Green Notebook from… Shh! Don’t mention it

I can think of a few ways to get yourself into trouble using only two words. Most of them end up with the word “… off”.

But there is another very effective method: one simply says “Saudi Arabia” and you can pretty much guarantee unpleasantries on anti-social media from those who have an opinion. And everyone seems to have an opinion. So, I suppose, one can say that it is best avoided, but that is a bit of a problem when one is writing an article about visiting Jeddah…

The name of the country is enough to get the supposedly liberally-minded ranting about how Formula 1 is bathing in the murky waters of sportswashing and that it is a beastly country, ruled over by a dark and evil prince.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I’m afraid that I have very limited time for people who criticise a place, but never get on a plane and go to visit, to find out for themselves whether the way the country is portrayed in the western media is how it really is. There is no substitute for first hand knowledge, and most places are not what one expects. They could all be better, but one can say that of one’s own country as well.

I find it incredibly arrogant when the complaining classes spout forth about other countries on the basis that their country and culture is right and everyone else has got it wrong. Democracy is not something one can force on a country. It must suit local ideas, ideologies, sensitivities and, above all else, timing. All places are different and to ignore the perspective of locals and declare that one’s own system is the best is dumb arrogance. And is it any wonder that this sense of moral superiority and the belief that one can define what common values should be, leads to so much anti-western feeling in the world, even if Saudis – like most people the world over – seem to be very keen on Dunkin’ Donuts… The point is that people the world over are people… and we share so much.

But, let me now tell you one story about the troublesome two-word kingdom, to give you a more little perspective. Sixteen months ago, during the first Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend, the thing that made the biggest impression on me was not the grubby town nor the shiny buildings. The driving standards were shocking but what really hit me was when I was on the starting grid and the Crown Prince arrived, surrounded by swishes of princelings and assorted attendants. Here was “The Bad Guy”.

And yet when you saw the grandstand light up with cheers, it was as if Mick Jagger has just walked on stage. For the locals, at least, the Crown Prince was a rock star. No, there weren’t soldiers with bayonets sticking them through the seats to make everyone jump for joy. This is what people thought because the prince had done many things to change the country and move it forwards.

I write this only because I’ve not seen any other mention of this reaction elsewhere.

Anyway, most of the F1 folk were far too busy looking at the racing cars to recognise who this person was. Some would not have known. They were there to race cars and they were too busy worrying about ride-heights to check to see if the local bigwig had blood on his hands that day.

At every race on the calendar (except perhaps Baku, because no-one goes there) there is a herd of VIPs who are shepherded on to the grid to do the photo opportunities, carefully guided by F1-branded “sheep dogs” trying to make sure these people don’t get run over, or hit over the head by frenzied TV cameramen, who never take prisoners.

The F1 grid is a complicated place. If you watch Martin Brundle’s grid walk you might get some hint of this. There are poseurs aplenty, media who stand looking at cars as though they understand what they are looking at, hoping that their editors will see them there, looking learned, on TV. There are the Hollywood types and the politicians who want some of F1’s angel dust to settle on them. There are the sponsors, swanning about gawping and doing selfies. There are workers, ducking and weaving between the nabobs, and there are the security people, who are there to stop someone assassinating their potentate. You can always spot these people. Their eyes are darting from place to place, always looking for a threat. It’s not an easy job.

The other day (not in Saudi) I was chatting with a Prime Minister in the paddock (as you do) and, as I have known him for many years, we were having a laugh. He said something vaguely rude about the media and I laughed and pretended that I was going to punch him. I stopped, my fist in mid-air, and asked: “Have you got any security people about?” One of his party said: “Look behind you,” and sure enough there was an eye-darting individual, wondering whether he should jump on me and stop me assaulting his boss. At this point the Prime Minister leaned forward and said: “And you have some laser points on your forehead as well.”

Amid much giggling, we went our separate ways.

I must admit that there have been times when the security men in F1 have worried me because when one has multiple royals in a confined space (as happens sometimes at races) there are so many eyes darting suspiciously about that things can get quite edgy.

