I was seeking a word to use to describe the arguments being put forward by F1 teams about why there shouldn’t be an 11th or 12th entry and “poppycock” leapt to mind.
The word means nonsense, or at least that is the polite version. I was amused to discover that the word first appeared in the United States where, so the story goes, Dutch immigrants used the term “pappekak”, which was said to mean “soft dung”. Dutch is not a language that is easy to master. I can say “Godverdomme” with a vaguely convincing accent and I am one of the few Englishmen able to pronounce Ijmuiden correctly, but Google Translate’s “Detect Language” function explained that “pappekak” is actually Norwegian for “cardboard cake”. I know northern folk can eat some funny things, but that takes the biscuit, as the saying goes…
Anyway, “poppycock” is a good word for what is being whispered into the ears of news-starved F1 journalists, in the hope they will write stories suggesting that the sport does not need any more teams – and that most of the current entrants are opposed to the idea of allowing General Motors to join the party.
I will admit that I didn’t have much confidence in the whole Andretti concept, but when Michael turned up with General Motors some doffing of hats is required. GM is America. It’s huge and powerful and a brilliant catch for F1. OK, Ford would have been just as good, but clearly Michael has better connections with GM.
During the announcement GM president Mark Reuss made it very clear that the firm intends to build its own Cadillac engines as soon as it can do (this may not be a good idea, by the way, but that is what he said). He did not say that the most likely way to achieve this quickly is to use intellectual property acquired from another manufacturer… but that is logical.
The accusation that F1 teams are whispering is that GM will only be branding engines built by someone else… and this would be poor show. No real F1 team would ever do that…
Um… Let’s take a waltz through the history books to see if any F1 team ever competed pretending to be something it was not. This sort of thing has been going on since the beginning of motor racing and there are a lot of examples of things being rebranded to help manufacturers who need a shortcut. If you want a good example where better to start than Ferrari which used the Lancia F1 car when their own was not very good, back in the mid-1950s. In the early 1990s Ferrari was so desperate to be successful that it bought Honda V12 IP after the Japanese firm departed F1.
Mercedes? Always a shining example of integrity. Well, yes, but they did enter F1 hiding behind a Sauber-branded V10 built by Ilmor, which Mercedes did not control for another 10 years. And when Merc entered as a factory team, they bought the old Honda team.
More recently Red Bull Racing bought Honda engine IP in order to start its own power unit programme…
Haas and AlphaTauri buy pretty much everything they are allowed to buy, while Aston Martin has a track record of cleverly producing cars that look just like those of its rivals – without it being illegal.
Car companies which race in Formula 1 but do not use their own engines are three-a-penny at the moment: Sauber, McLaren and Aston Martin would be best to keep shtum because they are all trying to play in the big game, but cannot afford to pay for their own F1 engines. OK, Sauber is being swallowed up by Audi now, but it has been pretending to be Alfa Romeo in recent years…
So arguments that GM should not be allowed to play are nothing short of poppycock. And one might even reach for the word “hypocritical”, although it isn’t that because the truth is that the teams are simply scratching around for arguments to try to justify keeping new rivals out and must all be well aware that the arguments are hopeless.
The main reason the teams are whining is because they fear they might lose out financially. Some of them obviously worry that they might drop further down F1’s greasy pole if big new players appear… so they are trying to protect themselves. That’s all. If they argued that extra teams make logistics more difficult, one might accept that but any new manufacturer is good for the sport, if only because they spend a pile of money promoting racing, which benefits everyone.
Manufacturers quite often screw up on track (ask Toyota). The problem is usually the same. Bosses who do not know the sport arrive, thinking it will be easy and that F1 teams don’t know what they are doing… and quite often the car industry execs leave without their trousers around their ankles having been spanked by the experts.
Making a fuss and trying to stop a major automobile manufacturer from entering the sport is pretty pathetic, particularly when the manufacturer is American and F1’s future growth relies heavily on the US market. Smart thinking would be to say: “Bring it on! Let’s all generate more cash”. That’s what they will be thinking in Denver (home of Liberty Media). If I was an F1 team boss who needs an engine, I’d be off to Detroit to talk to Ford or Chrysler because now GM is in, the others might be convinced…
In any case, competitors being allowed to stop a new player entering a game is a subject that has the potential to make lawyers a lot of money. One can imagine attorneys from Sioux, Grabbett and Runn LLC throwing around words like “cartel” and “collusion” and in the end GM has nothing to lose if they take down F1, because that would benefit other forms of racing, in which they are also involved.