Op-Ed: A pantomime winner in a race of one

Well hooray! Ring the bells, light the fire and rejoice. Silverstone is saved! Woo hoo. Party on! And well, duh! Like it was going anywhere.

As we know, F1 loves to drag out a saga and keep milking it, even if the cow died a week ago last Thursday. “Any news is good news” seems to be the motto that we’re used to so what better way than to drag this sorry mess out until now? Sorry if I’m not exactly jumping for joy here, but while I’m happy we still have a British GP, I can’t help but feel that this has been unnecessary.

It might be a win-win for Silverstone and Bernie, but there are lots of casualties from this is, and not just Donington.

There have been 3 main, key players throughout. As always there is Bernie, and sharing the stage are the British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) and Simon Gillett (in charge of the Donington GP bid.) We all know how much Bernie dislikes Silverstone or more accurately the BRDC, which he calls the “a gentlemen’s club short of a few gentlemen.” So it was no surprise when he announced that the British GP was in danger and later on that it was moving.

What was a surprise was where it was going. Donington. The timing was also suspect as it was announced on the weekend of the 2008 British GP at Silverstone itself. [Remember that?!] It just screamed of Bernie rubbing the BRDC’s face in it. Enter stage left Simon Gillett, the businessman with plenty of ambition, to see Donington as the new home of the British Grand Prix. Gillett, who had made a deal earlier in the year to rent the circuit from Tom Wheatcroft and his company, Wheatcroft & Son LTD. Tom, the man who had actually saved Donington when he brought the track back in 1971. He opened the Donington museum and in 1977 staged the first motor race since it was closed in 1939 due to the start of World War II. [They made it a military vehicle depot.]

Tom himself finally managed his dream of hosting an F1 race in 1993 with the European GP race. Ayrton Senna drove one of his greatest races, a demonstration of perfect driving control that still is talked about today.

After 1993, however the world of F1 changed forever. In 1994 Senna was killed, as was Roland Ratzenberger. The list of seriously injured drivers grew as well and suddenly F1 was pushed to be an even bigger safety drive than ever before. Cars became safer, but the circuits changed too. Famous and much loved corners were changed, interrupted by chicanes or gone completely.

As safety progressed, the big boom period in F1 also began. Suddenly, circuits could no longer be just ribbons of tarmac. They had to be amazing to just look at, and along came tracks at Malaysia, Bahrain and other new territories that threatened the very existence of the once very solid European tracks on the calendar.

So what Simon Gillett faced when he signed the right for the British GP was not just a simple task of putting up a few sponsor banners and off we go. Since ‘93 everything had moved on and Donington had not kept up. It was perfectly capable of hosting BTCC, club events and Moto GP. But F1 was something else. Not only did the track need extensive work but the very building themselves were not good enough, meaning a massive rebuild was ahead.

If there was not enough doubt at the start when the deal was announced, then the trouble soon started.

While the deal was announced in the summer of 2008, the planning permission for the main pit complex was not given until early January 2009 leaving barely 18 months to get it built. But that didn’t seem to worry Gillett, and he boasted about a 17-year deal to host the race, telling Silverstone to forget having any hopes of getting the race back anytime soon.

For his part, Bernie Ecclestone was sure it would happen, on the surface, but said that if the Donington plans failed then “there will be no British GP,” as Silverstone was a no go.

Of course, Donington was struggling from the word go, and a lack of funds became a big problem. Meanwhile, the only news the media was printing about Donington was also negative. A tunnel required to give access to the new pit complex, which was needed, broke safety regulations set by the Motor Sport Association, the body which gives the licences to race at circuits in the UK.

In other words, the circuit had no racing license.

Then Gillett, who had maintained the circuit would stay open during the work and close in the off season, suddenly found no racing would be allowed at all. Club events were cancelled and the BTCC race only got the go-ahead to race a few days before the event, after last minute work secured the license back.

Then the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment said that the Donington plans themselves were “poor” saying, “The scheme reflects a poor understanding of the site and the opportunities it offers.” Not what you want to have published when trying to attract investors, as the financial world was now heading straight in to a recession.

Seemingly with his eye off the ball, Gillett now found another income stream gone after 2009 as Moto GP decided that Silverstone would suit its needs better, maybe keen to avoid clashing with a series like F1. Whatever the case, the BRDC had made sure they had some cards still to play and they themselves were highly sceptical about Donington’s chances of having the event up and running.

