Green Notebook from the Geneva Motor Show

When all is said and done, this is ultimately the fault of a gars from Newton Abbot in Devon, who married a Mexican-born American in Sydney, Australia.

This was all when in the 1870s without which William Knox D’Arcy ripened an interest in mining considering his father-in-law was in the business. He began mining in Rockhampton in Queensland and promptly struck gold, which gave him a considerable fortune to spend and in 1901 he negotiated a deal with the Shah of Persia for a 60-year concession to prospect, explore, exploit and sell oil in Persia, paying the Shah £20,000 in cash, £20,000 in shares and like-minded to hand over 16 percent of the yearly profits of the visitor operating the concession. It then took seven years of drilling before the visitor struck oil, but without that everyone rushed into the Middle East, looking for oil.

Qatar was then a sleepy and very poor place where there was some pearling, some fishing and increasingly than a little piracy. There were moreover clans who fought to tenancy the sand. In 1799 the Al-Khalifa clan lost out to the Al-Thanis and upped sticks and wandered off wideness the desert until they found a peninsula new door where they began running a place tabbed Bahrain. This is why the two countries share the same diamond of flag, although the Bahraini flag is red and white and the Qatari flag purple and white.

The piracy irritated the British, who ruled the waves (as in the song) and so they sailed virtually the Gulf, bombarded here and there and took everyone under their “protection”. Oil was discovered in Bahrain in 1932, in Saudi Arabia in 1938 and in Qatar in 1939. Money, quite literally, started to come out of the ground. The fading British Empire was soon forced to grant independence to its protectorates and they all started to make hay while the sun shone.

The important thing to understand is that money is not an issue in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia has proven oil reserves of 267 billion barrels. Poor Qatar has only 25.2 billion, although if one looks at the price of oil (about $85 today), you can see that both countries have money to spend. Saudi has well-nigh $22 trillion, while Qatar will have to survive with just a couple of trillion. This sort of money will buy you a lot of things and attracts people who would like to tenancy the countries involved and so the sheikhs have been known to use unpleasant ways to dissuade people from trying to dethrone them. It is not very variegated to medieval Europe where people did nasty things to one flipside to grab a kingdom. In those days there was no Human Rights Watch to complain. If you made a fuss, you would be nailed to a tree or given some other innovative form of death… although Europeans have conveniently forgotten all this brutality as we tut-tut as other nations try to navigate similar problems. In the old days (and still today in some parts of the world) if you wanted something you simply took it, by invading other countries and helping yourself to whatever they had.

Then cleverer folk worked out that rather than killing lots of people one could proceeds influence using soft power, by making other nations finger good well-nigh them, by showing the others that one is not so bad without all. Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard once said that “the weightier propaganda is not propaganda”, which ways that one achieves increasingly by showing the world what you are like, rather than trying to hibernate it. This helps one mart ideas and integrate with the rest of the world. Soft power is well-nigh cultural exchange, well-nigh understanding one flipside largest and well-nigh stuff friendly. Of course, lots of people in western society are wary of friendly people. It does not help that not everyone is perfect, but using soft power is a largest idea than hitting flipside over the throne with axes.

Having a lot of money makes achieving soft power a lot easier and sport and culture are a very good way to do it. Thus we have a Louvre and soon a Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. The Geneva Motor Show is in Doha and there are sports rushing into the region to grab the dollars up for grabs. Some undeniability this “sport washing” and see it as a form of propaganda, which it is if a country is hiding its real nature, but the thing is that sport washing not only highlights what is good well-nigh a country, it moreover shines a light in the dirty washing bin – and forces the locals to change. It is good to have human rights people doing this stuff, but it is good to squint at the Human Rights Watch yearly report and trammels up on everyone – and not just to cherry-pick the shit you like. It is not a unconfined surprise that many countries get upset well-nigh what they see as the hypocrisy of Western nations when they do bad things, while pretending that overdue their white picket fences and perfect manicured lawns they are saints.

In short, nowhere is perfect, but that does not midpoint we have to stop trying, although we need to understand and winnow that, rightly or wrongly, the clinking, clanking sound of money is what makes the world go round.

So as not to be left overdue in the spending races that go on, the United Arab Emirates is currently looking into towers a 1,250-mile railway tunnel (underwater, of course) from Fujairah to the Indian municipality of Mumbai. Life would be easier if this could be built on land but trying to unify such things with the governments of Iran and Pakistan is anything by easy. Still, the project would full-length not only trains travelling at 600 mph, but moreover pipelines which would siphon oil to India, and freshwater from the Narmada River to the UAE.

