Paul Lewis: Formula One could be heading for disaster

It is not often you see a sport in its death throes - but that might be what we are witnessing with Formula One. Last weekend's debacle at the US Grand Prix in Indianapolis was too dire to be anything other than a serious risk to its health, at best, or the beginning of the end, at worst.

The ludicrous events at Indy underline what happens when the lines between sport and business get too blurred.

Step forward Bernie Ecclestone, the commercial rights holder to F1 and the tiny, seemingly feeble man who has nonetheless held the sport in his claw-like grip for many years.

All resemblances to Monty Burns from The Simpsons are coincidental but there is no doubt Mr Burns, er, Bernie, would have happily released the hounds on the seven teams and 14 cars who defied the order to start the Grand Prix last week.

The teams staged a mini rebellion over tyre safety. Ralf Schumacher suffered a nasty accident after a tyre blew in practice and Michelin - tyre-maker to the seven teams in question - flew out replacement tyres but, under F1 rules, they would have attracted a penalty.

The problem is Indy's long straights allow speeds of over 200mph and place extreme pressure on tyres on the track's banks.

The teams lobbied instead for a new chicane to be built into the track so speeds could be slowed to levels manageable for the Michelin tyres. Not surprisingly, Ferrari - who use Bridgestone tyres and were quite happy re safety and performance - declined to consent to a new chicane which would disadvantage them. The teams were deadlocked.

The race took place with only six cars and, predictably, Michael Schumacher won a contest of as much interest as a race between a rock and a dog turd.

Now let's not even dwell on the fact that this was suicidal in a market like the US.

American petrolheads are much more interested in Indycars and the Nascar series and view F1 as a suspiciously effete piece of European egomania. They love their great throbbing saloons run at breakneck speed, with some of the most dangerous manoeuvres known to motoring man. The reaction of 120,000 fans to paying large amounts to watch six cars was furious.

This is also a sporting market which doesn't quite understand quaint European notions of what is sport. Americans, for example, don't get draws. Football never really took off in the US because the vast majority of the audience found it ridiculous to watch a game that often did not produce a winner. Where Brits might coo over an entertaining 2-2 draw, the Americans would shrug and say: "So, they gonna flip a coin now or what? Waddaya mean we all go home now - are you crazy?"

Into this land of sporting black and white, Bernie rocked up with the travelling F1 circus. The most over-regulated, over-complicated business pretending to be a sport got caught up in its own red tape.

F1 has been changing its rules and changing them again. Why? Because Bernie and the FIA, the sport's governing body, were desperate to level the playing field. Michael Schumacher had been winning everything and the sport was getting boring. Excuse me, even more boring. So new rules were cooked up tightening fuel stops, replacement engines, practice rules and tyres to bring Schumacher back to the field. They effectively slowed down the racing until overtaking became almost obsolete - quaint concept, huh? Michelin's tyres handled better than Bridgestone's - the new rules stipulating that cars had to use the same set of tyres for practice and racing. Until Indianapolis anyway.

You might well ask, seeing that Michelin had the upper hand until then, why the French guys didn't take the hit. They could either have raced slower - and still taken championship points - or run the new tyres and taken the penalties. That would have evened up an F1 series that was proving just as one-sided as when Schumacher was winning them all.

The answer is business masquerading as a sport. Ecclestone has engineered, cajoled, promoted, copyrighted and plain old bullied the sport into a money-making machine. F1 didn't go to China because millions of Chinese want to see tubes of fibreglass rocket around a track making a noise that makes you drop your chopsticks and soil your trousers.

Nooooo. F1 went to China because the sponsors were keen on anything that could help them access China's teeming billions. The US was just another target market for Bernie - at least until last weekend.

The incredible happenings at Indy were the fault of the teams. They chose to play corporate manoeuvres instead of compete. The fallout, including the possible compensation of fans and sponsors, could sink F1.

So who introduced the teams to this greedy, corporate way of thinking? What happened to the incredibly simple ethos of motor racing - a sport that revolves around who can drive the fastest for the longest and make clever strategic use of pit stops and factors like tyres, all the while defying death at breathtaking speeds and moves?

It's not often you come across a sport that has forgotten its own raison d'etre.

Welcome to Weekend at Bernie's, folks. Not the cult movie built around two guys who drag a corpse around a series of comic situations.

No, this was a Weak End To Bernie's (hopes of cracking the US). It was a comic situation, all right.

But it still had the smell of death about it.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY