The Balance Between Sport and Entertainment – Brian Sims
April 30, 2013
One of the penalties of having spent so many years in the motorsport industry is that people seem to think I’m a technical expert on anything automotive. Go to a social event and there’ll always be someone who corners me and then proceeds to give me chapter and verse on every car that they’ve ever owned. As if that’s not bad enough, many will then go into raptures over the fact that their 1974 Cortina had an ex-works modified exhaust manifold system, or perhaps a triple Weber carburettor, imported specially from Ford Cologne. However hard I might try to explain that I worked on the commercial side of motorsport, it makes no difference. They carry on regardless.
Then there are those who want to talk Formula 1. Now that I can manage, mainly because I started following Grand Prix racing from way back before my first F1 job, as manager of the Kyalami Circuit in South Africa. I’m not too good with statistics, but I can remember so many of the characters involved and the fascinating tales of daring, skill and glamour.
Of late, however, the question that’s put to me so often by business people, friends, family and social acquaintances is this: “What’s going on with Formula 1, this tyre business for a start?” Another popular question relates to what Pirelli can possibly get out of producing tyres that last five or six in a race before they become virtually un-driveable. Business friends in particular openly ask me how that can be good exposure for a company that’s reliant on selling road tyres.
The feeling amongst many people who like watching F1 on the TV, but who aren’t directly involved in the sport, is that F1 seems to have switched from being all about the best technology driven by the world’s top race drivers on the most challenging race tracks, to artificially stimulated events that rely on tyre degradation, harvested energy, Red Baron style adjustable-wings and sponsorship-bringing also-rans to put on a show.
Mark Webber, he of the Seb Vettel admiration society, was recently moved enough on the subject to comment that the sport was getting closer to World Wrestling Federation strategy by the day.
Being Devils’ Advocate, I seem to recall that not many years ago; the F1 world pointed very twitchy fingers at the American Indycar fraternity, accusing them of indiscriminately using yellow flags for the purpose of stimulating the entertainment at their circuits. That’s interesting in the light of F1’s own current attempts to stimulate overtaking and excitement.
Now we have drivers from the same team actually having the temerity to race each other in a style that was the norm for F1 drivers not that many years ago. Immediately there is an outcry from within, it’s too dangerous, particularly if it’s a team-mate. Throw in the massive number of run-off areas at so many of the modern tracks and it’s little wonder that a significant number of the paying public are beginning to wonder why some of these drivers actually went into the sport in the first place.
I was under the impression that motor racing has always been a dangerous sport. Today, more so than ever, the rewards for the top drivers are phenomenal. Of course no-one wants to see it return to the days when a couple of racers a year would die on the F1 tracks of the world. It does beg the question, however, as to whether we really want to see what is meant to be the pinnacle of world motorsport reduced to relying on rapidly worn-out tyres to generate real racing? If the answer is yes, then I fear for the commercial future of motorsport as a whole.
Outside of F1, the viewing figures for motorsport are not healthy. Genuine sponsorship is incredibly difficult to secure and its monetary value has been drastically reduced. Motorsport is being perceived as socially irresponsible by an increasing number of businesses, whilst participant entry levels are down at many levels of the sport.
Whether or not you like F1, it’s undoubtedly the pinnacle of motorsport. If todays’ youngsters see more and more drivers making it to that level based more on the size of their wallets rather than on talent, they’ll quickly wonder whether it’s worth the effort of working their way up the motorsport ladder.
If you add all of these issues to the viewpoint of those people who think that F1 is now far too artificial for their liking, you have a very worrying scenario. If that’s what the public are thinking, you can bet your bottom dollar that the business-world will follow suite. From what is currently a disturbing situation in respect of sponsorship in motorsport, it could turn into a catastrophe.
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