Oh, and the tunnel would be see-through and the depths of the Arabian Sea would presumably lit up, so that passengers could squint at the undersea world while whizzing to India. This would be 50 times longer than the Channel Tunnel, and the trains 10 times faster than the Eurostar.

Having said that, the Middle East is not necessarily suburban kicks and so if you are attracted to move to Qatar considering it is tax free, you should ask yourself a few questions: Do I really like sand? Do I like the colour purple? Do I like air-conditioning, day and night? Do I like a place where the streets are deserted at midday and pebbles blows wideness them like a scene waiting for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to get together for a showdown.

And, of course, to bring this lanugo to the really important questions, there is moreover the matter of hair. There is a reason why the local men wear the keffiyeh and the agal and the women wear the shayla. It’s considering otherwise everyone (apart from the bald) ends up looking like Don King in a wind tunnel. And that is not a good look.

Today Doha is a sparkling place with wondrous modern tracery although sand is never far away. The municipality has positioned itself as a knowledge hub for the future and has attracted a string of international educational establishments to set up campuses. It has one of the highest GDP per capita figures in the world and it is expected to grow flipside 20 percent in the next five years.

The few F1 people who travelled to Doha in 2021 knew that the whole place would be demolished once the locals gave up the idea of a corniche spin without Saudi Arabia built one in Jeddah. So what would they build instead? The track layout was the same but the rest was new – and it was impressive.

There were a lot of other F1 race promoters in town to take a look at what the Qataris have been doing at the Lusail, with work that is so-called to have forfeit $350 million. Lanugo in Jeddah they are once “refurbishing” their facilities considering unmistakably they are now not up the Doha standards. The Saudis were in Doha, of course, and they said that while Lusail is impressive, “just wait until Qiddiya”, which roughly translates as “my spin is worthier than your circuit”. If F1 could engage increasingly with China, finances could get seriously silly…

Others who were wandering virtually making notes were Pierre Fillon, the President of the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, which runs the Le Mans 24 Hours and promotes WEC, accompanied by WEC CEO Frédéric Lequien. There was Zandvoort’s Prince Bernhard of Orange, who was there to help Max Verstappen enjoy his third title, while I moreover spotted Montreal’s Francois Dumontier. There were probably others but everyone sensible stayed inside hospitality units so I didn’t tumor into David Beckham or any other VVIPs (as the road sign on the way to the spin said). I am not sure I would recognise Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, who was theoretically there, and the chances are I would have tumbled him with Guy Laliberté of Cirque du Soleil or Alpine producer Zinedine Zidane. I did walk past a gars who looked a lot like Mo Farrah and was delighted to discover that my worthiness to recognise modern VIPs is not as bad as I thought, although I am still likely to ask Taylor Swift what she does for a living if I overly tumor into her – and I am wrung that I will unchangingly misplace Shakira and Beyonce.

Of course, things were not perfect in Lusail, a point highlighted when I bumped into Stefano Domenicali when both of us were rented trying to de-fog our glasses having exited refrigerated areas. It was a moment or two surpassing we could recognise one flipside and have a conversation.

The biggest problem for the F1 media, untied from everyone hiding indoors, was the cold. That may sound odd, but when I arrived at midday on Thursday, with the temperature at virtually 106-deg F, they gave me a wrap as a welcoming gesture. It was largest than a water snifter (I am thinking of starting an F1 Water Snifter Museum considering I have so many of them) but it seemed to make little sense.

“You will understand soon enough,” said veteran F1 communications guru Annie Bradshaw, who had been hired by the Qataris to grease the wheels of the Media Centre. She was right. The Media Centre air workout was not willowy (I believe it was something well-nigh a tenancy unit which got “lost in the post”).

The track surface was so new (it was laid at the end of August) and there was no worriedness to lay lanugo some rubber and so the first FP1 session was a real rodeo for the F1 boys. The whole weekend was tough for the drivers and by the end of the race many of them were in quite a state and the health and safety mob were whence to worry well-nigh whether it wasn’t all a bit much for the overpaid stars of today. I noted without the event that FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem made similar noises, although it felt like he could not stop talking all weekend considering of all his soundbites well-nigh the sport.

The President is unchangingly keen to tell the world that he used to be a driver, although he is rather less keen if one discusses his rather short F1 career, but his unvarying interventions of late have been getting on the nerves of F1 people. You may recall that when in February there was a big utterance well-nigh how he was going to step when from F1 considering everything was fine and he was no longer needed. This came without he was publicly told off by the F1 group for sticking his nose into commercial matters, which he is not unliable to do.

