I am also looking forward to the much-heralded ‘Rush’ to be directed by Ron Howard: Richie Cunningham from Happy Days and director of Frost/Nixon; Da Vinci Code and A Beautiful Mind, amongst others. The film will, I understand, be a dramatisation of another epic F1 duel, that which took place between James Hunt (McLaren) and Niki Lauda (Ferrari) in 1976. It is rumoured that Russell Crowe will be playing Richard Burton, who really did feature in Hunt’s life at the time – I wonder if Tom Cruise will be playing Bernie? One of the contrasts between the Senna vs Prost and Lauda vs Hunt battles was that Lauda and Hunt actually got on very well off the track while fighting for the championship on it – both of them spoke their minds, regardless of political niceties, and both recognised the other as a kindred spirit. Given the early publicity surrounding the film I was rather amused to see that the former editor of BusinessF1, Tom Rubython, had undertaken a wonderful bit of opportunism and followed up on his biography of James Hunt ‘Shunt’ (Btw if you want to read about James Hunt his ‘official’ biography by Gerald Donaldson is outstanding), with a book on the battle between Hunt and Lauda entitled ‘In the Name of Glory – 1976’. So we now have the book as well as the film, but it isn’t the book of the film and it won’t be the film of the book, but probably most people won’t know and won’t care  – timing is everything.

The subject of driver management in motorsport is an interesting one. There have been various forms of ‘manager’ over the years, the fact that Bernie is commenting on Lewis’s management is germane as he began his involvement in F1 as a driver manager, first advising Stuart Lewis-Evans in the 1950s and then with Jochen Rindt in the 1960s. Here the focus was very much on negotiation and contracts, something that Bernie, as we now know, had a bit of talent for. These tend to be independent managers, focused on motorsport who are directly advising one or several drivers and who certainly tend to be with them at races. They have often moved into management either from being a driver, or more often when they supported the driver at an earlier stage in their career. Examples would be David Robertson who looked after Kimi Raikkonen and Jensen Button, Martin Brundle looking after David Coulthard and Willi Weber with Michael and Ralf Schumacher.

Today it is very much the norm for drivers to have their own managers, effectively managing their financial affairs and negotiating on their behalf, although there are still one or two who like to handle things themselves such as Gerhard Berger and current world champion Sebastian Vettel. At the F1 level there are not often the close family relationships between driver and manager, such as that which existed between Lewis and his father, although Mark Webber took things a stage further and is living with his former manager, Ann Neal, and Jean Todt’s son Nicolas was managing Felipe Massa when Todt was CEO of Ferrari, which must have made negotiations interesting. Flavio Briatore may have had to negotiate with himself when he was Team Principal of Renault and also managing Fernando Alonso. So things have sometimes got a bit complicated.

An alternative approach is followed by those who go down the professional sports management route: using a specialist organisation to provide the support, such as the services provided by CSS Stellar which in addition to a range of sports/entertainment businesses includes individual sportsman/woman management.  This was founded by lawyer Julian Jakobi, formerly Ayrton Senna’s manager. As far as I’m aware the first driver to go down the route of using a professional sports management organisation was Jackie Stewart in 1968. JYS enlisted the help of Mark McCormack’s IMG operation, (he of – ‘What They don’t Teach you at Harvard Business School’ fame), which up to then had focused on professional golf players such as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. Famously JYS’s first ‘assistant’ ,provided by IMG, was one Martin Sorrell who went on to do rather well for himself eventually becoming chairman of marketing communications conglomerate WPP. Here the benefit of the management company is more geared towards the wider ‘celebrity’ of the driver and makes a lot of sense – as was the case with JYS – if you have an eye on the longer term earning potential of the individual ‘brand’. It is therefore probably too early to say whether or not Lewis has made the right decision in going to XIX Entertainment. However one thing I did find out on a visit to Tennessee was that XIX Entertainment owns Graceland, Elvis’s former residence, I wonder if they’ve now got an eye on a certain property in Stevenage?

