GLOBAL CULTURE AND SPORT SERIES

The History and Politics

of Motor Racing
Lives in the Fast Lane
Edited by Damion Sturm
Stephen Wagg · David L. Andrews
Global Culture and Sport Series

Series Editors
Stephen Wagg
International Centre for Sport
History and Culture
De Montfort University
Leicester, UK

David Andrews
Kinesiology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD, USA
Series Editors: Stephen Wagg, De Montfort University, UK, and David
Andrews, University of Maryland, USA
The Global Culture and Sport series aims to contribute to and advance
the debate about sport and globalization by engaging with various aspects
of sport culture as a vehicle for critically excavating the tensions between
the global and the local, transformation and tradition and sameness and
difference. With studies ranging from snowboarding bodies, the
globalization of rugby and the Olympics, to sport and migration, issues
of racism and gender, and sport in the Arab world, this series showcases
the range of exciting, pioneering research being developed in the field of
sport sociology.
Damion Sturm • Stephen Wagg
David L. Andrews
Editors

The History and

Politics of Motor
Racing
Lives in the Fast Lane
Editors
Damion Sturm Stephen Wagg
Massey University International Centre for Sport
Auckland, New Zealand History and Culture
De Montfort University
David L. Andrews Leicester, UK
Department of Kinesiology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD, USA

ISSN 2662-3404     ISSN 2662-3412 (electronic)

Global Culture and Sport Series
ISBN 978-3-031-22824-7    ISBN 978-3-031-22825-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
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 Acknowledgements

Damion would like to acknowledge his two bundles of joy—Mikaela and

Isaac. I love you and am eternally grateful for all the time that we play,
grow and develop together. Perhaps you too will grow to enjoy the spec-
tacle and sensations of cars racing at high speeds! This book is dedicated
to you both.
He would also like to thank Yi Wei for her love, patience and support
along our life journey, as well as my parents, Karen and Bryce, for helping
to support our young family.
He especially wants to acknowledge and thank his co-editors for bring-
ing him on board this project and for being so fantastic to work with
throughout the process.
Finally, he offers a special acknowledgement to Jacques Villeneuve for
providing a pivotal entry point and ‘hook’ into the world of Formula
One that has long since endured.
Stephen would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of: Jayne
Ashworth at Haynes Publishers, Paul Baxa, Eberhard Reuss, Sandra
Esslinger and Aldo Zana.
David would like to acknowledge and thank the diligence, expertise
and patience of his co-editors, all of whom were key in bringing this
project to fruition.

v
vi Acknowledgements

The editors would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our
contributing authors. Thank you for your willingness to be part of the
project and for investing your time and efforts during the challenges and
disruptions of a global pandemic. We are delighted with the wide-­ranging
coverage of motorsport topics across the edited collection, due in no
small part to your excellent and timely contributions.
 Contents

I ntroduction  1
Damion Sturm, Stephen Wagg, and David L. Andrews

Part I The Origins of Motor Sport  21


The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 23
Éamon Ó Cofaigh


The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development of the
World Rally Championship 45
Sam Tickell, Tom Evens, and Hans Erik Næss

Part II The Early Political Significance of Motor Racing  73


Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 75
Eberhard Reuss and Sandra Esslinger


Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport119
Georgios P. Loizides

vii
viii Contents


The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia135
Paul Baxa


Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on
South American Populism155
Mauricio Drumond and Victor Melo

Part III Motor Racing and the Automobile Industry 177


Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947179
Aldo Zana


British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti201
Mark Jenkins, Nick Henry, and Tim Angus

Part IV Motor Racing and the Politics of Gender 221

 Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death and

It
the Politics of Safety in the History of Motor Racing223
Stephen Wagg


From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only
Racing247
Chris Lezotte


The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional
Space: The Issue of ‘Grid Girls’271
Honorata Jakubowska
 Contents ix

Part V Motor Racing and the Politics of Race 293

 Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical

A
Relationship with Formula One Motor Racing, 1934–1993295
Gustav Venter

 Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports: The

On
Counter-mobility Work of NASCAR’s Wendell Scott327
Derek H. Alderman and Joshua Inwood


Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race
and the Resurrection of the Black Athlete355
Ben Carrington

Part VI Motor Racing, the Media, and Postmodernity 385

F
 ormula One as Television387
Damion Sturm


The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1413
Timothy Dewhirst and Wonkyong Beth Lee


“Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love
Cars”: Motor Racing on Film443
Seán Crosson


‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing
Drivers and the Politics of Celebrity: 1896 to 1992477
Stephen Wagg
x Contents


The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency
and Celebrity Culture519
Damion Sturm


Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game557
Daniel S. Traber


Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting
Ownership Structure of Formula One571
Tom Evens, Sam Tickell, and Hans Erik Næss

Part VII The Globalisation of Motor Racing 593


The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization, and the
Uber-Sport Spectacle595
Jacob J. Bustad and David L. Andrews


Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One
Racetracks619
Michael Friedman and Brandon Wallace


Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China:
State Entrepreneurialism and the Re-Imaging of Shanghai641
Andrew Manley and Bryan C. Clift


Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku,
Azerbaijan665
David Gogishvili


Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business
and Politics in the Arabian Gulf691
Mahfoud Amara and Youcef Bouandel
 Contents xi


Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian
Grand Prix?707
Callie Batts Maddox


Formula One and the Insanity of Car-­Based Transportation733
Toby Miller, Brett Hutchins, Libby Lester, and Richard Maxwell

I ndex761
 Notes on Contributors

Derek H. Alderman is Professor of Geography at the University of

Tennessee and a past president of the American Association of
Geographers. Derek is a cultural and historical geographer interested in
race, public memory, tourism, and the politics of place naming and map-
ping. Much of his work focuses on the rights of African-Americans to
move through, claim, and shape places and spaces on their own terms as
part of a broader goal of social and spatial justice. He is founder of
Tourism RESET, an interdisciplinary and multi-university initiative
devoted to analysing and challenging historical and contemporary raciali-
sation of travel, geographic mobility, and transportation.
Mahfoud Amara is Associate Professor in Sport Social Sciences and
Management at Physical Education & Sport Science Department,
College of Education, Qatar University. Amara has a number of publica-
tions, peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has been regularly
featured in international media outlets. His work focuses on two areas:
(1) sport, business, culture, politics and society in the MENA region; (2)
sport, cultural diversity and Muslim communities in the West. He has
been invited as speaker and expert to a number of working groups, inter-
national conferences, symposia, panels and lecture series/ webinars. In
2012 he published a book with Palgrave and Macmillan on “Sport Politics
and Society in the Arab World”. He ­co-­edited with Alberto Testa “Sport

xiii
xiv Notes on Contributors

in Islam and in Muslim Communities” (Routledge, 2015), and with

John Nauright “Sport in the African World” (Routledge, 2018). He
edited “the Olympic Movement and the Middle East and North Africa
Region” (Routledge, 2020).
Victor Andrade de Melo is a Full Professor at the Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro, where he works in the Program of Graduate Studies in
Comparative History and in the Program of Graduate Studies in
Education. He is the coordinator of Sport: Laboratory of the History of
Sport and Leisure. Author of several books and articles dedicated to the
historical studies of sports, he has been a productivity researcher (National
Research Council/Brazil) since 2003.
David L. Andrews is Professor of Physical Cultural Studies in the
Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
His research contextualises sport and physical culture in relation to the
intersecting cultural, political, economic and technological forces shap-
ing contemporary society. His books include: Making Sport Great Again?:
The Uber-Sport Assemblage, Neoliberalism, and the Trump Conjuncture
(2019, Palgrave): The Routledge Handbook of Physical Cultural Studies
(edited with Michael Silk and Holly Thorpe, 2017, Routledge); and,
Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies,
Ecologies (edited with Josh Newman and Holly Thorpe, 2020, Rutgers
University Press).
Tim Angus is Honorary Research Fellow at Coventry University and
holds a PhD on the Italian Motorsport Industry in 2001. Tim works in
economic development and innovation policy and has a long-standing
interest in the global motorsport industry. He has worked with Nick
Henry and Mark Jenkins on motorsport industry research for 25 years for
clients as varied as the UK Government, trade associations and national
and international sporting governing bodies. He co-authored Henry, N.,
Angus, T., Jenkins, M. and Aylett, C. (2007) Motorsport Going Global:
The Challenges Facing the World’s Motorsport Industry and most recently
published Henry, N., Angus, T. and Jenkins, M. (2021) ‘Motorsport
Valley revisited: Cluster evolution, strategic cluster ­coupling and resil-
ience’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 28(4), pp. 466–486. https://
doi.org/10.1177/09697764211016039.
 Notes on Contributors xv

Paul Baxa is Professor of History at Ave Maria University, a Catholic

Liberal Arts College in Southwest Florida. He is a cultural historian who
specializes in Italian Fascism. He has published on the making of Fascist
Rome and the relationship between Fascist ideology and motorsport. His
recent book is titled Motorsport and Fascism: Living Dangerously (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2022). Baxa is member of the Society of Automotive
Historians and is involved in organizing the annual Michael R. Argetsinger
Symposium held at Watkins Glen, NY, the only such event dedicated
solely to the history of motorsport.
Youcef Bouandel a graduate of the Universities of Algiers, Algeria and
Glasgow, Scotland, Bouandel is Full Professor of International Affairs at
Qatar University. He taught at the University of Lincoln England and
was visiting professor in Sweden, Bulgaria and the United States. His
work has appeared in DOMES—Digest of Middle East Studies,
Mediterranean Politics, The Journal of Modern African Studies, The Journal
of North African Studies, Third World Quarterly and Cambridge Review of
International Affairs and has contributed several chapters on Algeria’s
politics.
Jacob Bustad is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology
at Towson University, Maryland. His primary research and teaching
interests are in the fields of sport management, physical cultural studies,
the sociology of sport and urban studies. His research has been published
in international journals such as Cities, Qualitative Research in Sport,
Exercise and Health, International Journal of Sport Communication, and
The International Journal of the History of Sport.
Ben Carrington teaches sociology, communication studies and journal-
ism at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He has written widely
on the cultural politics of sports and is the author of Race, Sport and
Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora (Sage, 2010).
Bryan C. Clift is Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) and Director of
the Centre for Qualitative Research in the Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences and Department for Health at the University of Bath,
UK. His research is oriented around sport and physical activity in rela-
xvi Notes on Contributors

tion to issues of contemporary urbanism, popular cultural practices and

representations, and qualitative inquiry. His work has recently been pub-
lished in: Sport, Education and Society; Body & Society; Sociology of Sport
Journal; Qualitative Inquiry; and Cultural Studies ↔ Critical
Methodologies. Additionally, he recently co-edited with Prof Alan
Tomlinson Populism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture
(Routledge, 2021).
Éamon Ó. Cofaigh lectures in French at NUI Galway. His research
interests include twentieth-century French culture, tourism and recre-
ation, the French and Francophone Chanson and French Cinema. He is
author of A Vehicle for Change: Popular Representations of the Automobile
in 20th-Century France (Liverpool University Press, 2022)
Seán Crosson is Associate Professor of Film in the Huston School of
Film & Digital Media, and leader of the Sport & Exercise Research
Group at the University of Galway, Ireland. His major research interest is
the relationship between film, visual media and sport and his publica-
tions include the monographs Sport and Film (Routledge, 2013) and
Gaelic Games on Film: From silent films to Hollywood hurling, horror and
the emergence of Irish cinema (Cork University Press, 2019). Crosson also
co-edited (with Philip Dine) the collection Sport, Representation and
Evolving Identities in Europe (Peter Lang, 2010) and more recently edited
the volume Sport, Film, and National Culture (Routledge, 2021).
Timothy Dewhirst is Professor in the Department of Marketing and
Consumer Studies and Senior Research Fellow in Marketing and Public
Policy at the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics at the
University of Guelph in Canada. He is Associate Editor of the journal,
Tobacco Control, regarding product marketing and promotion, and he
serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Public Policy &
Marketing. Additionally, he served as an invited expert for the WHO
with respect to Article 13 guidelines, concerning cross-border advertis-
ing, promotion, and sponsorship of the Framework Convention on
Tobacco Control (FCTC). He has provided expert testimony in tobacco
litigation in Canada, the United States, and internationally.
 Notes on Contributors xvii

Mauricio Drumond holds a doctorate in Comparative History and is a

researcher in Sport: Laboratory of the History of Sport and Leisure at the
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of books and arti-
cles focused on the political history of sports in Brazil, Portugal and
Argentina.
Sandra Lotte Esslinger is Professor of Art History in California and
holds a PhD from UCLA. Her research focuses on the official art of Nazi
Germany, emphasizing the construction of national and cultural identi-
ties. She has published and presented on the artwork and museum as
Nazi propaganda. Active in disciplinary advocacy endeavours, she has
spearheaded the recognition of art history as a discipline in the California
Community College System, chaired a College Art Association (CAA)
Task Force on Advocacy at CAA, and co-chaired #CAA Advocacy panel
(2016) in Washington, DC. In 2011, she and Eberhard Reuss, historian
and automotive journalist for ARD/SWR German national public televi-
sion, began researching Adolf Rosenberger, which in 2019 resulted in the
ARD documentary “Der Mann Hinter Porsche–Adolf Rosenberger”. She
is a cousin of Adolf Rosenberger and founder of the Adolf Rosenberger
gGmbH (Adolf-­Rosenberger.com), an organization with a mission to
support research and projects that promote anti-discrimination policies
and support those voices that have been disempowered or marginalized,
especially in the automotive industry.
Tom Evens is an associate professor at the Department of Commu­
nication Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium, and a senior researcher
at the imec research group for Media, Innovation and Communication
Technologies. He specializes in the economics and policies of digital
media and technology markets, and has widely published on sports and
media in international peer-reviewed journals and edited ­volumes. He is
the lead author of The Political Economy of Television Sports Rights
(Palgrave, 2013) and Platform Power and Policy in Transforming Television
Markets (Springer, 2018), and the co-editor of Media Management
Matters: Challenges and Opportunities for Bridging Theory and Practice
(Routledge, 2020).
xviii Notes on Contributors

Michael Friedman is a lecturer in the Physical Cultural Studies pro-

gram in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland.
His research focuses on the relationship between public policy, urban
design and professional sports. His first book, Mallparks: Producing
Cathedrals of Baseball Consumption, is being published by Cornell
University Press. He has published several academic articles on sports
venues and events, including in the Journal of Urban Affairs, Sociology of
Sport Journal, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, City, Culture
and Society, and the International Journal of Sport Management and
Marketing.
David Gogishvili is a senior researcher in the Department of Geography
and Sustainability at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is inter-
ested in the role that large-scale urban development projects, such as
mega-events and cultural flagship institutions, play in cities across the
globe. His research examines the role of legal exceptions and politics in
large-scale urban projects and mostly focuses on the cities of Central Asia
and South Caucasus. In his current research, David is building a database
of cultural flagships worldwide that will allow drawing conclusions on
the prevalence, genealogy, context, rationales and outcomes of these ini-
tiatives. He is also conducting qualitative research on the multiple lives
and promises of Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Saadiyat Island Cultural
District.
Nick Henry is Professor of Economic Geography at Coventry
University. Nick undertook his first piece of published research on the
UK motorsport industry in 1994 and over the past 25 years has under-
taken numerous studies with his long-run colleagues Tim Angus and
Mark Jenkins. Nick directed the ground-breaking MIA (2001) The
National Survey of Motorsport Engineering and Services and Henry, N.,
Angus, T., Jenkins, M. and Aylett, C. (2007) Motorsport Going Global:
The Challenges Facing the World’s Motorsport Industry. He has provided
numerous inputs to studies seeking to understand the regional develop-
ment possibilities and economic impact of motorsport and perfor-
mance engineering and its associated events. Most recently he has
published Henry, N., Angus, T. and Jenkins, M. (2021) ‘Motorsport
Valley revisited: Cluster evolution, strategic cluster coupling and resil-
 Notes on Contributors xix

ience’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 28(4), pp. 466–486.

