Is Vettel the new face of German domination?

If a heavyweight Mafioso desires something, his first approach may not necessarily involve violence or the threat of it. He may begin by offering money, lots of money, or a favour so appealing that the hardest of hearts is enticed. There are useful lessons to be learned from this technique. Lewis Hamilton stated somewhat rashly last week that Red Bull was not much more than “a drinks company”, an upstart which hadn’t earned the right to be mixing things at the top with the likes of the mighty McLaren an Ferrari; teams with reputations carefully forged over generations of racing tradition. Well, Red Bull appear to be reading from a different script from the McLaren one because the best that Hamilton could do against the imperious Sebastian Vettel at the Australian Grand prix was come within eight tenths of a second of the German’s gearbox. With that sort of lead over the man who eventually stood on the number two step of the podium, Vettel could just as easily have been driving his own race by himself. The best advice for Mr Hamilton is not to whinge about the symptoms but deal instead with the cause of the problem. Get a couple of lieutenants and put them on a plane to Sicily with a clear message firmly installed in their brains. “Find a couple of scary but discreet chaps. Tell them to get in touch with Adrian Newey in the manner only trained Mafia chaps can (I have no objections to severed horses heads in beds). The important thing to make sure of is that Newey is never again seen anywhere near an F1 garage or workshop.” The time for this sort of approach is ripe. Ferrari tried engaging the services of Mr Newey before the start of this season and offered tempting inducements: more money, a top of the range Ferrari and a beautiful Emiliano-Romagnolo villa with a well stocked wine cellar. Newey declined. He likes it at Red Bull, he said. The thought of moving to Italy did not particularly enthuse him either. This being the case, unless Hamilton or some other forward thinking person does as I suggest, I fear the die is cast. Red Bull might be a drinks company but Christian Horner, the man in charge of running its F1 team, has the foresight of a falcon. Horner made two far-reaching recruitment decisions that will haunt the world of F1 for years. The first and most important was to hire Adrian Newey, the unequalled expert of racing car design, as the chief designer of Red Bull’s F1 cars. Adrian Newey is an alchemist, a man who goes to sleep at night and dreams in binary code, a genius. In his hands Williams and then McLaren were the class of the field. Following his departure, first Williams and then McLaren faltered. The answer to the question “how does one put together a championship winning Formula One car” is invariably “get Newey!” The second Horner inspired initiative was to spot the potential in a young German called Sebastian Vettel and sign him to Red Bull early. We saw the promise of the Red Bull car and driver last year as Vettel managed ten pole positions and a world championship in a season filled to the brim with exceptional talent. From the evidence of Vettel’s complete domination of Saturday and Sunday in Melbourne, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I hope to goodness that this is not the case, but the evidence of the Australian Grand Prix is that we have entered a new era of unrelenting domination akin to the mind-numbingly boring Michael Schumacher years. Word on the street before Melbourne was that McLaren had produced a pig’s ear of a car and could pretty much be written off. I didn’t see anything to suggest that at all. Hamilton’s second place in both qualifying and the race was respectable. Jenson Button wasn’t too far back but, uncharacteristically, he allowed himself to fall for the oldest trick in the book. Felipe Massa’s Ferrari was clearly slower than Button’s McLaren but Massa held his nerve and wouldn’t allow himself to be harassed by an increasingly irritable Button. The trick worked: Button “lost it”; he made a mistake and found himself forced to use a run-off area to get ahead of Massa. The Ferrari came into the pits soon thereafter so there wasn’t sufficient time for Button to realise his mistake and give the place back to Massa. As he should have expected, he was promptly slapped with a drive-through penalty which cost him at least twenty seconds and any chance of a podium position. Thinking back to Australian Grands Prix over the years, I have seen many that were better. Apart from Button’s gullibility, the only other incident which sticks in the memory was the hot headed Brazilian driver, Rubens Barrichello, deciding to t-bone poor old Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes so cruelly that the German had to retire. The race was largely a dull affair. I am sure Vitaly Petrov will disagree with me, though. Consistency and determination enabled him to bag the third podium place in his Lotus Renault and he thereby became the first ever Russian to win a Formula One trophy. The lesson from Australia is that Ferrari and McLaren have to raise their game considerably if this season is going to be worthy of the description “championship”. That, or book that flight to Palermo… Gitau 28 March 2011

