If you are Williams or Ferrari or McLaren, and you approach AT&T or Santander or Vodafone, and you say (in so many words), “I need $50 million from you to go Formula One racing this year,” the chances are excellent that you will get a hearing and pretty good that you’ll get the money.
And why is that?
Because you – Williams, Ferrari and McLaren – have been around F1 forever and you have kept your nose clean and haven’t ripped anybody off and delivered excellent value for investment most of the time.
Corporations know that you are a good risk. You have a history; you have a good track record.
Which explains why those three old-guard F1 teams can go after – and expect to receive – multi-million-dollar sponsorships.
Okay, so now you’re a guy who’s been around the sport a long time. You know the ins and outs and who’s a player and who isn’t. You know how things work.
So you announce, to great fanfare – as did journalist Peter Windsor and his long-time friend, F1 engineer Ken Anderson last year – that you are going to start a brand-new F1 team from scratch because, one, you can do it better (you’ve been around and know what everybody else is doing wrong), and two, you can do it cheaper (why are all those people wasting all that money?).
Everybody you talk to thinks your USF1 racing team is an absolutely smashing idea.
You start to run into problems almost immediately, however, because there are all sorts of people out there who are gung-ho as all get-out when it comes to talk but slow as molasses when it comes time to walk.
“Sure, I’m in for a million bucks” is something that’s really easy for someone to say. Actually sitting down and writing out a cheque is infinitely more difficult.
That’s at the individual level.
At the corporate level, you might even think you have a deal with a vice-president until it comes time for the board of directors to approve the expenditure.
“You want to give $50 million to WHO??? You want to give $50 million for WHAT???”
That’s why, if you want to play in F1 these days, you have to either have a great track record (see above), be personally wealthy (Alex Schnaider, Peter Sauber) or be an entrepreneur whose businesses support your team (Red Bull, Toro Rosso: Dietrich Mateschitz; Force India: Vijay Mallya; Virgin: Richard Branson).
If you are like someone in the previous paragraph, you will probably be able to play in F1. But otherwise, forget it.
It’s impossible and you can’t do it and that’s what the folks behind USF1 have unfortunately found out. On Thursday, the FIA officially announced USF1 would not participate in F1 this year. Anderson followed by saying he still holds out hope the team can race in 2011.
Listen, I’ve been there. I have personal experience of what happens when you think you know what you’re doing in the world of upper-level motorsport.
In 1988, after having been around racing cars forever, written about racing cars forever, gone racing myself and owned racing cars, I decided I knew enough to be able to go racing at the Indianapolis 500.
I knew how I was going to do it. It would be on the cheap but I had a business plan and I would be able to do it over three years.
I made a deal for a car and engine (through a fellow involved in IndyCar racing at the time), had a driver lined up, had sponsorship lined up, had associate sponsorship lined up, and on and on.
I even gave an interview to the local weekly newspaper in the town where I was living and said not only was I going to take a team to Indy but I was going to win the race someday. (I still think that, by the way …)
The deal started to come apart when the guy who owned the car and engine he was going to sell me called to say he was leaving the sport and wanted more money than we’d agreed.
When I went to the major sponsor I had lined up to say I was going to need more money because, etc., he said that business hadn’t been so hot lately, he’d been rethinking our agreement and, well, he really didn’t want to do it any more.
When the associate sponsors (they were just in for product, in any event) became aware that there wasn’t an Indy racing car in my shop because I didn’t have the money to pay for it, they either cancelled or came and got their stuff.
Like Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson, my IndyCar deal was over before it really got started.
Lesson learned: have the car and infrastructure in place; then make the announcement.
When Windsor and Anderson called a press conference on Speed TV in February 2009, and proceeded to talk in generalities, I cringed because I sensed that they might be going down a road they thought they knew but maybe didn’t.
I’ve often thought since that maybe, as one journalist to another, I should have written Windsor a letter and told him my sad little tale.
But I didn’t. I don’t think he would have listened anyway.
DONALDSON PODCAST FRIDAYS
I have great news today.
Gerald Donaldson, acknowledged to be Canada’s foremost authority on all things Formula One, will begin recording an audio podcast next Friday in which he will preview each and every Grand Prix race this season.
Donaldson, who reported for the Toronto Star during the Jacques Villeneuve era, will record his first podcast next Friday from the press room in Bahrain, site of the first F1 race of the 2010 season.
The 10-minute podcast, complete with visual images, will be available on wheels.ca by noon every Friday of a Grand Prix weekend.
Donaldson, who started writing about F1 in the 1970s and is the author of two dozen books on the series — including biographies of Gilles Villeneuve and the late world champion James Hunt — will report on practice times, driver performance and, yes, all the gossip that Formula One is famous for.
He did this previously for TSN, answering questions put to him by Vic Rauter. He will now have to answer to me.
Practice for the Grand Prix of Bahrain will take place next Friday. Go to wheels.ca at noon for the first of Donaldson’s preview podcasts.
nmcdonald@thestar.ca Read Norris McDonald’s Auto Racing blog at Wheels.ca.
Norris McDonald, Motorsport Writer | TORONTO STAR