It’s amazing how F1 can make the very simple become incredibly complicated. You would as a fan of this game be forgiven for feeling sometimes that to follow its matters you need as much knowledge of foreign and security policy and of the international human rights movement as you do of the sport’s esoteric matters such as undercuts and energy harvesting. And this in a pursuit that at its core is as basic as which car and driver combination can get from the start to the end of a race most quickly. But it can be and frequently is turned into much more than that.
We now have a Russian Grand Prix on the calendar as you know. Indeed the sport just lately made its second visit to the new Sochi venue. The event or something like it had quite the extended build-up period. Bernie Ecclestone indeed had been trying to establish a Russian and before that a Soviet round for several decades. No exaggeration – a Soviet Union Grand Prix to be held on a street track in Moscow appeared on a provisional calendar as long ago as that for the 1983 season. In between times rumours of several Russian/Soviet hosts came and went rather like the ocean tide, almost without interruption.
Yet it’s fair to say now that we have a Russian Grand Prix finally its popularity with the fraternity is, shall we say, limited.
This is down to a few things but most pressing initially at least was that when the debut Russian Grand Prix of modern times finally arrived last year even with the lengthy gestation period the visit could scarcely have seemed worse timed. Its very existence was controversial from several months out with unrest in Ukraine and allegations about Russia’s contribution to it dominating many news headlines. There also were concerns more generally about Russia’s human rights record and particularly its legislation prohibiting any ‘positive mention of homosexuality’ in the presence of minors.
Perhaps underlining where the modern F1 calendar has got to Russia is by no means the worst place that the sport visits – for example on the homosexuality point there are three countries on the itinerary, Singapore, Malaysia and UAE (for Abu Dhabi), where homosexuality is illegal – yet all-in Russia’s profile and that of its President Vladimir Putin seemed to add an outer edge.
Many indeed thought on this basis directly, or indirectly via the impact of the sanctions against Russia in response to the Ukraine situation, that the freshman 2014 race wouldn’t happen at all. But happen it did, as it was always going to given we know it takes a lot for Bernie or the FIA to halt these things. Perhaps tanks rolling in through the circuit gate…
A year on too as well as Ukraine being far from resolved there also was the uneasy background noise of Russia’s activity in Syria. Not to mention that some of the missiles fired therein weren’t landing all that far away from the Sochi venue.
More broadly such agonising over the countries the sport visits is a regular feature these days. You’d also be forgiven perhaps for being bored by it, but for all that the habitual claim of ‘sport and politics shouldn’t mix’ is made it’s hard to see how it applies here.
As we know the sport’s financial model relies in large part on inflated hosting fees for income these days. Governments are one of the few entities that can afford them, and in many cases pay up for a race to encourage tourism as well as to promote the country or area as a place to do business. There seems little secret to it all, I recall indeed the Crown Prince of Bahrain once describe the Grand Prix that he was funding as ‘a branding exercise’. And it appears that such fees can be extracted from questionable regimes with pariah status more easily, given they’re likely to be more keen for the reflected respectability from hosting a high profile international sporting event; that it is in effect an elaborate part of their application for admission to the oft-mentioned but ill-defined ‘international community’. So in other words we have political entities funding the races, and in many cases associating themselves closely with it, for political reasons. Very political.
It’s not entirely new either, see that F1 was last out and first back into apartheid South Africa, and for similar reasons as already explained Bernie (him again) worked out that the country’s desperation could be converted readily into big cheques.
All of the above can conspire to mean that the association of such dubious regimes with the F1 event is close. Often too little is left to the imagination on this, as indeed it hasn’t been in either of the sport’s visits to Russia, wherein Putin has had a high profile in the both races’ TV coverage including on the podium and in the podium anteroom. But there is a downside for the sport’s image, and indeed pictures of Putin shaking F1 drivers’ hands and similar (replete with ‘Putin…’ puns in the headlines such as Lewis ‘Putin his hands on the championship’) seemed all over the British newspapers on the Monday morning after the race just passed and not just in the sports sections. I dare say they weren’t good for F1, all told.