As Donington was struggling, Bernie found out his hand wasn’t as strong as he first thought when the cards were initially dealt. While he stuck to his “Donington or nothing” statements and bad mouthing Silverstone as he walked around state-of-the-art circuits like the newly opened Abu Dhabi circuit, he too had problems. The fact was, the new venues weren’t doing great. The Turkish race numbers were low, around 36,000 for the race day; by comparison, Silverstone had attracted 128,000 on its raceday. Bernie knows that the money was in TV mainly, but the dwindling numbers at other “newer” venues were a worry. Turkish organisers tried covering up whole grandstands with large black sheets to hide empty grandstands. Toyota-backed Fuji had also decided enough was enough, meanwhile Magny Cours organizers decided it was not worth the loss it was making and scrapped its own race. Bernie was facing nervous investors who were seeing empty grandstands.

Plus, there was no avoiding the obvious With the UK looking to have back-to-back British champions for the first time since Jackie Stewart and Graham Hill back in 1968-69, everyone knew it would be mad to leave Britain now. After all, wasn’t Valencia on the calendar mainly thanks to the Fernando Alonso effect?

By the time Jenson Button crossed the line in 5th at Brazil to win the Drivers Championship, the writing was on the wall for Donington. The money just was not there and despite Gillett insisting it would still happen he was probably the only person left who believed it would.

His company, Donington Ventures Leisure Limited, had just managed to sort out the embarrassing case of being sued for not paying Wheatcroft & Son LTD £2.47 million in rent. This was resolved, with no details how it had been ironed out. Had the money been paid? No one knew.

Deadline after deadline was passing by, and Bernie was not getting his agreed payments off Donington, and he was openly questioning the plans. “It’s not looking good is it?” he said, an understatement if ever there was one.

As the season wound up and finished so did Donington’s dream. Not long after the final deadline passed, and despite a rumoured 12 million suddenly being found to pay Ecclestone, Donington’s last hope, a bond scheme, failed completely. And that still totally ignored the fact that the building work was very very far behind.

With the confirmation of the deal failing, Donington Ventures Leisure Limited went into administration, leaving Donington itself in danger.

After this it became nothing more than a face-saving exercise for Ecclestone. He still tried to make out that the race was guaranteed, at Silverstone but now it seemed the BRDC, which apart from issuing the odd statement saying it was worried about the future of the race and questioned Donington’s realistic chances of hosting the race, found it now had the strongest hand.

While the BRDC had made a profit from hosting the race in 2009, now it had the Moto GP race and a reasonable level of income coming in if the deal failed.

So it all came down to Bernie.

No surprise, Bernie tried his usual bullying tactics, talking about Silverstone having “48 hours to sign a deal,” a deadline that passed almost a month ago.

And today, Silverstone announces a 17-year deal, the same length as Donington had. You can’t help but think they found a pen and just scratched out Donington and replaced Silverstone on the contract.

So a deal that we all knew would happen has happened. The biggest question most people seem to be asking is which layout will they use?

Well, here’s another one: Sure, the British GP has been saved, but was it worth the damage done to Donington? Simon Gillett still thought the race could happen in 2011, right up until the 17-year deal announcement from Silverstone. He also said it would only take around 1 million pounds to repair Donington, enough to get it back in shape to hold races again. That does not really say much for the amount of work that was completed towards the F1 race if this is true.

But Donington is not the only victim. One example is from a story that ran on a local news station this past summer. The feature was on a small Bed and Breakfast business based near the circuit. At the time the Moto GP race had just been lost and the woman in charge was explaining that this, on top of the uncertain future of the F1 race, had affected her business terribly. How many more businesses will suffer as well is the circuit can’t carry on racing?

You can blame the spat between Bernie and the BRDC for this and Bernie possibly using Donington as nothing more than a pawn to get more out of Silverstone. However, Simon Gillett is also at fault. He should have seen months ago that his plan was doomed to fail.

He has said in the past week that he blames the credit crunch for the dream failing but he also said when he was bragging about his 17-year deal: “The great thing about the credit crunch is that building is cheaper! So we’re now looking at about £30 million. (Rather than the 100 million originally thought to be needed) We’re confident with what we have – and that’s with a 10-year contract.”

So it’s hard to see the credit crunch being anything other than an easy excuse that’s been used all this year (see Toyota, Honda etc.).

To cap off the sadness of all this, hours after the end of Donington’s plans got announced, Tom Wheatcroft, the man who had brought the race there in 1993 and saved Donington in the first place, passed away.

It’s a terrible thing that the last news he would hear about his beloved track was its failure to secure another F1 race.

What this whole story all boils down to is greed and money and being unable to see when the game is up. The British GP has been saved but it has come at a price. Lets hope it was worth it.

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