Warning! Very long entry alert!

This morning, I was woken up by my dad, who had some rather worrying news. Honda F1 have decided they want no further part in F1 (with BBC video of the report) due to the amount of money it costs in a low-sales economy. Needless to say, it's been the talk of the Formula 1 Home forum, as it has been elsewhere in the F1-related internet.

The leavetaking of manufacturers when things get tough (and things really are tough now) has been predicted ever since the manufacturers began to return en masse to F1 in 2000. More recently, Williams chief executive Adam Parr predicted this scenario in October.

In fact, we should have predicted something of this kind yesterday. Shuhei Nakamoto was transferred to Vice President of the motorcycle division of Honda. For all the stick he may have received for his lack of aerodynamic understanding in F1, he did well for himself in the motorcycle world. Clearly he is also a valued employee because vice-presidency of such a key department in Honda's empire constitutes a promotion. Perhaps he was only in F1 at all to widen his experience and give him a taste of high-level management.

The big clue that should have given it away was the fact that no replacement was announced, nor was the usual message along the lines of “a replacement will be announced in due course” appended to the end of the press release. Combined with the cancellation of Christmas and the 2009 launch, it does indicate that the senior management had advance notice (if perhaps only slightly advance notice) and acted accordingly. After all, it is hard to have a jovial Christmas party if everyone at the tables, including the hosts, is already on the path to redundancy and a miserable New Year. Launching a car that is never going to race (even in the modified form that Renault are suggesting in their case) is simply ridiculous. Before today's announcement, none of this made sense. Now it all fits the pattern of a management settling the team's affairs in case no buyer can be found.

It turns out that the team found out its fate after an emergency meeting yesterday with senior Honda Company management. This followed the Honda factory in Swindon shutting down for the first two months of 2009, a move echoed by Honda factories elsewhere. Combine that with the 1000 redundancies announced for the Swindon factory at the start of December and a general impression that the F1 programme was unsustainable with that backdrop emerges.

What wasn't predicted at that point was the timescale of the sale. Always before, several months, or occasionally years, were allotted for the sale of a team before all hope was lost on it. Such sales were made as quietly as possible so as to extract maximum value and reduce disruption to the team. Even Ford gave Jaguar two months' grace, and that was considered irresponsibly short notice at the time. Happily, Red Bull were shopping for an F1 team at the time, so it simply forced its hand earlier than might otherwise have been the case.

How long have Honda allotted for the sale of its team? It would appear to be Christmas, though given that this is the date redundancy letters will be sent, a deal made soon afterwards would probably still be able to salvage a decent proportion of the team. That's a very short time to sort out the paperwork and due diligence. The latter will be done extremely carefully because the cause of the credit crunch (bad debts hidden behind seemingly innocuous ones) will have made purchasers particularly wary of financial trickery. The sheer improbability of Honda committing any trickery will not be relevant to buyer confidence with regard to checking, only perhaps to whether a favourable check enables a sale.

I think that Honda, despite the short timetable, has a considerably better chance of securing the future of its team than Squadra Toro Rosso. Unlike the latter, it has a fully functional factory at Brackley, capable of making components for every aspect of an F1 car. This will stand it in good stead in 2010, when customer cars are formally banned (assuming that Max Mosley doesn't do another U-turn on the matter). With minor modifications, it may even be possible for it to expand to other series if that is what a new buyer desires. The windtunnel finished being recalibrated last year and is very much the equal of rivals' tunnels further up the pit lane. It has a large staff made close-knit rather than argumentative (at least as far as I can see on the outside) through the adversity of two years of poor results. Also, Bernie's confirmation of Fry's statement that there are already three organisations with a serious interest in buying Honda F1 will help a lot. It's easier to secure a sale to an interested party than to try to conjure up a buyer from seeming thin air. I will say Bernie's attitude to this is a vast improvement over his dismissive mocking of Jaguar when it needed to sell in 2004.

Financially, it's in a relatively strong position too. It has no debts of its own and as of the end of its last financial year an existent (albeit modest) reserve. Its fixed costs are relatively high, but Toyota's and Ferrari's are higher and when cost-cutting already initiated by Honda is taken into account, some British-based teams may be more expensive.. It's selling the team for £1, which should help get potential investors through the door. It's the running costs that are the real problem, but that's a problem every F1 team faces. When you consider that part of the money Honda spent in the previous financial year covered Super Aguri's costs, and that item of expenditure is no longer present, it is not really in any worse shape than the average F1 team.

Against all that, there is the question of who would buy any F1 team at this time. Super Aguri couldn't find a buyer earlier this year, though to be fair Honda didn't help matters by blocking two different buyers from purchasing its satellite team (somewhat ironic now). Also in mitigation, Super Aguri was a customer car team, which was not a sustainable business model due to the regulations. Again, it sheds light on the notice that certain members of the team might have had – why would a board fund a B-team when the existence of the A-team may have been in doubt even back then?

Squadra Toro Rosso were on the market for nearly a year before Dietrich Mateschitz gave up trying to sell it as a bad job (at least publicly). Again, this is a customer car team, but it is indicative about how choosy the market is right now.

When you consider other factors, you can see why buyers are difficult to find. Formula 1, to a manufacturer, has eight aims, which are really five when you think about it:

1.Marketing (to attract new markets)
2.Marketing (to attract new customers in existing markets)
3.Marketing (to augment the brand's reputation among currently loyal customers)
4.Research and development (as opposed to the image thereof, which is classed as marketing)
5.Competition with other brands
6.Elaborate training opportunities to help staff members to progress through the company
7.Perks for senior staff members and companies the manufacturer wishes to impress, which feeds into
8.Staff morale

Points 1-3 have been going extremely badly. For one thing, the credit crunch means that fewer people can afford cars. Those who can are generally going for cheaper cars than they would have bought in the days when credit was easier to acquire and was easier to pay back.

Also, people are wanting smaller cars for lifestyle reasons (there are more single-person households than previously, and unused seats are easy for a buyer to remove from the equation when purchasing) and environmental/economical reasons (it always makes financial sense to use less fuel, especially when governments are encouraging more people to go green and providing incentives to do so). The manufacturers' offerings in the small, low-fuel-consuming arena are not especially diverse at the moment and tend to be in the cheaper, lower-margin end of the market. This is not a profitable situation for the manufacturers.

