Green Notebook from Pratt’s Bottom

I know, I know. This is  bit late as columns from Austria go, but the days before the British Grand Prix are always busy and for me, as a rare visitor to the offshore nation that used to be part of Europe, there is always a lot to do, not least the 900-mile drive from Spielberg to Calais. Austria was brutal with a sleepless night caused by track limits. I wouldn’t normally lose sleep on this matter, but changing the results of a race hours after the chequered flag means that work that was already done had to be thrown away and done again and a virtual worm in my Apple didn’t help by munching through some other bits of copy, which meant that work was not finished before five in he morning and there was only time for a quick nap before hitting the road through a rainy Styria. Kids, don’t do this at home…

Knowing that there were roadworks and Dutchmen with hangovers (ie traffic jams) on the main road north to the German border in Passau, I went west through Styria until I met the autobahn system south of Salzburg. This was slower, but much more agreeable, although  returning Dutch race fans were with me for most of the day as we toured German motor racing history, passing Solitude, Hockenheim, Niederzissen, and going close to the Nurburgring and Kerpen, before bidding “Tschüss” to the land where they still play John Denver songs on the radio, presumably because his real name was Henry Deutschendorf, and nipping through Belgium by way of Liege, Brussels and Bruges. It was a race against time to get past Dunkirk to Calais for the midnight boat, but it went without undue drama and I found myself in a very quiet and rainy Dover at about one in the morning where diversions because of road-working led me up back roads to the very un-English-sounding Capel-le-Ferne, the home of the Battle of Britain Memorial. If you are flying about above England, this is a useful navigational aid. From the air it looks like a three-blade propeller. On the ground in the early hours of the morning, however, it is not a glamorous spot, but this is the land of Manston, Hawkinge, West Malling and other aerodromes that evoke much emotion for the Englanders. My destination was that most famous fighter base of them all, Biggin Hill, a place of legend, the most famous of Battle of Britain air stations.

Biggin Hill is still an operating airport for executive jets, although it is probably best known as one of the places where passenger jets “stack “, making circles in the air while waiting for a slot to get into Heathrow.

Pratt’s Bottom is on the way to Biggin and one of those English villages that make one giggle, like Great Snoring or Middle Wallop. The English are good at weird village names but Europeans have similar skills, a I noted when I passed by Bad Füssing on the way to the Austrian GP.

I had to be at Biggin Hill early on Tuesday morning for a tour of the Formula 1 Media and Technology Centre, but managed “a Full English” after a brief hotel stop and in the bar of one o those almost lovely old English pubs, listening to “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer”,  which is one of those songs that are so evocative of the early 1960s, and of summer in general. I wondered whether I was the only person there nerdy enough to know that Nat King Cole purloined the song after it became a  hit in Austria, the clue to its German origins being the reference to “pretzels and beer”.

Biggin Hill is still an operating airport for executive jets, although it is probably best known as one of the places where passenger jets “stack “, making circles in the air while waiting for a slot to get into Heathrow.

Pratt’s Bottom is on the way to Biggin and one of those English villages that make one giggle, like Great Snoring or Middle Wallop. The English are good at weird village names but Europeans have similar skills, a I noted when I passed by Bad Füssing on the way to the Austrian GP.

The F1 facility was wildly impressive and is definitely heaven for troglodyte tec types who like living in cool dark conditions, surrounded by banks of clever machinery. The technology involved in creating the F1 TV shows is astonishing as less and less equipment moves around the world and more and more is done remote streaming back to Biggin from where they do all kinds of things, such as operating the pit lane flying camera and splicing together things. The most impressive thing for me was meeting the guy who listens to the 20 driver radio feeds simultaneously and is somehow able to know who is talking and produces selects the good ones and fires out captioning at the same time. It sounds impossible, but he does it… The human brain is a marvellous thing. I then had some family business down Gloucestershire way before visiting Alpine and Williams on Wednesday and then the Red Bull Powertrains factory on Thursday morning.

I cannot relate much about what I saw, except that it was very impressive and the team is far more advanced on 2026 engines than I had ever imagined.  Those who are aiming to compete need to buck up their ideas.

The big news in Austria was all about Audi with the non-unexpected news that the company boss Markus Duesmann, the motive force behind the F1 project, has been posted into retirement, the latest in a long internecine history of VW executives slitting one another’s throats to become the top dog. Volkswagen AG has been run by Porsche AG CEO Oliver Blume since September last year after he won a leadership battle with Duesmann, the boss of Audi.

Duesmann joined Audi in 2020 having been plucked from BMW by the then Volkswagen AG boss Herbert Diess, another former BMW man. Duesmann brought a group of BMW people with him.

Diess was fired in 2022 because of falling VW group sales. A few days before Blume became the boss of Volkswagen AG, Duesmann announced that he would be leading Audi into Formula 1 in 2026 with a deal to build engines and a staged purchase of the Sauber team. This would give the German manufacturer control of Sauber by the end of 2024 but the team would not be rebranded until 2026 because of the need to continue to Ferrari engines.

Porsche had intended to enter Formula 1 in partnership with Red Bull Racing, but this fell apart and Red Bull turned instead to Ford, leaving Porsche with nowhere to go.

The problem for Duesmann is that Audi has failed to improve its sales, particularly in comparison to Mercedes and BMW. He was hired to reverse that situation but in 2022 Audi sales fell by nearly four percent and so the axe swung and lopped off Audi’s head. It will be interesting to see how things chance with the Audi F1 project. There have been rumours for some time that things have not been moving fast enough and that Audi needs to speed up its engine development. The firm has been using a single-cylinder engine to prepare for the prototype new unit and this is due to begin testing on the dyno by the end of this year, which means that they are well behind Red Bull and the others, although Honda seems to be in a fairly delayed state as well.