Yet there have been more specific matters to do with the event itself that added to the Russian stop-off’s apparent unpopularity. Plenty of ‘typical Tilke’ comments have been made about the Sochi track (which are fair enough). Kate Walker moreover during the first visit immediately declared Sochi a “Mokpo Mk II” (in reference to the egregious Korean venue of recent times) as well as a “future white elephant” – on the grounds variously that it’s a long way from Moscow and the local town of Adler wasn’t very exciting. And her sentiments were far from atypical.
My Twitter timeline on the Saturday evening 12 months ago appeared filled with F1 journos complaining about the quality and preparedness of the nearby eateries (as an aside the modern journalistic obsession with oneself never ceases to amaze me). It did in parts get rather snide, such as one or two others being similarly scathing the next day about the dancing festivities on the pit straight prior to the race.
But Sochi also was to some extent a victim of circumstance, or rather a few circumstances combined. That the first visit to this strange new world, with Putin and all, came but days after Jules Bianchi’s harrowing Suzuka accident was one of them. But there were circumstances too that came together to ensure that viewing the debut F1 race at Sochi was akin to watching grass grow, as Adam Cooper explained. “Last year, there was a perfect storm of bulletproof tyres, no safety cars and extreme fuel saving, which together turned the inaugural Russian GP into one of the dullest races of 2014,” he said.
The doom and gloom wasn’t quite as heavy this time a year on but there was the odd murmur, including one journo in the Sochi media centre making mirth by calling their wireless network ‘CIAspyfi’ and the like… It all seemed more uneasy truce than warm embrace. Lee McKenzie noted that Sochi “seemed to have picked up Korea’s mantle as the race no one was looking forward to”; Martin Brundle added “I can’t pretend it’s a venue I relish going to”.
Rather in the minority though and even with some of the above I will admit to liking the Sochi venue. Indeed it has a certain charm about it, albeit within the modern ubiquitous Tilke constraints. Visually the circuit is excellent with its backdrop all quirky, gleaming, modern architecture which for a history buff of sorts such as me was redolent of Montreal’s early days in F1 when the cars flashed between close-at-quarters weird and wonderful Expo buildings. The circular medals plaza with its various flags is attractive also. Like Montreal too Sochi is at a former Olympic venue and its layout is made up largely of straights and braking zones between close-at-hand walls. Although Sochi of course is rather an ersatz version of the Île Notre-Dame track. The maligned layout was deceptively challenging for the drivers too and a few have said they actually like driving on it. As for entertainment, well even the ugly duckling Valencia track showed us eventually that we should never write a circuit off in that sense. Once upon a time the Hungaroring was synonymous with soporific fare yet the last two Hungary visits have been thrilling.
There were other reasons around for being malcontent, though again they struck me as a little wide of the mark. For example one questioner on ‘Ask Crofty’ on Twitter after the latest race with Sky F1’s David Croft boomed “who will be the first one to admit that this Russian GP is brutally dangerous?” True there were two rather violent crashes in the weekend’s F1 running (as well as others in the support events). True also, at least one example of the marshalling was, um, courageous. But on this latter point perhaps it’s inevitable in countries with little motorsport experience and therefore matters will improve over time. As for the other claims, safety standards are a matter for the FIA while the Techpro barriers are centrally supplied (it’s also far from the first time we’ve seen cars go under barriers, see Heikki Kovalainen in Barcelona in 2008 for example). Tecpro confirmed on Twitter too that the utilitarian repairs of the barriers with duct tape after Romain Grosjean’s accident were OK so long as the barrier shape or any sling were not damaged, and that the Techpro barriers had done their job given the two drivers involved largely were unharmed. I’m pretty sure also that your average Monaco weekend has just as many violent prangs, as have a few at Spa. Montreal and elsewhere.
And some of the worst predictions of the Russian round have yet to come true. One of these as Walker intimated was that it would hardly attract a crowd, related to that Sochi as a town is small (some 350,000 inhabitants) and that Moscow is a three hour flight – or if you prefer a 24 hour car journey – away. But in both visits the place has been sold out on race day, helped somewhat by that the capacity is modest with room for around 55,000, the organisers minded possibly of not overreaching themselves.
Then we have the bigger picture. There is a reason that Bernie had been trying to establish a Russian Grand Prix all that time, as long ago he identified the vast country as a potentially highly lucrative market as well as a vital country to have a presence in. I do not ignore that many things are done in the Russian state’s name that cannot be defended yet having a Grand Prix in Russia is, when considered in itself only, a good thing for the sport.