https://doi.org/10.1177/09697764211016039.
Brett Hutchins is Professor of Media and Communications in the
School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. His books
include Environmental Conflict and Media (co-edited), Sport Beyond
Television: The Internet, Digital Media & the Rise of Networked Media
Sport (co-authored), and Digital Media Sport: Technology, Culture & Power
in the Network Society (co-edited).
Joshua Inwood is Professor of Geography and Ethics at Pennsylvania
State University. Inwood is committed to understanding the material
conditions of peace and justice and engages with these concerns through
a variety of research and teaching projects. At its heart his work seeks to
understand the social, political and economic structures that make
human lives vulnerable to all manner of exploitations, as well as how
oppressed populations use social justice movements to change their mate-
rial conditions. His research contributes to literatures on urban spaces,
political geographies, justice and historical and cultural geographies.
Honorata Jakubowska is a sociologist at Adam Mickiewicz University
in Poznań, Poland. She is author of Skill Transmission, Sport and Tacit
Knowledge: A Sociological Perspective (2017) and co-author of Female
Fans, Gender Relations and Football Fandom: Challenging the Brotherhood
Culture (2021), both based on the research projects funded by the
National Science Centre. She has published numerous articles, chapters
and two other books related to her main research interests: sociology of
sport, gender studies, and sociology of the body. She was the ­coordinator
of European Sociological Association Research Network “Society and
Sports” and vice-president of Polish Sociological Association Section
“Sociology of Sport” (2017–2019). She is a member of the editorial
boards of Communication and Sport, Polish Sociological Review and Poznań
Journal of Law, Economics and Sociology.
Mark Jenkins is Emeritus Professor of Strategy at Cranfield School of
Management, Cranfield University. Mark's work focuses on competitive
strategy, innovation and high-performing teams. He is the author of
many journal papers and a number of books on strategic management
xx Notes on Contributors

issues, which include: Performance at the Limit: Business Lessons from

Formula One Motor Racing; Advanced Strategic Management and The
Customer Centred Strategy.
Wonkyong Beth Lee is an associate professor at the DAN Department
of Management and Organizational Studies, University of Western
Ontario, Canada. Her program of research primarily pertains to transfor-
mative consumer research (TCR) by focusing on addictive consumption
such as smoking, social marketing (especially marketing communica-
tions), and the policy environment. She previously served as an adjunct
professor at the Department of Advertising and Public Relations,
Hanyang University, South Korea and was visiting scholar at the Sydney
School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Australia. In addition, she
gave a social marketing workshop at the Public Health Summer Camp,
University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand.
Libby Lester is Director of the Institute for Social Change at the
University of Tasmania and UNESCO Chair in Communication,
Environment and Heritage. She works to understand the place of public
debate in local and global decision-making, and her research on environ-
mental communication and political conflict is widely published. Her
most recent book is Global Trade and Mediatised Environmental Protest
(Palgrave Macmillan). Before joining the University, she worked as a
journalist for 15 years, reporting for The Age and other Australian news-
papers and magazines.
Chris Lezotte spent two decades in advertising which included time at
McCann-Erickson writing car commercials. After exiting her advertising
career she pursued a master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies at Eastern
Michigan University and holds a PhD in American Culture Studies from
Bowling Green State University. Now working as an independent scholar,
Chris focuses her research on the relationship between women and cars
in a variety of contexts. This includes women’s participation in various car
cultures traditionally associated with masculinity and the male driver, as
well as investigations into representations of women and cars in popular
culture.
Chris would like to thank archivist Jenny Ambrose of the International
Motor Racing Research Center [IMRRC] for her invaluable assistance.
 Notes on Contributors xxi

Georgios Paris Loizides Holds a PhD in sociology from Western

Michigan University with areas of specialization in social inequality (race,
class, gender) and comparative/historical sociology. He published a book
and a number of journal articles on the Sociological Department of the
Ford Motor Company and is involved in a number of scholarly projects,
mainly revolving around social and industrial relations during the
Progressive era. He is a professor at the University of Wisconsin—Stout,
where he regularly teaches courses in social problems, race and ethnic
relations, as well as social theory.
Callie Batts Maddox is an associate professor in the Department of
Sport Leadership and Management at Miami University where she
teaches classes in the critical socio-cultural study of sport. Her research
interests include sport and physical culture in contemporary India, the
global governance of sport, and American yoga culture. Her work has
appeared in Sociology of Sport Journal, South Asia Research, Journal of Sport
and Social Issues, Annals of Leisure Research, and Journal of Sport History,
amongst others.
Andrew Manley is an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences at the University of Bath, UK. Manley’s research
interests centre on the city and issues of urbanism, cultural heritage, and
tourism experience. He is also interested in researching human ­interaction
and organizational culture with an emphasis on surveillance and social
control. He has published in a broad range of journal articles on these
topics including but not limited to the following: City & Community,
Surveillance & Society, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Culture and
Organization, and Organization. His work has been funded by the Jiangsu
Provincial Government (PR, China), The Arts and Humanities Research
Council (AHRC) and The British Council.
Richard Maxwell is Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, City
University of New York. His publications include The Spectacle of
Democracy, Culture Works: The Political Economy of Culture, Herbert
Schiller, Global Hollywood (co-authored), Greening the Media (co-­
authored), The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media, Media and the
Ecological Crisis (co-edited), and How Green is Your Smartphone?
(co-authored).
xxii Notes on Contributors

Toby Miller is Stuart Hall Profesor de Estudios Culturales, Universidad

Autónoma Metropolitana—Cuajimalpa; and research professor of the
Graduate Division, University of California, Riverside. His most recent
volumes are A COVID Manifesto, Violence, The Persistence of Violence,
How Green is Your Smartphone? (co-authored), El trabajo Cultural,
Greenwashing Culture, and Greenwashing Sport.
Hans Erik Næss is Professor of Sport Management, Department of
Leadership and Organization, Kristiania University College Oslo,
Norway. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Oslo and is
the author of many peer-reviewed articles and books on the relations
between business, politics, leadership, and organization of sport, includ-
ing A History of Organizational Change: The Case of Fédération
Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) 1946–2020 (Springer, 2020).
Eberhard Reuß began an academic career as a historian but switched
direction to become a radio and TV journalist. He developed a specialty
for motor racing as a Formula 1 reporter for Germany’s Radio ARD,
covering many of Michael Schumacher’s races. He has produced many
TV documentaries on motor racing history and has written a number of
books on this topic. His book “Hitler’s Rennschlachten”, the result of 20
years of research was first published in Germany in 2006. It was named
“Motorsport Book of the Year” by the Motor Presse Club, a group of
distinguished German motoring journalists. A much-­enhanced English
translation was published in 2008 by Haynes. In 2019, Eberhard Reuß
directed and edited an ARD TV documentary about Adolf Rosenberger.
Together with Sandra Esslinger, Reuss researched the case of Adolf
Rosenberger and how this Jewish racing driver and co-founder of the
Porsche GmbH fell victim to racism, which extended beyond the Third
Reich. As a result in 2019, Reuss produced the ARD TV documentary
“Der Mann hinter Porsche—Adolf Rosenberger” which reintroduced
Rosenberger into the historical record.
Damion Sturm is Senior Lecturer in Sport Management at Massey
University, Auckland, New Zealand). With a specialisation in global
sport media cultures (inclusive of celebrity, fan and material cultures), he
recently co-edited Sport in Aotearoa New Zealand: Contested Terrain (with
 Notes on Contributors xxiii

Roslyn Kerr, 2022), co-authored Media, Masculinities and the Machine

(with Dan Fleming, 2011), and has published works on mediatisation,
technological innovations and sporting events (Formula One, the Indy
500, Formula E, Formula One eSports, cricket, rugby league and the
America’s Cup).
Samuel Tickell is a postdoctoral researcher with the Institute of Sport
and Exercise Sciences at the University Münster in Germany having
completed his Doctorate at the Research Group for Media,
Communication and Information Technologies at Ghent University in
Belgium. His research focuses on media sport and sport management. He
has successfully published peer-reviewed articles on the fragmentation of
broadcast media delivery and financialisation models with regard to niche
sports. Additionally, he has a long professional history in motorsport
media in Australia and Europe, having worked mostly in Le Mans style
sportscar racing, and various rally championships, including the World
Rally Championship.
Daniel S. Traber Is Professor of English at Texas A&M University at
Galveston, Texas. He is the author of Culturcide and Non-Identity across
American Culture (Lexington, 2017) and Whiteness, Otherness, and the
Individualism Paradox from Huck to Punk (Palgrave, 2007). His work has
appeared in journals such as Cultural Critique, The Journal of Popular
Culture, The Hemingway Review, American Studies, Popular Music and
Society and Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion. He is also an invited con-
tributor to the essay collection The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock.
Gustav Venter is an academic with a primary research interest in the
historical intersection between sport, politics and race in the South
African context. He holds a PhD in History from Stellenbosch University
(2016) and his doctoral thesis explored the changing dynamics of profes-
sional football as played under apartheid. His career has spanned tradi-
tional academic functions as well as the business of sport. He is particularly
interested in the application of data science within high-performance
sport and previously co-founded a cricket data consultancy which served
professional teams in South Africa’s domestic structure. He is a National
Research Foundation (NRF)-rated researcher in South Africa (Y-rating)
and has recently entered the financial sector.
xxiv Notes on Contributors

Stephen Wagg retired as a professor in the Carnegie School of Sport at

Leeds Beckett University (UK) in 2019 and is now an honorary fellow in
the International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort
University in Leicester, UK. He has written widely on the politics and
history of sport. His latest books include Cricket: A Political History of the
Global Game 1945-2017 (Routledge, 2018) and The Palgrave Handbook
of Sport, Politics and Harm (edited with Allyson Pollock, 2022).
Brandon Wallace is a doctoral candidate in the Physical Cultural
Studies program in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of
Maryland. Broadly, his work examines sport as a vehicle for understand-
ing how hierarchies of race, class, and gender are produced and contested
in popular culture, while driven by an optimism that sport can serve as a
powerful conduit of social justice. Brandon’s past research analysed the
cultural politics of athletic apparel, as well as the representations of Black
bodies, spaces, and culture in sports media. His current research exam-
ines the Know Your Rights Camp led by Colin Kaepernick to explore the
transformative possibilities of community-based sporting activism
initiatives.
Aldo Zana is a motor historian and journalist. He began writing articles
for motor magazines in the mid-1960s as a freelance editor of Autosprint
and Rombo weeklies, developing an inclination towards history and his-
toric cars and races. Since the late 1980s, he has become a regular con-
tributor to Italian and foreign historic car magazines.His recent
automotive books deal with the history of the Sports-Prototype FIA
World Championship; the Monza 1000 km race (Italian and English edi-
tions); the lives and races of Italian drivers Tazio Nuvolari, Achille Varzi,
Giovanni Lurani; the motor racing scenario of the 1950s including a
biography of Alberto Ascari; the Monza 500-mile races “Monzanapolis—
The Race of Two Worlds 1957 and 1958” (Italian and English editions);
the story of the forgotten Milano car shows 1901–1947; “Fast on the
Sand” (English only) on the LSR triple challenge in Daytona Beach
1928.He also authored the catalogues of the MEF (Museo Enzo Ferrari)
in Modena and the exhibit there on Ferrari and Maserati racing cars. He
was the key organiser of the 2009 World Forum for Motor Museums in
Modena.Outside of the history of motoring, he wrote many articles for
 Notes on Contributors xxv

science magazines and authored books on an Italian lady CEO, a research

on the editors-in-chief of leading Italian newspapers, and the WWII
diary of an Italian Red Cross nurse.After a PhD in Theoretical Physics at
the Milan University and at the Cern, the European Physics Research
Centre in Geneva, he switched to a managerial career in corporate com-
munications while continuing with motor journalism.He is a long-time
member of SAH (#2333), Speed Record Club (UK), Aisa (Italian
Association of Motor Historians) and the History and Museum
Commission of ASI (Italian National Historic Car and Bike Association).
 List of Figures

 e Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development

Th
of the World Rally Championship
Fig. 1 Timeline of major changes within the WRC management 64
Fig. 2 Owned media properties of the WRC promotion body, 2001
vs 2020 64

 cclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting

E
Ownership Structure of Formula One
Fig. 1 Formula One ownership structure in 1997 580
Fig. 2 Formula One ownership structure in 2005 582

Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku,

Azerbaijan
Fig. 1 BCC map laid on a public street network of Baku. (Source:
BCC, Compiled by the author in 2016) 667
Fig. 2 Barriers and fences erected in Baku downtown. (Source:
Author, 2016) 677
Fig. 3 Map of the Baku City Circuit and traffic restrictions. (Source:
BBC, 2016) 679

xxvii
xxviii List of Figures

Fig. 4 Blocked entrance of the Old Town and the spectators stand
(back). (Source: Author, 2016) 679
Fig. 5 October 2016, the Baku City Circuit paddock club and the
Hilton Baku Hotel on the left. (Source: Author, 2016) 680
 List of Tables

 cclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting

E
Ownership Structure of Formula One
Table 1 Liberty Media Financials (in US$ Million) (Liberty Media
Corporation, 2020) 586

 otor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business

M
and Politics in the Arabian Gulf
Table 1 Examples of motorsport and motorbike series in the GCC
(different internet sources) 694

xxix
 Introduction
Damion Sturm, Stephen Wagg, and David L. Andrews

Through the pairing of people (principally, men) and machines, motors-

port has held an enduring fascination for its competitors, interested audi-
ences and invested industries across a history of approximately 125 years.
Much of this appeal seemingly percolates around elements of masculine
bravado, mastery and risk-taking, often with a yearning for a return to
the ‘good old days’ of ‘pure racing and pure racers’. The daring feats of
apparently fearless drivers across the ages are regularly lauded and recalled
in contemporary motorsport accounts. These accounts repeatedly play
on the linkages between men, machinery and risk-taking. Thus,

D. Sturm (*)
Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Wagg
Leicester, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
D. L. Andrews
Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1

D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_1
2 D. Sturm et al.

