As we head towards the traditional northern hemisphere F1 winter break the world of Formula One will both reflect on 2020 and look forward to the next challenge in 2021.
Looking back on 2020 it has to be said Liberty, FOM, the Teams and the Media have done a brilliant job of working from country to country during a global pandemic to produce one of the most dynamic seasons in years.
The results in the history books may not look that different than previous years with Mercedes dominating and the rest of the pack fighting over midfield prowess and points.
Yet that doesn’t tell the story. Hamilton’s three-wheeled escapades at Silverstone and Max Verstappen winning a week later for a home win for the British based team are just a couple of stand outs. Then Gasly’s emotional win at Monza as he gets his mojo working after a rough ride in the Red Bull stampede of driver changes in the last few seasons.
Talking of emotional wins everyone in Formula One was able to celebrate with Sergio Perez taking a back to the front spin and win. His first iF1 win and last run out for Racing Point at Bahrain. It was an outstanding performance compared to Vettel, his replacement, who had a somewhat sad demise in his last few months as a Ferrari driver.
For me though the outstanding moment of 2020 was when the sport of F1 drew a collective breath after lap one in Bahrain. For the next 30 seconds, we all held our breath around the globe as Roman Grosjean was engulfed in a fireball in his Haas.
There was certainly an angel on his shoulder that day as the “Halo” did exactly what it was supposed to do. His car sliced through the metal Armco at 130 miles an hour with 53 g’s of impact. Stepping away with just burns to his hands some might say WAS a miracle. I say it was no miracle. Instead, it was the brilliant research and endeavour by the likes of Alex Wurz and many others in F1 and FIA to demand that the Halo be a uniform add-on to all FIA single-seater series. Their courage and perseverance to make it so quite simply saved Roman Grosjean’s Life.
So despite these troubled times, Formula One has gone forward in 2020 against all odds. While there were many cancellations, disruptions and inconveniences due to the pandemic, F1 made it through to Abu Dhabi and pulled off an excellent season of racing.
Now the question is can they do it again in 2021 which is just around the corner and will be upon us before we know.
On my “Speed City” radio show we have been blessed to have interviews from F1 race promoters and team managers alike as we got their take on surviving in these unparalleled times and doing it all again in 2021.
Liberty Media recently published its financial results for the third quarter of 2020, showing an overall loss of $104 million for the period.
The disparity in terms of profit was greater still. F1 earned $44 million in the third quarter of 2019, but lost $104 million this year. The sport attributed this partly to changes in race earnings due to the inability to allow ticket sales to fans.
For Eric Boullier the CEO of the French Grand Prix and Bobby Epstein the owner of the Circuit of the America’s (COT) they didn’t even get the chance to make it work with both the French and US Grand Prix’s canceled in 2020.
“It’s been a terrible year,” commented Bobby Epstein from COTA. “To not hear the track is a very disappointing thing.
“By now we would have had 400,000 concert goers at our music venue and we would have had 4 major motor racing events and a couple of the major international events and that would have brought over a million fans through the gates and yet, in reality, we are sitting near zero.”
The pandemic financially affected all the Formula 1 teams, but McLaren and Williams are the only ones that have made figures public.
McLaren lost $227 million for the first quarter of this year. In May, it announced it was laying off 1,200 of its 4,000 employees across its three divisions. About 75 of the job losses will be from the Formula 1 team.
Three days after McLaren announced job losses, Williams disclosed a $45.5 million loss in Formula 1 revenue in 2019 so their investors coming in at the end of 2020 couldn’t have been more timely for their survival.
In the case of the French Grand Prix, the dates were just workable to fit into F1’s revised schedule.
“The French Grand Prix had to be canceled as Formula One is in charge of the calendar,” commented Eric Bouillier. “They gave me two dates, which were not possible for us to host the race. One was in the middle of summer when the Cote D’Azur is traditionally very crowded.
“The other one, the track was not available. As we have to rent the track from Paul Ricard it needs to be available and it was not for the weekend F1 had earmarked for the revised 2020 season.”
The upside of that was that tracks like Mugello and Imola in Italy, Turkey, and Portimao in Portugal were able to step up and create very successful events. This though sets up perhaps more headaches for the traditional venues as these new venues will now want to retain the opportunity to run a race in the future. The French Grand Prix has a contract for the future, but in the case of COTA 2021 is the last season of their 10-year contract with F1.
