by Gordon Kirby
As we all know,
Formula One is a fantastic success story for a favoured few, including
Bernie Ecclestone,
Max Mosley, the
FIA, the F1 team owners and drivers, agents, managers and engineers.
During the lengthy and continuing Ecclestone era, Formula One has become a superb but incredibly expensive promotional and marketing exercise for many sponsors and the competing motor manufacturers, and Ecclestone has spun a worldwide web of television coverage that has made many people rich. Some people say that like never before the F1 brand stands for greed and arrogance, an image that Ecclestone has assiduously nurtured for maximum profit, and it’s hard to argue otherwise.
Indeed, it is the intrigue, politics and business of F1 that dominates the headlines and fills most of the vast number of column inches and broadcast time devoted to
F1. It’s been this way for many years in fact, as has the story line about the racing itself which is all about an elite few teams and drivers. Often, it’s just one or two teams dominating over a motley collection of midfielders and dispiriting claque of tailenders.
For many years F1, like CART, enjoyed twenty-six and twenty-eight car fields, but for some time a grid of eighteen cars has been accepted as the norm. That fact perfectly suits F1’s image but the modern F1 field looks increasingly anemic in an age where forty rollicking NASCAR cars race damn near every weekend, boasting a savoury surfeit of noise, spectacle and sponsors.
