Green Notebook from various taxis

Producing the GP+ e-magazine was a little slower than usual on what the Australians call “Rice Dye” in Melbourne. The Grand Prix had been long, complicated and controversial. The FIA Stewards were still adjudicating until after 11pm, by which time all the stars of the show were on planes, flying through the night towards Europe.

At just after one in the morning, I emerged from the Media Centre and walked through a dark and almost deserted Albert Park. Even the drunks had gone home. The trams had long ago stopped running and it was time to seek out a cab.

In such circumstances, it is entirely normal to encounter those of a larcenous nature. It is depressing that humans are so predicable, but supply and demand means one can rip off those in need. The normal fare to get into town from Albert Park is $20, but the driver wanted $30. I’ve been asked for more than that in the past and have been known to reply with words as colourful as any rainbow. But this was reasonable robbery, if there is such a thing.

But it comes at a cost to the driver as I roll out a well-used discourse about how taxi drivers are really diplomats and vitally important for a country because they are often the first people that visitors encounter, and it sets the tone for the visit. If people feel exploited, it impacts on their view of the city. Did the driver know, for example, that the Economist Intelligence Unit publishes a Global Livability Ranking, which calculates which cities are the nicest. From 2011 to 2017 Melbourne won this prize every year. In 2018 and 2019 it was beaten by Vienna. In 2021 it had dropped to eighth in the rankings (behind even Perth and Adelaide) and in 2022 it was down another place to ninth.

I would not have written this were it not for that cab driver…

Once the sermon was over, there was still much to be done and I was back at work, with only the minibar to talk to. In the end, I ruffled the bedding so that the cleaning lady had something to do and would not wonder what kind of a weirdo pays for a room and then does not sleep in it. By the late morning, it was all finally done and the words had been sent out into the digital world. A nap would have been nice, but it was time to check out, so a brisk walk helped to re-oxygenate the blood.

I cannot remember how it started, but for more than a decade there has been a Monday lunch after each Australian Grand Prix, with a bunch of adventurers and cut-throats who gather at the usual venue and chat about life, love, red flags and cars of all sorts. It is what we like to do and Australian fish stocks are depleted, particularly Moreton Bay Bugs (right). The wine cellar also gets a little more empty space.

It is usually a long and agreeable lunch and then, when the light begins to fade towards evening, we go our separate ways. I wandered around for a while, trying to kill time, and then decided to try my luck at the airport and see if I could get through into the lounge and while away the hours there. With only hand luggage this is often possible, although the security people take your pots of Vegemite away because they fear they might explode in mid-air. Once air-side you can buy more (at twice the normal price) but they put them in special sealed bags which prove it is a non-explosive kind of Vegemite.

All this was ahead of me when I found a cab and set off for Tullamarine. I fell quickly asleep and the next thing I knew we were at the airport, the taxi driver was asking for $80. This was normal. I reached for my wallet. Then something weird happened. It didn’t feel like my wallet and I soon discovered that I had two wallets, the second belonging  to one of my lunch companions, which I had obviously pocketed by mistake. Oh well, I thought, he will want it enough to come to the airport and collect it. So I rang my mate.

“You in a panic?” I said.

Yes, he replied. He was having a horrible time. He’d been freaking out about the missing wallet, retracing his steps and was back at the restaurant to have a look there. And he had then discovered that he had a puncture! You couldn’t make this stuff up.

So, with time on my hands and too many wallets I volunteered to go back to town and then go back to the airport again, although he promised to drive me back if the automobile club people were quick. A couple of hours later I was back in the airport lounge, with all wallets back in the right pockets and having had a glass of Chardonnay and a laugh about travelling. When you travel the world, it is inevitable that things will go wrong, but it’s the screw-ups that make it fun.

The Grand Prix had been full of screw-ups… which ended up with a very bizarre statistic, being the first time in the history of the sport that the start/finish line was used for both purposes at the same moment. This sort of fact might delight the grumpy old men who once made up the majority of F1 viewers, but it no doubt confused the Drive-to-Survive newbies, of which there are plenty. There is a down side to F1’s success at the moment because the new fans are not all educated in the ways of the sport. Numerically, the Grand Prix was a huge success with a four-day  crowd figure of 444,631. This smashed  last year’s record of 419,114, previously the highest number since the first event in 1996, which drew a crowd of 401,000.