I am quite sure that if we ever do have a shootout on the grid at an F1 race, it will turn out that it was a gun battle between personal protection officers, who mistook one another for killers…

Anyway, the Saudi Arabian weekend was quiet because not everyone goes there and the timings were all offset because of the timetable. This made it feel like every day had about 30 hours. We spent a lot of time at the track and yet a lot of time in the hotel as well. Everyone goes home at weird hours of the night and then the paddock is empty until midday.

They look after us very well in Jeddah with the F1 Media having its own island, known as Media Island, although it might as well be called Fantasy Island, given some of the stories emanating from it. The biggest fantasy of the week was the supposed London Grand Prix. This was a total fabrication. There was once a project in the docklands area, probably five years ago. The idea then was to build the circuit infrastructure into a new waterside development which was being planned on the north side of the Royal Albert Dock.

Time ran out and the construction went ahead without an F1 track being included.  The story about floating concrete modules being floated into place to form a track was wonderful – but rubbish.  It was clearly someone trying to use the sport to create momentum to help fund a floating modular waterside park. This was clever. However, there was no mention of money and, as every cynic knows, in F1 you must always follow the money to know what will happen and what will not. Each year Monaco, Albert Park, Baku and Singapore all build their tracks on the streets. It costs a lot of money, but the governments pay. And that is just the costs. It does not include the race fees, which would require at least $25 million a year. So one is looking at a bill each year of at least $50 million and no-one willing to pay that. In London there is no public money available. Formula 1 made no official comment on the story, not wishing to add fuel to the fire, but quietly pointed out that there have been no proposals and no discussions with anyone involved.

Just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons, I would say that it is far more likely that we will see a race in Kigali, in Rwanda, than in London. F1 wants a race in Africa.  Rwanda is keen to get some positive global coverage to back up its drive to build a tourist trade and attract business and conventions. The country, which is around 100 miles west to east and 50 miles north to south, is in the Great Rift Valley, just south of the Equator, between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the old Zaire). It has great natural beauty but has a reputation based on the civil war in the 1990s when tribal violence between Tutsis and Hutus resulted in a genocide, which resulted in more than half a million deaths. The war dragged on until 2000 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) won and Paul Kagame took power. He won a landslide victory in elections in 2003 and was re-elected in 2010 and 2017.

His goal is to transform the country from an agricultural to a knowledge-based economy, aiming to be  an upper-middle income country by 2035, and a high-income nation by 2050. The GDP per capita has gone from $631 in 2000 to $3,344 in 2022. Kagame sees Singapore as a role model for economic development and obviously F1 has done an important job for Singapore and could, in theory, do the same in Rwanda. Kagame wants to build up a luxury eco-tourism industry and more than $1.5 billion has been invested in developing that sector. The country was deemed by the World Bank in 2020 to be the second easiest place in Africa to do business. It has also scored highly on the Corruption Perception Index, which rated it the fourth best country in Africa and was deemed the second safest country in Africa in a Gallup Global Law and Order report in 2018. Kagame met Stefano Domenicali in Singapore last year and contact is believed to have intensified since then.

And, all plans in South Africa have now stalled, so Kigali’s only real opposition in the race to host an African GP is from Morocco, although F1 seems to be keener on Rwanda probably because no-one expects a race there…

The biggest real news in terms of races was that the Austrian Grand Prix will stay on the calendar until at least 2027. This might not seem a very interesting story, but it is actually quite fascinating. Everyone assumes that Red Bull pays for the race, but the truth is that the event is promoted by Projekt Spielberg GmbH, which is a subsidiary of Dietrich Mateschitz Beteiligungs GmbH.

It is not a Red Bull company. There is no doubt that Red Bull will contribute something in exchange for the global exposure the race generates, but it is a Mateschitz event. The late Dietrich Mateschitz funded it personally because of the economic impact it brought to his native region. He could afford it. He owned about five fancy hotels in the area as well and all earned money from the race, but it is essentially a charity event, designed to make Styrians proud and happy. It was his wish (perhaps written into his will) that the race go on… and so on it will go.