traditionally, motorsport has been characterised by dangerous practices

and reckless pursuits that were frequently fatal for participants and/or
spectators and required, in turn, a series of improvements and refine-
ments in order to safeguard the drivers and preserve their machinery.
Furthermore, rather than being staged in some idyllic modernist utopia,
motorsport has always been politically contentious, if not highly prob-
lematic. For example, the promulgation of motorsport success was vari-
ously an assumed symbol of fascism in Italy in the 1930s and of Nazi
supremacy under the German Third Reich. This provided a politically
contentious boost for national car manufacturers, while the residual priv-
ileging of upper-class white masculinities has long presented motorsport
as a stereotypical playground for the moneyed ‘elite’.
Recently, the status and place of motorsport has been subject to renewed
political and scholarly scrutiny. Traditionally wasteful, expensive and some-
what regressive in its operations, critical appraisals have judged motorsport
to be out of step with contemporary times, trends and issues. For example,
a chequered history of marginalisation, sexualisation and exclusion for
women has dogged the development of many forms of motorsport while,
regrettably, remaining largely unresolved as an equity and equality issue
today (Sturm, 2021). Despite new initiatives, such as Formula One’s
(2020) ‘We Race As One’ initiative that focused on diversity, inclusion and
sustainability (https://corp.formula1.com/we-­race-­as-­one/ accessed 5
August 2022), the lack of diversification from forms of white, elitist mas-
culinity has also posed challenges for most top tier motorsport categories
where the social classifications of gender, race and class seemingly remain
impenetrable. Indeed, these initiatives tend to suggest that, rather than
meaningfully addressing the identified issues, Formula One has primarily
engaged in a public relations campaign of empty corporate social responsi-
bility rhetoric to generate positive publicity rather than instigate real change
in a sport that is ostensibly male and 90% white (see chapter “Formula
One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation”; Sturm, 2023).
In relation to environmental sustainability, long-standing wasteful
practices, resource-intensive components and parts, a historical reliance
on the extractives industry, and many pollution-inducing elements have
legitimated concerns around the deleterious ecological impacts motors-
port events can have, both locally and globally. Despite recent attempts
 Introduction 3

to further reduce the environmental impacts of most global motorsport,

these renewed sustainability efforts are undermined by the excessively
large carbon footprints generated by motorsport series that span the globe
annually. For example, despite Formula One’s efforts around hybrid tech-
nologies and improving event operations, these initiatives only account
for approximately 8% of the sport’s CO2 emissions, while global travel
and transport together constitute over 70% (see chapters “The Circus
Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization, and the Uber-Sport Spectacle”
and “Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation”). It
should also come as no surprise that exorbitant costs for the top series,
such as Formula One which allegedly operated at approximately $2b per
season in the early 2000s (see chapter “Formula One as Television”), fur-
ther heighten concern with the sport’s elitist orientations and escalat-
ing costs.
Ironically, although these concerns remain a feature of popular culture,
two key aspects have arguably underpinned and remained steadfast for
motorsport. First, it remains extremely popular. Motorsport operates in
and across a range of levels from local grassroots through to the pinnacle
of national or international series such as NASCAR, IndyCar, V8
Supercars, Le Mans/World Endurance, Formula One and the World
Rally Championship. Hence on local and global, national and interna-
tional scales, motorsport is significant and has remained a pre-eminent
site and expression of status, tradition and prestige as well as cultural and/
or national identity. This significance also translates to live and in-situ
audiences—with a regular contemporary annual audience of approxi-
mately 450m television viewers for Formula One (subject to positive and
negative fluctuations), while the Indianapolis 500 can draw in-situ
crowds in excess of 300,000 people on race days (Sturm, 2017).
Unsurprisingly, this also generates media and commercial interest. Media
conglomerates seek to harness the power, prestige and promotional value
of various ‘iconic’ motorsport events and series across a range of media
platforms, technological innovations and cross-promotions. Additionally,
transnational corporate sponsors brand and commodify motorsports,
often literally turning cars into high-speed billboards, for profit-driven
returns.
4 D. Sturm et al.

The second, and more surprising, feature is that, despite its pre-­
eminence as a significant realm of contemporary sport, for historical
sporting traditions and as a form of popular culture (e.g. see chapters
““Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”: Motor
Racing on Film” and “Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video
Game” on motorsport films and Formula One video games respectively),
motorsport remains under-explored as a valid ‘subject’ for academic scru-
tiny, analysis and debate. Indeed, the study of sport from socio-cultural
and historical perspectives germinated as an academic field in the 1960s
and 1970s, but has overwhelmingly focused on major and mega events,
as well as the big sports from predominantly British, North American
and Australian contexts and perspectives, often to the detriment and out-
right exclusion of motorsports. Hence, while remaining popular and
globally significant, motorsport itself is largely overlooked or ignored by
most scholars despite offering prime sites for explorations of sporting
histories, sporting politics and the complex web of globalisation, com-
mercialisation, mediatisation and wide-ranging socio-cultural issues that
this book seeks to address.
Of course, there are some notable exceptions. Aside from a range of
often one-off accounts that draw on motorsport as a case study to explore
aspects such as elite constellation (Nichols & Savage, 2017), event man-
agement, sponsorship, tourism and fandom, a select number of authors
have offered sustained socio-cultural critiques of motorsport. For exam-
ple, Mark Lowes and Paul Tranter have explored the politics of motors-
port in relation to urban development, the environment and place-making
in Canada and Australia predominantly (Lowes, 2004, 2018; Tranter &
Lowes, 2005, 2009a, 2009b), while Josh Newman and Michael Giardina
have provided critical insights into the cultural politics of southern mas-
culinities, religion and identity in the American NASCAR series
(Newman, 2007, 2010; Newman & Beissel, 2009; Newman & Giardina,
2008, 2009, 2010). Furthermore, via the notion of Formula One as a
glamorous and hi-tech global spectacle of speed, Damion Sturm (2011,
2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023) has traced how motorsport is con-
structed as a media spectacle, a sensory experience for audiences, and
probed some of its commercial, global and environmental aspects. Finally,
Hans Naess (2017, 2019, 2020, 2021) has examined some of the social
 Introduction 5

impacts and political ramifications of various motorsport events, devel-

opments and innovations, including explorations of the Formula E series
(see also works by Haynes & Robeers, 2020; Robeers, 2019; Robeers &
Sharp, 2020; Robeers & Van Den Bulck, 2018, 2021).
While these scholars have also authored or co-authored books which
cover aspects of Formula One (Fleming & Sturm, 2011; Naess &
Chadwick, 2023), IndyCar (Lowes, 2002), NASCAR (Newman &
Giardina, 2011), the World Rally Championship (Naess, 2014) and
Formula E (Næss & Tjønndal, 2021), the dearth of edited collections or
monographs on motorsport is also surprising, with only a sprinkling of
other academic texts available. For example, Beck-Burridge and Walton
(2000) focused on leadership and nationalism, while Mourao (2017)
probed the economics of motorsport in ways that differ to the specific
interest in sporting histories, politics and a critical socio-cultural analysis
that inform this edited collection. Alternatively, Baxa (2022) provides a
fascinating analysis of fascism in Italian motorsport which is usefully
broached via his chapter included in this volume (see chapter “The Fascist
Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia”), while the editors
also acknowledge the useful edited work on American motorsport by
Howell and Miller (2014), which predominantly focuses on develop-
ments for and issues surrounding NASCAR.
In this vein, this edited collection seeks to fill the persistent academic
gap surrounding motorsport by bringing together a team of renowned
global scholars probing various elements of global motorsport through a
critical historical, political and/or socio-cultural lens. In saying this, we
acknowledge but seek to go beyond the often valuable journalistic and
piecemeal scholarly writing on the sport. In the end, we have found our-
selves dealing principally with Formula 1, and this is largely because
Formula 1, being, as noted, a sport with a huge global following, has
attracted the most attention by academics. We look forward, however, to
seeing more historical and/or political scholarship on other motorsport
cultures—motorcycle sport, NASCAR, IndyCar, Le Mans and Formula
E, to name a few.
The chapters are set out as follows.
Following the Introduction, Part I of the book is concerned with the
origins of motor sport. In chapter “The Origins of Motor Sport in France:
6 D. Sturm et al.

Sites of Racing Memory” Éamon Ó Cofaigh examines the emergence of

motor car racing on the roads of France at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury. Chapter “The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development
of the World Rally Championship”, by Sam Tickell, Tom Evens and
Hans Erik Næss, describes the journey of the World Rally Championship
from its amateur roots to a professional championship under the current
joint ownership of multi-platform media company Red Bull Media
House and KW25.
The four chapters that comprise Part II explore the early political sig-
nificance of motor racing, looking at its links to Nazism and fascism in
Europe, to early twentieth century consumer capitalism in the United
States and to right-wing populism in Latin America. Common to these
chapters is the notion of motor racing as an important flagship for proj-
ects of nationhood and industrial modernity. In chapter “Racing and
Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich” Eberhard Reuss and
Sandra Esslinger challenge the romanticism that still attends historical
accounts of early German motor racing, showing how after the fall of the
Third Reich in 1945, the legendary Silver Arrows became strategic in
euphemising Nazi Germany and the role of Jewish racers and entrepre-
neurs was deleted from the official record.
Chapter “Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport”, by Georgios
Loizides, revolves around Henry Ford’s involvement in, and influence
on, early motor sport in the United States. Its two main parts cover, first,
the years of Ford’s direct involvement with car racing, 1901–1913, and,
second, the years following 1913, when his involvement became more
indirect and served the interests of manufacturing and sales. In particular,
it covers the 1901 and 1902 races at Grosse Ponte, which proved influen-
tial in establishing the Ford Motor Company, as well as other early racing
events in which Ford was directly involved.
Chapter “The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille
Miglia”, by Paul Baxa, discusses the connection between Italian fascism
and the Mille Miglia motor race. His argument is that the Fascist regime
used the event to trumpet its road building achievements and its ability
to ‘discipline’ Italians so that fast cars could race on the open roads with-
out impediment. Also, the race itself, given its geographical scope, was
designed to bring Fascist and Futurist ideology to the masses of Italy.
 Introduction 7

Unlike most sporting events, which are held in purpose-built venues, the
Mille Miglia was ‘brought to the people’ and was designed to embody the
ideals of the Fascist Revolution and the Fascist New Man. These ideas,
Baxa argues, carried over into the post-war revivals of the race.
Chapter “Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on
South American Populism”, by Victor Andrade de Melo and Mauricio
Drumond, completes this part. Andrade and Drumond analyse the use
of motor sport as a political tool during Getulio Vargas’s rule in Brazil
(1930–1945) and the First Peronism in Argentina (1946–1955). Both
Vargas and Juan Perón attempted to mobilise the image of modernity and
success related to motor races and their regimes. In Brazil, Vargas sup-
ported the staging of international motor races and tried to enhance the
national image through a still nationally underdeveloped sport. In
Argentina, on the other hand, Perón thrived with the success of star driver
Juan Manuel Fangio, closely associating his image to that of the Peronist
government itself, in addition to supporting an already well-stablished
motor sport field in the country.
Part III consists of two chapters and is about motor racing and the
automobile industry. A—perhaps the—key historic raison d’etre of motor
racing has been the promotion of the automobile and the desire to sell
cars. As shown in the previous part, several governments in the 1930s
gave enthusiastic support to car manufacture and/or to their racing teams.
This part offers two case studies—one of Italy where motor manufactur-
ers arguably led the way in the promotion of motor racing, and a con-
trasting one of the British motor racing scene, which was characterised by
a series of comparatively small competing non-works teams with work-
shops mostly located in ‘Motor Sport Valley’, north of London. The
Italian motor racing mogul Enzo Ferrari once famously disparaged these
teams as the ‘garagistas’, although they dominated motor racing for a
time in the 1960s and, in Bernie Ecclestone, produced arguably the most
influential entrepreneur in the sport’s history.
Chapter “Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry,
1893–1947”, by Aldo Zana, focuses principally on the years from the
first appearance of a motor car in the country through to 1940, when
Italy entered the Second World War. The years before the Great War were
a time of slow-growing mutual understanding amongst politicians,
8 D. Sturm et al.

government and the emerging motor car industry, which exploited races
for market leverage. The two decades between the Great War and the
Second World War saw the apex of motor racing celebrations as the
Fascist regime invested it with their key concepts: tight discipline, sheer
power, daring and courage, quest for victory and total supremacy. After
the Second World War, Italian motor racing, understandably, gained a
greater autonomy from the state.
In chapter “British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti”, Mark
Jenkins, Nick Henry and Tim Angus present the seven stages of the rise
of the British ‘garagistas’, beginning in the 1920s.
Part IV brings us to the politics of gender. Here the first chapter
(chapter “It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death and
the Politics of Safety in the History of Motor Racing”), by Stephen
Wagg, explores the issue of safety in motor racing and begins by describ-
ing the masculine codes that dominated the sport in its early decades and
which were used to rationalise frequent death on, or at, the track. He
then charts the development of a politics of safety in motor racing, attrib-
utable, he argues, variously to the emergence of the Grand Prix driver as
highly paid celebrity, with an eye to his (likely very comfortable) future;
the growth of motor racing as a television event; the (related) acceptance
in 1968 of on-car advertising (much of it taken up by tobacco compa-
nies) and the corresponding reluctance of these sponsors to have their
products associated with death; and the growth of the politics of wellbeing.
Throughout its storied history, motorsport has been unwelcoming to
women. Consequently, it has been necessary for female racers to develop
unique strategies to enter what has long existed as an exclusive masculine
enclave. While entry can be facilitated through a familial relationship
with a male driver, women without such connections often get their start
through participation in women-only racing events. Although these races
have provided women with the opportunity to enter the track, they have
not been without controversy. Detractors argue that women will not be
considered legitimate racers unless they compete on the same track as
men. Proponents view women-only racing not only as a way to attract
more women into the sport, but also as an important source of skill
development, support and community building. Chapter “From Powder
Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only Racing”, by Chris
 Introduction 9

Lezotte, investigates the evolution of women-only racing, from its early

introduction as a media stunt, to its current incarnation as a proving
ground for serious female open wheel racers.
In chapter “The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional
Space: The Issue of ‘Grid Girls’”, Honorata Jakubowska discusses the
vexed question of Formula 1 ‘grid girls’, introduced in the 1960s, in the
context of the wider socio-cultural changes concerning female status,
gender order and feminism that have taken place in the ensuing 60 years.
To an extent, Formula 1 has acknowledged these changes, as illustrated
by a decision made by Liberty Media in 2018 to drop ‘grid girls’ from
race weekends, but, on the other hand, F1 remains a male-dominated
world wherein women are sexualised and ‘used’ in decorative roles, as
evidenced by many of the reactions to this decision. Moreover, the issue
of women’s agency, which can be expressed, among other ways, by an
emphasis on physical attractiveness and the sexuality of a woman’s own
body, adds a new point of view to this analysis.
Part V is about motor racing and the politics of ‘race’ and offers three
case studies. The first, chapter “A Political and Economic Analysis of
South Africa’s Historical Relationship with Formula One Motor Racing,
1934–1993” by Gustav Venter, is an analysis of the white South African
driver Jody Scheckter, Formula One Champion in 1979. Scheckter was a
de facto poster boy for a pariah state, South Africa’s white supremacist
apartheid system having caused a range of sanctions to be imposed by
international sport bodies. The chapter examines South Africa’s historical
position within Formula 1 racing. It considers aspects such as the politi-
cal significance of hosting Formula One races during the apartheid era,
and considers how it was possible for this to continue during the turbu-
lent mid- to late 1970s—a period which saw the height of international
pressure directed against South African sport. The analysis also seeks to
contextualise the role of Scheckter, the 1979 Formula One world cham-
pion and to date the only South African to achieve this feat. It looks at
how Scheckter was received domestically and internationally, particularly
given the vociferous resistance experienced by South African representa-
tives in team sports such as rugby and cricket.
In chapter “On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports:
The Counter-mobility Work of NASCAR’s Wendell Scott”, by Derek
10 D. Sturm et al.

