Australian Grand Prix: Business is booming in F1, but scandals threaten to burst the bubble

The sport continues to grow in spite of the on-track action, yet new threats to its image are refusing to go away

Formula One revealed this morning that 124,113 people had come through the turnstiles simply to watch two practice sessions for the Australian Grand Prix — a record attendance.

Partly, it is the lure of the Australian contingent on the grid: Oscar Piastri and Daniel Ricciardo, not to mention adopted Aussie Valtteri Bottas, whose mullet-wearing, ute-driving antics have been causing a ripple this week.

But also it is the ongoing Drive to Survive effect and the monumental rise in the sport’s popularity both on track and for those watching from the sofa back at home.

Those numbers are all the more remarkable in that this season has the makings of being another monumentally one-sided affair, even though the indications in practice were that Charles Leclerc might at least push Max Verstappen to pole in qualifying tomorrow.

F1 has become obsessed with cracking the United States and, it has to be said, with three grands prix there, it has done so successfully. And it begs the question whether the sport’s hierarchy has taken its eye off the ball in this constant drive, with it now seemingly skipping from one scandal to another?

AP

Verstappen did his best impression of diplomacy when talking to the media on Thursday by committing his future to Red Bull until the end of 2028 and insisting all the top brass at the team, Christian Horner included, needed to stay where they were; this despite deep unrest remaining in the Red Bull camp.

Tellingly, Verstappen’s father, Jos, whose relationship with Horner seems beyond repair, did not follow through on his threat of coming to Melbourne. What will be the impact, though, when he does reappear on the grid?

And behind the scenes, the Horner saga is not entirely going away. The female colleague who made an allegation of inappropriate behaviour against him, which was dismissed after an investigation by an external lawyer, has taken her gripe to the FIA’s ethics commission. That commission has been busy, and this week cleared the organisation’s president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, of two complaints which were previously made public by a whistleblower to the BBC.

The allegation was that the FIA chief had intervened to help overturn a penalty against Fernando Alonso at last year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and that he had told officials not to grant the necessary certificate to the Las Vegas Grand Prix for the race to go ahead.

Added to that, Susie Wolff, the F1 Academy boss and wife of Mercedes team principal Toto, revealed in Australia that she has launched criminal proceedings over the conflict of interest investigation launched against her late last year by the FIA.

In her statement, she called for “transparency and accountability” in her case, a phrase that has been seemingly on repeat in the paddock in recent weeks.

It was used by her husband, as well as McLaren team boss Zak Brown, in the Horner case, with Brown wheeling it out once more on the wider malaise in which the sport finds itself off track.

“We’re living in 2024, not 1984, which means transparency”

Zak Brown on F1's spate of scandals

“About all the items that have come to light here in recent times, they are very serious situations,” said Brown. “We’re living in 2024, not 1984, which means transparency. We need to make sure that things are done in a transparent and truly independent manner. Everyone should welcome it.

“I don’t think it’s a great situation that we’re in, that we’re three races into the calendar and we’re still talking about these issues. We need to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to speak up, so I think it’s important that the FIA as our governing body addresses this swiftly, transparently and coming to the right conclusions, whatever those may be.”

The FIA and F1 have asked Red Bull for transparency in the Horner case, but the team say it is a private matter.

As for Ben Sulayem being cleared of any wrongdoing, we are also none the wiser as to how that conclusion was reached. And Susie Wolff clearly got to a bubbling point of frustration where she felt there was no course of action open to her bar taking her issue to the French courts to find answers.

F1 can revel in its attendances all it likes, but it is in danger of damaging the product it is so keen to promote.

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