Duesmann role will be taken over by Gernot Döllner, a 54-year-old who has been Volkswagen Group’s vice president of product and group strategy in recent years. It is also no great surprise that Duesmann’s replacement is a Blume lieutenant, Döllner having worked alongside him at Porsche.  The key question from a sporting point of view what will now happen with Oliver Hoffmann, the man who has been in charge of the F1 project under Duesmann. Hoffmann has been with Audi since 2004 and played a big role at Audi Sport before becoming Audi’s COO in 2020. He is currently the man to whom Adam Baker, the CEO of Audi Formula Racing GmbH, reports. Baker is one of Duesmann’s former BMW colleagues. There are rumours that Audi’s Julius Seebach who used to be in charge of Audi Sport until last autumn when he handed over control and moved into an undefined “new business” role, is going to become Baker’s boss.

Seebach is already on the board of Sauber, alongside Andreas Seidl. For the moment Seidl is not officially employed by Audi, but the word is that he will be from 2026 onwards.

There have been rumours, however, that Audi may be trying to accelerate the sale process to enable investment in Hinwil. At the moment Audi owns just 25 percent of the team. At the end of this year, that will increase to 50 percent but the current chairman Finn Rausing will remain the man in charge and as shareholders must put in their fair share of investment, there will be pressure on Rausing to sump up cash or to accelerate the sale to allow Audi to spend what is required.

The question of capital investment has been causing minor friction between the teams in recent weeks but it seems that they will eventually find a solution to allow the weaker teams to catch up as Audi, Williams, Alpine, McLaren and AlphaTauri (and thus Red Bull) are all keen to be allowed to spend more on facilities and a deal needs only five of them. Having visited Alpine and Williams in recent days it is clear why they need to spend to get to the same level as Red Bull and company and as F1 is keen to level the playing field in this respect, it does make sense, although some teams are objecting to helping the smaller fish in the F1 fat fryer. Most of these teams are in full building up mode and want to spend money, get better equipment and hire better staff. Scuderia Alpha Tauri has now joined that group as Red Bull has revealed plans to make big changes with plans for a new bigger British facility to replace the ancient Bicester factory and wind tunnel. The team will share Red Bull’s yet-to-built windtunnel in Milton Keynes and so it is logical for the new facility to be in the Silverstone area, halfway between Bicester and Milton Keynes… The Silverstone area is, of course, under intense development at the moment with the new Aston Martin factory and facilities being used by Hitech Grand Prix and Andretti, although it is not certain that either will get an entry. The rumours are that GM will one day get serious about F1 with an existing team, rther than risking going with the Andretti project, which may not get an entry. That is up to the FIA to decide in the weeks ahead although teams must also convince the Formula One group to let them join the party. That is bubbling story…

There are various other rumours around about drivers, notably involving Scuderia AlphaTauri, where the word is that there could be major changes this year (let alone next year). One rumours that is interesting is that Indycar star Alex Palou currently had a contractual window that might allow him to jump out of IndyCar and into an F1 drive, before the doors slam shut and he has to stay where he is, with either current employer Ganassi or McLaren. The word is that Dr Helmut Marko likes he look of the Spaniard and might offer him an AlphaTauri when the IndyCar season ends in September, which would set him up nicely for next year and ultimately could lead to work at Red Bull Racing as Sergio Perez is not really flavour of the month there because he had completed failed to keep up with Max Verstappen and the fear is that if the team has more opposition next year (we can hope), the team needs a better number two to help win the Constructors’ title as Max might not be able to win it on his own… There is also talk of Daniel Ricciardo coming into replace Sergio for a year or two while Red Bull prepares some new juniors…

Those who like things green wee getting exciting in Austria about a new energy generation system being trialled at the Austrian GP, producing 90 percent of its on-site energy requirements to power all garages and motorhomes and the F1 mobile broadcast centre. The system was powered by sustainable sources, including a hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) biofuel and 600 sq m of solar panels. Still, commendable though this may be the big problem that F1 wants to ignore is the fact that mllions of spectators still drive to races and if the sport is going to have better green credentials it must address this problem and go racing in places where the crowds can be delivered by mass transportation systems, such as happens in Zandvoort, Monaco, Montreal and Montreal, amongst other places. As we know, the world’s most pollution sporting event is the Tour de France, because of its 14 million spectators, so appearances can be misleading.

The new calendar is much as predicted in this ecologically-sound Notebook, although the big gap in October is a bit odd. They say that this is because Doha did not want a race at that point, but I have another theory. Giving everyone some in-season time off might be nice next year, I fear that this will provide the slot for a 25^th race in 2025, and no-one will be able to complain… Let’s see.

Finally, I was looking at the FIA finances after a recent press release about things were so much better than before and it struck me that we should really know why they were so bad in 2021. The conclusion I reached is that about half the money went to settle a legal action over the use of the halo, which was a patented device which the FIA though it might ignore. The result was some heavy-hitting lawyers in Texas spanking the federation into a settlement of about $12 million, although much of his will have been their fees. Still, the problem has gone away. Overall things are not too bad for the federation thanks to a another mysterious sum of money that turned up in the accounts in 2019 for reasons that no-one can openly explain. I wish someone would leave $15 million in my bank account for no reason… that would rather nice.

Right, time to get on, hopefully next week’s Green Notebook will be delivered more quickly…