Going around the world, writing about Formula 1 cars, is a wonderful life, but that does not mean that every day is enjoyable. We all have days when things go wrong. Your know the sort of thing: you wake up and find a parking ticket on your car… and then it starts raining and the umbrella is broken. That is a little how I felt by the end of Monday when I cruised past the village of Schwarzgrub and then stopped for the night in nearby Rottenbach. I don’t know if Schwarzgrub means “black insect”, but it sounded like it. In Rottenbach it was pouring with rain. It didn’t feel like August at all.
I was disappointed to still be in Austria because I had wanted to go further. I’d only done about 500km, and I had wanted to be somewhere near Nuremberg, 300 km further down the road home.
This was thanks to a late start, caused by the work dragging through Sunday night, then there were traffic jams, a diversion, delightful but slow, which took me through the middle of Vienna. I don’t really know where I went because there were road works everywhere and my car’s guidance system is a bit out of date and so I went around in circles a bit. I don’t know Vienna well but I did manage to spot the Musikverein, the Hofburg and Schönbrunn Palaces, and I think I even went past the Spanish Riding School, although on a map that seems a little unlikely. It was all very splendid but I was in a hurry because I had to stop early because I was supposed to have Zoom call and so I ended up in Rottenbach and then the Zoom person failed to make the appointment.
Oh well, I thought, things will be better with a gin & tonic and a decent schnitzel. I long ago discovered that the secret of travelling around Europe by car is to be prepared for everything and travelling companion, which is slightly more charming than Robert Louis Stevenson’s donkey Modestine, has almost everything a traveller might need on the roads of Europe, hidden away in the boot. I haven’t done a full inventory recently but I know that there are crampons (in case of snow) and there is always an iron (but not an ironing board) and there is even a tie to iron. People may think me odd when I say that I always travel with a toaster, a bath plug and, of course, a corkscrew. Quite often I have a bottle of gin and some tonic (plus a glass because some hotels are so cheap they don’t have one). Last year this proved to be most helpful when my original Modestine blew her engine to bits and left me stranded near Bourges, in the middle of France. The driver of the recovery vehicle was bemused by my relaxed state, as he was obviously used to having customers who are stressed out. I explained that I did not think the car was fixable and as I was clearly doing no further driving that evening, I would amuse myself with gin & tonic….
So I drank a G&T in Rottenbach and felt a little better, although I did notice that a bunch of mosquitos had checked into my hotel room before I got there. This made for an annoying night but at least I had the quinine from the tonic water to help me avoid malaria. Admittedly the average Austrian mosquito is probably not carrying malaria, but you have to allow for a little poetic licence. When I got up on Tuesday morning, there was thick fog and with 1,100 km to go to get home, I sighed a rather long sigh.
But I was soon speeding across Germany on a sunny day and when there was a traffic jam near Hockenheim, I was able to use years of local knowledge to use a rat run that I knew to get off the clogged autobahn and wiggle my way up the Rhine bridge at Speyer – you cannot miss it, there is a Boeing 747 close to a medieval cathedral.
Then it is up and over the Pfälzerwald and through the forests to the French border at a place called Goldene Bremm, which I think was named after an old inn that once stood there. However, being the border between France and Germany was not always a good thing given the various conflicts through the ages and so there is not much there these days that one would want to visit.
All of this driving gave me the chance to ruminate on the weekend in Budapest. There was, of course, the news that Max Verstappen would be staying at Red Bull in 2026. This was not a surprise as Max was not actually in a position to leave given that the terms of his contract locked him in for another year at the end of July, as he was still third in the Drivers’ World Championship. Red Bull seemed to be rather more worried about others departing because of contractual clauses that linked them to Christian Horner. We must remember, of course, that Christian has not left, he has simply been moved from his previous role and he will not be leaving until a settlement is sorted out. This will not be the work of a moment because he had a contract for another five years and a eye-watering salary, which is sufficient to have the Austrians with tears streaming down their cheeks. But what seems to be worrying them most of all is if all the people with Horner-linked contracts can suddenly walk away, without needing to do gardening leave. There is a lot of work going on at each Grand Prix with team principals (and their acolytes) lurking about trying to lure staff away from each other, in an effort to have the best possible teams in the future.
There was also talk about Lewis Hamilton after his remarks after a poor qualifying. This seemed to be the thoughts of the moment, rather than any long-term thinking and Lewis had previously explained that he was working hard to get Ferrari moving in the right direction and was not about to waltz off to his next career. I think that Lewis’s intervention probably played a fairly important role in Ferrari finally decided to keep Fred Vasseur.
Ferrari has long had the very bad habit of throwing out its leadership every three or four years but the news that Vasseur will stay is a sign that (perhaps) the top management has finally understood that it is best to keep the same people and let them build what they can before they are thrown into the mincer at Maranello. The problem is that it is very hard for them to know whether the person chosen is the right one and extending the contract is the right thing to do, or whether it is better to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and start again. Given the complete lack of support for Vasseur from these folk in recent months, it is fair to say that they were not really convinced. But, no-one else wanted the job, and in the end Fred’s rivals were telling Ferrari to keep him, which was interesting. Were they supporting him because they know he won’t fix it? Or were they so enamoured by the Frenchman that they were willing to risk being beaten by him in the future. Time will tell, I suppose.