But the complex nature of the incidents and red flags confused people who did not know the rules (and quite a few who did) and their enthusiasm led them to appear in several places behind the barriers, but inside the safety cordons that exists between the safety fences and the spectator areas. Elsewhere they climbed the debris fences to watch the cars and wave at the drivers, while several people went through a gap in the safety fencing on to the grass at the edge of the track, although they  appeared  from TV footage to have been called back again by track security before they triggered a general invasion – before the cars came through for the last time, as the chequered flag was being waved. Further round the track there were reports of people on the circuit as the cars completed their slow down laps and returned to the pits.  This is dangerous stuff although it happens occasionally. In Brazil last year there was something smaller but similar but no-one did anything. This time the Stewards summoned a representative from the Australian Grand Prix Corporation for a spanking. The Melbourne organiser is one of the best and actually exports this expertise to other places, to help new promoters get it right (for a financial consideration, you understand). They appeared to be so well-organised that one got the impression that there had been a committee meeting at some point to think through a contingency plan if there was a track invasion. That’s not unlikely as there was a similar but worse interlude back in 2017. Their response for the stewards was logical and well-structured and made life a little easier for the officials.

The problem with having new fans is that people do not know what happens when errant people are hit by an F1 car at speed. Suffice to say, it is not pretty and can also kill the driver, as was seen in South African in 1977 when Tom Pryce hit a fire marshal running across the track and both were killed. It is said that they could not identify the marshal until they had a roll call to find out who was missing, such was the state of the body. And F1 lost one of its most promising young drivers. So, folks, even if you are excited about the sport and think of Gunther Steiner as the new Brad Pitt, please don’t invade circuits until you are allowed to do so.

It is disappointing that the do-gooders who walked on the track last year at Silverstone were not sent to jail at Northampton Crown Court when they went to be sentenced in the days before the race in Australia. They got away with suspended sentences. If I had been the judge I’d have sentenced them to watch the video of the 1977 South African Grand Prix to explain their stupidity, no matter how self-righteous they may feel or how valid their message may (or may not) be. Being self-righteous is not such a big deal, but being self-righteous and dead is not clever.

The paddock in Albert Park was relatively quiet, although the fake F1 reporters around the world twisted and extrapolated more than ever, because real news was thin on the ground. There was talk of a night race in the future in Melbourne, which makes a lot of sense for all concerned. I am told that the latest state budgets for future Grands Prix already have contingencies to allow for lighting, although the state will probably buy rather than rent and so the equipment can be used over time for other events, which would be better at night. Timing is always a problem in a land that is so far away from the fan bases.

There is still talk of new teams and of the future of Scuderia AlphaTauri, but Red Bull continues to say (and to tell the team members) that the Italian operation is not for sale. But then again, everything is for sale at the right price, isn’t it? When I suggested this to Christian Horner he did not argue, but said that Red Bull would not be budging in its position. When I suggested that $800 million might be quite persuasive, he said that teams were now worth at least $1 billion. This does not mean we will not see changes in Faenza, as it has rather high costs at the moment.

I sought out Paul Stoddart to ask whether he had included any stipulation about a sale when he flogged the Minardi team to Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz back in 2005 and he explained that the sale process had taken about five minutes to conclude. Mateschitz had agreed to pay $75 million, although Stoddart got about half that figure as there were sizeable debts to be paid. Yes, he said, there was a verbal agreement to keep the team in Italy and look after the staff properly, but it was all a bit vague and not written down. With Mateschitz no longer with us, the verbal agreement is probably not worth a get deal, but we do not know what might have been written into Mateschitz’s will, so it is difficult to say whether it could be moved or not.

What could happen, however, is that more of the design process could be moved to Britain, along with some more of the production, but the Italian base will remain. It is widely agreed (even by Franz Tost) that his days with the team are numbered and so it is fair to speculate about the need for a replacement. There has been talk of Hitech Grand Prix boss Oliver Oakes being a possible candidate, but it is felt inside the Red Bull empire that a future boss will need to be Italian-speaking.