Beyond that, F1 has proved a less-than-ideal platform for marketeers. It has recently been pulling out of major markets such as the USA and Canada. Places where manufacturers are based, such as Britain, France and Germany, face considerable uncertainty concerning whether they can stay or re-join the calender. Japan may be under threat because the safekeeping of the Grand Prix has transferred from a track owned by Toyota to one owned by Honda because Toyota no longer want the expenditure – yet Honda no longer wants F1 expenditure either. South Korea, which was meant to be joining the calender in 2009, has quietly fallen off the radar in much the same way as Mexico did in 2006. China, one of the two big hopes for the car manufacturers to counteract stagnating sales elsewhere, is under threat. India, their other big hope, has been delayed for a year, possibly longer, which makes it useless with regard to marketing the manufacturers out of their current problems. Apart from India, all of these have been due to financial considerations.

Bernie has put CVC's own financial interests above those of F1's participants and supporters. He has forced circuits to gain all their money from ticket sales and to give all of these (and a fair amount more) to him simply to allow them to host the race. This means ticket sales are beyond the means of vast swathes of supporters, preventing them from putting a lot of income into the sport in incidental purchases and instead making them re-think their level of commitment to the sport. While there are people who will buy caps and T-shirts simply to support a team or driver, the music industry shows that these are well outnumbered by the numbers who need an occasion to wear them at in order to make the purchase worthwhile to them.

As for the participants, if there is no F1 in the markets they are trying to reach, no F1 (or F1 at serious risk) in the markets they are trying to increase customer base in, and F1 in bad repute from existing customers because it is seen as a processional* (on TV – races usually look less processional from the touchlines) cash cow for faceless organisations which bring no value to anything, what is the marketing purpose of them being there? That goes a fortiori if the market is itself shrunken by wider financial considerations.

Point 4 has been increasingly difficult. For the last 15 years, the emphasis has been on preventing advances in technology to increase the sport's purity – and the extra restrictions have come thick and fast, especially recently. While it may have increased the purity to some extent, it has also limited the scope for research and development. The December 2008 edition of F1 Racing shows that a fair bit of R&D is going on anyway – but that much of it is of no financial benefit to manufacturers of cars. Also, the R&D that car manufacturers need most is how to make cars relevant to owners of small, pared-down, fuel-efficient cars that are never raced anyway because they spend 90% of their time in traffic jams, passing speed cameras or traversing “traffic calming” measures. No racing series will ever be truly relevant to such people. It can entertain (a power that is not to be underestimated in these times), it can offer a limited range of R&D solutions to part of their problems, but there will still be massive gaps in the solutions it provides.

Of these gaps, the key things that F1 can provide in terms of R&D is, in approximate order of relevance, fuel technology, more efficient engine technology and low-drag aero.

Fuel technology is artificially limited by the FIA to only permitting fuels with 5.85% biological origin. Fuels with a greater biological origin are forbidden, as are any non-petroleum-based sources of power apart from KERS. Note that since road cars rarely brake with anything remotely resembling the force an F1 cars, that KERS will always be of limited applicability to road cars, and also that for the foreseeable future, the influence of KERS is being artificially controlled by the FIA.

Engine technology cannot get more efficient while the only modifications permitted on the engines frozen at the start of 2007 are those that improve reliability. Engine reliability is a relatively minor problem in the eyes of purchasers, so having engines that last a little longer in high-stress conditions will not make the manufacturers more money in providing a car that people want to buy. A high-tech car that nobody wants to buy is as useless to its manufacturer as the Betamax was in the fight against the technically inferior VHS video recorder. Efficiency would help, but efficiency is not really promoted in the FIA's scheme, as a proposal to have a 1.8 turbo engine that required no refuelling was rejected by the FIA earlier this week.

Low-drag aero has been of interest for quite some time – Pat Symonds said in the August 2007 edition of F1 Racing that this was what made the Renault car company interested in F1's R&D aspect. However, the increasing standardisation of aero has made this more and more difficult. The FIA has at least enforced a reduction in drag. The trouble is that they also heavily restricted other aspects of aero at the same time, which limits the amount of additional drag that can be taken off.

In short, the FIA has managed to largely stop point 4 as it relates to what manufacturers need to be doing in its tracks.

Point 5 remains relevant. F1 has got more competitive in the last two years. A manufacturer who is simply there to compete with other manufacturers and demonstrate their capacity to do so will be very happy with F1 as it has been recently. This grows stronger the better the manufacturer is doing. So Ferrari and Mercedes will find point 5 particularly compelling, while Honda would find it considerably less so.

This is also responsible for the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses effect that pushes running costs so high in the first place. To compete, a team needs to find and use as many resources as it can. After all, opposing teams will only do the same. To do less is to be defeated.

This effect cannot be defeated, at least not while one of the competitors is Ferrari. This is because competition is the primary reason why it is in F1 in the first place. It has an entire country's population putting pressure on it to be as competitive as possible. If it declared cutbacks, then it will have to face the wrath of an entire people in addition to its customer base. Therefore, it spends as much as possible in F1 to be as competitive as possible because it has to for the sake of the company's reputation. While that is the case, everyone else has to match that resource outlay – or at least try. This is why Max Mosley providing what he calls “an option to spend less” will never work as intended. A team that is there for competitiveness will have to spend a lot of money or none at all. The “F1-lite” option does not exist for them.

Point 6 takes advantage of the competitive element and seems particularly relevant because Honda cited this as a major reason why it was involved in F1. Shuhei Nakamoto is perhaps the most high-profile example of someone benefiting from this idea. However, there are cheaper ways of developing staff talent, so F1 would have to provide an exceptional benefit to a lot of people in order to be worth £1m, let alone the pushing-£200m that Honda were spending each year on their F1 project.

Point 7 is a nice luxury, but a luxury nonetheless. If responsible companies are already under pressure to cut costs, such perks will be among the first to go, especially since most workers will never directly benefit from them.

Finally, perks are part of staff morale. Unlike perks, every employee has the potential to benefit. However, there would have to be a large morale boost for this to be sufficient reason to invest millions in a racing series.

From that point of view, the case for manufacturer participation in F1 is very poor, a pessimistic view backed up by grandprix.com. The Honda Company's shares rose 0.2% as a result (which is a lot of money in absolute terms given the company's size), suggesting that investors also agree with this analysis. So what is being done about it?

The FIA and FOTA have been arguing this one since FOTA was called the GPWC. Even though I would argue that the effects of a credit crunch are beyond the powers of either to significantly ameliorate, it is still the case that things could be done to help teams out at this time.

With regard to points 1-3, nothing has been proposed because the calender is outside the influence of FOTA and the FIA has only very limited powers (it can stop “traditional races” from being cancelled, but the criteria to be deemed as such are strict and do not prevent Bernie from issuing unreasonable terms to circuits). Likewise, the FIA has no power over what the manufacturers make (though it can put pressure on them through the touring section) and FOTA, consisting as it does largely of teams semi-detached from their manufacturers, is only slightly more influential over their manufacturer-owners than the FIA is.

It is unlikely that Max Mosley's letter to the teams, sent out this morning, will include any provision for expanding research truly relevant to the road car industry as it currently stands. There may be some clauses to improve fuel and engine technology though, which will be helpful to the manufacturers. Drag is unlikely to be affected until the effects of the 2009-spec aero regime are seen in action.

It's worth adding at this point that Fernando Alonso has threatened to quit if standard engines are introduced. While he is known for spur-of-the-moment comments, he is also known for spur-of-the-moment actions. Having a double world champion quit because of unsatisfactory technology levels will be more damaging to F1 than having Juan Pablo Montoya quit because F1 wasn't, in his opinion, proper racing. This is especially the case in Spain, where Alonso is the primary reason why Valencia and Barcelona can justify paying Bernie his fees. Losing two more races will do F1 no favours at all, especially when Spanish banks are major sponsors of two teams (Mutua Madrileña at Renault and Santander at McLaren).

Thankfully, the single engine tender has metamorphosed into a discounted engine supplier for those teams wanting one. However, asking four teams to take that supply when there are currently only four teams not supplying their own engines (Force India, Red Bull, Squadra Toro Rosso, Williams), one of whom (Force India) is already contracted to Mercedes in 2010 when it's due to start and two others (Squadra Toro Rosso and Williams) in danger for different reasons means that the pricing structure may require a re-think. At least the concept is in the right direction, though, let's give Max credit for that.

FOTA will continue to provide as much competition as their board executives will allow and there is nothing the FIA can do to stop them short of driving them out of the sport entirely. Naturally, this will make a mockery of any “cost-cutting” measure proposed, as the research to circumvent a restriction is generally higher than the savings made by taking less expensive components to the track.

Staff development and perks are purely in the hands of the FOTA member's respective boards. There is nothing that the FIA and FOTA can negotiate here that will help either, though negotiating cheaper Paddock Club tickets and other perks with CVC will help keep manufacturers in F1.

Staff morale is in the hands of FOTA's staff. It is difficult to assess how the morale effect has changed from having an in-house F1 team, but it is unlikely that the FIA-FOTA discussions will make much direct change in it, since it is largely conditions within each manufacturer and each employee that determine the morale boost an F1 team can give an individual employee.

As a result, it is difficult to see who would buy Honda, but Honda has a better chance of being saved than several other teams which could be on the market in the near future. Whoever does buy Honda will do so for the competitiveness element above all else, which should be good for the team because it will get the money it needs to perform and won't become another Midland.

There will be consequences to this move. If Button and Barrichello are about to re-enter the driver market, the currently vacant seats will freeze while the team bosses consider whether to fill them with either driver – and to find out whether they will in fact be available. An investor may keep them on in the event of takeover, but there are no guarantees. This means it is likely the end of Sebastién Bourdais' sojourn in F1, because he has already said he cannot afford to wait for STR very long due to other offers being on the table. If neither Honda driver ends up at STR, expect Buemi and Sato to get the race seats, irrespective of their performance in next week's testing, with a complete newcomer to F1 doing the testing.

More likely is that if Barrichello and Button find themselves without a Honda seat, they will either spend 2009 testing with a view to claiming a race seat in the future or they will be forced out of F1 completely. Bruno Senna, who gave up the chance of an STR seat to chase the Honda dream, may well be kicking himself about now. His only chance in F1 in 2009 is if an investor buys the team.

A bizarre footnote to the driver situation is that only Button received an individual apology for the abrupt manner of Honda's leavetaking. Call me misguided, but I thought Barrichello was as much a member of the team as he was?

The other teams will be looking nervously at their boards to see if they make drastic changes of tactics regarding F1. Toyota's staff will be pleased to hear that their board wishes to stay in, but Toyota is Honda's main rival and could be expected to take full advantage of its biggest rival's tacit defeat. Ferrari and Mercedes have also confirmed their participation, and while Ferrari will be in F1 for as long as it can be for reasons outlined earlier, Mercedes' confirmation will be somewhat reassuring to the jangled nerves of the sport's administrators. They won't face a mass walk-out – this time.

Beyond that, around 800 people risk finding themselves at the Brackley branch of the JobCentre (assuming the village has one). Unsurprisingly, the effect of the announcement on them has been enormous. Admittedly, some will probably be redeployed in other parts of the Honda empire, particularly the ones working on engines, but for some who specialise in F1, that won't be a realistic option. Their best hope is that there is a simple “change of logo and color scheme” and they can carry on much as before with new leadership. While many have question Nick Fry's leadership of Honda, though, this wasn't how anyone wanted his tenure to end. And if terms cannot be agreed with a buyer, the prospects for the F1 specialists in the team is grim. With teams not hiring much, especially with Max Mosley claiming that this is the primary reason for F1's unsustainability (conveniently ignoring his own and Bernie's roles in the situation), they will struggle to return to F1. This means F1 risks losing a lot of talent to other industries. That F1 can damage itself to this extent is sad. The difficulties that a blameless workforce face as a result of that damage is even sadder.

I hope that the Honda staff have as merry a Christmas as is humanly possible. In practise, that will require Honda to find a buyer and sharpish. Even if it's from the Middle East.

(I am aware that this entry doesn't fit into the whole “Thanks” theme I signed up for in the December NaBloPoMo. Thing is, it's kind of difficult to be thankful for proof of F1's peril that the powers-that-be claim to be adapting to and haven't).

* - Yes, the last two seasons have seen a vast improvement in overtaking. No, it won't have filtered through to many people that the manufacturers are targeting because the viewing figures (apart from certain climatic events) still haven't caught up with their peak in 2001, let alone surpassed them. Reputation is usually behind reality, when they relate at all.

Warning! Very long entry alert!

This morning, I was woken up by my dad, who had some rather worrying news. Honda F1 have decided they want no further part in F1 (with BBC video of the report) due to the amount of money it costs in a low-sales economy. Needless to say, it's been the talk of the Formula 1 Home forum, as it has been elsewhere in the F1-related internet.

The leavetaking of manufacturers when things get tough (and things really are tough now) has been predicted ever since the manufacturers began to return en masse to F1 in 2000. More recently, Williams chief executive Adam Parr predicted this scenario in October.

In fact, we should have predicted something of this kind yesterday. Shuhei Nakamoto was transferred to Vice President of the motorcycle division of Honda. For all the stick he may have received for his lack of aerodynamic understanding in F1, he did well for himself in the motorcycle world. Clearly he is also a valued employee because vice-presidency of such a key department in Honda's empire constitutes a promotion. Perhaps he was only in F1 at all to widen his experience and give him a taste of high-level management.

The big clue that should have given it away was the fact that no replacement was announced, nor was the usual message along the lines of “a replacement will be announced in due course” appended to the end of the press release. Combined with the cancellation of Christmas and the 2009 launch, it does indicate that the senior management had advance notice (if perhaps only slightly advance notice) and acted accordingly. After all, it is hard to have a jovial Christmas party if everyone at the tables, including the hosts, is already on the path to redundancy and a miserable New Year. Launching a car that is never going to race (even in the modified form that Renault are suggesting in their case) is simply ridiculous. Before today's announcement, none of this made sense. Now it all fits the pattern of a management settling the team's affairs in case no buyer can be found.

It turns out that the team found out its fate after an emergency meeting yesterday with senior Honda Company management. This followed the Honda factory in Swindon shutting down for the first two months of 2009, a move echoed by Honda factories elsewhere. Combine that with the 1000 redundancies announced for the Swindon factory at the start of December and a general impression that the F1 programme was unsustainable with that backdrop emerges.

What wasn't predicted at that point was the timescale of the sale. Always before, several months, or occasionally years, were allotted for the sale of a team before all hope was lost on it. Such sales were made as quietly as possible so as to extract maximum value and reduce disruption to the team. Even Ford gave Jaguar two months' grace, and that was considered irresponsibly short notice at the time. Happily, Red Bull were shopping for an F1 team at the time, so it simply forced its hand earlier than might otherwise have been the case.

How long have Honda allotted for the sale of its team? It would appear to be Christmas, though given that this is the date redundancy letters will be sent, a deal made soon afterwards would probably still be able to salvage a decent proportion of the team. That's a very short time to sort out the paperwork and due diligence. The latter will be done extremely carefully because the cause of the credit crunch (bad debts hidden behind seemingly innocuous ones) will have made purchasers particularly wary of financial trickery. The sheer improbability of Honda committing any trickery will not be relevant to buyer confidence with regard to checking, only perhaps to whether a favourable check enables a sale.

I think that Honda, despite the short timetable, has a considerably better chance of securing the future of its team than Squadra Toro Rosso. Unlike the latter, it has a fully functional factory at Brackley, capable of making components for every aspect of an F1 car. This will stand it in good stead in 2010, when customer cars are formally banned (assuming that Max Mosley doesn't do another U-turn on the matter). With minor modifications, it may even be possible for it to expand to other series if that is what a new buyer desires. The windtunnel finished being recalibrated last year and is very much the equal of rivals' tunnels further up the pit lane. It has a large staff made close-knit rather than argumentative (at least as far as I can see on the outside) through the adversity of two years of poor results. Also, Bernie's confirmation of Fry's statement that there are already three organisations with a serious interest in buying Honda F1 will help a lot. It's easier to secure a sale to an interested party than to try to conjure up a buyer from seeming thin air. I will say Bernie's attitude to this is a vast improvement over his dismissive mocking of Jaguar when it needed to sell in 2004.

Financially, it's in a relatively strong position too. It has no debts of its own and as of the end of its last financial year an existent (albeit modest) reserve. Its fixed costs are relatively high, but Toyota's and Ferrari's are higher and when cost-cutting already initiated by Honda is taken into account, some British-based teams may be more expensive.. It's selling the team for £1, which should help get potential investors through the door. It's the running costs that are the real problem, but that's a problem every F1 team faces. When you consider that part of the money Honda spent in the previous financial year covered Super Aguri's costs, and that item of expenditure is no longer present, it is not really in any worse shape than the average F1 team.

Against all that, there is the question of who would buy any F1 team at this time. Super Aguri couldn't find a buyer earlier this year, though to be fair Honda didn't help matters by blocking two different buyers from purchasing its satellite team (somewhat ironic now). Also in mitigation, Super Aguri was a customer car team, which was not a sustainable business model due to the regulations. Again, it sheds light on the notice that certain members of the team might have had – why would a board fund a B-team when the existence of the A-team may have been in doubt even back then?

Squadra Toro Rosso were on the market for nearly a year before Dietrich Mateschitz gave up trying to sell it as a bad job (at least publicly). Again, this is a customer car team, but it is indicative about how choosy the market is right now.

When you consider other factors, you can see why buyers are difficult to find. Formula 1, to a manufacturer, has eight aims, which are really five when you think about it:

1.Marketing (to attract new markets)
2.Marketing (to attract new customers in existing markets)
3.Marketing (to augment the brand's reputation among currently loyal customers)
4.Research and development (as opposed to the image thereof, which is classed as marketing)
5.Competition with other brands
6.Elaborate training opportunities to help staff members to progress through the company
7.Perks for senior staff members and companies the manufacturer wishes to impress, which feeds into
8.Staff morale

Points 1-3 have been going extremely badly. For one thing, the credit crunch means that fewer people can afford cars. Those who can are generally going for cheaper cars than they would have bought in the days when credit was easier to acquire and was easier to pay back.

Also, people are wanting smaller cars for lifestyle reasons (there are more single-person households than previously, and unused seats are easy for a buyer to remove from the equation when purchasing) and environmental/economical reasons (it always makes financial sense to use less fuel, especially when governments are encouraging more people to go green and providing incentives to do so). The manufacturers' offerings in the small, low-fuel-consuming arena are not especially diverse at the moment and tend to be in the cheaper, lower-margin end of the market. This is not a profitable situation for the manufacturers.

Beyond that, F1 has proved a less-than-ideal platform for marketeers. It has recently been pulling out of major markets such as the USA and Canada. Places where manufacturers are based, such as Britain, France and Germany, face considerable uncertainty concerning whether they can stay or re-join the calender. Japan may be under threat because the safekeeping of the Grand Prix has transferred from a track owned by Toyota to one owned by Honda because Toyota no longer want the expenditure – yet Honda no longer wants F1 expenditure either. South Korea, which was meant to be joining the calender in 2009, has quietly fallen off the radar in much the same way as Mexico did in 2006. China, one of the two big hopes for the car manufacturers to counteract stagnating sales elsewhere, is under threat. India, their other big hope, has been delayed for a year, possibly longer, which makes it useless with regard to marketing the manufacturers out of their current problems. Apart from India, all of these have been due to financial considerations.

Bernie has put CVC's own financial interests above those of F1's participants and supporters. He has forced circuits to gain all their money from ticket sales and to give all of these (and a fair amount more) to him simply to allow them to host the race. This means ticket sales are beyond the means of vast swathes of supporters, preventing them from putting a lot of income into the sport in incidental purchases and instead making them re-think their level of commitment to the sport. While there are people who will buy caps and T-shirts simply to support a team or driver, the music industry shows that these are well outnumbered by the numbers who need an occasion to wear them at in order to make the purchase worthwhile to them.

As for the participants, if there is no F1 in the markets they are trying to reach, no F1 (or F1 at serious risk) in the markets they are trying to increase customer base in, and F1 in bad repute from existing customers because it is seen as a processional* (on TV – races usually look less processional from the touchlines) cash cow for faceless organisations which bring no value to anything, what is the marketing purpose of them being there? That goes a fortiori if the market is itself shrunken by wider financial considerations.

Point 4 has been increasingly difficult. For the last 15 years, the emphasis has been on preventing advances in technology to increase the sport's purity – and the extra restrictions have come thick and fast, especially recently. While it may have increased the purity to some extent, it has also limited the scope for research and development. The December 2008 edition of F1 Racing shows that a fair bit of R&D is going on anyway – but that much of it is of no financial benefit to manufacturers of cars. Also, the R&D that car manufacturers need most is how to make cars relevant to owners of small, pared-down, fuel-efficient cars that are never raced anyway because they spend 90% of their time in traffic jams, passing speed cameras or traversing “traffic calming” measures. No racing series will ever be truly relevant to such people. It can entertain (a power that is not to be underestimated in these times), it can offer a limited range of R&D solutions to part of their problems, but there will still be massive gaps in the solutions it provides.

Of these gaps, the key things that F1 can provide in terms of R&D is, in approximate order of relevance, fuel technology, more efficient engine technology and low-drag aero.

Fuel technology is artificially limited by the FIA to only permitting fuels with 5.85% biological origin. Fuels with a greater biological origin are forbidden, as are any non-petroleum-based sources of power apart from KERS. Note that since road cars rarely brake with anything remotely resembling the force an F1 cars, that KERS will always be of limited applicability to road cars, and also that for the foreseeable future, the influence of KERS is being artificially controlled by the FIA.

Engine technology cannot get more efficient while the only modifications permitted on the engines frozen at the start of 2007 are those that improve reliability. Engine reliability is a relatively minor problem in the eyes of purchasers, so having engines that last a little longer in high-stress conditions will not make the manufacturers more money in providing a car that people want to buy. A high-tech car that nobody wants to buy is as useless to its manufacturer as the Betamax was in the fight against the technically inferior VHS video recorder. Efficiency would help, but efficiency is not really promoted in the FIA's scheme, as a proposal to have a 1.8 turbo engine that required no refuelling was rejected by the FIA earlier this week.

Low-drag aero has been of interest for quite some time – Pat Symonds said in the August 2007 edition of F1 Racing that this was what made the Renault car company interested in F1's R&D aspect. However, the increasing standardisation of aero has made this more and more difficult. The FIA has at least enforced a reduction in drag. The trouble is that they also heavily restricted other aspects of aero at the same time, which limits the amount of additional drag that can be taken off.

In short, the FIA has managed to largely stop point 4 as it relates to what manufacturers need to be doing in its tracks.

Point 5 remains relevant. F1 has got more competitive in the last two years. A manufacturer who is simply there to compete with other manufacturers and demonstrate their capacity to do so will be very happy with F1 as it has been recently. This grows stronger the better the manufacturer is doing. So Ferrari and Mercedes will find point 5 particularly compelling, while Honda would find it considerably less so.

This is also responsible for the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses effect that pushes running costs so high in the first place. To compete, a team needs to find and use as many resources as it can. After all, opposing teams will only do the same. To do less is to be defeated.

This effect cannot be defeated, at least not while one of the competitors is Ferrari. This is because competition is the primary reason why it is in F1 in the first place. It has an entire country's population putting pressure on it to be as competitive as possible. If it declared cutbacks, then it will have to face the wrath of an entire people in addition to its customer base. Therefore, it spends as much as possible in F1 to be as competitive as possible because it has to for the sake of the company's reputation. While that is the case, everyone else has to match that resource outlay – or at least try. This is why Max Mosley providing what he calls “an option to spend less” will never work as intended. A team that is there for competitiveness will have to spend a lot of money or none at all. The “F1-lite” option does not exist for them.

Point 6 takes advantage of the competitive element and seems particularly relevant because Honda cited this as a major reason why it was involved in F1. Shuhei Nakamoto is perhaps the most high-profile example of someone benefiting from this idea. However, there are cheaper ways of developing staff talent, so F1 would have to provide an exceptional benefit to a lot of people in order to be worth £1m, let alone the pushing-£200m that Honda were spending each year on their F1 project.

Point 7 is a nice luxury, but a luxury nonetheless. If responsible companies are already under pressure to cut costs, such perks will be among the first to go, especially since most workers will never directly benefit from them.

Finally, perks are part of staff morale. Unlike perks, every employee has the potential to benefit. However, there would have to be a large morale boost for this to be sufficient reason to invest millions in a racing series.

From that point of view, the case for manufacturer participation in F1 is very poor, a pessimistic view backed up by grandprix.com. The Honda Company's shares rose 0.2% as a result (which is a lot of money in absolute terms given the company's size), suggesting that investors also agree with this analysis. So what is being done about it?

The FIA and FOTA have been arguing this one since FOTA was called the GPWC. Even though I would argue that the effects of a credit crunch are beyond the powers of either to significantly ameliorate, it is still the case that things could be done to help teams out at this time.

With regard to points 1-3, nothing has been proposed because the calender is outside the influence of FOTA and the FIA has only very limited powers (it can stop “traditional races” from being cancelled, but the criteria to be deemed as such are strict and do not prevent Bernie from issuing unreasonable terms to circuits). Likewise, the FIA has no power over what the manufacturers make (though it can put pressure on them through the touring section) and FOTA, consisting as it does largely of teams semi-detached from their manufacturers, is only slightly more influential over their manufacturer-owners than the FIA is.

It is unlikely that Max Mosley's letter to the teams, sent out this morning, will include any provision for expanding research truly relevant to the road car industry as it currently stands. There may be some clauses to improve fuel and engine technology though, which will be helpful to the manufacturers. Drag is unlikely to be affected until the effects of the 2009-spec aero regime are seen in action.

It's worth adding at this point that Fernando Alonso has threatened to quit if standard engines are introduced. While he is known for spur-of-the-moment comments, he is also known for spur-of-the-moment actions. Having a double world champion quit because of unsatisfactory technology levels will be more damaging to F1 than having Juan Pablo Montoya quit because F1 wasn't, in his opinion, proper racing. This is especially the case in Spain, where Alonso is the primary reason why Valencia and Barcelona can justify paying Bernie his fees. Losing two more races will do F1 no favours at all, especially when Spanish banks are major sponsors of two teams (Mutua Madrileña at Renault and Santander at McLaren).

Thankfully, the single engine tender has metamorphosed into a discounted engine supplier for those teams wanting one. However, asking four teams to take that supply when there are currently only four teams not supplying their own engines (Force India, Red Bull, Squadra Toro Rosso, Williams), one of whom (Force India) is already contracted to Mercedes in 2010 when it's due to start and two others (Squadra Toro Rosso and Williams) in danger for different reasons means that the pricing structure may require a re-think. At least the concept is in the right direction, though, let's give Max credit for that.

FOTA will continue to provide as much competition as their board executives will allow and there is nothing the FIA can do to stop them short of driving them out of the sport entirely. Naturally, this will make a mockery of any “cost-cutting” measure proposed, as the research to circumvent a restriction is generally higher than the savings made by taking less expensive components to the track.

Staff development and perks are purely in the hands of the FOTA member's respective boards. There is nothing that the FIA and FOTA can negotiate here that will help either, though negotiating cheaper Paddock Club tickets and other perks with CVC will help keep manufacturers in F1.

Staff morale is in the hands of FOTA's staff. It is difficult to assess how the morale effect has changed from having an in-house F1 team, but it is unlikely that the FIA-FOTA discussions will make much direct change in it, since it is largely conditions within each manufacturer and each employee that determine the morale boost an F1 team can give an individual employee.

As a result, it is difficult to see who would buy Honda, but Honda has a better chance of being saved than several other teams which could be on the market in the near future. Whoever does buy Honda will do so for the competitiveness element above all else, which should be good for the team because it will get the money it needs to perform and won't become another Midland.

There will be consequences to this move. If Button and Barrichello are about to re-enter the driver market, the currently vacant seats will freeze while the team bosses consider whether to fill them with either driver – and to find out whether they will in fact be available. An investor may keep them on in the event of takeover, but there are no guarantees. This means it is likely the end of Sebastién Bourdais' sojourn in F1, because he has already said he cannot afford to wait for STR very long due to other offers being on the table. If neither Honda driver ends up at STR, expect Buemi and Sato to get the race seats, irrespective of their performance in next week's testing, with a complete newcomer to F1 doing the testing.

More likely is that if Barrichello and Button find themselves without a Honda seat, they will either spend 2009 testing with a view to claiming a race seat in the future or they will be forced out of F1 completely. Bruno Senna, who gave up the chance of an STR seat to chase the Honda dream, may well be kicking himself about now. His only chance in F1 in 2009 is if an investor buys the team.

A bizarre footnote to the driver situation is that only Button received an individual apology for the abrupt manner of Honda's leavetaking. Call me misguided, but I thought Barrichello was as much a member of the team as he was?

The other teams will be looking nervously at their boards to see if they make drastic changes of tactics regarding F1. Toyota's staff will be pleased to hear that their board wishes to stay in, but Toyota is Honda's main rival and could be expected to take full advantage of its biggest rival's tacit defeat. Ferrari and Mercedes have also confirmed their participation, and while Ferrari will be in F1 for as long as it can be for reasons outlined earlier, Mercedes' confirmation will be somewhat reassuring to the jangled nerves of the sport's administrators. They won't face a mass walk-out – this time.

Beyond that, around 800 people risk finding themselves at the Brackley branch of the JobCentre (assuming the village has one). Unsurprisingly, the effect of the announcement on them has been enormous. Admittedly, some will probably be redeployed in other parts of the Honda empire, particularly the ones working on engines, but for some who specialise in F1, that won't be a realistic option. Their best hope is that there is a simple “change of logo and color scheme” and they can carry on much as before with new leadership. While many have question Nick Fry's leadership of Honda, though, this wasn't how anyone wanted his tenure to end. And if terms cannot be agreed with a buyer, the prospects for the F1 specialists in the team is grim. With teams not hiring much, especially with Max Mosley claiming that this is the primary reason for F1's unsustainability (conveniently ignoring his own and Bernie's roles in the situation), they will struggle to return to F1. This means F1 risks losing a lot of talent to other industries. That F1 can damage itself to this extent is sad. The difficulties that a blameless workforce face as a result of that damage is even sadder.

I hope that the Honda staff have as merry a Christmas as is humanly possible. In practise, that will require Honda to find a buyer and sharpish. Even if it's from the Middle East.

(I am aware that this entry doesn't fit into the whole “Thanks” theme I signed up for in the December NaBloPoMo. Thing is, it's kind of difficult to be thankful for proof of F1's peril that the powers-that-be claim to be adapting to and haven't).

* - Yes, the last two seasons have seen a vast improvement in overtaking. No, it won't have filtered through to many people that the manufacturers are targeting because the viewing figures (apart from certain climatic events) still haven't caught up with their peak in 2001, let alone surpassed them. Reputation is usually behind reality, when they relate at all.

Warning! Very long entry alert!

This comment was originally triggered by F1 Fanatic's provocatively-titled The Genocide Grand Prix, though several events in the last few weeks have contributed towards the feeling that I need to write this entry.

The vexed relationship between sport and (proper) politics does not often crop up in relation to F1. Yet there is a growing feeling in the blogosphere that the relationship between the two should be higher up the agenda.

First there was the test in Barcelona earlier this month. I avoided commenting on it much at the time, partly because I don't trust testing results very much (for all that I smiled at Fisi being fourth on the first day, I wouldn't predict he'd be fourth in the Australian GP on that basis!) The second reason was because the main story of the weekend was one on which I wasn't sure how to report properly.

On the one side, the fact that a group of people had turned up wearing costume that could (and was) construed as racially insulting against Lewis Hamilton was seriously big news, especially since there were (then) no previously recorded instances of racially-based stupidity in Formula 1.

On the other hand, I didn't want to give these same people too much coverage in case it tacitly supported the predictable media publicity that these people received. This was uncharted territory for my blog as much as it was for the Formula 1 world.

Now, with the perspective lent by three weeks of considering other matters, it may be a good time to tackle the matter in its context.

For what it's worth, I think the people who were most in the spotlight were Carnaval celebrants who made a seriously stupid choice of outfits. Carnaval is a Spanish fiesta (with many parts of the world having an equivalent festival) that occurs just before Lent and drifts a week or more afterwards. Part of the celebration is that people dress up in costumes, which sometimes poke fun at other people, especially those that have recently been in the news. However, they are not meant to be insulting or make people upset. As such, choosing outfits that used skin colour as the basis of the fun-poking was an incredibly stupid move.

That move had far-reaching consequences. McLaren have since spent their testing more or less barricaded into their pit compound, with the gates opening for a select few; one might even wonder if the rumoured move into the fifth pit box (which is normally reserved for the fifth-placed team in the championship - the better-ranking pits are bigger and nicer) was facilitated by the authorities wishing to make it harder for undesirables to get to the McLaren pit should they get into the paddock against security.

The testing barricades are sensible while the initial risk of copycats fades away, but moving McLaren to the middle of the pit lane won't solve the problem in the long term. Better security might, but some racist acts are very difficult to police ahead of time. People yelling racial taunts, for instance, generally look like everyone else until they open their mouths. More likely more cynical reasons are in play for McLaren's possible move to the fifth pit box, such as subtle pressure from Ferrari not to let McLaren have the slight advantage given by the end pit, or the realisation that the Brand Centre could do with somewhere to park...

The press from the UK and Spain accused each other for fuelling the fire, giving further cause for concern for those who believed the standard of F1 journalism was decreasing.

The FIA has launched threats to take races away if there are any repeats of the Barcelona incident, to a background of denouncements of racist behaviour by the Spanish authorities and also by Fernando Alonso (link in German). They've also announced a program called "Racing Against Racism". Without any details, however, it is hard to judge whether they will be effective in preventing the spread of wrong-headed attitudes.

It would do well to start with the press. In the last 12 months, the team-mate fight at McLaren between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton has had several levels of complexity. The mainstream press in Britain and Spain has, by and large, chosen to ignore them. Instead, both countries' presses had increasingly shallow pieces pitching the fight as ever more adversarial (apart from some harsh press statements from both parties - possibly under pressure from these same press people - and some serious indiscipline at the Hungaroring, there was little evidence of tension between the pair - it was more Alonso v Ron Dennis than anything else).

As a consequence, Hamilton's initial popularity with Britain has faded (except among the casual spectator and the British press which sees casual spectators as walking pound signs). In Spain, he never was popular and he ended up seen as "Alonso's opponent" rather than "Lewis Hamilton". Alonso has been vilified in the British press and lionised by the Spanish press (though even the more obsessive Spanish F1 does not seem to suffer from saturation effect the way their British counterparts are - perhaps they are more used to it, since the Alonso obsession in the Spanish media dates back to 2003 and Alonso's arrival at Renault).

Granted, neither driver helped their cause with some unwise acts at times. But they're F1 drivers, not plaster saints, and a realistic portrayal of their actions would have allowed us to put them into perspective. A pity the press and perspective go together like oil and water these days...

The lack of perspective meant that we ended up with fans from both countries who had effectively been brought into the sport, learned to love one driver (of their own nationality) and been implicitly made to assume that to love one driver means that any driver who does not share some single key characteristic should - and anyone who poses a threat to that driver must be hated. For the casual viewer, in the absence of information about F1 customs regarding support, will simply copy the journalists, particularly the commentators, with modifications to fit the viewer's culture and background. Absent perspective from the press, the fans will be equally lacking in perspective when expressing their opinions. When they find that their nearby peers think the same way, group acts such as that seen in Barcelona become possible.

Lewis Hamilton's one-sided fans in the British press room have already caused some people to unsubscribe from F1 Racing and demand alternatives to ITV. La Marca are the most obvious Spanish equivalent for one-sided coverage. Apart from it having a specialism in sport, it can be regarded as what The Sun in Britain would be like if the libel laws were more lax. Frankly, any paper which is prepared to go to the extremes it did to fool its readers into believing Roldan Rodruigez had a better chance of a 2008 F1 seat than he did should not be taken very seriously. However, the sorts of things that have been printed about Lewis recently constitute dangerous manipulation of attitudes and would certainly fuel racist behaviour.

Spain's main sports before Alonso came to the fore were football and bull-fighting, both sports which tend to encourage support for one side against the other. In football, the home team (from the viewer's perspective) is supported against the away team and in bull fighting, the toreador is supported against the bull.

Formula 1 is much more complicated, with twenty-two "sides" to choose from (thirty-three if you count the teams). There are many shades of grey and a wide variety of hues, and F1 confounds any attempt to understand it in simpler terms. The many who watched motorcycling before F1 will have a reasonable feel for this, but by now a very large number of Spaniards watching the sport-cum-soap-opera would not the sort of background to balance out what the media were saying.

Nationalism can be a good thing because it encourages people to think beyond themselves and particularly beyond their immediate community. The downside of this affiliation is the same as the downside of all group affiliations everywhere. To join a group can be to lose your individual identity and in losing that identity, reduce everything to “Us” and “Them”. “Us” being whoever is in your group (with those worst affected struggling to sense where their individual, original thoughts end and their memories of what their group has said or implied it wants begin). “Them” is everyone else, considered inferior to “Us”. That sort of parochial attitude is the basis of all discrimination.

The moment there is an attempt to comprehend a global activity through nationalism or any other variety of parochialism, the true meaning of the activity is lost to discrimination of those elements that come from outside your country. When the group is challenged by another from outside the group, the "pack mentality" of the group means that the most obvious point(s) of difference is/are used to attack the outsider. The hope being to defeat that outsider. In Lewis Hamilton's case, that happened to be race. Any other obvious and irrelevant indicator of difference could have been used as well, because xenophobia (the technical word for parochialism) knows no bounds.

This is why excessive nationalism led to latent racism and why it eventually came out into the open.

This is only one of several directions membership of a group can take, which is just as well because otherwise we would have to ban all group activities. It does however make sense of the transfer some people make from nationalism to racism and other discriminatory activities, and also explains why F1 has this problem now, why it's surfaced in Spain (rather than Malaysia, China or some other nation with an emerging F1 supporter base) and how the perpetrators might not have been aware they were doing anything wrong, despite how obvious it was to many in the English-speaking world.

The "pick one side to support against the other" approach simply doesn't work for F1. It is, after all, a global enterprise. The question is, has anyone told the casual Spanish F1 viewers (and press) yet?

The British media do not have this excuse, which makes their behaviour less understandable. F1 Racing has, in a nice touch, acknowledged this in its March 2008 edition. Hopefully this will mark the beginning of more objective journalism from them and that other journalistic outputs will follow suit.

Perhaps Barcelona could have been put down as a one-off incident. However, it has been revealed that there were people behaving in a racist fashion at the China 2007 GP. The situation will need to be carefully watched, a role that the "Racing Against Racism" scheme could usefully perform.

Speaking of China, that leads to the second instance of politics and sport mixing in F1 this month. The Genocide Grand Prix deals with an issue that has been latent since 2004 (the ethics of staging the Chinese GP), but has come to the fore due to the Olympics and Paralympics being held in Beijing later this year.

From the moment China won the Olympics and Paralympics, the decision was criticised. China has a very poor reputation for human rights, possibly because the Chinese concept of human rights has been based on a completely different philosophical tradition to Western human rights, causing much tension between those attempting to establish universal human rights.

This is not the only reason for poor human rights in China - classic political stalling and inertia, combined with the pre-eminence given to strengthening the economy and the Chinese government not accepting the wisdom of certain measures contribute to a country with which the likes of Stephen Spielberg will not do business.

Bernie Ecclestone was never likely to be one who had that sort of ethical discomfort. His ethical system is the ethics of the Almighty Dollar, so when China told him they could afford the circuit, Bernie's rate ($22m in 2005, $27.5m in 2006 and increasing by similar amounts since) and would allow the race to take place, he took their money and made the race happen. Should it have been that easy, though?

Some people have argued that F1 should not go to any race where the governance makes immoral decisions. The trouble with that is that every country makes immoral decisions. Some discriminate according to race, some by social or economic status, some by health, some by place of residence, some by all the above. There are a few places that manage to contrive unique "excuses" for discriminatory practise as well. And that's just discussing the discrimination side of politics - political ethics is multi-dimensional and some countries which excel in some elements do very poorly in others.

In fact, even Bernie practises discrimination of a sort, favouring those who will pay him, directly or otherwise. However, he's a single-minded professional businessman and that sort of comes with the territory. Ethics requires some sort of consideration for the consequences of actions, and if your only criterion for measuring consequences is financial, then the discrimination-by-money is not a surprising thing to note.

Still, that does not get us out of the problem, for most of us have a code of ethics, and very few will share Bernie's extreme interpretation of capitalist ethics. So what to do about China?

Boycotting the race to show disapproval with its staging has been suggested. If only financial criteria are understood by the likes of Bernie and the people who run the event, then a lack of foreign capital going inwards would make China sit up. However many locals step in to fill the spaces in the grandstands, part of the reason China has a race is to attract foreign capital and thus strengthen its economy. Absent that capital and the purpose of holding the race is diminished. PR, which is another reason the Chinese have a GP, would also be adversely affected.

As it happens, I don't get a choice over whether I boycott attending the Chinese GP or not. The Chinese entry requirements make it quite clear that anyone with a mental disorder, sexually transmitted disease or infectious disease is forbidden from entering China altogether. No exceptions.

Infectious disease I can understand. No rational government wants to allow its citizens to be infected with diseases from outsiders (who would generally come into some sort of contact with the indigenous population during their stay). Sexually transmitted diseases are a rather odd restriction, which says something about how Chinese people with STDs are regarded in their home country. But mental disorders?!? Why are they not allowed?

Anyhow, I have Asperger's Syndrome, a neurological (brain wiring) condition at the “mild” end of the autism spectrum. Asperger's Syndrome is classified as a mental disorder. So despite being a peaceful, law-abiding individual who doesn't randomly explode into purple goo on touching foreign soil, I am forbidden from spectating at the Chinese GP itself. Let's just say I have yet to talk to anyone who sees this as a sensible restriction on the Chinese government's part...

There's the ethical element (discriminating people on the basis of their neurology is as wrong as discriminating them on the basis of race). There's the self-interest element (surely venues should want more spectators, not fewer). There's the financial element (as well as paying for a ticket, the extra foreign capital flowing into local restaurants, hotels and evening entertainment locales would surely boost the Chinese economy). There's the numbers argument (a rule that bars 1 in about 150 people from entering the country before they even make themselves known to the authorities would seem pretty strange).

Even if Bernie doesn't care either way (it was once rumoured that he would hold a Mediterranean GP at his Paul Ricard circuit with no spectators at all, surely the Chinese government should have seen sense and admitted people according to whether they posed a risk to China instead of whether they fit into some artificially-produced boxes.

In short, xenophobia affecting F1 is not just practised by a handful of easily-photographed individuals, but by a variety of sources, with consequences going some way beyond hurting the feelings of the athletes competing. Sport may be at its best when politics doesn't get involved, but politics is pervasive. Sport has to take measures to control its influence in ways that benefit sport.

One could joke that the Spanish authorities could prevent future Chinese mishaps by making racism a psychologically-certifiable condition, thus preventing anyone engaging in racist behaviour from being able to enter China in the first place. Since psychological conditions have a lot of stigma attached to them in the Western world, this would be a disproportionate reaction, though.

It also wouldn't stop such people from going to the other 18 F1 races, where people with mental disorders are permitted (in case you're wondering, even Malaysia and Singapore of the current F1 venues allow people with mental disorders to enter without additional impediment, though the USA won't allow people with mental disorders to participate in the Visa Waiver Programme).

More sensibly, Spain and all other countries hosting F1 races could team up to ban any known troublemaker (whether the trouble is racial or on some other universally-objectionable grounds) from any sporting event in those countries. If this could include non-F1 races as well, this would be even more effective, for there is no reason to believe the behaviour of a given individual will be more responsible in some sports than others. Neil Horan proved that when he made a nuisance of himself at the 2003 British GP and the and also at the 2004 Olympic marathon.

Such an international agreement would need to be supported by an information campaign explaining clearly and precisely what actions are considered unacceptable. Yes, the broad-brush version is on the race tickets themselves, but how many people actually read them, especially if they're in a language in which the ticket-holder is not fluent? That, and a reasonably strict and clear interpretation of the rules should prevent too many further problems in the long run.

Bernie and Alonso have since questioned the need for "Racing Against Racism" on the grounds of it being a one-off. I am 100% sure that the specific troublemakers at Barcelona won't repeat their error because it was originally made through ignorance. That won't stop deliberately racist people in future, though, and in the coming years there is a serious danger that they will appear on the tracks of Grand Prix racing.

While F1 continues to expand into new territories, those countries whose populations actually respond to F1's presence will continue to bring new problems and new expressions of old problems into F1. A flexible response is needed. Perhaps “Racing Against Racism” should have its scope widened and be re-named “Racing For Ethics?”