However regardless of the reasons for Ferrari and RBR to leave the team’s association, does this spell the end of FOTA? As history has a habit of repeating itself, it is interesting to note that in the controversies around previous Concorde Agreements, there were three teams who were united in refusing to sign up to the fourth agreement which was due to run from 1997 to 2002. They were McLaren, Williams and Tyrrell. In many ways it was this stand that led to the financial demise of the Tyrrell organisation, a team who had dominated F1 in the late sixties/ early seventies. Eventually a revised, fifth, agreement was drawn up which included the three teams and was to run from 1998 to 2007. The current (sixth) agreement is to run until the end of 2012, and this is where the negotiations are focused. The point of history is that the three teams who resisted the fourth Concorde Agreement are very much at the heart of FOTA today, McLaren providing the chairman, Williams a committed participant and the team that was originally Tyrrell Racing has now morphed into Mercedes GP (sorry Mercedes AMG GP!), via spells as British American Racing and Honda, with senior management team Nick Fry and Ross Brawn very much committed to FOTA. So even if FOTA doesn’t represent all the F1 teams, it may represent a significantly powerful voice that can influence the terms of the seventh Concorde Agreement, if it holds together.

But while much of the media attention focuses on 2012, the movers and shakers: the Team Principals and FOTA, the FIA, Formula One Management and CVC are all focused on 2013. This is when a new Concorde Agreement should come into effect. Recently in the FT, Leisure Industries Correspondent, Roger Blitz aligned the politics of F1 to those of the Eurozone, with an intense battle emerging between the haves (Bernie and CVC) and have-nots (FOTA and FIA) – my definition not Roger’s. The complex web that is the governance of F1 is yet again going to be stretched and rewoven, and currently, no-one is quite sure how this will all end up. Certainly we will see Bernie at his best – he always enjoys a good fight – and will undoubtedly be focusing on divide and rule with the teams, not a new strategy, but always an effective one, but who knows perhaps Martin Whitmarsh and his peers will be able to keep FOTA united and carve out a good result? The key is going to be where the FIA end up. In the past they have traditionally aligned against the teams, but perhaps this time we will see a new permutation? Expect plenty of off-track fireworks during 2012.

However there are those in F1 for whom 2012 and 2013 matters not a jot: for the technical strategists in the teams work is well underway for the 2014 regulations which will require the cars to have 1.6 litre V6 power units and substantial Energy Recovery Systems (ERS) to harvest and reuse the energy to improve performance. The engine manufacturers are well underway with a variety of permutations and concepts and the teams will be keen to see how they can build the optimum package from this new powertrain.

All in all the next few years are going to be a busy time for anyone involved in F1, regardless of whether or not the Eurozone holds together.

I guess the contrast I would draw would be the difference between Michael Schumacher at Benetton where supported by Flavio Briatore, Ross Brawn and others he achieved two world championships, here he was a champion, but not a leader. In contrast, during Michael’s time at Ferrari he played a very key role in turning round the whole organisation , becoming the catalyst for change and winning the greatest number of championships that have ever been won, Michael grew from being a champion to being a leader. Similarly, I would also put Fernando Alonso in the leader category, he played a key role in the success of Renault in the 2005/6 seasons and has gone on, with a brief blip at McLaren, to do the same at Ferrari. If we look back into previous champions individuals like Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda and Jackie Stewart all fit with the leadership role. The interesting question for me is where Jenson Button is on this, in many ways he seems to be stepping up to the leadership role this season, not only through his performance on the track but his demeanour, his confidence, his approach are all suggesting something stronger than a driver who just gets in the car and performs on the track.

So the obvious thing for Sebastian to do now, or certainly in a year or two, is to move to a new team that needs a leader and see if he can shift up a gear from being world champion, not easy, but some have done it. Who knows, like Michael at Ferrari, he may even persuade Adrian Newey to come with him.