The race that is now the most vulnerable is Belgium, which is out of contract at the end of the year. In 2024 Azerbaijan, Britain and Japan all need to renew. This is useful for Formula 1 as it gives them leverage to dictate terms and to move Baku and Suzuka in the calendar so that the schedule can become more sensible and greener. The fly in the ointment is still Montreal, which everyone wants to be twinned with Miami. The Florida race cannot move because of various things, including the weather. Montreal could move, but does not want to. Thus there is potential for conflict.

The big talking point after the race was Fernando Alonso’s penalty that went away. This did not make the FIA look good, but it will probably help in getting systems working properly in the longer term. The need for a penalty came when the new Remote Operations Centre (ROC) in Geneva, determined that a penalty was required because the rear jack had touched the car during the earlier five-second penalty. This penalty was due to an apparent agreement that had been made by the Sporting Advisory Committee (SAC) that any contact with the car would be penalised in future.

Stewards make decisions based on the facts put in the front of them and so when Aston Martin argued that there was no agreement because it was not written down and was not mentioned in the minutes of the meeting, the stewards did not know. The team also argued that there were numerous examples in the past of jacks touching cars during penalties. The stewards were thus faced with facts that could not be disputed. And so had to overturn their earlier decision. Was there an agreement made in the SAC? Evidently, people think that this was the case, even if it was not minuted. Aston Martin must have known that, but chose not to accept it, as it was not written down. The team won back three points. Was it worth it? One can argue that it was clever, but one can also argue that it was perhaps unprincipled.

The reality is that we don’t really know what happened because such meetings are not public. This sort of thing should not happen and I suggest will not happen again in the future because as we know from movie mogul Sam Goldwyn, “a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”, but that does not mean that there was never an agreement…

Getting the teams to agree on anything, of course, is a difficult task because many of them think only in terms of their own self-interest. Things have got better of late with a certain amount of more intelligent thought about what is best for the sport.

Such an argument is currently ongoing in relation to CapEx (capital expenditure) for teams that need to invest in their infrastructure. The goal of the budget cap is not to advantage those who have better machinery than others, but rather to make the playing field more equal. Aston Martin used this argument to get allowances for a new windtunnel and so one would hope that thy will not get in the way of attempts by Williams and Audi (to a lesser extent) to get allowances for more CapEx in order to fix problems that cannot be done with the current restrictions. It seems sensible to allow this.

It also seems sensible not to block (or try to block) new entries if they seem to be reasonably able to compete. The two major contenders (although there may be others) are Andretti Global and Hitech. It has come to light that Andretti has taken on Nick Chester, as his technical director.  Chester started his F1 career back in 1991 and was technical director at Renault before moving on run the Mercedes Formula E team (now McLaren). He is joined at Andretti by aerodynamicist Jon Tomlinson, who started in F1 in 1995 and was head of aerodynamics at Williams for five years before moving to Renault and then following Chester to Mercedes in Formula E. The third major hire is John McQuilliam, who has worked in F1 since 1986, largely with Jordan but then with the Virgin/Marussia/Manor operation. Since then he has been head of composites at Prodrive. The three have the kind of knowledge that Andretti requires and so with the right money and right people should be able to build F1 cars.

Hitech’s technical team is headed by Mark Smith, another F1 veteran, with a career dating back to 1990 when he was one of the three designers of the famous Jordan 191. He has been technical director at Sauber, Caterham and Force India in the past. He has a staff of designers as well and rumour has it that there is a Hitech wind tunnel models in one of the Mercedes wind tunnels. The big question for Hitech seems to be political as the owner Ollie Oakes, a former World Kart Champion, has long been associated with the Mazepin family, which owned Hitech until the war in Ukraine began last year. This has not stopped rumours that they are still involved in the background, although Oakes says this is not the case.

It is very clear that all submissions to the FIA must give clear details of ownership and the owners must be “fit and proper persons”. The Mazepins are both sanctioned by the European Union and thus would not qualify, so no entry will be possible if they are listed as the owners.

But if Ollie Oakes has pieces of paper saying he is the owner of Hitech, who can say that he isn’t?

If things are not written down, they cannot be deemed to be facts… as Aston Martin will not doubt tell you.

Right, a few days at home now follow and then it will be off to see another Red Bull massacre in Melbourne – with all the other teams pumping out hot air about how they can catch up, to keep their sponsors happy.