H. Alderman and Joshua Inwood, the authors explore professional

stock car racing, specifically the US-based National Association for Stock
Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and the racialised struggles and resistant
‘hard driving’ of Wendell Scott (1921–1990) of Danville, Virginia. Scott
was the first and only African American driver to win a race in the elite
division of NASCAR. He raced throughout the segregated Jim Crow
South and in what was otherwise an all-white sport, facing discrimina-
tion, humiliation and violence on and off the track. The authors offer a
critical (re)reading of Scott’s racing career as antiracist counter-mobility
work and focus on the bodily, social and technological practices he
employed to maintain and even enhance his ability to move around tracks
and to and from races. Scott did not represent his efforts in terms of civil
rights activism, but it is important to contextualise black resistance out-
side the confines of formal protest to include the struggle for survival and
material reproduction.
Lewis Hamilton is Britain’s most successful motor racing driver. In a
sport historically associated with the global elite, Hamilton has undoubt-
edly broken barriers in moving from, as he once put it, ‘the slums’ of
Stevenage (an overspill town, north of London) to the yachts of Monaco.
A central part of Hamilton’s narrative and his extraordinary career has
been his willingness to speak out on racial (and other) issues both within
and outside the sport of F1 motor racing. As arguably Britain’s highest-­
profile black celebrity athlete, Hamilton is often seen to embody a new,
multi-racial British identity. His very existence is a challenge to contem-
porary racist discourses that work to produce British identity as exclu-
sively white. Chapter “Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis
Hamilton, Race and the Resurrection of the Black Athlete”, by Ben
Carrington, critically examines the role of celebrity athletes as agents of
social change, and more specifically focuses on the contradictory ways in
which Hamilton has enacted a form of ‘celebrity antiracism’ and on his
representation by the British media.
Part VI is about motor racing, the media and postmodernity, and has
six chapters, all concerned both with the historical growth of the relation-
ship between motor racing and the mass media and the cementing of the
place of motor racing in postmodern culture. They deal, successively,
with motor racing as a television spectacle; the growth and diversification
 Introduction 11

of sponsorship of motor racing; the relationship between motor racing

and film; debates about celebrity and driver agency in motor racing;
video gaming sanctioned by Formula 1; and, in an apparent consumma-
tion of the postmodernisation of motor racing, the purchase in 2017 of
Formula 1 by a global media company, Liberty Media.
Chapter “Formula One as Television”, by Damion Sturm, is about
Formula 1 as television. Over the past 30-odd years, Formula One has
operated as a television spectacle. In the 1980s, British businessman
Bernie Ecclestone repackaged Formula One as a media event, in an effort
to streamline what had largely been a haphazard and disjointed series.
Today, cameras are placed around the track to provide continuous fram-
ing of the race, supplemented by an entertaining and informative empha-
sis on action, drama and the star drivers. Complementing this highly
mobilised fluid framing is the deployment of participatory innovations,
particularly the sustained On-Board Camera footage and access to the
driver’s comments as he races. This coverage is supported by an array of
on-screen graphics and information. Yet, although broadcasting rights
are still worth an estimated $600 million annually, the television audi-
ence has been steadily declining. Nevertheless, new audiences and digital
and social media opportunities are also presenting themselves, notably
with successful platforms for eSports, live streaming and the Drive to
Survive series on Netflix.
Next, in chapter “The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within
Formula 1” Timothy Dewhirst and Wonkyong Beth Lee chart changes
in the pattern of sponsorship for Formula 1. When Formula 1 was origi-
nated in 1950, visible sponsorship was highly limited, with only under-
stated automobile branding apparent on the nose of the race cars. Early
examples of Formula 1 sponsorship were typically function-based and
largely confined to fuel and tyre suppliers. Prominent Formula 1 team
sponsorship liveries emerged during the late 1960s and early 1970s,
which marked an important transitional period for sponsorship as
tobacco companies began turning towards sponsoring broadcast sports
events to compensate for lost broadcast advertising exposure. Cigarette
advertising had been banned from the broadcast media in various juris-
dictions, including the United Kingdom in 1965 and the United States
in 1971. By 2000, tobacco companies collectively were spending an
12 D. Sturm et al.

estimated $250 million per year on sponsoring Formula 1 teams. More

recently, the technology industry has emerged as prominent sponsors
while tobacco sponsorship has diminished in visibility due to regulatory
stipulations. Philip Morris International, however, remains a main spon-
sor of the Ferrari race team, and additional main sponsors currently
include Alfa Romeo, Petronas, Red Bull, Renault and sport betting com-
pany SportPesa. The magnitude of financial investment from Formula 1
sponsors is huge, yet ethical questions also emerge given many of the
sponsors operate in controversial product sectors such as tobacco, gam-
bling, energy drinks and oil.
Chapter ““Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love
Cars”: Motor Racing on Film” is an analysis by Seán Crosson of the
relationship between motor racing and film. Motor racing and film both
date from around the mid-1890s. With the development of film into
distinctive forms, including fiction and non-fiction, motor racing has
continued to feature as a popular subject for film, including both criti-
cally acclaimed and commercially successful films across a wide range of
genres from drama to comedy, animation and documentary. This chapter
examines the historical development of depictions of motor racing on
film, identifying some of the salient features of these depictions and their
significance with regard to both the development of film and motor racing.
Chapter “‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing
Drivers and the Politics of Celebrity: 1896 to 1992”, by Stephen Wagg,
is about British motor racing celebrity. It explores the nature of the niche
that Stirling Moss occupies in the British popular imagination as part of
a broader examination of the nature of British racing drivers as celebrities
(and otherwise) over a 100-­year period. In doing so it pays special atten-
tion to the ways in which, in the history of British motor racing, social
class and gender have combined with a particular politics of celebrity.
British motor racing has its origins largely in the upper reaches of the
British class structure and this, along with a specific form of patriotic and
predatory masculinity, has for the most part defined the celebrity con-
ferred on the British racing driver. The chapter concludes with four case
studies of British racing driver: Moss, Graham Hill, James Hunt and
Nigel Mansell. These case studies are aimed to show variations on the
theme of British racing driver celebrity and on its construction. Women
 Introduction 13

from wealthy British families have had access to motor cars and have
driven them as fast as men and they are also discussed; however, women
have invariably been excluded from the elite racing scene, except as
adornments, as anxious wives/partners, or as seekers of sexual adventure
in the hotels and paddocks of the international racing circuit.
In chapter “The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver
Agency and Celebrity Culture”, in what is essentially a sequel to the pre-
vious chapter, Damion Sturm addresses the matter of contemporary
celebrity in Formula 1 (post-1994). He discusses the central question of
the extent to which, in a sport dominated by highly sophisticated tech-
nology, the car, and not the driver, may be the star. That being the case,
how is contemporary racing driver celebrity constructed? Much of his
chapter probes how F1 attempts to re-present the ‘star in the car’ despite
these assemblages of technology, machinery and a prevailing corporate
culture. Specifically, the case studies of Michael Schumacher, Kimi
Raikkonen and Jacques Villeneuve are explored to consider different star-
driver responses to these increasing encroachments on F1 stardom.
F1 2018, the only officially licensed Formula 1 Racing video game, is
the subject of chapter “Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video
Game”, by Daniel S. Traber. The game is analysed for its ideological
properties, and Traber argues that playing the game is, effectively, a tuto-
rial in neoliberalism. Racing in expensive cars with engines built by major
manufacturers—some of them categorised as luxury brands—obviously
implicates players in the service of naturalising competition and com-
modity desire. However, to succeed in F1 2018 not only must you win
races, but you are required to interact with the technology at a headache-
inducing granular level to set up a winning car. Moreover, you must actu-
ally manage your own career; for example, choosing the way you answer
a reporter’s questions about your performance can affect team politics or
create rivalries. A game in which your existence and your occupation are
so intertwined reads like a digital reproduction of neoliberal rationality.
To the normalisation of conducting one’s life as a series of ‘rational busi-
ness decisions’ is added the worship of technology and science (i.e. privi-
leging closed notions of reason and reality imbedded in both the game’s
narrative and its very form as a race simulator), as well as embroiling
yourself in globalisation, with a seemingly benign cosmopolitan attitude,
14 D. Sturm et al.

as you export your product around the world. F1 2018, he suggests, is

about much more than pretending to drive fast machines in exotic locales,
but so too is the real F1.
Finally in this part, chapter “Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look
into the Shifting Ownership Structure of Formula One”, by Tom Evens
and Sam Tickell, examines the consequences, and likely consequences,
of the takeover of Formula 1 by the US corporation Liberty Media in
2017. First, the chapter discusses the interplay between sports and the
media business and puts corporate integration between sports and media
organisations into historical perspective. It claims that any trend towards
ownership of sports organisations had been subsiding since the late
1990s, but that vertical takeovers have received renewed interest lately.
Second, the chapter describes the shifting ownership structure of F1 and
examines the latest acquisition by Liberty Media. With this deal, the for-
mer cable company develops into an entertainment conglomerate with
multiple activities in the growing leisure business. Finally, the chapter
elaborates on the possible commercial future of F1 as a media sport and
critically examines Liberty’s strategy to grow audiences and fully embrace
digital media while protecting its broadcast television revenues.
The final five chapters that make up Part VII cover issues in the glo-
balisation of motor racing.
First we look at the decline of Western—effectively, North Atlantic—
hegemony in motor racing and its extension to other previously excluded
parts of the world. There follow four case studies—of China, Azerbaijan,
the Gulf countries and India—which explore the political motives which
have prompted various nations to see, to raise and/or to sanitise their
global profile through motor racing. The last chapter—arguably the
book’s most important—confronts Formula 1 culture as the vehicle for
capitalist mythology and environmental destruction.
Chapter “The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization, and
the Uber-Sport Spectacle”, by Jacob J. Bustad and David L. Andrews,
examines the long-standing, at times haphazard, yet nonetheless proces-
sual post-­Westernisation of Formula 1, from the North Atlantic origins of
its inaugural championship season in 1950 (wherein races were held in
Britain, Monaco, the United States, Switzerland, Belgium, France and
Italy), to the subsequent spatial distribution of Formula 1 races to
 Introduction 15

Argentina (originating in 1953); Morocco (1958); South Africa (1962);

Mexico (1963); Brazil (1973); Japan (1976); Australia (1985); Malaysia
(1999); Bahrain (2004); China (2004); United Arab Emirates (2009);
India (2011) and Russia (2014). This discussion examines the complex,
and at times contradictory, global (organisational) and local (host) politi-
cal and economic motivations behind the sport’s global expansion, and
the existence, or otherwise, of discernible geospatial phases in the post-
Western expansion of the sport. In particular, the chapter focuses on the
development of Formula 1 as a display of contemporary global sport,
characterised by a delivery and experience that emphasises the travelling
and comprehensive spectacle of elite motor racing. Yet as the authors
argue, this model of global spectacle also has particular implications in
regard to sustainability, including in regard to the future development of
the sport.
In chapter “Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula
One Racetracks”, Michael Friedman and Brandon Wallace explore the
spatial development of Formula One racetracks, which has followed the
pattern of confinement and artifice observed by geographer John Bale
(Bale, 2003) as occurring in other sports. The first Grand Prix races were
generally held on closed public roads, but as auto racing matured, dedi-
cated tracks began to be built. Since Formula One started in 1950, races
have been held on such permanent circuits, street circuits or a combina-
tion of the two as cities have sought to profit financially from these high-­
profile events. Within permanent racetracks, the spectacle of auto racing
has been confined to a defined space, often covering a large area as events
require several kilometres of road, places for spectators and support facili-
ties. Races on street circuits are held on public roads, often in downtown
areas, and local authorities close streets for several days before competi-
tors arrive in order to set up the track, temporary stands and support
areas. Civic leaders typically justify this disruption on the grounds that
these events are intended to showcase cities to global audiences.
Chapter “Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China:
State Entrepreneurialism and the Re-Imaging of Shanghai”, by Andrew
Manley and Bryan Clift, is a about place-­making and the re-imagining
of urban space. Taking stock of China’s engagement with major sporting
spectacles—and with specific emphasis on the Shanghai Chinese Grand
16 D. Sturm et al.

Prix, a round of the Formula One World Championships that began in

2004—the chapter examines the role of sport-mega events in (re)shaping
an emergent vision of the nation, one that is reflective of the desire to
embrace a persistent drive towards economic modernity whilst simulta-
neously consolidating the power of the Chinese party-state. In so doing,
reflections are raised about this strategy of place-making and place-mar-
keting that point to the problematic of belonging and expose the domi-
nant power relations that work to conceal specific populations and past
representations of place deemed inappropriate for the new and preferred
portrayal of a city and nation.
In a similar vein, David Gogishvili, in chapter “Mega-Event on the
Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku, Azerbaijan”, analyses the
recent inception of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Baku, the capital of
Azerbaijan, as part of the orchestrated effort for using international sport-
ing events to whitewash the authoritarian political regime there, has been
part of the Formula 1 Championship since 2016 and will continue hold-
ing the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix until at the earliest 2023.
Organised on the streets of downtown Baku, the F1 Grand Prix has
brought transformations in physical and regulatory terms by imposing
temporary regulations and restrictions to host this elite motor sport spec-
tacle. The result was a commercialisation, privatisation and securitisation
of parts of the city contained in the race, leading to disruption to the local
population’s daily practices in the areas directly impacted by the race,
including highly popular Baku Waterfront Boulevard, as access to such
areas was only made available to F1-related visitors and staff, and for
weeks leading up to the event.
Chapter “Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business
and Politics in the Arabian Gulf ”, by Mahfoud Amara, is about the
Middle East and discusses the growing interest shown by countries in the
Gulf Cooperation Council, particularly Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar, in
the car and motor racing industries. Bahrain was the first (in 2004) to
join the Formula 1 Circuit, followed by Abu Dhabi in 2009 and Qatar
and Saudi Arabia in 2021. It is suggested that these countries aim thereby
to diversify their revenues and decrease reliance on the oil sector; to
 Introduction 17

satisfy the local growing demand for cars and pickups; and to showcase
the mega urban development projects in cities such as Manama, Abu-
Dhabi and Doha, organised around the development of airports as hubs
for distance travel, as well as tourism, retail and real estate. All these
countries also have what is euphemistically described as poor ‘human
rights records’, leaving them open to the same charges of political ‘white-‘
or ‘sport washing’ as described in the two previous chapters.
On October 30, 2011 Sebastian Vettel won India’s first Formula One
race in front of 95,000 spectators, Bollywood stars, and the Indian
business elite. Framed as the latest sporting iteration of a thriving and
cosmopolitan India—joining the Indian Premier League and the
Commonwealth Games—the Grand Prix was meant to herald the suc-
cess of private investment in Formula One, as the race was one of the
few on the F1 schedule not subsidised by the local government. There
has been no Indian Grand Prix since. In chapter “Stray Dogs and
Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian Grand Prix?” Callie Batts
Maddox outlines the brief and tumultuous history of the Indian Grand
Prix and explains why, given in the complex politics of neoliberal India,
in this case the promised benefits of privatised sporting development
never materialised.
The final chapter (chapter “Formula One and the Insanity of Car-
Based Transportation”), by Toby Miller, Brett Hutchins, Libby Lester
and Richard Maxwell, takes the arguments of the preceding four chap-
ters further, dismissing the notion of ‘economic growth’ beloved of main-
stream economists and ‘fan boy’ commentators and indicting Formula 1
as a source of waste and environmental damage. As they point out, the
costs of participation in Formula 1 are extreme, the companies involved
massive, and the host countries engaged in cultural diplomacy shameless.
The sport provides these monsters something beyond an Olympics or a
World Cup: it occurs annually, year-round and across the world, rather
than every four years, for a month and in one region. And it promotes
‘the insanity of in-car transportation’ with deleterious effects on the
environment.
18 D. Sturm et al.

