The Strategy Group, Bernie Ecclestone, the FIA, CVC, team principals, drivers, fans and the media have all voiced their opinions about ‘what Formula 1 could and should be.‘ Faster cars, refuelling, bigger tyres, wider tyres, noisier engines, more competition, more overtaking, less tyre saving, less fuel saving, less complex technology, more risk, fewer penalties, no grid girls, the list goes on. The ‘what’ question however misses the point. If you look at the really successful enterprises – as Simon Sinek argues – they tend to operate from the inside out, starting with the question ‘why’, only then followed by the ‘how’ and the ‘what’. It is not the product features alone (engines, tyres, banned radio, or manual starts) that engage the hearts of your customers and get them addicted to your product; something more fundamental is required to achieve that. Would man have made it to the Moon had the Kennedy speech been about rockets, fuel, spacesuits, and landing modules?
So why did Nigel Roebuck get hooked on motor racing watching Jean Behra at the Pau Grand Prix 1954? Why did Max Mosley decide to pursue single-seater career following his visit to a race meeting at Silverstone? Why did Adrian Newey decide to design F1 cars rather than the Airbus A380? And why the new generation of millennials does not appear to be much interested in motor racing despite the fact that they are passionate about music as much as the older generations were in the 70s or 80s?
Here is my personal ‘why’ statement:
- Because as a boy back in 1985 I needed a hero I could identify with, someone who was doing something cool and exotic that only a few people in the world could engage in. F1 happened to fit the bill. I wasn’t interested in ‘puppets’ whose strings were pulled by the masters in the pits, who weren’t gladiators in their own right but only served as remotely controlled PR robots delivering the last mile of a complex team effort.
- Because I was proud of the space-age technology (there were no Moon landings in the 80s) that seemed to defy the laws of physics and that allowed humans to walk away from 300kmph accidents (sadly only until 1994).
- Because F1 offered a cocktail of legal drugs that attacked all your five senses – engine noise, petrol smell, incredible speed, grip/friction of the tarmac, taste of danger.
- Today, I’m passionate about F1 because it is like a book of short stories, sometimes with happy, sometimes with tragic ending. A great story is one in which the motivation of the main characters (drivers, team principals, engineers) and the plot (race) are brought to their unexpected, but inevitable and earned ending.
- Because F1 brings constant change, novelty, and unpredictability. All the same, this unpredictability must come about by the natural competitive order and not artificially.
- Because I love watching characters fighting and sometimes winning against all odds (think Nurburgring 1999 or Monza 2008).
- Because I love watching drivers expressing all their prodigious skill and talent, and not just during a couple of laps before the pit stop. How exciting is a football match where the teams are playing at 80 percent of their ability except for the last five minutes?
- Because I love pure racing. This also means that no amount of twists and turns (overtaking) in an otherwise artificial and predictable plot will make much of a difference.
- Because I love watching drivers being tested to their physical and mental limits, exposing their character, willpower, inner struggles, mistakes, their darker side, and their humanity.
Why are you passionate about F1?
Once F1 figures out the answers to the fundamental question ‘why’, the ‘how’ and ‘what’ should be much easier to agree on.