

Let's get real.

For what it's worth, we reckon the problem is even greater in Singapore, where the population is cramped into high-rise accommodation on a small island.

If Bernie Ecclestone gets a night GP off the ground in Singapore he's a bigger genius than we thought, putting one over Lee Kuan Yew, the man who remains (in reality, if not in title) that country's leader and, like him or loath him, one of the world's outstanding political success stories.

Errr, did we call Bernie a bigger genius. In view of the vertical challenge factor, better just make that more of a genius than we thought!

Webber's very honest assessment
Now motorsport ...

So Mark Webber is virtually admitting that his switch to Red Bull Racing is going to be a step backwards in the hope of taking two forward.

Webber is conceding what we have been saying here throughout the weeks of pre-season testing, that the Red Bull RB3 car is not on the pace.

Australian fans would love to feel they could go to Albert Park this weekend, or turn on the Channel 10 telecast, with a hope that Webber could win, or at least do well, in his home grand prix.

But Webber's saying he can't win; that the best he can hope for at the minute is for a major improvement by the time the European races start -- from round four of the world championship.

"I hope we can finish the race and try to get some points," is the best Webber can offer the Aussie public.

"They are not exactly ambitious goals, but that is where we are right now.

"There are three or four top teams at the moment -- Ferrari, McLaren, BMW and Renault.

"They are all looking solid, so that is already eight cars.

"It is very, very tight at the front, but we want to break into that.

"Last year I retired while I was leading the (Australian) race (in a Williams), and had a good chance to finish third.

"I still had to make a pit stop, but third was definitely on the cards.

"I would love to be in that position again this year, but I probably won't be.

"But as the season goes on we can definitely make it better.

"I am not expecting anything amazing, but I don't expect to be at the back of the grid either."

That's some consolation, and Webber reckons his tall frame is now a lot more comfortable in the RB3 cockpit.

There was a lot of cynicism when Webber's switch to Red Bull was announced, but we always thought the move made a lot of sense.

The team is very well-funded, and in the post-tobacco era perhaps has access even to the type of budgets of the car manufacturer teams.

It also has Adrian Newey, with a reputation as a design genius. And a Renault engine -- the motor that powered Fernando Alonso to the past two world titles.

Things have not started well for Webber at Red Bull.

It's going to be interesting to see, on Saturday afternoon, whether he's ahead of Alex Wurz and Nico Rosberg in the Williams cars, now with Toyota engines.

Webber knows, better than anyone, that this is a defining season for him in F1.

The days of reckoning dawn this weekend.

Despite the Australian public's lack of understanding of the predicaments that have left him with only one podium from 86 GPs, Webber has overcome a lot of hurdles to get to where he is in F1, even just to survive in this big league.

Let's hope, as Aussies, that after all the trials and tribulations his career, now with Red Bull, at last gets wings.

It is the oldest line-up on the F1 grid, but Mateschitz says: "If you want to develop a car you have to have experience. You also have to have two drivers that score points, so from my perspective the choice of Webber and Coulthard is correct."

>>> Toyota's Jarno Trulli is battling a fever ahead of the GP, but the team is confident he will be right to race. Otherwise Frenchman Frank Montagny could get the chance to make his GP debut.

>>> David Coulthard, a two-time winner in Melbourne, is aiming for his fifth consecutive points-scoring finish in Australia, while world champion Fernando Alonso, last year's Melbourne victor, is aiming for his fourth straight podium at this race.

>>> Bernie Ecclestone reckons the 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points system in F1 since 2003 has not rewarded race winners enough and is foreshadowing a change next year, perhaps back to 10, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ecclestone wants drivers fighting for first place rather than settling for second.

>>> British automotive entrepreneur David Richards, who we've seen this week described as the "Richard Branson of motorsport", is the front man for the syndicate that has won the bidding to buy revered sports car maker Aston Martin from Ford, but he insists his new F1 team next year will not be badged Aston Martin -- a name made most famous by the James Bond spy movies.

Richards says Aston Martin's immediate racing future will continue to be in sportscars, although he admits there is a possibility of F1 in the longer term future.

While Richards heads Prodrive, which among its various activities builds Ford Performance Vehicles in Australia and runs Ford Performance Racing in V8 Supercars, he is at pains to point out that he has gone into Aston Martin as himself rather than Prodrive.

"Prodrive will go into F1 in partnership with one of the existing teams. That really does preclude a start-up with Aston Martin, which would be highly inappropriate at this moment in time anyway," Richards says.

"There are lots of other things to do with Aston Martin before we consider F1. Who knows, maybe in five or 10 years it might be something to think about, but it's certainly not in the foreseeable future."

Approaching his 55th birthday and in his final year of V8 Supercar racing, Bowe has always had a boundless enthusiasm for motorsport -- and for talking it up.

So it's something of a surprise to read his stinging criticism of the support race line-up at this week's Melbourne GP.

Bowe certainly got it off his chest in today's Herald Sun newspaper.

"I have been to every Australian GP since 1986 and this is the worst supporting program I have ever seen," Bowe says.

"It's a real, real shame for the racing followers.

"It (Melbourne) is the centre of the car industry and a great opportunity for the competition's backers to be involved."

Mark Skaife and James Courtney told the Herald Sun they were disappointed not to be racing at the GP this year.

However, Courtney -- who in his days of international open-wheeler racing, which saw him get as far as a test driver for Jaguar Racing (now Red Bull), was an ambassador for the Australian GP Corporation -- says: "We (V8 Supercars) don't need an event like the GP to prop it (V8 Supercar racing) up. I think they will probably miss us."

Expect that to be reflected in the attendances.

Michelin is claiming "irregularities in the tender process".

Must say, the announcement a few days back seemed rather odd to us, and we wondered whether there was an element of payback from the FIA after the seven Michelin-shod F1 teams refused to take part in the 2005 United States GP on safety grounds.

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