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 Part I
The Origins of Motor Sport
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France:
Sites of Racing Memory
Éamon Ó Cofaigh

Introduction
While the motorcar was invented in Germany, it was in France that
motor racing was primarily exploited to promote the automobile, whose
birth in the late nineteenth century was greeted with a mixture of awe
and scepticism. City-to-city races showed the automobile’s potential
before a series of accidents prompted the establishment of what are now
iconic racing circuits in France. The name ‘Le Mans’ is particularly evoca-
tive of the automobile and motor racing. Its circuit, which uses the public
roads on the city’s outskirts, predates the first twenty-four-hour race held
in 1923. Le Mans has maintained strong links with the development of
automobile tourism and offers the amateur enthusiast an alternative to
the machines that reach incredible speeds on modern-day closed circuits.
The town of Deauville, which sports enthusiasts associate more readily

É. Ó. Cofaigh (*)
School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (French), University of Galway,
Galway, Ireland
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 23

D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_2
24 É. Ó. Cofaigh

with horseracing, also hosted early Grands Prix and thus occupies an
important place in the automobile’s history. This chapter examines how
French roads became testing grounds for the earliest cars, and how the
transition of motor racing from public highways to specially dedicated
closed circuits led to the creation of sites of racing memory in France,
which remain inextricably linked to the democratization of the car.
Coined by French historian Pierre Nora in his celebrated edited work,
the term lieux de mémoire refers to places that have been so imbued with
commemorative importance that they have become unforgettable, con-
stituent parts of the French collective mentality. Nora’s collection of
essays by historians and cultural commentators examines such sites of
memory to elucidate France’s past. These sites may be ‘any significant
entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of
human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the
memorial heritage of any community’ (Nora, 1997). They vary from war
memorials, through the Vichy regime, the Marseillaise, and the Cathedral
in Reims, to the Tour de France. These lieux de mémoire chronicle the
history of France from the perspective of its collective memory. It is in
this spirit that we now explore sites of racing memory in France.
These sites vary from turn-of-the-century city-to-city races to short
dashes in the late nineteenth century aimed initially at breaking the
100 km/h barrier, and later to determine which fuel source was the most
sustainable for use in the rapidly democratizing automobile. Paris was the
natural starting point for the majority of these endeavours. Indeed, the
vast majority of racing sites germinated due to their close links with the
French capital. The popular seaside resorts of Dieppe, Deauville and
Trouville on the Normandy coast are such well-known tourist attractions
because of their proximity to Paris. Moreover, the Parisian upper classes
who spent so much of their time on the turn-of-the-century Côte Fleurie
were seen as a willing audience to be seduced by the automobile industry.
While races from Paris to the Normandy coast and back were conse-
quently gaining popularity, across the country, on the Côte d’Azur, a
different form of testing racing cars developed. Called Courses de côte (hill
climbs), the earliest versions took place from Nice to La Turbie near the
Franco-Italian border. As motor sport gradually began to democratize the
car, Gordon Bennett Jr., wealthy owner of the New York Herald, served as
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 25

an important catalyst in the growth of the sport when he inaugurated the

first international races, precursors to the modern Grand Prix. Le Mans,
just 200 km to the west of Paris, also played a significant role in the early
development of motoring. In this chapter, the genesis of motor racing in
France will be discussed through sites of racing memory, showing how
sport helped the automobile establish a foothold.

Paris
Although Gottlieb Daimler invented the internal combustion engine in
Germany in the 1880s, the automobile developed more quickly in France
for several reasons. Firstly, France’s road network allowed the transition
from horse-drawn vehicles to the automobile to be made without too
much difficulty. Napoleon Bonaparte’s creation at the turn of the nine-
teenth century of a star-shaped road network with Paris as the hub
allowed easy access to and from the capital. Paris was itself capable of
accommodating the motor car, having been rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth
century by Baron Haussmann under Napoleon III’s orders. Fashionable
houses were built on elegant boulevards with open intersections designed
to deter the building of barricades by rebels but which now allowed for
the coexistence of horseless and horse-drawn carriages (Pinkney, 1958).
A second major factor was French entrepreneurs’ foresight and anxiety
to make up ground lost as a result of France’s belated and partial indus-
trial revolution. The traditional famille artisanale only began to industri-
alize in the latter half of the nineteenth century. These small businesses
typically engaged in metal and woodworking trades and thus had both
the necessary flexibility and the existing infrastructure to turn their work-
shops into automobile manufacturing plants. These family-run work-
shops rapidly established themselves as the core of what came to be
known as the Second Industrial Revolution in France (Levin, 2010).
Thus, by the turn of the twentieth century, France had over 600 car man-
ufacturers compared with fewer than 100 in the rest of Western Europe
and the United States put together (Laux, 1976).
As regards automobile racing, the French aristocracy was mainly
responsible for the first attempts to codify the sport. The nobility actively
26 É. Ó. Cofaigh

supported and participated in sports and, indeed, the Jockey-club de Paris,

a gathering of the elite of nineteenth-century French society, was an
example of this close link. Two members of this exclusive club formed
two-thirds of the founding members of the Automobile Club de France
(ACF) in 1895. The Comte de Dion, Baron de Zuylen and Paul Meyan,
a journalist with Le Figaro and editor of the newsletter La France
Automobile, met in September 1895 to create the world’s first automobile
club. De Dion was nominated club president, which he immediately
ceded to de Zuylen as he saw his position as a car manufacturer at the
time as a conflict of interest. The Association Internationale des Automobile-­
Clubs Reconnus, created in 1904, was the predecessor to the Fédération
Internationale de l’Automobile, which would come into being in 1947, as
the body with which the ACF organized its international races. Its head-
quarters is located next door to the ACF at 8 Place de la Concorde
in Paris.
The growth in automobile racing was also to have its effects on the
highly politicized arena of journalism. The Comte de Dion and Pierre
Giffard found themselves on opposite sides of one of the most significant
political scandals in French history, the Dreyfus Affair, which involved
the wrongful conviction (and later exoneration) of a Jewish officer in the
French army on charges of treason. Giffard founded sport newspaper Le
Vélo in 1892 and pursued an active role in promoting both bicycles and
automobiles; thus, his paper was widely used for the advertising of these
vehicles (Dauncey, 2008). One such manufacturer was the Comte de
Dion, a vocal anti-Dreyfusard. De Dion became involved in a highly
publicized spat with the French president Émile Loubet at the Auteuil
races, for which he was jailed for fifteen days. Having been heavily criti-
cized by Giffard in the newspaper he sponsored extensively, de Dion
removed his advertising from Le Vélo and with several other industrialists,
including the Michelin brothers, created a new newspaper, L’Auto-Vélo,
in 1900, with Henri Desgranges as editor-in-chief. It became L’Auto in
January 1903 when Giffard successfully sued the paper for infringement
of his own paper’s name. Hence, it was L’Auto in 1903 that was respon-
sible for the creation and organization of the celebrated Tour de France
cycle race.
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 27

The popular press was experiencing substantial development with

growing literacy levels in society, and each newspaper was striving to
come up with ideas to increase its readership—a vital link developed
between journalism and the expansion of sport. As sport was of growing
interest, it was seen by journalists as a means of acquiring and then main-
taining a high readership. The coverage of a sporting event that lasted
over a number of days or even weeks was used as a tool to promote the
regular purchase of newspapers. Giffard, as editor-in-chief of Le Petit
Journal, the largest-selling newspaper of the 1890s, had organized in
1891 a bicycle race from Bordeaux to Paris; this was followed in the same
year by Paris-Brest-Paris. These bicycle races had allowed Giffard to create
a daily column relating to the race build-up and the preparations involved,
encouraging readers to buy their paper each day for the duration of the
race period to learn about each competitor’s progress (Dauncey, 2008).
This paper-selling technique was the reason for the creation by L’Auto of
the Tour de France. It was only a matter of time before this practice was
adapted and used as a model to promote a motoring event.
The first attempts to test automobile efficiency in public were orga-
nized as early as 1887 when the French newspaper Le Vélocipède illustré
announced the holding of a ‘reliability’ trial (Studeny, 1995). The event
involved a short run from Paris to Versailles. Only one competitor showed
up, however, and the event had to be abandoned. The following year, the
same trial was organized. This time, two automobiles turned up; the trial
was carried out and completed, but little importance has been given to it
since the two cars involved were both by the same manufacturer, the
Comte de Dion. An automobile was allowed to take part in the Paris-­
Brest-­Paris bicycle race of 1891. This race also saw the first instance of
pneumatic tyres used in a race. The Michelin brothers convinced the
renowned cyclist Charles Terront to use their invention on his entry.
While having to stop to repair numerous punctures, the pneumatics’
ability to cope with the rough terrain helped Terront to a famous victory
(Souvestre, 1907). Terront finished the course some seventeen minutes
before the only participating car, which indicates why the first authentic
automobile race was not to take place for another number of years.
Having sponsored the Paris-Brest-Paris bike race, Pierre Giffard
decided to apply his model to a motoring trial. Having seen the
28 É. Ó. Cofaigh

automobile first-hand in 1891, Giffard organized and publicized a trial

for Voitures sans Chevaux (horseless carriages) to be held on the public
roads between Paris and Rouen in 1894 (Studeny, 1995). It was not a
race, but a reliability trial intended to assess the potential of the motor
car. Unlike previous attempts, this event garnered a considerable level of
interest, not least due to front-page promotion by Giffard in Le Petit
Journal. It began to catch the public’s attention, and what has been quali-
fied as a ‘significant’ crowd turned out at Porte-Maillot for the departure
on 11 June 1894 (Varey, 2003). Of the 102 entrants, twenty-one appeared
on the start line, and seventeen made it to the finish. As reliability and
practicality were the order of the day, the automobile that finished first
was not awarded first prize. The Comte de Dion on a steam engine of his
invention crossed the line first; his vehicle, as it required a stoker, was
deemed impractical. The first prize was jointly awarded to the second-
and third-­placed vehicles, both petrol-powered. De Dion covered the dis-
tance of 127 km in six hours and forty-eight minutes, giving him an
average speed of just over 18 km/h with all competitors stopping for
lunch during the event.
Giffard was immediately approached to organize an automobile race in
1895 but declined as he was unwilling to run an event on open roads
with vehicles capable of reaching what were perceived to be dangerously
high speeds. De Dion and Baron de Zuylen duly organized the Paris-­
Bordeaux-­Paris race. The choice of route may have been modelled on the
first city-to-city bicycle race, which had successfully run from Bordeaux
to Paris in 1891. This route was also chosen to show those still sceptical
about the automobile that it could cover a large distance with a mini-
mum of mechanical issues. By linking two of France’s largest cities, it
demonstrated the functional role of the car.
While car trials were a thing of the past, with people wanting to know
which car was the fastest, practicality remained a primary concern.
Although French engineer Emile Levassor on a Panhard finished the race
first, in a time of forty-eight hours and forty-eight minutes (averaging
24.5 km/h), he was not awarded first prize since his automobile only had
two seats and was thus not considered viable (Volti, 2004). However, his
achievement is remembered by a statue situated at the start/finish line in
Porte-Maillot, Paris. Commissioned by the ACF in 1898, a year after
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 29

Levassor’s death, the monument was originally to be sculpted by Jules

Dalou. However, upon Dalou’s death in 1902, one of his students,
Camille Lefèvre, completed the Greco-Roman-style triumphal arch in
1907. The arch, which depicts Levassor in his car being watched by
onlookers, remains there to this day (Laux, 1976).
The new-born ACF decided to hold city-to-city races on an annual
basis. Race organizers chose routes that always incorporated Paris as a
starting point but gradually moved further away in their destination.
Paris-Bordeaux-Paris covered a total distance of almost 1200 km; the fol-
lowing year, the race distance was extended to more than 1700 km for the
Paris-Marseille-Paris race. The year 1898 may have seen a shorter race but
with a much more significant destination as it was from Paris to
Amsterdam; political borders were crossed as the automobile proved
capable of linking countries. Races linking Paris with Berlin, Vienna and
Madrid followed; these were interspersed with some national competi-
tions, including the Tour de France automobile in 1899, organized by Paul
Meyan and Le Matin, a full four years before the cycling version
(Cadène, 2005).
The largest sporting event in 1903 was not the inaugural Tour de France
bicycle race but the Paris-Madrid road race organized by the ACF, which
left from Versailles on 24 May 1903 in front of a reputed 200,000 specta-
tors (Dauncey & Hare, 2003). A further two million people lined the
roads from Paris to Bordeaux. According to newspaper reports, the entire
population of Bordeaux (around 200,000) came out to see the arrival at
the end of the first stage of this race (Dauncey & Hare, 2003). However,
a spate of fatal accidents brought about the cancellation of the Bordeaux-­
Madrid stage of the race. Among the victims was Marcel Renault, brother
of Louis, co-founder of the Renault company. The ill-fated Paris-Madrid
race signalled the banning of city-to-city races in France as it was deemed
impossible to adequately marshal motor races on open roads (Rousseau,
1985). An early form of circuit racing now came into being. Roads were
closed to public use to form a circuit; this became the compromise
required by the authorities to allow racing to continue.
While these races tested reliability, many manufacturers remained
unconvinced of the feasibility of the internal combustion engine. The late
1890s saw the beginning of a struggle for power between three types of
30 É. Ó. Cofaigh

vehicle: internal combustion, steam and electric. Each vehicle had its
qualities and its weaknesses. Electric cars were quiet and reliable; how-
ever, their battery never lasted more than forty or fifty kilometres, and
given the fact that they were challenging to recharge outside urban envi-
rons, they were essentially seen as city cars. Steam-powered automobiles
worked along the same lines as locomotive engines, albeit in a smaller
form; these cars required a chauffeur, literally a heater, to stoke the engine
with fuel to provide the steam to propel the car. Steam cars, therefore,
required two people to run and were quite large and cumbersome. They
were also slow to start as twenty minutes was generally needed for an
automobile to build up a head of steam. Internal combustion engines
were noisy, smelly and largely unreliable; however, they could cover large
distances, and for those who converted from steam, their chauffeur now
drove the car.
La France Automobile, essentially the journalistic organ of the ACF,
initiated a series of short speed tests in the late 1890s. A straight stretch
of road in the Parc Agricole d’Achères near Paris was the venue chosen for
these sprints, and in 1898 Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the world’s
first land speed record when he achieved 63 km/h driving a Jeantaud, an
electric vehicle (Chanaron, 1983). In 1899, Belgian driver Camille
Jenatzy, nicknamed The Red Devil, broke the 100 km/h barrier for the
first time, driving another electric car named La Jamais Contente (Never
Satisfied) (Souvestre, 1907). However, it was becoming apparent that
there was no scope for improvement in electric batteries’ power or lon-
gevity; steam, and particularly internal combustion, remained a more
viable option. Engineer Léon Serpollet procured the bragging rights for
steam when he broke the land speed record in April 1902, driving his
Oeuf de Pâques (Easter Egg) along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, to
record a speed of 120 km/h (Chanaron, 1983). Within a matter of
months, prominent American William K. Vanderbilt II drove a French
Mors at 122 km/h to become the first internal combustion-powered
automobile to hold the land speed record. This signalled the beginning of
the end for steam power, as petrol, in winning both reliability and speed
trials, was proving its ability to answer the needs of drivers.
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 31