Now for the start we really wanted: Melbourne

“Are you sitting down? the Australian accented female voice asked down the telephone with more than a hint of mischief.
“What do you want?” I demanded querulously.
“I represent Qantas Airways,” the voice continued unperturbed. “Have you heard of us?”
“You obviously did not ring to educate me about the world’s airlines and I am not particularly bothered about yours,” I said, “so if you have a point to make you’d best make it quickly.”
“Well, Mr Githinji, we discovered your interest in Formula One through reading your blog on the Internet and would like to offer you two free tickets to this year’s Australian Grand Prix and premier hospitality in the restricted corporate entertainment area at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne.”
I was at first nonplussed. Somebody reading my musings had decided to offer me a gift worth at least £1,000 simply because they liked what I wrote about. It seemed a little too slick, other-worldly even. I said “thank you very much for letting me know. You can send the tickets to me at my London address.”
“We would rather not do that for security reasons, sir. The tickets will be available for you to collect at the Albert Park any time from Wednesday 23 March. All you have to do is present some identification, such as your passport, to the Qantas representative at the Park and…”
I interrupted her: “you seem to be overlooking the slightly inconvenient fact that the distance between London and Melbourne is well in excess of 10,000 miles!”
“You did not allow me to finish, sir. You will need to provide evidence that you and the person accompanying you have flown to Melbourne in Business Class with Qantas Airways. Your boarding pass stub will do adequately.”
“We have come to the point of this phone call, I see. You chaps are struggling to fill your planes. Two business class tickets at over £3,000 apiece is well worth a few smarmy phone calls, isn’t it?”
“I think you’ll find that Qantas continues to be one of the world’s most profitable airlines.”
“I am sure it is! Why on earth wouldn’t it be? But for my piece of mind, I shall be delighted to accept your generous offer if you will be so kind as to send me your flight occupancy figures for the last three months.”
The line went dead.

This incident reflects the difficulties encountered in marketing goods and services in the age of multimedia. Twenty years ago, if you had a catchy enough but cleverly irritating advertising jingle like “Mr Sheen shines umpteen things clean!” you were pretty much assured that it would be ringing through the brains of at least half the country while they struggled to do something else. We have all been there: “what’s my daughter’s birthday, dash it!...Mr Sheen shines…is it 14 August, or is it…umpteen things clean! Blast!” Now you have to work very hard to get an entire country glued to its television sets at the same time on the same day.

But companies have to sell things or else they die. This is why I have lots of things handed to me for free at many street corners of London various times a week. One day it might be a new flavour of Coke, the next it might be a new laundry detergent, or a new cereal bar, or a new type of yogurt, and so on. Since the companies know there is little chance of catching my attention on television, radio or in a newspaper, they give me their product to try for free and hope that I will like it enough to buy more of it in the future

Sport, however, provides perhaps the last universal marketing point. If Arsenal are playing in the European Champions League semi-final, you know that there will be a global audience of one billion plus watching the game at the same time. That is why companies now offer large sums of money to football clubs to have their names included on the teams’ strips or to have naming rights at the teams’ grounds. Twenty years ago a large international bank sponsoring a football club was unimaginable; now Standard Chartered PLC has its logo prominently displayed on the shirts worn by Liverpool Football Club’s players. It’s a clever marketing ploy: instead of spending millions designing adverts for different parts of the world, now the bank can relax in the knowledge that every time Steven Gerrard runs across a football field when playing for Liverpool, the words “Standard Chartered” will be emblazoned across his chest for all the world to see. Similarly, a part of North London never previously known to have had anything to do with the United Arab Emirates is now the home of the Emirates Stadium (Arsenal FC’s ground).

But Formula One got in on this game well before football. Every last inch of a team’s car is worth lots of money, depending on how successful that team is. At the start of the 2009 season, the new team Brawn had virtually spotless white cars. Nobody knew how they were going to perform and it was difficult for the team boss, Ross Brawn, to persuade companies to give him some money and have their names on his cars. The situation quickly resolved itself. By the end of the season, when Brawn was heading inexorably towards winning the constructors’ championship, the team’s livery had a healthy peppering of useful brand names all over it. It is not that different for drivers either. During his Ferrari days, Michael Schumacher’s forehead was the most expensive advertising space in the world; for a company to earn the right to have its name on Schumacher’s cap a fat cheque had to be handed over.

For these reasons, a sensible suggestion by the new FIA boss, Jean Todt, that drivers’ numbers are displayed more prominently and in larger letters on cars (how many times have you observed a Ferrari or a McLaren spin out and had to wait for the slow motion replay to work out which of the team’s two drivers was involved in the incident?) has not been received with much enthusiasm. Unfortunately, placing number 1 more prominently on Sebastian Vettel’s car means that Red Bull has less advertising space to sell - stickers bearing car numbers are never accompanied by fat cheques!

Aside from these distractions, we have the minor matter of the start of a brand new Formula One season to deal with this weekend. Despite the best efforts of Bernie Ecclestone to kill the sport by taking money from dodgy people and handing race rights to places with no motor racing history and which cannot even rustle up a dozen genuine fans, the competitiveness of Formula One has got better, not worse, in the last few years. We are enjoying an unprecedented period in the history of the sport. For the first time ever five men who have held the tile of F1 world champion – Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel - will be battling for honours this season. Alongside them will be at least three others – Nico Rosberg, Mark Webber and Felipe Massa – who are just as capable of competing at the very top. A fourth very talented driver, Robert Kubica, would have added to the unpredictability of this season but, sadly, he was badly injured in a rallying accident earlier this year and will probably not be back before the end of the season, if ever.

The Bahraini Arabs may not have intended this when they began their protests but Melbourne is where the new season is to be launched. There should never have been any debate as to where the new F1 year ought properly to begin. No sportsman - not even a Premier League footballer - is as self-obsessed as a Formula One driver; particularly one who has ascended to the lofty heights of a world championship. It is far better for a chap like that to begin the racing year in a sun-drenched, beautiful city with a long tradition of hosting exciting motor races than in a dusty, poorly designed circuit in the middle of the Arabian desert. Doubtless, you will agree as you settle down to the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday. Pity it has to be at the crack of dawn, though.

