F1 must decide if it’s serious sport or Netflix fodder

The chaos of Melbourne raised the suspicion, inescapably, that it was all done for good television — and that instead of F1 feeding its popular docudrama, the docudrama is steering the sport.

Martin Samuel

Red Bull Racing's Dutch driver Max Verstappen after winning the Melbourne GP. Picture: AFP

3 min read

10:20AMApril 03, 2023

As Freddie Mercury once asked, “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” Formula One needs to make its mind up.

Nearly 18 months on and we’re still in Abu Dhabi. Still poring over the rules, still wondering what is sport and what is part of a wider narrative, tailored only to drama.

Once again, this time in Melbourne, the words farce and chaos attached themselves to the end of a grand prix like a drag racer’s parachute.

Drivers were cursing on their team’s airwaves, one crossed the line in tears of frustration. It now transpires that Alpine sent two cars to the scrapyard in a race that didn’t exist; that Carlos Sainz received a five-second penalty for what was basically a motorsport mirage. And the suspicion, inescapably, is that it was all done in the name of good television. That instead of the sport feeding its content for Drive to Survive, Drive to Survive now steers the content of the sport.

Chaos in Melbourne as drivers go off the track. Picture: Getty Images

Present in Melbourne was Michael Masi, the man who started this. As F1 race director in 2021 – and the second word in that title seems increasingly significant given what we are now seeing – he made the flawed decision that handed the drivers’ championship to Max Verstappen in the last lap of that season’s last race. Lewis Hamilton should have won a record eighth title but Masi’s rogue ruling denied him. He is now the chairman of the Supercars Commission and a director of Karting Australia. Hamilton is nowhere, the record books are irretrievably altered, and a precedent has been set.

For while Masi left F1 beneath a cloud, his judgment criticised by all but the victorious Red Bull, his decision to race that day rather than finish behind a safety car is now the model. The carnage and confusion in Melbourne is its result. When Kevin Magnussen drove into a wall as the race neared conclusion a yellow flag, for the safety car procession, was quickly escalated to red, requiring a full grid restart. It is impossible to argue this is not F1 policy now: the manufactured drama of a finish under race conditions. That every driver appeared to be asking the same question – WTF? – suggests this is a recent development, too.

So the race stopped and restarted on new tyres with two laps to go, and the organisers got what they wanted: the spectacular, pretty much a demolition derby. Sainz took out Fernando Alonso; the two Alpine drivers collided. Cars spun into gravel and into each other as the drivers jockeyed desperately for final position. And the red flag came out again. By now the leaderboard no longer showed Alonso in the top three. Yet when the race restarted, there he was again. Back in third place on the grid. Something about the restart not getting to the first sector, so the race had to resume as it began, not as it finished. It’s in the rulebook, apparently. The rulebook the sport seems to ignore when it suits.

Meaning it did finish beneath a yellow flag after all, with one lap minus the two Alpine cars destroyed in an irrelevance. Tearful Sainz was bumped down to 12th having committed an infringement in a race that was too short to count.

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton after the race. Picture: AFP

As this is a sport in which participants have died, the fact this could happen only for the action not to even count does seem somewhat reckless. Then again, little makes sense in F1 now. No doubt when Netflix gets hold of it, though, it will play as artfully as an episode of Succession.

It will be argued, too, that this exposure has proved very good for the sport. That much is true. But, increasingly, it’s no longer sport, because sport has rules that cannot be adopted or ignored according to whims and the hope of better viewing figures.

Also, sport doesn’t require a director. That’s what makes it so compelling. Sport’s improvised.