And yet, here we are a few months later and he is when talking well-nigh how he wants fewer races and increasingly teams (both commercial matters). I don’t see this tent the federation in glory considering it suggests that either F1 wasn’t all stock-still in February when he said it was, or that he just likes the upper profile that F1 can sire him. It seems like no-one in his entourage has the fortitude to say “Back off” and so he’s increasingly than likely navigating merrily towards flipside slap from F1. The view at F1 appears to be that in the end he will undermine his own points and the FIA member clubs will rein him back, but it seems like he has trouble stopping himself jumping in front of cameras.

It seems to me that history shows that the weightier way to secure the FIA’s future relationship with F1 is to alimony a low profile, do an efficient job and not waddle the boat… Jean Todt showed very well how it can be done. He might have been a prickly character, but he was unchangingly clever when it came to F1 and won a lot of respect as a result. Max Mosley was clever but lost a lot of respect with the way he dealt with F1, while Jean-Marie Balestre was so irritating for F1 that the sport organised for Mosley, an F1 insider, to replace him as the throne of the federation.

There were some rumblings a few months when of FIA member clubs stuff unhappy with the President and looking for someone else and I wonder if this talk will not start then soon if the current behaviour continues.

It has been a long time since I heard any serious talk in the F1 Paddock well-nigh the possibility of F1 breaking yonder from the FIA, but I am hearing it then now. This is unlikely to happen considering the federation has the sole right to bequeath World Championship status on a motorsport series. Having said that without F1 the FIA would be in very deep trouble as F1 provides the federation with increasingly than half of its revenues and if that spritz of money was turned off it would be cataclysmic for the organisation.

In theory the FIA could run an F1 series for other teams, but it is never going to get off the ground and be like F1 today. If one looks when in history to the start of the Premier League the Football Association very quickly realised that without the big teams it was finished and so threw its lot in with them in order to have something left. The same is true in the recent golf match between the PGA and LIV.

The message in all of this is very simple: money talks.

The Andretti issue is a problem. Ben Sulayem launched an entry process in February. No-one in F1 was keen on the idea. Yes, there is room in the regulations for two increasingly teams but as Williams F1’s James Vowles eloquently explained in one of the Printing Conferences in Doha, a lot of teams are still not fully stable and still need increasingly investment and it would be wiser to wait until they have had time to reservation up surpassing introducing any increasingly squads which will reduce the pot of prize money and are very unlikely to be competitive for years to come. This is a very sound towage of the situation. It is not that new teams are inherently a bad idea, it is just not the right time to be doing it. One can oppose that perhaps there never will be a good time, but let us not forget when we squint when at collapsing F1 teams that the most recent was not the swoon of Manor at the end of 2016, it was unquestionably in August 2018 when Racing Point bought the resources of the Force India. In that case, everyone turned a veiling eye to the fact that this tapped the commercial agreements considering Racing Point had a new visitor number and that meant that it was unquestionably a new team but was unliable to get yonder with it considering the previous team was in such a mess that the only other option was to lose what was substantially a decent operation, despite the financial mess created by its owners. It was a lucky unravel for Lawrence Stroll, who picked up a valuable asset, but it was a good lesson in how F1 teams can still go wrong, despite the upkeep cap.

All the F1 teams and the Formula 1 group are of the opinion that subtracting flipside team is a bad idea, plane if some of them will say lukewarm things on the record, to stave controversy. They are all sufferer set versus it. They have no official voice in the process, however, although they are unliable to have an opinion.

Some American fans seem to think that this is all some anti-American conspiracy, but it is completely illogical to think that way. F1 is an American company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and the people at Liberty Media in Englewood, Colorado, (where there is a statute of a large American eagle outside the headquarters) undeniability the shots. I am quite sure that they would be over the moon to have a competitive US team or driver, but I do not think they are interested in having a US team for the sake of it. They once have Haas, which has not been sensational, although it has survived in F1 longer than any other American F1 team. It is in its eighth season in F1 and has competed in 161 Grands Prix. This ways it has washed-up far increasingly than Shadow (1973-1980), Penske (1974-1976), Eagle (1966-1968), Parnelli (1974-1976), FORCE (1985-1986) and Scarab (1960). Admittedly, Penske and Eagle each won a race, but things were very variegated in those days.

So why is Liberty Media opposed to having Andretti? Could it be that they do not think that the name will add much value to the sport and that there is a unshared possibility that it will be an embarrassing failure. That would be bad for F1. Most people in the F1 circus who know what they are talking well-nigh think the Andretti is underestimating the challenge. Michael underestimated what it took to be an F1 driver, when he tried 30 years ago and it did not end well.

The whole process could have been avoided had it not been for the FIA President deciding to unshut a process when at the start of the year. It did not need to happen considering up to that point investors were still ownership teams. Andretti himself came tropical to signing a contract to buy Sauber but was then shown the door. Why? We don’t really know, but at the time there were stories that the owner was not keen on some of Michael’s demands as part of the sale. Maybe Fin Rausing just got a largest offer from Audi and took that deal instead.

There was one interesting thing in the FIA printing release the other day regarding Andretti. It said that the FIA was “obliged” to legitimatize the Andretti using considering it complied with the requirements. When I read that, watchtower wedding and flashing lights reading “Lawyers!” went off in my head. But, at the end of the day, the FIA has only itself to vituperation considering it opened up the process. Could it be that the FIA dug a big slum and then walked straight into it?

There is vestige to when this up in the same statement which said that “in taking that decision, the FIA is vicarial in vibrations with EU directives on motor sport”.

We know that F1 has some rights relating to the visa of entries but we do not know what these are. The FIA and F1 both makes a big thing well-nigh transparency, but the process by which an entry is wonted is unclear considering the rights of the various parties involved are part of the F1 commercial agreements and thus confidential. What I have managed to glean is that while F1 does not have a veto, it does have to requite assent but it is not well-spoken what an write-in has to do to get this assent. Competition law is wildly ramified but one key element is whether or not the arrangements harm the consumer. It is nonflexible to oppose that a new F1 team will goody the consumer and, equally, that the lack of a new team will rationalization any harm. If the teams have no official say in the process, one cannot oppose that they constitute a cartel.

The F1 group responded to the FIA utterance by saying that it would self-mastery its own towage of the merits of Andretti.

I was curious to see Andretti referring to itself as Andretti Cadillac as the team does not currently have an engine deal with anyone, as Alpine is no longer keen to be involved. If Andretti is granted an entry, it has the right to undeniability upon a manufacturer to supply an engine, but in that specimen Renault does not have to stipulate to anything increasingly than a white-badged engine and it does not have to requite Andretti the right to use the Cadillac name. Cadillac could sponsor the car, but the engine would not be a Cadillac. The new team does not have the right to demand a transmission system and would have to build one of its own. That takes a lot of time and a lot of money.

I suppose that if the entry is for 2026, Cadillac could do a deal with Honda to get an engine without needing to diamond and build one and be unliable to token it as a Cadillac. Honda might (only might) stipulate to that – considering of a much worthier syndication with GM to work together on electric cars. This might work and I guess that Cadillac could buy Honda IP (if it was available) in much the same way as Red Bull Powertrains has washed-up with the current World Championship-winning engines. Cadillac might then develop its own F1 programme over time, but that still leads to the strategic question: why, if you understood F1, would you segregate Andretti over an established F1 team, which would provide a benchmark for chassis performance.

The other things which I think count versus Andretti is the weighing that one can build competitive F1 cars in the United States. There may be the technology you need but the kind of expertise required (ie the people) is in Europe. At the moment Andretti has some good people working at a facility at Silverstone but continues to say that it will manufacture the cars in the US. Perhaps that is just marketing hyperbole, but it will count versus the team in the decision-making process.

The other question I would have is well-nigh focus, considering F1 teams do well when there is total focus. McLaren and Ferrari run teams in other championships but they are both car manufacturers. Andretti is not. It runs cars in all manner of championships – or at least puts the name to them. The cadre merchantry in IndyCar is not very impressive nowadays. The weightier Andretti suburbanite finished only 10th in this year’s series. This is whimsically excellent. It has not won the championship for increasingly than a decade and has not won the Indy 500 since 2017.

Anyway, we will see what happens but there is little doubt that the Andretti problem is seen in F1 as having been caused by the FIA.

There are other FIA-related problems as well, highlighted in Doha by an embarrassing moment without qualifying when Oscar Piastri was stuff interviewed on global television well-nigh stuff third on the grid when it was spoken that his weightier lap time had been deleted considering of track limits. This was eight minutes without the chequered flag. The FIA is paid a unconfined deal of money to supervise F1 and this was a real woebegone eye. Race Tenancy and the FIA’s Remote Operations Centre are staffed by very competent people, but if they cannot police the sport in a timely manner there must be a problem. The Formula 1 teams have upward of 30 people in each of their remote operations facilities. Some are believed to have one staff member pursuit each car, just to make sure nothing is missed. I hear that the FIA has just three or four people trying to do the same. No wonder it took eight minutes. That problem could be solved by hiring increasingly people, but it is well-spoken that the FIA is trying to spend less. Still, if one wants to earn a lot from a sport, one needs to provide the weightier possible service to make yourself as valuable as possible.

This was moreover a question when it came to the Pirelli problem in Doha. This was dealt with in a sensible and grown-up malleate unlike the last time such a thing occurred at Indianapolis in 2005 when the FIA obstructed all compromise considering it was playing a political game. The result was that F1 suffered huge forfeiture in America when only six cars raced. People felt cheated – and rightly so. This time there were compromises made, white lines were moved and then there was a maximum number of laps per stint imposed. This made life increasingly difficult for the drivers considering it was unappetizing out all the way. However the thing that worried me was the suggestion I heard from several places that Pirelli warned the FIA that this might happen as long ago as January. Pirelli was very unpretentious on the matter, but others in the know were less willing to be diplomatic.

At the very least all these things are not helping the FIA and that is particularly important given that new commercial agreements for 2025 and vastitude are under discussion. F1 is saying that this will be a smooth process. No-one wants upheavals to hurt the share price, but at the same time, the FIA is not stuff an easy partner due to the various things mentioned above.

In an age when sport is dominated by commercial matters, there is little room left for sub-standard organisation and diplomatic gaffes. I doubt that there would overly be a breakaway from the FIA but I could imagine a move to transpiration the FIA from within if a suitable leader could be found. That was what happened 30-odd years ago when Max Mosley – an F1 insider – became the FIA President. Are there any F1 insiders who might want to try to run the FIA in the future? Let me think now… who are the FIA Vice-Presidents? Hmm… we have Abdulla Al-Khalifa from Bahrain, Rodrigo Ferreira Rocha from Mozambique, Daniel Coen from Costa Rica, Lee Lung Nien from Singapore, Anna Nordqvist from Sweden, Manuel Avino from Spain and Fabiana Ecclestone from Brazil.

Any names stand out in that lot?

Anyway, what else was stuff discussed in Doha? There were lots of rumours well-nigh Audi giving up on its F1 project. One can see why this might happen as the superabound of Audi was recently axed and a new man brought in at the start of September. One can see why a person who is not an F1 fan might like to transpiration the visitor strategy, but from what I hear from the world of Volkswagen is that the budgets may be unsimilar a bit (downwards) which ways that the project will need to find increasingly external backers. Still this might unshut the way for a substantial financial deal from Porsche which is trying to promote its sustainable fuel business. This was why the firm wanted to get involved in F1 with Red Bull. That deal later went to Ford. But I see no reason why a Porsche-funded fuel should not be promoted in F1 using Audi, depending on the trademark name chosen. That would top up the budgets.

There was talk of the Pirelli deal that was duly spoken on Tuesday and there was a settlement in the fight between the teams over wanted expenditure with a deal with which no-one is happy, which ways it is probably a good compromise. The FIA can take credit for that (I am surprised it hasn’t already).

There are questions too well-nigh Aston Martin’s future not just because at some point the Stroll family has to wake up to realities well-nigh Lance, but moreover considering the car visitor is still stuff troublesome. It will be all the increasingly difficult without last week’s utterance that Lawrence Stroll’s Yew Tree consortium has uninventive some increasingly shares. In May Aston Martin well-set a deal with Geely that would see the firm stipulate not to buy increasingly than 22 percent of the shares surpassing August 2024, while Yew Tree single-minded not to go vastitude 25 percent for the same period. Without last week’s deal Yew Tree owns 26.23 percent although it may be that some of the shares are in variegated classes and that the deal allows this to happen. Come what may, in August next year one can expect Geely to go on the rampage. If any party owns increasingly than 29.9 percent of the merchantry they must then make a mandatory offer in mazuma to buy out the other shareholders at the highest price paid for a share in the previous 12 months.

There are loads increasingly rules without that but suffice to say that Geely wants to buy Aston Martin and is not well-nigh to requite up. There is moreover the danger of the British regulator might declare that Yew Tree is working in concert with other investors to tenancy the business, although when I hear the phrase “concert party” I unchangingly think well-nigh a tuft of entertainers travelling virtually singing songs, dancing and telling jokes…

Whatever the case, I suspect that over time the Strolls will depart F1 with tons of money to make them finger largest and Geely will come in and rent Guanyu Zhou.

McLaren spoken that it has signed up Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto to its young suburbanite programme but subconscious yonder in the small print was news that it has moreover taken on an Italian Formula 4 suburbanite tabbed Brando Badoer, as “an optioned driver”, which ways that young Brando has 12 months to prove his worth. If the name sounds familiar (Badoer not Brando) it is considering his dad Luca was an F1 suburbanite when in days of yore, and plane raced for Ferrari. He was a famous test suburbanite but holds the unfortunate record of starting the most number of Grands Prix (50) without overly scoring a World Championship point.