Gitau
22 March 2011

Bahrain: an expensive folly is dead

To say that I am disappointed that there will be no Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend would be akin to saying that I am not a fan of motor racing, or that I don’t like shagging, or that I hate Paris. Bahrain’s ghastly circuit in the desert – a plaything of the Persian Gulf state’s Crown Prince – is everything that an F1 circuit should not be: remote, uninspiring, slow, dusty and not designed for racing. Ever since the first race in 2004, one watched the Bahrain Grand Prix for reasons other than the enjoyment of motor racing action. In the course of a racing season one needs to be able to engage with the team dynamics in various teams, to understand the relative performance differentials from car to car and generally to keep abreast of the F1 championship as it progresses. Bahrain served that purpose annoyingly and inadequately.

Watching the desert race each year was, truth be told, mostly an ordeal. I could just about put up with the awful race when it was simply one of many in the F1 championship season. What got my goat was when the Bahrain Grand Prix was elevated to the status of season opener in 2010. This was a kick in the bollocks. It was Bernie Ecclestone sticking two fingers up at the F1 world. It was chutzpah on a shocking scale.

But as everybody who has had to pay for their sins will tell you, there is a great wheel of justice in this world. The wheel may turn slowly, but turn it certainly does. Here we were waiting to begin the 2011 season in the Middle East when – bang! – a revolution began in Tunisia and spread across Egypt and up the Persian Gulf to Bahrain. Suddenly, no comfortable Westerner, least of all any rich Formula One driver, wanted to place himself at risk of kidnap or worse by flying out to the Middle East to participate in something as trivial as a motor race in March 2011.

As soon as Ben Ali of Tunisia hightailled it out of his palace to a sanctuary in Saudi Arabia, it was obvious to anyone who spent more than five seconds thinking about the thing that the Bahrain Grand Prix was toast. Suddenly, Ecclestone’s enthusiasm at abandoning trusted old F1 circuits in Western Europe was revealed in all of its cynicism. Race organisers, tour operators, hotels, airlines and sundry business people have lost their shirts in the whole debacle. Companies are laying off staff and lawsuits have been launched. Anybody at the receiving end of court documents or bank demands will be loath ever to reconsider the circus in the desert. I would go as far as predicting the death of Bahrain as a Formula One destination. Not too many tears will be shed if that is the case.

From its less than impressive debut onto the world’s motor racing stage, it was easy to predict that the Bahrain Grand Prix was never going to be a long term prospect. Since there is not a lot else to draw a punter to the country, once the novelty of a race in the desert had worn off, it seemed clear that interest in attending live races there or switching on a television to watch the race each year would eventually become more of a chore than anything else. Contrast that with, say, Australia. Punters flock there in their thousands because the country has a great deal more to offer than an impressive F1 circuit in Melbourne’s Albert Park. I did not, however, foresee how Bahrain’s death would happen. What killed the Bahrain Grand Prix was not lack of interest from fans but a long oppressed Arabic population rising up as one and saying “hang on a bit, why does this sheikh bloke have his foot up our arse? Why is he swanning about the world in private jets and Rolls Royces with our cash? Why don’t we tell him where to get off?” And they marched to the town square in Manama, threw a few stones about and declared “oi, Sheikh, we’d like a word with you!” Nothing is more likely to put the wind up mollycoddled Westerners than the sight of angry Arabs throwing stones.

The race was swiftly erased from the 2011 F1 calendar. But while cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix may be good news for those who loathed the circuit, it is terrible news for Bernie Ecclestone. Each circuit has to pay Ecclestone an agreed amount of money every time it hosts a race. The details of these amounts are obscure but the fact that the rights to host new F1 races have only been granted to opaque, “no-questions-asked” places like Bahrain and Abu Dhabi gives you some idea of their size. The owner of the Sakhir circuit has not handed over the requisite fat cheque and will not do so if there is no race at his folly in the desert this year. Behind Ecclestone are a bunch of hungry Private Equity investors who will most certainly have made their displeasure known to him. “Where’s the money, Ecclestone?” rings through the man’s ears each day like tinnitus. It is for this reason that Ecclestone is talking about trying to slot the race into the calendar at the end of the year. “We'll try and have a look and see what we can do, how we can swap things round a bit,” Ecclestone said. “Maybe we can change with Brazil, something like that.” I would not advise anyone to hold their breath.

Meanwhile, the Arab revolution is gaining momentum. In the teeth of fierce and bloody resistance from an enraged Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyans are arming themselves. Tunisia’s fires are still burning. Rumblings are spoken about throughout the region and have been heard loudly in Oman recently. Everyone’s holding their breath about Saudi Arabia. If the Sheikhs in the biggest Arab country get a taste of the Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarack medicine, we will all soon be feeling the heat as the oil price climbs higher than it has already. If that happens, we won’t just be looking back at the death of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Formula One itself will be six feet under. Get out your prayer books.

Gitau
08 March 2011