La Côte Fleurie

Having the closest resorts to Paris, early seaside vacationing in France
began in Normandy in the nineteenth century. The upper classes made
these resorts their summer destination primarily for their proximity to
Paris (Bertho-Lavenir, 1999). It was becoming easier to reach the sea
from the capital, and the construction of the rail line to the region in
1848 meant that it was possible to access Normandy’s golden beaches
within five hours. An iconic poster of the time, which was subsequently
commemorated on a stamp, shows members of the upper classes in the
sea off the coast of Cabourg trying to catch a bewitching mermaid dressed
in white, the caption reading ‘Cabourg à 5 heures de Paris’. Hotels and
particularly casinos began to spring up in these towns as the wealthy
classes made their way there. In the 1850s, the town of Trouville was the
preferred holiday retreat of Napoleon III’s court, and it was his half-­
brother, the Duc de Morny, who identified the marshland across from
Trouville as the perfect location for a new town to be built specifically to
welcome increased tourism to the area (Hébert, 2012). This new town,
Deauville, was constructed with upper-class holiday-making in mind.
The growth in popularity of the automobile among the wealthier
classes in the early twentieth century gave the so-called Côte Fleurie a
new lease of life following the economic downturn which had occurred
in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war (Smith, 2006). With the
advent of the automobile, members of the upper classes enjoyed further
autonomy as their latest purchase duly made its way to the nearest seaside
resort. In 1911, the Comte Le Marois had the surroundings of the race-
course at Deauville-La Touques redeveloped in the image of Longchamp
racecourse in Paris (De Villiers, 1921). Coco Chanel opened her second
boutique in Deauville in 1913, and the fashion store Printemps also
opened its first shop outside of Paris there (Madsen, 2009). The resorts
were places in which the gentry wished to be seen, and several artists and
writers also made this area their summer home. Marcel Proust was among
them, being chauffeur-driven to Cabourg and spending every summer
from 1907 to 1914 in the Grand Hotel; he used the town as a model
‘Balbec’ in his epic novel À la recherche du temps perdu (Karlin, 2007).
32 É. Ó. Cofaigh

André Citroën became emblematic of the type of wealthy Parisian who

brought his family to stay in a rented villa and strolled along the
‘Promenade des Planches’ (Aubenas & Demange, 2007). Thus, the per-
ception of the town of Deauville is critical as Bertho-Lavenir refers to the
importance of its image in the press and also, crucially, to its role as the
standard-bearer for automobile-oriented tourism (Bertho-Lavenir, 1999).
Leisure activities were of particular importance to the upper classes. In
consequence, these resorts incorporated the facilities to host events that
would amuse their clientele (Huggins, 1994). Horse racing was seen as
the principal sport on the social calendar, and with the emergence of
Deauville as a resort, horse races began to be held there. The Grand Prix
de Deauville (originally called the Coupe de Deauville), a prestigious flat
race, first run in 1866, still exists today (Pinçon & Pinçon-Charlot,
1994). The nascent motor industry also invested in this area by running
one of the first automobile trials from Paris to Trouville in 1897 (Ribémon
& Toombs, 2010). This race was a resounding success as it attempted to
exploit the established interest in equine sport and transfer it to the auto-
mobile that was gaining currency as a means of transportation. The choice
of route for the race was by no means arbitrary, as it showed the possibil-
ity to reach the sea outside the constraints of the train timetable. A speed
trial was held at Deauville in 1901, and again the following year, the
success of which is attested to by the specialist newspaper La Locomotion
(9 August 1902). Motor racing was to remain popular in the region as
Dieppe vied with Le Mans for the hosting of the first-ever motor racing
Grand Prix and the inaugural Grand Prix Automobile de France (Bonté
et al., 2006). Although unsuccessful in securing this pioneering race,
Dieppe went on to host the following four Grands Prix de France in
1906, 1908, and then, after a three-year break, in 1911 and 1912
(Ribémon & Toombs, 2010). Deauville would also go on to welcome the
Grand Prix de France in 1936 when the race was run in the streets of the
town in what was an imitation of Monaco, where the first street race had
taken place in 1929 (Jacob, 1973).
Early tourism in Normandy was fuelled by the upper classes as they left
Paris to holiday. Initially linked via train and later by car, the Côte Fleurie
was the initial seaside destination of choice of the Parisian wealthier
classes and remained so until sufficient advances in the road network and
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 33

the car itself allowed for the possibility of reaching the Côte d’Azur with
relative ease. The emergence of the Côte Fleurie as a tourist destination at
the turn of the twentieth century was closely linked to that of the car; this
was evidenced by the number of automotive events staged in the area.
The growth of the resort towns of Dieppe, Cabourg, Trouville and
Deauville and their subsequent use as destinations for automobile trials
and races are a clear reminder of their place in early motor sport, which
was ever-democratizing as new forms of trials were inaugurated to further
test and promote the automobile.

Courses de Côte
One of the oldest forms of motor sport, the hill climb, has in more recent
times evolved into a spectator-oriented motorcycle event where competi-
tors try to climb an excessively steep grass-covered slope before falling
back down again. The original Courses de Côte (from the French word for
hill) tested not only engines but also brakes and tyres as cars made their
way up an undulating route which comprised several hairpin turns while
climbing rapidly from sea level up to significant altitudes. A famous
example is the course de côte du Mont Ventoux, which was inaugurated in
1902. The Mont Ventoux in the Drôme département in France is particu-
larly resonant as it is a feature of the Tour de France cycle race and the
place where British cyclist Tom Simpson died, near the summit, during
the 1967 Tour. The last motoring edition run on Mont Ventoux was in
2002, with the only category being Véhicule Historique de Compétition.
Perhaps the closest modern example of the course de côte is the Pikes Peak
International Hill Climb (also known as ‘The race to the clouds’) in the
Rocky Mountains in Colorado, which has been holding an annual event
since 1916.
Often integrated into a larger event, the course de côte involved a stag-
gered start, much like modern-day rally competitions. The competitors
came to the start and left one by one at regular intervals from the bottom
of the hill, the goal being to reach the top as quickly as possible. The
event generally took place over a weekend, sometimes over a single day if
the course’s length and the number of competitors allowed it. The drivers
34 É. Ó. Cofaigh

were generally entitled to two or three test climbs, which preceded the
timed climbs. The final result was determined by the best time, the addi-
tion of the times, or the average of the times achieved. Thus, how the
winner was determined varied depending on the rules in place.
The town of La Turbie is located on the winding roads that lead from
the Mediterranean coast up into the Alps. It is famous for its Trophy of
Augustus (le trophée des Alpes), a thirty-five-metre-high monument built
circa six BC to celebrate Emperor Augustus’ military victories over the
tribes inhabiting the Alps and which was partially destroyed during the
War of the Spanish Succession by order of Louis XIV. The road itself was
to become famous later as it was on one of the hairpins that Princess
Grace of Monaco suffered a stroke and lost control of her car in the now-­
famous fatal accident.
The first Nice-La Turbie course de côte was the final leg of a larger three-­
stage race which ran between Marseille-Fréjus-Nice-La Turbie from
29–31 January 1897. The race was the brainchild of journalist Paul
Meyan, who had previously been involved in creating the Automobile
Club de France. Originally from Marseille, Meyan’s local roots probably
played a role in his decision to launch a race from there. This first hill
climb would have tested cars’ power and reliability under extreme exer-
tion, notably their brakes and several other technical components. The
undulating nature of the climbing route allowed numerous spectators a
good vantage point as they crowded into the grassy areas adjacent to the
winding road. The race was organized and run by the Automobile Vélo
Club de Nice created in 1896. This auto club purportedly organized the
first Concours d’élégance automobile in 1899 (Le Matin: derniers télé-
grammes de la nuit, 1 February 1899). These competitions, which pre-
dated the car, initially involved parades of horse-drawn carriages, which
were gradually replaced by ‘horseless’ vehicles. Thus, the early races not
only provided the means by which automobiles could be tested, but they
also offered platforms for manufacturers to show both the aesthetic and
mechanical qualities of their vehicles.
In 1897, the hill climb started from the centre of Nice, went through
the Route de Gênes (now the Grande Corniche), then passed in front of
the Mont-Gros observatory to end at the entrance to La Turbie, a village
located 450 metres above sea level and on the border of the Principality
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 35

of Monaco. This third stage, the course de côte, was to be retained into the
early twentieth century. The first edition was won by André Michelin,
driving a steam-powered De Dion et Bouton automobile; he covered the
16.6 km in 31 minutes and 50 seconds (an average speed of 31 km/h)
(Lottman, 2003). Having previously participated in the Paris-Bordeaux-­
Paris (1895) and Paris-Trouville (1897) races, the older of the Michelin
brothers won two of the three stages in the Marseille-Fréjus-Nice-La
Turbie race (Le Sport universel illustré, 15 February 1897). As previously
explored, the Comte de Dion was instrumental in the growth of the auto-
mobile and motor racing at the time, with five of the first ten cars to
finish bearing his name.
With the inauguration of the first course de côte, this new sporting dis-
cipline was to become adopted elsewhere in France, as well as in Belgium
and further afield. Also organized by Paul Meyan in 1898, the course de
côte de Chanteloup on the outskirts of Paris became, arguably, the most
famous example of this racing discipline. It was the stage that was retained
by the Automobile Vélo Club de Nice and continued to be held on an
almost annual basis up until 1939.

Gordon Bennett: Urbi et Orbi

The aforementioned wealthy American journalist Gordon Bennett played
a significant role in the promotion of international motor racing. He
sponsored the world’s first international race, inviting competitors from
different countries to compete for the Gordon Bennett trophy; Bennett
was later to sponsor an annual ballooning competition (1906–1938).
James Gordon Bennett (1841–1918) was born in New York. He was the
son of an Irish-American mother and a Scottish-American father who
owned the famous New York Herald, the leading American newspaper of
the day. When he took over the reins from his father in 1866, he was
twenty-five and keen to spread the family firm abroad. Gordon Bennett
had a keen sense of the newsworthy and publicized his Herald with a
series of publicity stunts, such as Arctic and African expedition sponsor-
ships, predecessors to the Citroën ‘Raids’ (rallies) of the 1920s and 1930s
as they used exploration to promote sales. Bennett was also an avid sailor,
36 É. Ó. Cofaigh

having won the first transatlantic yacht race in 1866. As a sports fan and,
much like Giffard, seeing sports promotion as a means of expanding
newspaper readership, he inaugurated competitions in yachting, football
and boxing.
Bennett moved to Paris in 1877 where he established the Paris Herald;
he was, therefore, in France at the birth of the motor car and was ideally
placed to observe its progress. Consequently, in announcing the inaugu-
ration of his Coupe Internationale, his aim was to transform motor sport
into an international phenomenon. The first international races followed
a set of rules devised by Bennett but enforced by the ACF. Each annual
race was open to a maximum of three entries per nation, and they were
to be held in the country of the winner of the previous year’s race
(Besquent, 1985). The cars of each nation were to be painted a national
colour irrespective of their manufacturer. French cars were painted blue,
American cars red, Belgian cars yellow, Italian cars black and German
cars white. As there was no British entry in the inaugural race and since
the three traditional colours from the British flag were taken by other
countries, the Napier driven by Selwyn Edge in 1901, which won in
1902, was green, and this is reputedly the source of British Racing Green.
While initially quite farcical affairs, with only France filling its quota
of three cars, it was not until the French were defeated that manufacturers
and the public opened their eyes to the competition’s worth. In its third
year, a British car, a Napier, won the Paris-Vienna race, albeit in some-
what fortunate circumstances as the three leading cars, all of which were
French, each broke down in quick succession. A dramatic rise in the
number of entries in the French qualifying competition for the following
year is indicative of the importance attached to this result in France.
Equally, 1903 saw the largest number of entries in the race, twice the
number of the previous year, with full quotas of competitors for the first
time from Germany, Britain and the United States.
As a British driver had won the 1902 race, it was now Britain’s respon-
sibility to act as hosts, which proved problematic. Britain had been hos-
tile towards the automobile, and the Red Flag Law set a speed limit of
twelve miles per hour on British roads and stipulated that all motor cars
be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag (Laux, 1976). Although
this law had been repealed by 1903, speed limits were still maintained, so
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 37

it was decided that the race would be hosted in Ireland, where a relax-
ation of speed laws was permitted on rural roads but not in towns. The
racing track consisted of two circuits forming a figure ‘8’ centred on the
town of Athy, County Kildare. On seven points where the track passed
through towns, there were non-racing zones where the cars followed a
bicycle through the town. This was the first example of an international
motor race which took place outside of France; it was also the first time
motor sport was attracting global attention. Camille Jenatzy, driving a
Mercedes, won the race, thereby taking the Gordon Bennett Trophy to
Germany, and with it the privilege of hosting the following race.
The final two Gordon Bennett races in 1904 and 1905 took place in a
highly charged political atmosphere. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870
was still a matter of contention in some areas, and this was no more evi-
dent than in Alsace, which France had ceded to what was to become
Germany in the aftermath of their high-profile military defeat. Léon
Théry’s 1904 victory on German soil and subsequent triumphant return
to France through Alsace, where he and his supporters were ordered to
hide their Tricolours, demonstrated the motor car’s potential to become
a symbol of national pride (Besquent, 1985). The ostentatious welcom-
ing of Théry by the president of France on the Champs-Élysées further
augmented the event’s political impact (Breyer, 1984). The final Gordon
Bennett race consequently took place in France and was the centre of
media attention across the globe. Léon Théry’s triumph for the second
year in a row became front-page news simultaneously in France, Britain
and the United States, among other countries; in doing so, it relegated
the Russo-Japanese War to page 2 (Besquent, 1985).
The Gordon Bennett Cup (1900–1905) internationalized motor sport
when it seemed that France would continue to monopolize the sport for
years to come. Bennett harnessed the French method of organizing rac-
ing, even going so far as to use the ACF to organize his races. He based
his initial race in France, but by stipulating that the winner must host the
following year’s event, he opened the door for other nations, in time, to
establish themselves in motor racing; this also provided a focal point to
develop further growth. Bennett’s cup acted as a catalyst for motor sport
development as it evolved into a phenomenon visible on the world stage.
These races, however, left France increasingly frustrated. While other
38 É. Ó. Cofaigh

nations often struggled to assemble a team, France held annual qualifiers

to choose its representatives. Thus, with only three French cars out of
twenty-nine qualifying for the 1904 race, manufacturers like Clément-­
Bayard, Darracq, De Dietrich, Gobron-Brillié, Hotchkiss, Panhard,
Serpollet and Turcat-Méry found themselves absent from the interna-
tional sporting spotlight. When the Gordon Bennett Cup was born in
1899, the motor industry was still struggling to make their products
viable, but by 1905, the United States had overtaken France as the world’s
largest automobile producer (Laux, 1976).
Turn-of-the-century motor racing was a reliability exercise more than
a sporting event; however, the success of the Gordon Bennett Cup meant
that the sport was becoming, to an even greater extent, an arena in which
constructors marketed their products. Responding to the French inability
to cater for all its manufacturers, the ACF decided to boycott the 1906
Gordon Bennett competition. Instead it inaugurated a race in which all
car producers could have a chance to compete without limiting entries.
Bennett, in turn, withdrew sponsorship from his motor race and created
the Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett in 1906 for balloons, an event
that exists to this day (Dauncey & Hare, 2014). He followed this, in
1909, by sponsoring The Gordon Bennett in Reims, an airplane race that
continued until World War I. It is particularly apt that the street named
in Bennett’s honour in Paris is located beside the Stade Roland Garros,
the tennis centre that commemorates a renowned World War I pilot who
was the first person to fly across the Mediterranean.

