Formula One’s struggling teams played down talk of a possible boycott of today’s US Grand Prix on Friday as arguments over the division of the sport’s revenues grew more heated.
With the indebted Marussia and Caterham teams in administration and absent from Austin, there was speculation that others could refuse to race in protest at what they see as an unfair playing field.
Britain’s Times newspaper reported in yesterday’s edition that despair had turned to anger with Lotus, Sauber and Force India — who have all had their own financial problems — discussing the possibility of not racing.
Photo: AFP
“It is 50-50 whether it happens, but what else is there?” one unnamed executive was quoted as saying. “The small teams have complained for months and warned what was going to happen, but no one listened.”
Lotus principal Gerard Lopez said that he knew nothing about such a plan, which would revive painful memories of the farcical 2005 US Grand Prix at Indianapolis, when only six cars took part in the race after those using Michelin tires all withdrew.
That race was widely held up as Formula One shooting itself in the foot in a key market for sponsors and the car manufacturers.
“I’ve just found out about the story now, so my answer is no. I’ve no idea. I have to say a bit surprised,” Lopez said. “I’ve had a meeting with them [the other teams] about the cash distribution and so on, and that’s it.”
“I’m not aware of this. I don’t even know where this comes from,” he added.
Force India team bosses also professed to be unaware of the suggestion, while there was nobody at Sauber immediately available for comment.
However Force India deputy principal Bob Fernley suggested there was an agenda at play, and said more teams risked folding unless something was done.
“Two teams have now gone and I think the commercial rights holder is comfortable to thinking there might be 14 cars next year. How many do they want to lose?” he asked. “He [Formula One Group chief executive Bernie Ecclestone] thinks there could be 14 cars next year. So the question is, if we are driving teams out of the business, to what agenda is it? And what’s the game?”
The Times quoted Ecclestone as saying there was a risk of two more teams falling by the wayside.
“If we lose another two teams, that is what will happen,” he said. “We need [them] if they are going to be there performing properly and not moving around with begging buckets.”
Fernley spoke after a news conference that went on for nearly an hour and that also spoke volumes about the crisis engulfing the sport.
The Sauber, Lotus and Force India bosses all sat on the back row, while in front of them, emphasizing the division in the paddock, sat McLaren’s Racing Director Eric Boullier and Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff.
The calls of the back row for a revision of how the revenues were divided, in a sport with turnover in excess of US$1.5 billion a year, but where the big teams get far more than the less successful ones, seemed to fall largely on deaf ears.
“If you look at the budgets of Marussia and the highest spender, whether it is Ferrari or Red Bull, we are talking about a gap from US$70 million to US$250 million,” Wolff said. “So if you want to start with a cost cap, how do you do that? Do you make two-thirds of the people redundant in the big teams? How does it function?”
Wolff said teams had always come and gone in Formula One and the sport was a tough business.
“Maybe Formula One is just a different ball game,” he said. “This is the pinnacle of motor racing and if you want to compete at the pinnacle, you need to have the resources.”
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS