OCT 18 — I always get nervous when people start spouting terms like “dreams”. “Vision”. “Golden opportunity”.
But for Lotus F1 technical director Mike Gascoyne, they seem to be so much stock in trade. It’s strange to hear them coming from Gascoyne.
From a public relations representative, sure. But from a technical director? Curious, to say the least.
You get the feeling that Gascoyne is on the team more to lend an air of legitimacy than for any technical know-how he may bring. This despite the fact that, although Gascoyne hasn’t quite replicated his earlier success with Jordan and Renault, he still has a wealth of experience to offer the team.
After the initial fanfare of the announcement, team principal Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes seems to have withdrawn from an active role in Lotus. While Fernandes makes no secrets of wanting to relinquish his role once the 2010 season begins, he seems to be getting a running start towards that end.
Which then leaves just Gascoyne as the man in charge of it all. Press interviews. Candidate interviews. Buying wind tunnels. One wonders how the man still finds time to do what a team with no car and no driver probably needs most right now: someone to get the show on the road.
The man seemingly in charge of Lotus also tells us that the team should be a source of national pride. Because it’s “Malaysian”.
I think a lot of people truly want to pick up the patriotism card that Gascoyne and most any other “supporter” of Lotus F1 keeps trotting out. Not me, personally, but I’m sure there are people out there.
Except that right now, there seems scant that’s actually going to be Malaysian about the team other than, well, the money.
On the one hand, the government says that it will not have a direct stake in this “1 Malaysia F1 Team”. On the other, Fernandes tells us how much he would love to have Petronas on board. And the team’s oh-so-patriotic name can’t harm its chances any.
If — or more likely, when — Petronas does get on board, can it still mean the government will not have a “direct stake” in the team? To insist that it is so would be to argue semantics. Fist hits face, face hits fist. Same difference: none at all.
Objectively, would Petronas be better served having its name on an established team, with greater chances of getting those precious TV seconds or to have its name plastered on every single inch of a car that in all probability will only be shown when it’s getting lapped? Who knows, really?
Without the backing of Petronas and other moneyed government-linked companies, one wonders how Lotus F1 is going to find the funding it needs to even get in the door. Formula One is not a millionaire’s sport; it’s a billionaire’s game.
Fernandes may be rich — far richer than any average Malaysian can ever hope to equal even in a hundred, maybe a thousand lifetimes — but in the financial black hole that is Formula One, all his ringgit and sen won’t see the team much further than the first couple of seasons. That’s by their own reckoning.
No, rich as he is, he will still need to do this the old fashioned way. With other people’s money. And there’s the rub. Other people’s money is fine. But the People’s money, that’s another thing altogether.
I very much doubt if Malaysians care one way or the other if Fernandes and his wealthy partners chose to do this with their own money, their friend’s money, whomsoever’s money. Just not ours.
While we don’t actually see a single sen from Petronas and its ilk, these corporations belong to the government. And the government belongs to the people, even if it doesn’t look that way very often. Or at all.
And if the government does decide — as if it hasn’t already — to finance this venture (“indirectly”, of course) where will it all end? How many millions or billions before it’s too much? Or will there be no end?
Dreams. I shudder when I hear that. Because every time someone in the government dreams, the rest of us should start bracing for a nightmare.
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