Sir Jackie Stewart turned 70 last Thursday. At his home in the Chilterns near Aylesbury, surrounded by trophies and awards from his Formula One racing days and in the company of his wife, Helen, his two sons, Paul and Mark, and nine grandchildren, the three-time world champion displayed the same fire that drove him to glory.
“It doesn’t feel any different at all, to be honest,” he said in that familiar, Dumbartonshire drawl. “I’m not an age-watcher. In my mind, I’m still below 30.”
But while Stewart was in celebratory mood, his thoughts on his own sport, which he used to dominate and which has served him so well, were anything but positive. It’s not that he doesn’t delight in the racing - he does and nothing has pleased him more than this season and the progress of Jenson Button. He is looking forward to Sunday’s Silverstone Grand Prix with relish.
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It’s rather that he fears for the future of Formula One, that he worries for its long-term prosperity, even its very survival. Too much power, he argues, resides with just two people - Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone - and they’re taking decisions which could cut off its sponsorship lifeblood.
What Mosley’s triumph shows, asserts Stewart, “Is that the FIA is led by one man. The power Max has over the sport is so totalitarian he can survive something that if he had been elsewhere he would have had to resign.
“To me, it is a clear indication of just how much the governance of our sport needs to be put in order. Max has such power over the underlying system that he can’t be put out.”
Stewart said he could see which way the wind was blowing. “As time went past he made sure he would recover.”
So strong is Mosley’s grip now that Stewart believes that while the president indicated in December he would stand down in October but would take a final decision on a new term this month, he will be re-elected for four years. “Nobody is prepared to stand against him. The infrastructure is created in such a way that it seems impossible for him to be taken out,” added Stewart. “None of it does the reputation of the sport any good.”
Mosley’s insistence on a £40million budget cap, claimed Stewart, showed the danger of too much control resting with one man. “I’m not against spending money - I’m a Scotsman. But Max wants to play God as to what the costs must be. It should be a team’s prerogative as to what its sponsorship money and revenue should be spent on.”
If it had a tie-up with an engine manufacturer, it could go to them and they would produce the part for next to nothing - when to source it from scratch on the open market might result in a hefty bill. “How do you police that price? It’s fraught with difficulties. Do the accountants say ‘that’s it, you’re over budget, you’re out?’ “What will the public and sponsors make of that? There’s nothing wrong with saying that costs must be brought into line, but I firmly believe it should be the domain of the teams and not the FIA.”
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By playing hard-ball, said Stewart, Mosley was running the risk of ruining the sport, of giving sponsors an excuse they could be seeking in the teeth of a recession to withdraw. “It’s a very real danger. We’ve got to understand that Formula 1 is the most capital intensive investment sport in the world - bigger than horseracing, than the NFL, than soccer. The amount of capital expenditure that goes into it is huge. The England football team, for instance, may wear their strips but those shirts may well be made in Vietnam for next to nothing. There are 50,000 people in the UK who work in F1.”
It’s not right, he argued, that such a vital part of the UK economy was dependent on “the ego games that are being played right now”.
Stewart said he found it inconceivable that this weekend’s grand prix at Silverstone may be the last for some time in this country, if Donington, which has won the race from next year, is unable to make the required improvements.
“We’ve lost the US Grand Prix, we’ve lost the Canadian Grand Prix and we’ve lost France. Now we face the loss of the British Grand Prix.
“Bernie will say it can go somewhere else as the others have done but what is going on? For the sponsors there is no bigger market than the US. Canada, France and Britain. They want to be in those countries.”
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