Would Mercedes leaving Formula 1 be bad for the sport? Thank Frankel it’s Friday

Formula 1 has been fabulous for Mercedes-Benz and while it is an international team, we should be proud that its rarely beatable combination of engine and chassis are designed, engineered and built in Britain. But has Mercedes-Benz been fabulous for Formula 1? Given that it has won every drivers’ and constructors’ title for the last six seasons, it’s hardly been a great advert for competitive sport.

Infer no criticism of Mercedes here. It came back to the sport in 2010 and paid its dues: four full seasons went by before it took its first title. And by working not just harder, but smarter too it has won ever since. And, yes, by spending more money as well. But never think for a moment that all you have to do to win in F1 is write a sufficiently large cheque: Toyota which went not just without a championship but even a single solitary win for eight entire seasons will tell you that.

Nor do I subscribe to the notion that Mercedes should quit to ‘let someone else have a go’. That’s hardly the spirit of sport is it? Of course any race team will cherish every victory no matter how strong or weak is the opposition – and Toyota provides another good example here, thanks to its current form relative to the rest of the field in sports car racing. But a win against world class opposition will always be sweeter even if rarely recorded by record books.

No, I think Mercedes should leave because if F1 is to have a future, that future need to be in the hands of teams that exist not to sell road cars or fizzy drinks, but simply to race.

If you look back to when Formula 1 had so many entries they had to have a separate qualifying to qualify for qualifying, it was because the cars were so simple, with the vast majority of teams using the same engines and gearboxes, that you didn’t need to be a multi-national to get on the grid. Indeed, wealthy private individuals could buy last season’s F1 cars and go it alone at the very top level.

And what did that bring, other than packed grids and close racing? It brought character, it brought great David & Goliath stories, it gave Formula 1 a human face. If it has one today, which I doubt, it is hidden so far behind the corporate mask as to be entirely obscured.

Just think about it for a moment. The FIA and Formula 1 come good on their promise to even up the playing field because they’ve realised that by the time the circus gets to Melbourne it will have been fully eight seasons since anything other than a Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull has won a race. Incredible, isn’t it. By the time Mercedes leaves at the end of 2020, if it leaves, it will almost certainly be nine. 

But suddenly all these other teams, not those already on the Grand Prix grid, but doing good work in Formula 2 and Formula 3 suddenly realise that F1 is a possibility. They might not win straight away, but they’d fill the grids with interesting cars and interesting people not contractually obliged to toe the corporate line. And their sponsors would love it. Last year Jolyon Palmer told me that if the big names left there’d be ‘a queue’ to fill their places in a cost-controlled Formula 1.

And what would we, the paying punters, actually be losing? Not much so far as I can see. Actually, I’d be sad to see Ferrari leave because, well, F1 without Ferrari would be hard to imagine. But if Ferrari didn’t want to race without spending vastly more money than most of the rest of the field, I guess they’d have to go too. And F1 would survive without the red cars. In fact I think it would be fine.

But do I think Mercedes-Benz will pull the plug as a constructor? Actually I think there’s a decent chance because every car manufacturer to come into F1 for marketing purposes has, sooner or later, left. And no, you can’t include Ferrari because the only reason Enzo started making road cars was to finance his racing. By contrast, the teams that came to F1 to race tended either to get sold – like Jordan, Tyrrell and so on – or still be there, like McLaren and Williams. And it is with teams like that with which the sport’s future should surely lie.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.