The latest meeting of the FIA World Motorsport Council approved a number of measures of direct interest to the DSC readership.
We’ve been talking to the FIA, and to the ACO to help ensure that future regulatory changes are more comprehensively explained. The response to those approaches has been very positive indeed so hopefully no repeat of the rather ill-founded information on power-capping that resulted this time.
Then though there’s the issue of the new Formula One calendar.
The major bone of contention is, of course, Baku a provisional date that sees the first F1 race in Azerbaijan going head to head with the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours, a move so clumsy by BCE and friends that even the normally very diplomatic Gerard Neveu has commented in particularly strident terms to Italian magazine Autosprint that the measure amounts to an attack on the WEC and the Le Mans race.
Putting aside the obvious truth that you always know when you’re doing something right if ‘they’ try to hurt you, the reality of the move is that there can be no realistic option for current F1 drivers to compete in the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours. From the get go it got social media and the DSC Editor’s inbox buzzing with conspiracy theory and conjecture.
There was only one prevailing theme. Was this another raid on sportscar racing as it finds itself in the ascendancy? (shades of 1992!)
Every part of me hopes, and at least some of me believes, that isn’t so. but, put simply the insertion of a provisional date for an F1 race at Baku which effectively clashes with the Le Mans 24 Hours is difficult for anyone to defend.
In an era of supposed direct co-operation between the ACO and FIA, in a ‘moment’ when there has been much talk of prominent F1 racers showing interest in competing at Le Mans and in the year after Le Mans was won overall by a crew featuring a current full season F1 driver (Nico Hulkenberg) the move looks cynical. Again if it isn’t there’s precious little effort being expended to dissuade critics of that.
It certainly shows little backbone from the World Motorsport Council whose job it is to consider and either approve or question the calendar submitted by the F1 promoter. For that matter it shows utter disregard for the sport. Any measure that resorts to observing the wording, but drives a coach and horses through the spirit, of a commitment not to clash cannot be viewed in any other way.
The fact that it is Baku that is the potential clash adds further grist to the mill, yet another race inserted onto the calendar for two reasons only. Money and a political statement.
Shame on you decision makers for allowing it, it is impossible to defend, and whilst it may, ultimately, only affect the options for one driver, it shows that an important part of the sport has forgotten that our Champions, and the fanbase for the sport as a whole, have a vital role to play if the sport is to reverse the trend of decline. One of the infamous F1 ‘Fan Polls’ might usefully ask. Where would you like to see the very best drivers racing in June? My guess is that even the F1 faithful would put ‘Le Mans’ WAY ahead of ‘Baku’
Short-term gain though has once again been allowed to prevail, and that, it will be seen in the future, is not going to be the correct decision for the sport as a whole.
GG