It is also interesting to see that the form book at the back of the grid has not changed much, HRT bring up the rear, with Virgin still behind Team Lotus, who are also still behind the more established teams. Tony Fernandes has made it clear that 2012 is the year of reckoning for Team Lotus to break into the midfield, and I suspect he may not be the only one of the ‘new’ teams to decide that it is getting to make or break time. Joe Saward (http://joesaward.wordpress.com/)  always has a good ear to the ground and is suggesting that Team Lotus will soon relocate from Norfolk to Leafield – the former Arrows facility in Oxfordshire – and that Virgin are already relocating themselves from Yorkshire to Banbury, with a possible further move to the rapidly developing Silverstone campus, so it looks like the message is you have to be at the heart of motorsport valley to really do well. However, an interesting counter rumour to this is that Scuderia Toro Rosso are going to be sold and relocate from the facilities at Faenza in Northern Italy and Bicester in the UK to the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, perhaps we’ll get an announcement at the time of the Grand Prix? If it really does happen it will bring about the first move from Europe of an F1 team, an event which has been predicted by many for some time, so far it hasn’t happened, but this could be about to change.

I have been very fortunate to have been able to meet and occasionally interview many of the movers and shakers in F1, but if I had to select the one person I would have loved to ask some questions to, above all others, it would have been Enzo Ferrari. Like Walt Disney, Enzo’s presence is still very much in evidence at Ferrari. The term ‘racer’ is often used to describe someone whose very being is driven by the need to race, and win races. If all of the money disappeared from F1 many people would disappear, but the racers would still be there. Enzo was the original racer, he was, at one time, a works driver for Alfa Romeo, he created one of the first motorsport companies: Scuderia Ferrari which provided cars and the support for rich individuals to go racing. His road car operation was there to help raise funding to go racing. Many car manufacturers have tried to emulate the Ferrari mystique by racing to promote their road cars. None of them come close and the reason is Enzo Ferrari, his passion and his values. I recently managed to get a copy of his autobiography ‘My Terrible Joys’, it is one of the best motorsport books I have ever read, it is candid and insightful, it is, of course, his view of the world, but it is all the more engaging for that.

It is now twenty three years since Enzo’s death and Ferrari have just put a piece on their website asking for comments on the great man:  http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/News/Headlines/Pages/110814_In_memory_of_Enzo_Ferrari.aspx

I am certain that Enzo’s shadow will be there for as long as there is a prancing horse on a Ferrari.

So should we be grateful to Sky for helping out the BBC? Perhaps we should and perhaps we should also consider whether the real culprit is, as some have suggested, CVC Partners in requiring such high fees from broadcasters to cover their debt in acquiring F1 in the first place? The counter-argument for the BBC is that F1 has a less than pristine image and this makes it hard to justify spending many millions of the licence fee revenue propping up a less than transparent (think Bahrain), hugely rewarded (think Bernie) often unsporting (think spygate, liegate, crashgate) phenomena that is F1, and clearly the FIA, FOM and the teams have all played their part in this. I think the problem is that these aspects of F1 made it politically easier for the BBC to make the decision to pull the plug, but I think they are wrong and they should reconsider and I give three reasons why:

1.       Showcase British sporting talent

The standard of driving talent in F1 today is incredible. Although there has been talk of pay-drivers and the like, the overall standard is far higher than it has ever been. If you look at the quality and mix of drivers there is a fantastic array of British talent – Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button being potential title contenders, but there is also the up and coming talent such as Paul Di Resta, surely the BBC should be showcasing such global talent for all to see, and to recognise.

2.       Support the best of British industry

It has been one of the world’s best kept secrets but we are bloody good at producing F1 teams with technology that is absolutely at the leading edge. Eight of the current twelve F1 teams are based in the UK. Why did Mercedes Benz acquire Ilmor Engineering just north of Northampton and transform it into Mercedes Benz High Performance Engines? Can they not build high performance engines in Stuttgart? Of course they can, but they can’t produce engines with a centre of gravity a few centimetres from the ground and which you can change in 45 minutes – they can in Britain’s Motorsport Valley. We are often very good at putting British expertise down, but here we have it in spades and it really doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world (for now at any rate), so let’s celebrate and showcase it.

3.       Stick to what you’re good at

There is no question that the BBC coverage has been superb. For me no-one can beat the combination of Murray Walker and James Hunt in the commentary box, the contrast in styles and approach was fantastic, but we are now in different times, and the mix of commentators between Jake Humphreys, the irrepressible Eddie Jordan, Martin Brundle, DC, Lee McKenzie and Ted Kravitz is world leading. The BBC likes winning awards and they like increasing viewing figures, that is exactly what they have been doing with F1, so why devalue it by letting Sky take the credit?