Le Mans: Continuities and Changes

When the name Le Mans is mentioned, it is the twenty-four-hour car
race that springs to mind for most people. While the Le Mans 24 heures
is universally recognized, the role of this town in the evolution of motor
sport goes back much further than the 1923 start date of the first twenty-
four-hour race. As host of the world’s first Grand Prix in 1906, Le Mans
holds a singular place in motor sporting history, but the automobile
tracks stretch back even further in the history of the town and area, which
can justifiably claim to be the hub of motor sport in France.
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 39

The department of La Sarthe was home to the Bollée family. Originally

bell makers, this family took up car construction when steam locomotion
was being developed. Amédée-Ernest Bollée invented L’Obéissante (the
feminine form of the adjective ‘obedient’), a twelve-seat estate car that
was advertised as the ‘first road locomotive’ in 1873 (Bonté et al., 2006).
This vehicle made national news in 1875 when Bollée drove it the 200 km
that separate Le Mans and Paris. In 1878 La Mancelle, meaning a female
native of Le Mans, became the first automotive vehicle to be presented at
the Exposition Universelle de Paris (Cadène, 2005). Such was the lack of
familiarity with this new mode of transport that, being steam-powered, it
was classified in the railroad section. As previously mentioned, the com-
pany’s Nouvelle took part in the first ever automobile race, the 1895 Paris-­
Bordeaux-­Paris. Many vehicles built by Bollée won various small races
over this period, including Paris-Dieppe (1897) and Paris-Trouville
(1898), and in 1898, Léon Bollée took part in the highly publicized
world land speed record attempts averaging 60 km/h. The Bollée family
was a prime example of the success that could be had with the automo-
bile. Their success inspired an ethic of innovation in the region of La
Sarthe. This spirit infused the ambition of an entire community to mobi-
lize in order to attract what was to become the largest race of the time to
Le Mans (Plessix, 1992).
In late 1905 the ACF announced that a new Grand Prix would be held
the following year, allowing three entries from each automobile manufac-
turer. The newspaper L’Auto announced ‘the Race for the Circuit’ on 1
December 1905 (Bonté et al., 2006). Among the seventeen proposals was
one from Georges Durand on behalf of the Circuit du Mans, received on
15 December, just fourteen days after the original advertisement. Before
the end of 1905, Durand had acquired the financial backing of the
General Council of the Sarthe and had convinced the board members of
the ACF to visit the proposed circuit, a triangular formation joining the
towns of Le Mans, St Calais and La Ferté Bernard (Cadène, 2005). After
examining the proposal and visiting the proposed circuit between 14 and
16 January, the ACF declared on 17 January 1906 that La Sarthe would
host the inaugural Grand Prix de l’ACF in 1906. The Automobile Club de
la Sarthe was created on 24 January 1906 and immediately made the
Baron de Zuylen (the then president of the ACF) and Amédée Bollée
40 É. Ó. Cofaigh

honorary presidents (Plessix, 1992). Durand was elected general secre-

tary, having turned down the opportunity to become president; it was a
role that he was to retain until 1938. An energetic fundraising campaign
ensued, the circuit was prepared, and on 26–27 June, the race took place
on the 103.16 km circuit, which every car had to complete six times on
each of the two days. Twenty-three French cars took part in this race,
which, despite a significant attendance, made a loss for the Automobile
Club de la Sarthe (ACS), with most of the spectators deciding to watch
the race from areas where it was free rather than paying for entry into the
main stand (Bonté et al., 2006). This setback notwithstanding, the entire
weekend was deemed a success by the ACF, and Le Mans went down in
history for having hosted the first Grand Prix.
Le Mans is best known for its twenty-four-hour race, the launch of
which came after more than twenty years of groundwork and was to
become the world’s most famous annual race. The 24 Heures du Mans was
the brainchild of Georges Durand who, becoming worried about the
enduring relevance of motor sport in its current form, held a meeting
during the Salon de l’Automobile of 1922 with Charles Faroux, of the
newspapers L’Auto and La Vie Automobile, and with Émile Coquille of
Rudge-Withworth, well-known wheel makers (Bonté et al., 2006). It was
decided that motor racing needed to be simplified and made more acces-
sible. It was by now apparent that cars were reasonably reliable and could
reach high speeds. However, race cars were moving further and further
from the vehicles on the roads, and technical advances were no longer of
direct benefit to the everyday driver. Coquille believed that car lights and
starters were particularly behind the times and that, in the interests of
building a safer car, a high-profile night race was needed (Plessix, 1992).
Durand suggested a twenty-four-hour race instead as this would put the
lights to the test, while pushing man and machine to the limit. It was
agreed that the race of ‘tourism cars’ would take place during the second
half of June, when days are at their longest, and that the race was to run
from four o’clock in the afternoon until the same time the following day.
The Le Mans start was the initiative introduced to test the cars’ starters;
this involved the drivers lining up on one side of the road and, once the
French flag was dropped at four o’clock sharp, French time, running
across the road, jumping into their vehicle, starting it up and driving off.
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 41

The advent of racing harnesses did nothing to stop this practice, and it
took the actions of a racing driver to show the lunacy of competing at
getting into racing harnesses. In 1969, instead of running across to his
car, Jacky Ickx, the eventual winner, made a point of strolling across the
track and belting up carefully before driving off. The following year
would see the race start with the drivers already strapped into their cars.
However, the Le Mans start did ensure that Durand and Coquille accom-
plished the two goals they had set for themselves: testing the starters and
lights of the cars.
The Le Mans 24 heures has continued to be used as a testing ground for
new technologies, and aerodynamics improved immensely over the early
years due to the long straights on the circuit. Disc brakes were first used
at Le Mans in 1953. Alternative fuel sources have also been tested here,
from ethanol, used on a class-winning Porsche in 1980, to a diesel-­
powered Audi that won three successive races from 2006 to 2008. Audi
managed to achieve from diesel a similar speed to that typically obtained
from a petrol-powered car. This, allied with the fuel economy of diesel,
meant that the Audi pitted fewer times than other cars, giving it the nec-
essary margin to win. More recently, hybrid-engined cars have been suc-
cessful, with Porsche and Toyota to the fore.
Le Mans is also the site of the single most devastating accident in
motor sport, an accident that had severe repercussions not only in France
but also throughout the world. In 1955, just seven hours into the race,
French driver Pierre Levegh, driving a Mercedes, was forced to swerve
wildly by another car, losing control of his car and flying into a packed
stand (Ambroise-Rendu, 2007). Levegh died instantly, along with eighty-­
two spectators. The decision to continue the race was taken to allow
emergency services access to the circuit as stopping the race would have
flooded the roads with the over 200,000 people in attendance. Later in
the race, Mercedes withdrew its two other participating cars and retired
entirely from competitive racing until 1987. When the curtain drew on
this event, it saw the cancellation of many races throughout the world,
including the Grand Prix de France for that year. It also brought about a
complete ban on circuit racing in Switzerland, which exists to this day
(Setright, 2003).
42 É. Ó. Cofaigh

From its beginnings in motor sport, through the early days of Grand
Prix racing right up to its current position, Le Mans has remained at the
forefront of motor racing in France. Le Mans continues to gather higher
and higher viewing and attendance figures, year in, year out, while all
forms of motor sport are coming under increasing pressure to survive. Its
rich legacy is one of innovation and perseverance, much like the twenty-­
four-­hour race for which it is famous.

Conclusion
The democratization of the automobile and, indeed, motor racing has
been enacted at a certain number of privileged sites of racing memory in
France. The first races ever run took place with Paris as their focal point,
and the first attempts at codification were a result of France’s desire to
promote this technological innovation. The early growth stimulated the
initiative taken by the French nobility, who, along with the vested inter-
ests of newspapers, embraced the idea of organizing and taking part in
races to build the reliability and reputation of the self-propelled vehicles.
Automobile racing spread to the Normandy coast and later to the Côte
d’Azur where the upper classes holidayed. The inauguration of the course
de côte from Nice to La Turbie launched a new trial for these early manu-
facturers and racers. Gordon Bennett modified the French turn-of-the-­
century races and successfully internationalized them through French
facilities to lay the groundwork until other countries were capable of tak-
ing up the baton. Le Mans took up the reins in the further advancement
of the product; its name will forever be associated with hosting the first
international Grand Prix, but it is for its endurance race that this city is
truly famous. These sites of racing memory were the stages upon which
the pioneers of motor sport plied their trade as the automobile was gain-
ing a foothold in society. They remain closely linked to the genesis of the
sport in popular sporting memory.
 The Origins of Motor Sport in France: Sites of Racing Memory 43

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 The Long Winding Road: The Politics
and Development of the World Rally
Championship
Sam Tickell, Tom Evens, and Hans Erik Næss

Introduction
Rallying as a form of motorsport has a rich history, dating back to the
1894 Paris–Rouen Horseless Carriage Competition (Concours des Voitures
sans Chevaux). In the auto sector’s infancy, manufacturers would see ral-
ly’s unique endurance formats as an ideal place to test their vehicles, and
it was accessible for anyone with the necessary equipment and financial
means. Rallying took place on all surfaces—in forests, on the streets, on

S. Tickell (*)
Social Sciences of Sport, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
T. Evens
Department of Communication Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
e-mail: [email protected]
H. E. Næss
Kristiania University, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 45

D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_3
46 S. Tickell et al.

ice and on gravel. Events were run over many days, and throughout the
ensuing decades, the sport formed its spirit of adventure and endurance.
Slowly, national and regional championships would emerge, bringing on
local talent and exporting the sport to different areas of the world. Then
in 1973 the World Rally Championship (WRC) was born. Yet its devel-
opment as a media product was not prioritised until the early 1990s
when Bernie Ecclestone and his International Sportsworld Communicators
(ISC) group centralised the Championship’s promotion. They took con-
trol of the sport, putting in place the first steps towards professionalisa-
tion and mediatisation (Næss, 2014). At the same time, this led to conflict
and controversy in packaging and promoting the WRC in a rapidly
changing media landscape. This chapter explores the reasons for the long
neglect of rallying, and focuses on the developments from 2000 to 2019
to identify what made the rally promotion of this period fundamentally
different from earlier media ventures.
The WRC’s journey from 2013 to today will be given particular atten-
tion as it has been all but ignored by researchers so far, even though it is
one of the most dramatic eras in terms of media innovations. In 2013,
after the collapse of the former WRC promoter (TV production com-
pany North One Sport), the WRC Promoter GmbH was formed, led by
the Red Bull Media Group to navigate a new era in the sport’s manage-
ment and revolutionise media opportunities (Brenner, 2014; Evans,
2012a). The following period saw managerial stability, the reinvention of
the television product, and capitalisation on rallying’s position as a niche
sport, rather than chasing the vast financial rewards that mega-sports like
Formula 1 or the English Premier League had achieved. The chapter
places this story in a political landscape and applies sport management
and media theories to the sport from its inception, through turbulent
ownership structures and, finally, the stewardship of the current pro-
moter. The chapter will scrutinise the formation of rallying as a world
championship, and its relevance as a global media phenomenon. Then,
there will be an emphasis on media-driven financialisation, management
and professionalisation, before the chapter reconnects with the history of
the WRC at the time when its commercial rights were first centralised.
The rest of the chapter discusses the ramifications of ‘the promotional
turn’ in 2000 which has led to the WRC we see today.
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 47

The Formation of a World Championship

The WRC formally came into existence in 1973 with a 13-round cham-
pionship for manufacturers. This followed a three-year trial of a World
Cup to provide a global championship in line with sportscar racing and
Formula 1. A driver’s championship would be introduced in 1977. From
the initiation of the Championship through to the late 1980s, there was
no central promotion body; rather the governing body would oversee the
WRC, create the calendar and set the technical rules, while the manufac-
turers and promoters of individual events would be responsible for pro-
motion and television (Lovell, 2003; Næss, 2014). The events ran under
a variety of different formats, from more flat-out sprint-style events to
longer ‘raid’ (off-road/cross country)-style events providing radically dif-
ferent lengths, with the 1973 East African Safari Rally being over
5000 km, for instance, while the International Österreichische Alpenfahrt
was the shortest at 324 km (1973 WRC Season, 2021). Furthermore,
some events allowed drivers to inspect the roads and create pace notes,
while others simply provided maps. Teams would choose drivers accord-
ing to their local knowledge and speed on the different rallying surfaces
of snow/ice, gravel or tarmac.
During this time, the manufacturers and the governing body would
wield significant power. In the beginning, rallying mostly featured tuned
road cars. However, Italian car makers Lancia created a bespoke car, the
Lancia Stratos HF, which would take the 1974, 1975 and 1976 WRC
Championships (Davenport & Klein, 2012). This led others to create
their bespoke rally cars and pressure the governing body to use the WRC
as a testing ground for new technologies and marketing. Due to this pres-
sure, the technical ruleset of Group B was formed. It created powerful
and visually spectacular cars, rumoured to rival the pace of a Formula 1
car in certain conditions (McKellar, 2013a). The cultural effects of the
rule change would fundamentally change the path of the sport as, in the
past, road-derived cars were used with relatively few modifications. With
Group B, bespoke cars specifically designed for rallying would be the
norm. Never again would a private entrant be able to build a car and suc-
cessfully compete against a better-funded manufacturer team.
48 S. Tickell et al.

During the Group B era, safety was less of a concern, with the cars
proving to be exceedingly dangerous, and hordes of spectators would
stand in excessively risky positions. Rallying had never been more popu-
lar, but in the end it was a recipe for disaster. It came to a head in Portugal
1986 when four spectators died and two leading drivers, the Finn Henri
Toivonen and Italian American Sergio Cresto, were fatally injured on the
Corsican Tour de Corse (Davenport & Klein, 2011). This resulted in
Group B being banned at the end of the year and Group A regulations
coming into force. From 1987 the message was clear: Safety had to be a
priority, or the sport could be lost.
From the WRC’s inception through to the commencement of the
Group A regulations, the power balance, event formats and media had
largely remained unchanged. However, this period demonstrated that
there could be a significant fanbase for mediated rallying. Therefore, ral-
lying would increasingly be seen by the governing body as a sport to com-
mercialise. It would draw the interest of Bernie Ecclestone and Max
Mosley, the latter of whom was working his way from Head of Promotions
at the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) in 1986, to
President of FISA five years later and President of the Fédération
International de l’Automobile (FIA) in 1993 (Albers-Daly, 2020). The
Ecclestone/Mosley duo had achieved success in professionalising and
financialising Formula 1 and sought to achieve the same success with
other sporting series. Their power had grown to such an extent that
Ecclestone saw it as his “God-given right” to control other motorsport
entities, and the first steps to recreate the Formula 1 experience in rallying
would take place in the late 1980s (Lovell, 2003, p. 235). With Ecclestone
entering the fray, the sport would undergo a fundamental shift.