So, if Mr Oakes is spotted visiting language schools in Milton Keynes we will know there is something to the story, but for now he seems to be intent on pushing ahead with his plans for Hitech to get an entry of its own in 2026. The word is that he has got the money he needs from someone in Dubai and will make an announcement soon, but the cynics say that Dubai is well-known as a place where Russians still do business and so he needs to find a way to convince everyone in F1 that there is no Mazepin involvement in the whole thing, even if there is no paper trail that leads to Russia.

Hitech is working hard on its wind tunnel programme for the first car, which is believed to be taking place at the Mercedes Applied Science unit, just around the corner from Hitech’s facility in the fast-developing Silverstone Park industrial estate. This is  a short walk from the new Aston Martin factory and recently the nascent Andretti Global Formula 1 team has moved into premises in the same locale, so this is a hive of activity. The Andretti project has been planned in infinite detail (to make it hard to reject) and the new location is just an interim solution pending a green light, at which point the team will start developing a bigger and better facility somewhere in the region.

There is a note in the green book which says “Carlin building cars”, but this is not about 2026 but rather that Carlin has a deal to produce some F1 lookalikes for Brad Pitt’s movie. I have been delving into how these could be used and it is clear that the teams will not let them take part in races, but that we might see them at the back of the grid on occasion, but they will be hurried away when the real action begins. They will no doubt be used for lots of other purposes in the pits, and so on.

There is a note which says “Masi”, which is fairly self-explanatory. Michael Masi was back in the paddock, catching up with old friends, of which he has many in F1 and I heard more than a few folks ruminating that things would be better if Michael had not be thrown to the lions by the FIA. Obviously, that is not a view one hears at Mercedes, nor among the Lewis-loving British media, but it is there nonetheless. Michael makes no bones about the fact that what happened hurt a great deal, but he is enjoying his new role with Supercars, which allows him to live a much more sensible life, with all the delights that Australia provides.

Most of us who travel with F1 have wondered whether it is possible to live in Australia and travel to all the Grands Prix. It is not. I looked into it years ago. If only they could tow the continent (with Tasmania still attached) to a location not far from the Azores, it would be a different story…

I think we’d all be there if that was the case.

There were two other stories worth mentioning. One was that Jenson Button is so enthused by his recent adventure in NASCAR that he is seriously looking at trying to become a full-time NASCAR driver in the future, on ovals as well as road courses, and as international drivers are what NASCAR is desperate to get these days, that could happen. Jenson is certainly up for it.

The other little whisper was that Liberty Media, the owner of the Formula 1 group, is on the verge of buying something, which will help drive up the value of the business. I have been pondering what this might be and I am told it isn’t in the United States, which would have been my first conclusion. Perhaps the clever folks in Denver are going to be doing more races which they promote themselves (as is happening in Las Vegas) and I am wondering if there are not a few distressed European race tracks which might be acquired for F1. The owner of any entertainment venue controls the commercial rights to all events held, unless they choose to hand over these rights to someone else. Bernie Ecclestone’s genius was that he managed to get all the venues to sign over their commercial rights – and pay for Formula 1 as well. Bernie could not be bothered with owning venues, although he always seemed to have a secret desire to acquire Silverstone.

Today, it makes sense for F1 to own more venues, in order to have more assets and more revenues on the balance sheets. One can imagine that Liberty might be looking at buying some of the sport’s famous venues, in order to exploit their history, to create synergies and generate more money. Local governments might not want to pay for Grands Prix, but they all want to hold on to their events to attract visitors.

Liberty Media has deep enough pockets to invest in venues to allow them bigger capacities, which the current owners cannot afford to do. One of Liberty’s offshoots is  Live Nation Entertainment, a company that promotes, operates, and manages ticket sales for live entertainment and owns and operates entertainment venues, and manages musical talent. Racing circuits  also have a lot of space, on which one can develop things like convention facilities, hotels and entertainment venues.

So watch this space…