This time also circumstance aided the Sochi race’s entertainment thanks to a couple of safety car appearances. Those in combination headed off the fuel saving that was so endemic last year, and even better the second appearance was at a tantalising moment. Not quite late enough for those on super-softs (most of the field) to reach the end on softs with comfort, but near enough for those with less to lose to have a punt on it. Most of those from Sergio Perez in P5 downwards indeed did so, which meant that later we had the fun of Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Raikkonen with overtaking to do to reclaim their places, and had additional amusement as the two approaches came together in the battle for third place right at the race’s conclusion. Before that however, and indeed without that, it looked like rather a repeat of the much-criticised 2014 race.
As Mark Hughes outlined for Motorsport magazine the Sochi track’s still-smooth surface apparently with bitumen still near the top, combined with a few auxiliary factors, ensured that again in our latest visit and for once indeed drivers had tyres that hardly degraded and allowed them to push at the maximum throughout. Something we often say we want. Plenty of drivers appreciated as much too, with Hamilton noting “I much prefer this way of racing”.
We however saw something of a flip side to it all as we had in the first visit to Sochi, at least in terms of the entertainment for us watching on. It reminded us that the pace variation from gumball Pirellis (and DRS, to an extent) were in fact a cloak of a problem that never had gone away – that F1 cars are designed in such a way so to not let them get near those ahead in the other’s turbulence, all else being equal. There was a spell particularly mid-race this time indeed when a succession of those in the midfield were in turn at least a second away from the one ahead, as if being respectably spaced was somehow the object of the exercise, despite is some cases closing rapidly on them (see Daniel Ricciardo with Pastor Maldonado for one; Bottas and Raikkonen later following Riccardo for another). It was rather a replication of the 2014 race here when as if to underline the problem Fernando Alonso and that man Ricciardo again – the season’s most willing and thrilling racers probably – converged upon each other in the latter part of the race and with 14 laps’ difference between them in the mileage of their mediums. But then nothing happened.
If you watched the race in the British Sky F1 coverage then you’ll be aware that Brundle got rather animated on the subject as we all watched the follow-my-leader. When a replay of Bottas’s pit stop was shown, including a team member cleaning the Williams’ rear wing slot gaps of pieces of rubber that might have got in there, Brundle explained that “any pieces of rubber really dramatically affects the aerodynamic performance, so surprise surprise, they can’t follow each other!
“I wonder what we could do about that” he added with layers of irony.
“The obvious answer is to unload the upper surfaces, the front and rear wings” Brundle went on. “Give them some front wing endfences for starters so we can keep the front wing working all through the range of behind another car, and put some downforce underneath the car and make the downforce relative to the road.
“Look at the front wing on that” Brundle said temporarily distracted by Hamilton’s W06 on screen, “it looks beautiful but it also looks like a Christmas tree. It’s bound to be affected by turbulent air. Let’s load the underneath of the car and make the downforce more consistent. Look at a World Series car or a GP2 car, it’s [the answer is] staring us right in the face, but I can’t get anyone to agree with me on that.”
That last point reminding us of the major barrier. F1’s legendary dysfunctionality, particularly when it comes to agreeing on what appear rather glaring solutions.
Hearing this I was reminded that recently I was looking at the excellent Clip the Apex annual overtaking stats, that showed that this year that average number of overtakes per race has fallen roughly to 2010 levels, pre the drastic-measures-for-drastic-times degrading Pirellis and DRS, at around 30 per race. Indeed they’ve been falling year-on-year since their explosion in 2011. And to return to my initial point, none of this is the fault of the Sochi track. Indeed with at least two lengthy flat out blasts ended with big stops it’s a circuit that should in theory encourage overtaking.
And encouragingly a lot of the things that Brundle spoke about were earlier this year also spoken about by sport’s Strategy Group, which promised that “more aggressive looking cars for 2017, to include wider cars and wheels, new wings and floor shape and significantly increased aerodynamic downforce has been outlined and is currently being assessed by the teams”. Hopefully it is not a source of worry that we yet are to hear what the meat is to be on these bones. We’ve been disappointed before of course. That dysfunctionality again.