“For 2021 we are ready and in fact, we had performers lined up musically that will come back in 2021,” said Epstein.
“In fact, we may benefit from being in the fall in October calendar wise. I certainly hope that a year from now we can go ahead as planned with crowds and a full event.
“Next year is the last race of our contract. I absolutely think that F1 has a future here at COTA from 2022. Conversations with Stefano Domenicali are waiting to be had and with Chase Carey. They will probably be conversations I’m sure next spring for 2022 and onwards.”
Liberty Media have announced an unprecedented 23 race calendar for next year yet the sport is far from out of the woods heading into 2021 as the pandemic rages on. The number of races is perhaps an attempt to hope all will be better with the pandemic and that the losses from 2020 can be made up for in 2021 with more events. In fact, Liberty has been quite vocal about eventually having 25 events.
“It’s not a secret that liberty is looking at expanding the calendar, but by stretching the calendar there is a limit to the travel for the teams and their personnel,” said Bouillier. “Having a cost cap for the teams will help but it becomes difficult, but there is a limit to the number of races and they also need to be on all five continents and not four as it is now.”
Then there is the sheer logistics of so many races around the globe and providing the personnel needed.
Ex Haas and Marussia F1 Team Manger Dave O’Neill commented, “I think we are getting close to the limit for sure. Typically it’s a young men’s and women’s sport and when you try to string more than two races together as at the end of 2020 at Bahrain {twice} and Abu Dhabi and then the test after you tend to burn people out.
“Not just physically, but also mentally as many have families who they are away from for the best part of a month.
“Logistically it is tricky. The hardest thing is trying to dovetail new staff into the event. If you have a good wheel changer on your pit stop you don’t want to change him out especially when we have sub-3-second stops. If you have 20 races you typically have 5 to 6 sets of kits floating around the world, but when you go up to 25 races the bigger teams might be able to replace a few people and get new blood in, but with the smaller teams it’s really stretched.
“The DHL and Broadcast operators go from event to event ahead of time so they can be on the road for months. When I was at Haas we couldn’t swap the engineers out. Where we could change mechanics and truckies,we could rotate some. It’s very difficult to get the consistency that Formula One demands with so many races.”
Add that to the fact that COVID is far from done with us.
Take Round One in Melbourne, Australia. The first Grand Slam tennis event of 2021, the Australian Open, looks set to start three weeks later than planned on February 8 due to the coronavirus pandemic, after the ATP Tour announced a revised schedule for the first seven weeks of the season.
F1 in Melbourne is penned for March 18th- 21st so it will be touch and go as to whether all the quarantine protocols can be met in order for it to go ahead as planned.
Round 2 in Bahrain shouldn’t be a problem given how they have a model to work from 2020, but round 3 in China in April with Visa’s, etc …. will be a huge challenge.
Hanoi, Vietnam has done all the work needed to host their first Grand Prix, but they are not included in the 2021 schedule though there is a TBC for mid-April yet to be announced.
The America’s especially North America is where Liberty was hoping to expand. A Miami street race and even Indianapolis Motor speedway added to COTA for 3 American visits. Bobby Epstein is not averse to more Grand Prix’s in the American time zone as it will help grow the sport.
“This pandemic set things back a couple of years for F1 in the USA, but Liberty I think what Liberty has done has been successful since 2017,” said Epstein. “We were sold out in 2019 we spent less on marketing than ever before because the sport is growing in this country. And fans do appreciate the product that Liberty is putting out.
“Racing in our time zone is critical and that’s not happened this year and it’s understandable, because of COVID, but it makes a big difference to our fan base because we are not as relevant as before.
“They should build as many races as they can in the Americas. Preferably have that other US race in June so we don’t have to fight for the fans to come and compliment each other.
“We all want the sport to grow and the more exposure the fans here in America we can have the better.
“We have found it’s not simply about the cars on the track it’s about the event and you can’t buy history and you can’t buy tradition.
“We spent 8 million dollars resurfacing the track here in January – so now we are just waiting to show it off.”
These are precarious times for Promoters, Teams, Liberty Media, and the overall business of Formula One.
The only solace all the above can take is that Formula One managed to pull it off in 2020 and will need just as hard if not hard to do it all again next season.
Netflix were right all along as they head for their 3rd season Formula One truly is “Drive to Survive. See you all next season.
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