Think again BBC, for your own good.

Winners

Jenson Button: What a great way to celebrate your 200^th Grand Prix and the place where Jenson won his first race back in 2006. Jenson may not be Alonso material, but he’s a great character and on his day, unbeatable. It could have been very different, I actually think he may have pitted if he’d been in front of Lewis when the rain started to come down, but that’s conjecture on my part. A great result and who knows what will come next.

Sebastian Vettel: Although he didn’t win, he was ahead of both his main rivals for the championship – Lewis and Fernando. This was a good championship banker for Sebastian and still makes him the favourite. He is now almost 100 points ahead of both of them (notice I haven’t put Mark Webber down as a rival), and that means they need to win four races with Seb not picking up a single point to overtake him. Not very likely.

Martin Whitmarsh: Martin has come in for a bit of stick regarding McLaren’s performance, I have no idea why, as he is doing a brilliant job. McLaren have prided themselves on being the only team that can run two ‘number one’ drivers, however this has often been at the cost of much intra-team rivalry and friction (Senna/Prost; Hamilton/Alonso), and it has to be said that Ron Dennis’s partial approach to drivers has often appeared to fuel such tensions. Martin Whitmarsh has a different style and one which is about fairness, balance and the team. Undoubtedly there is a good relationship between Jenson and Lewis, but it is the team approach that will either build or destroy this, congratulations to Martin and McLaren for giving us such great racing yesterday. If McLaren had used team orders it would have been so much more boring and we wouldn’t have seen the best of Jenson or Lewis.

Losers

Lewis Hamilton: It was a big shame for Lewis as he deserved a far better result than he ended up with, but he took the outcome with stoicism and for that he probably should have been a winner as well! There is much more to come from Lewis in the second part of the season.

Team Orders: Towards the end of the Hungary race I was reminded of Austria 2002, the day when Jean Todt, oblivious to the views of F1 fans across the world decided to get Rubens Barrichello, who had outdriven Schumi all weekend, to pull over and allow the Schumi-meister to win the race. Undoubtedly Todt’s motives were sincere and for the benefit of the team, but in reality they did far more damage to the team and their lead driver. Contrast this with Lewis and Jenson fighting tooth and nail for every last piece of the abrasive Hungaroring circuit and you realise how much racing team orders can destroy. Let’s hope all teams reflect on this and think how they can get the best out of everyone and put on great racing, because that was what we witnessed yesterday.

Having settled into our hotel room, which overlooked the Zambezi river before it explodes into the Victoria Falls or to give it the local name Mosi-oa-Tunya – The Smoke that Thunders, I was happily watching some zebra gently grazing when I received a text from Chris Aylett of the Motorsport Industry Association. Chris had come across a piece in the Independent that had quoted me as stating that the motorsport industry in the UK has quadrupled over the past ten years, was this true and was it based on new research?

Hmm.. I’d had a chat with Kevin Eason at the Times just before leaving for a piece he was writing, but hadn’t made any such statement, so where had this come from? I replied to Chris that I had no idea where this had come from. So how on earth had this happened? The UK motorsport industry is certainly a world leader, but has not quadrupled in the last ten years. So on my return I managed to contact the journalist who had written the piece in the Independent’s pre-British Grand Prix issue on 9 July:  ‘Britain is Centre of the Universe for Motorsport’ – Richard Rae – who advised me that he had found the quote on Clive Couldwell’s website: http://www.clivecouldwell.com/formula1_review.php.

Now Clive’s a really nice bloke and his book ‘Formula One: Made in Britain’ is an excellent publication and one in which I am widely quoted (so I could be biased), and one of these quotes is that the motorsport industry has quadrupled over the last ten years – so actually I did say that. The problem is that the book was published in 2003 and the interview I did was in 2002 and at that time, between 1992 and 2002 the UK motorsport industry had quadrupled, but it certainly was not the case in 2001 – 2011, although Chris advises me that things are looking good with sales, exports and employment in the industry still growing.

So I am delighted to get good news on the motorsport industry out there, and the Cranfield media team are delighted we’re getting national press coverage, but I think like all things we sometimes have to treat what we read with a bit of care and this is definitely one of those times.