The big chat in the F1 Paddock over the Budapest weekend was actually none of this, but rather a lot of coming and going over the engine rules of the future. A new proposal has been put forward by the FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who is busy trying to get re-elected in December and wants to impress his electorate by announcing as many deals that look good for the FIA before election day. He has recently extended the agreement with Formula E and is trying to promote the FIA World RallyCross Championship himself, while also looking to conclude a new governance deal with F1 – and a commercial deal with the World Rally Championship. The rallycross deal is controversial and will probably end up with the European Commission getting involved, although the bureaucrats move slowly and so they may not cause any trouble before December.
Ben Sulayem really wants to get a governance deal with Formula 1 and the teams and is trying to get what he wants, but rushing into deals is never the best idea, as one accept things that will come back to bite you. So it is a balancing act. F1 and the teams might wish to slow down agreements, but at the same time, does not want to upset the volatile Emirati, and so it is a balancing act for them as well. Stability is what they want and thus things that will destabilise the sport and definitely frowned upon. In the end, money will probably decide everything, as it usually does. The FIA will be thrown some more greenbacks to keep them quiet and this will make Ben Sulayem’s chums happy, but he will want a bigger victory than he is likely to get so he needs to be cautious.
Ben Sulayem has been trying to get the manufacturers to agree to change the engines rules before the end of the planned regulation cycle, which is supposed to run from 2026 until the end of 2030. There will then be a new set of rules in 2031. While there are some companies which would not mind cheaper and easier engines, others argue that they have made the investment and want to be able to get returns on that before moving on to new ideas.
The idea of an early change has been opposed by Audi, Honda and Mercedes, which together will provide power units for six of the 11 Formula 1 teams next season. Mercedes and Ferrari are the two biggest players, as they will be supplying power units to seven teams in 2026. With Audi and Honda both also keen to stick with the current arrangements, there is no real chance of a change, although some companies want to keep their options open for an earlier change in case their 2026 engines are not competitive. This pragmatic approach means that there might be more support for a change in 2026 once the new pecking order is established. That will be too late for the FIA election.
The latest suggestion is that F1 should use V8 engines, rather than the existing V6 turbos. Timing is important in all this. The 2026 engines regulations were finalised in the middle of 2022 and thus new rules in 2028 would have needed agreement in the middle of 2024. Even a change in 2029 is unlikely, although some of the manufacturers might be willing to give up 2030 if there is a more attractive formula.
They do agree that engine budgets should come down by about 30 percent but most of them are arguing (sensibly) that if the engines change, the whole formula should be reconsidered with the chassis rules being taken into account as well, because otherwise the tail is wagging the dog – as is now happening as the FIA tries to fit chassis rules around the engines, rather than looking at the problem as a whole. The general feeling is that everyone wants cars that can be raced flat out, which will be smaller and lighter but with some elements of hybrid technology and sustainable fuels. All things considered, most of the big players want to wait to see what happens in the election before committing to something. In order to change the rules in 2030, agreement is needed by next summer. There is a sense of urgency because there are various other companies that might want to be involved in F1 in 2030 or 2031 and they need to start planning. There will be a meeting in September to discuss these matters, but there are clearly discussions going on to see what alliances will be formed ahead of the talks. It was interesting to see Ferrari chairman John Elkann having several meetings with Mercedes’s Toto Wolff during the Budapest weekend.
There are lots of rumours about people wanting to buy teams, notably in relation to Alpine. The team must be quite happy that Lawrence Stroll has acquired the shares in Aston Martin Racing previously owned by the Aston Martin road car firm. One might argue that this is not very different to selling shares to oneself and the end result is that the cash-starved car company has got a bit more money, while the racing team has a inflated valuation, which will naturally reflect on the valuations of all the other teams. The fact is that an F1 team is worth what someone will pay for it, and there are some people willing to throw big numbers about to secure an entry, on the basis that the entry will double or triple in value in the years ahead.
It is not just the gamblers of private equity who want to dive in, because some of the car companies see F1 as being a way to get free publicity because the teams are now making money and if they structure things sensibly, a car company can make money from F1 – and get the exposure that F1 offers. They have to be a little tentative because shareholders are wary of expensive motorsport programmes, but as these make more and more sense, so the likelihood is that others will join in. One name that is being bandied around a lot is Hyundai, but there is also Toyota and even some of the Chinese are beginning to think of F1 in a favourable light, if they can find someone who understands it. Hyundai Motorsport is led by a man called Cyril Abiteboul, who knows a lot about how to play F1 politics, while Christian Horner will eventually be on the market and he will looking for partners.
It was interesting to see Audi’s Gernot Döllner in Budapest, on a private visit to the event. This seemed rather odd because Dollner was not very keen on F1 when he first got the job of CEO of Audi. Now, it seems, he is developing a taste for the sport, which is good news for F1.
I am told that Ford is also more and more keen, despite the Horner kerfuffle, with chairman Bill Ford dropping in recently (after Horner’s move) to see how things are going in Milton Keynes.
In the overall scheme if things F1 is very healthy today. The numbers are good and the fans base is growing . The F1 Movie has last week hit a cumulative global box office total of $545.6 million, which means that it has become the highest-grossing movie of Brad Pitt’s career. The film is showing no signs of fading out of cinemas just yet and the launch of the film on Apple TV may be later than planned as there is no point in developing that market until the box office numbers fade.
The success means that there is now added impetus for other interesting broadcasting projects and new rights deals. We expect to see a string of new TV deals launched this autumn – and we hear that a scripted fictional series about F1 (read soap opera) is beginning to gather momentum again…
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