Media-driven Financialisation
and Professionalisation
Ecclestone’s interest in the WRC (and motorsport in general) coincides
with significant developments seen in the global media economy, as the
WRC had been as loosely organised as Formula 1 before he took control
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 49

of the latter in the 1970s (Mosley, 2015). Professionalism and media-­

driven financialisation of sport is rooted in neo-liberal political ideals
wherein privatisation and market forces dominate (Harvey, 2007). That
is the case for both mega-sport and niche sport. A niche sport does not
receive significant mainstream media attention, does not have much cul-
tural influence and is not the recipient of much financial prosperity
(G. Greenhalgh & Greenwell, 2013; Hutchins, 2019; Tickell & Evens,
2021). Due to the lack of cultural and economic clout, niche sports can
be more susceptible to political motives, as evidenced in the WRC as
their path to professionalisation was highly influenced by political moves
in the governing body (G. Greenhalgh & Greenwell, 2013; Næss, 2018).
In essence, the WRC stakeholders wanted media-driven prosperity. They
hoped that the WRC would become a mega-sport bringing greater cul-
tural kudos; higher revenue; increased interest from government and
media; and ease of access for a significant audience base (Boyle & Haynes,
2009; McKay & Miller, 1991; Miller et al., 2001; Rowe, 2011). Some
sports, like F1, successfully professionalised, earning billions, and were a
source of inspiration for others, like the WRC, to seek the same media-­
driven financial success (Billings, 2011; Greenhalgh et al., 2011; Rowe,
2011; Thorpe & Wheaton, 2011; Wenner, 1989).
At almost all points, media-driven financialisation through broadcast
television was the omnipotent force for mega-sports. Live sport and tele-
vision were a match made in heaven. Television could present a range of
experiences and spectacles that allowed sports to reach their fans week in,
week out, with increased accessibility and visibility (Whannel, 1992,
p. 96). Financialisation of sports had started in the mid-twentieth cen-
tury, but throughout the 1980s and 1990s the rise in sports coincided
with the proliferation of live television (see Billings, 2011; Rowe, 1999;
Wenner, 1989; Whannel, 1992). The relationship between the media
and financialisation of sport created what has been called the “sports/media
complex” (Jhally, 1984) and the ‘sports-media triangle’ (Boyle & Haynes,
2009; Rowe, 1999; Whannel, 1992). The sports/media complex makes it
possible for cultural and media popularity to draw audiences to consume
sport on television, and broadcasters can financialise this audience
through avenues like advertising and subscriptions. Two important devel-
opments allowed this shift: evolving technology that brought television
50 S. Tickell et al.

into most peoples’ homes and the neo-liberalisation of the television mar-
ketplace (Evens et al., 2013; Evens & Donders, 2018; Milne, 2016).
Thus, mediated sport, with its inherent unpredictability, became popular
with viewers. Viewing rituals or appointments were made to watch sport,
and growing audiences fuelled increases in global sports-rights values
(Smith et al., 2016; Whannel, 1992, p. 192).
The primary reason why rallying would find it difficult to make it into
the living rooms of fans was ‘broadcast scarcity’ (Hutchins & Rowe,
2009). With limited media opportunities and broadcast slots only the
most popular sports could demand live television, as they brought signifi-
cant advertising or subscription revenue for the broadcaster, producing a
financial win-win (see Rowe, 1999; Wenner, 1989; Whannel, 1992).
Culturally significant, live sports would bring in viewers, advertising or
subscription packages, resulting in a financialisation cycle. For sports,
like rallying, that were not culturally significant or telecast live, it would
be difficult to financialise this approach, and the WRC had to seek less
financially attractive alternatives. When a sport cannot be shown live, the
problem is twofold. Live sport creates tension; once the result has become
known or ‘spoilt’, the viewer interest is significantly reduced. Additionally,
a highlights package that is not broadcast at a predictable time fails to
create a ritual for the viewer (Rowe, 2011).
However, as technology progressed, and behaviours changed in the
internet age, scarcity gave way to ‘digital plenitude’ (Hutchins & Rowe,
2009). Suddenly, measurable or finite caps on content to be distributed
to audiences disappeared. Fast internet and cheap storage enabled stream-
ing video, social media, blogs and more, ensuring almost limitless possi-
bilities to publish content online to reach targeted audiences. Moreover,
geographical boundaries became theoretical. The importance of valuable
broadcast slots decreased as sports could be broadcast at the mutual con-
venience of administrators, investors and mediators, and as such the
broadcast business models were revolutionised. For mega-sports, the
financial pipeline coming from television would still be important and
protected, but for niche sports the opportunity to pivot their broadcast-
ing strategy was evident (Evens & Donders, 2018). Sports managers
could now stream their events, either through third-party intermediaries
(similar to broadcast television) or via owned services (like their own
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 51

mobile app or portal); directly publish on a variety of social and web

channels; and interact directly with their audiences (Hutchins et al.,
2019; Næss & Tickell, 2019; Zheng & Mason, 2018). The new model
allowed a sports promoter to act like a media company in their own right,
and have a direct relationship with their audience (Lefever, 2012). It pro-
vided a renewed path to ‘branded entertainment’, giving more control
over the mediated product to convey the sport in a distinct style, integrat-
ing commercial aspects into the viewing experience (Kunz et al., 2016,
pp. 523–524).
For sports to exploit this changing marketplace, rapid and continuing
professionalisation had to occur. Professionalisation of sports resulted in
sporting bodies leaving behind volunteer-based structures, with the
“transformation leading towards organisational rationalisation, efficiency
and business-like management” (Nagel et al., 2015, p. 408). Moreover,
the professionalisation of a sporting body can be seen when bureaucratic
and formal structures are introduced, and when this structure supports
professional employment (Kikulis et al., 1992). Financially, this enables
sports promotions to be seen as an investment, rather than a form of
charity (Sam, 2009). This change can be seen as ‘systematic professionali-
sation’ brought on by external factors like commercialisation or decisions
imposed by other companies, and sporting bodies rarely revert to their
former status but instead are forced to continue to evolve (Dowling et al.,
2014; Sam, 2009; Skinner et al., 1999). While not unique to sports,
these managerial shifts help bring standardisation in elements like media,
culture or promotion (Washington & Patterson, 2011). Standardisation
in Formula 1 resulted in similar tracks, cars, race length and event struc-
ture, and this proved to be successful in a global market (Sturm, 2014).
Equally, for the WRC, standardisation would occur to assist the creation
of a globally popular media product (Næss, 2014). Transformation came
for both F1 and the WRC, but with vastly different financial results, and
why the WRC’s journey is different has seldom been explored.
52 S. Tickell et al.

The Professionalisation of the WRC

Upon Ecclestone’s entry to the WRC, motorsport’s governing body saw
the success of Formula 1 globally and was eager to transform and finan-
cialise its other global motorsport properties, and the WRC was part of
this plan (Næss, 2014). As Lovell (2003) suggests, this was a time of
major political powerplays within the FIA as Mosley and Ecclestone
sought to fundamentally shift how global motor racing would be organ-
ised and promoted. In total, 19 Championships, including the WRC,
would be brought under the control of International Sportsworld
Communicators (ISC), the motorsport promotion company headed by
Ecclestone (Lovell, 2003). In 1993 this strategy forced the WRC to take
steps towards professionalisation. The effects of this decision were quickly
felt. A new television distribution model was created which the car man-
ufacturers had to fund, increasing costs and negatively affecting teams’
copyright claims on the footage, and television companies could no lon-
ger televise the Championship free of charge (Lovell, 2003). From 1994
until its demise in 1999, World Rally Teams Association (WRTA) cam-
paigned against these, and other measures, on behalf of the major teams
(Evans, 2020a).
These motorsport-wide decisions were being watched. Within motor-
sport, there was trepidation after Ecclestone and the FIA took partial
control of the World Sportscar Championship in the late 1980s when the
series had originally run under the direction of the French automotive
group (and originators of the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race)
Automobile Club de l’Ouest. By 1993, costs had risen and interest dwin-
dled to such an extent that the Championship, started in 1953, was dis-
continued (FIA Group C Racing (1982–1993), 2012; Lovell, 2003;
Orlove, 2016). Having seen what happened with sportscars, the manu-
facturers were wary of the changes in the WRC. While media had been a
major factor in the emergence of the WRTA, they were not the only fac-
tor. The 1995 Championship featured the fewest rounds since 1974 with
eight rounds and the rally rotation scheme (whereby some rallies would
be held only every two years), and the “Rally 2000” document was cre-
ated regarding future car and event regulations (Evans, 2020a). Both
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 53

initiatives were politically charged as they were designed to find new ways
to increase investment in the sport, decrease costs, and standardise more
aspects of car specifications and event operation. Within the WRTA and
between the WRTA and the ISC, friction was evident. The process to
find the balance between tradition and future demands was difficult.
Moreover, this was magnified by the fact that Ecclestone personally did
not care much for rallying, despite Mosley’s efforts to convince him of the
commercial value of the WRC, thinking it could become more popular
than F1 because of its ‘conceivably greater worldwide potential’ (Mosley,
2015, p. 232). Despite the backroom disquiet, however, charismatic driv-
ers and popular cars helped to draw an estimated crowd of 2 million to
the 1995 RAC Rally, a four-day event (Page, 2019).
This popularity could not be sustained, and even with television cover-
age that had better production and cost more, the viewing figures in some
territories were halved between 1995 and 1997 (Lovell, 2003, p. 262).
However, it seemed as though the teams would have to learn to live with
the situation as ISC was handed the promoter rights deal for the period
1996–2010 (Goren, 2006). Throughout the following years, political
rumblings would continue as Group A gave way to the WRC car regula-
tions and the televisation of the WRC was centralised (O’Connor, 2004,
p. 11). The disquiet continued, with some motorsport and WRC stake-
holders pressing the European Union to investigate the FIA and
Ecclestone for anti-competitive practices, a tactic that would eventually
succeed. In 1997, on the back of a possible flotation of Ecclestone’s
Formula 1 interests, the European Commission launched an investiga-
tion into global motorsport (European Commission, 1999; Formula One
Stalled by EU, 1999; Lovell, 2003; Næss, 2014; O’Connor, 2004). In
June 1999, the Commission released a document concluding

that it considers the FIA to be abusing its dominant position and restrict-
ing competition. The Commission has sent the same statement of objec-
tions to two companies controlled by Mr Bernie Ecclestone: Formula One
Administration Ltd (FOA), which sells the television rights to the Formula
One championship, and International Sportsworld Communicators (ISC),
which markets the broadcasting rights to a number of major international
motor sport events. (European Commission, 1999)
54 S. Tickell et al.

This decision from the European Commission would set in motion a

series of events that would impact the sport for years. For Ecclestone, the
path was clear with the eventual sale of F1 being worth more than a bil-
lion dollars, dwarfing the value of the WRC (Lovell, 2003; Mosley, 2015).
Ecclestone’s decision required a solution for the WRC. Initially, the
European Commission courted Patrick Peter, a leading figure in the fight
against Ecclestone. Peter was part of a consortium promoting a burgeon-
ing global sportscar series—the BPR Global GT Series—but became a
victim of the FIA’s draconian approach to motorsport media in the 1990s.
The FIA stated that he was operating outside FIA policy by not giving the
broadcast rights to Ecclestone, but he would continue in sportscars rather
than switching to rally promotion (Grandprix.com, 2000; Lovell, 2003).
This opened the door for Welsh motorsport entrepreneur David Richards,
who purchased the ISC brand and the WRC promotion rights for a sum
that was thought to be around £30 million (Lovell, 2003, p. 313).

A Period of Hope, Instability and Disaster

With multi-million-pound investment and 10 years remaining on the

rights contract, Richards’ confidence in the future financial success of the
WRC was evident. At the time, manufacturer interest was high, with
seven manufacturer teams, growing budgets, and an appetite to replicate
Formula 1’s success as a form of branded entertainment (Davenport,
2000; Næss, 2014; Williams & Klein, 2001). Richards said:

…we need to be looking at rallying with some fresh vision. There are two
sides to the sport. Looking at the top, it is 100 percent professional. And it
is pure entertainment for spectators. It is a medium for the marketing of
cars and associated sponsors. (Davenport, 2000, p. 37)

Changes would soon come in an attempt to address the entertainment

and marketing aspects of the WRC. Key among these changes was the
introduction of a compulsory centralised service park and cloverleaf for-
mats. These two aspects resulted in a standardisation of rallying whereby
a central area where all cars would go for repairs, the ‘service park’, would
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 55

be used. Stages would surround the service park and be used two or three
times in one day before the cars dispersed to different geographical areas
the next day for another group of stages, conjuring the image of a clover-
leaf (see Image 1). The drivers would drive from the service park to the
stages, knows as the liaison, on public roads, driving to a set time but
outside of direct competition (Næss, 2014). Previously, cars repairs could
occur anywhere and stages could snake across a country.
These changes were primarily for the benefit of the media and specta-
tors. They allowed Richards to take a revolutionary step to control WRC
media presentation, creating and delivering consistently branded televi-
sion products. The number of employees at ISC increased, market
research was carried out and, for the first time, broadcasters could expect
branded daily highlights delivered at a predetermined time (O’Connor,
2004). Television was the leading asset in trying to make rallying a “much
younger and dynamic sport” (O’Connor, 2004, p. 157). Despite the

Image 1 A WRC event itinerary: Rally Finland 2019. The flags represent the start
and finish of the stages. The wrench denotes the service park, the central area of
the rally for car repairs and the media. Via: https://www.rally-­maps.com/
Rally-­Finland-­2019
56 S. Tickell et al.

effort and new direction from ISC, however, the FIA were still active in
the background, with political discontent becoming more visible in 2004
with efforts to expand the calendar from 14 to 16 rallies, introducing a
re-start rule for retired crews (previously teams had to retire from the
event if they missed a stage; this rule would allow them to miss stages and
incur a time penalty) and consideration of a move away from compulsory
centralised servicing (Season 2004, 2004; Wilkins, 2003). It was apparent
that Richards was becoming increasingly aggravated by the creeping
influence from the governing body and, at the time, was quoted as saying:

The overriding issue for me is the way [the rules are] being imposed on the
World Championship. You’ve got a commission with all the appropriate
stakeholders. To take the authority away from that group is wrong.
(Wilkins, 2003)

Furthermore, Jost Capito, the boss of Ford’s European motorsport arm,

outlined the manufacturer discontent:

Ford budgets are being reduced and if budgets need to be increased—by up

to 2 million for Japan and Mexico—the feeling within the company is that
might not be right. (Wilkins, 2003)

Other manufacturers were also considering their place in the sport and
over time interest declined. By 2007, several manufacturers had with-
drawn and Richards was divesting himself of ISC, with the (now defunct)
London company, North One Sport (NOS) taking command for that
season (Goren, 2006). NOS came in as promoter with apparent sympa-
thy from FIA President Max Mosley, who said:

The fundamental difficulty is that rallying is wholly unsuitable for televi-

sion. The public now demand to devour their major sporting events live
which simply cannot be delivered in the case of rallies. (Davenport,
2008, p. 105)

At the time, Simon Long, a senior executive at ISC, was looking to the
internet with great opportunism. He would say:
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 57

We want to make the possibilities that the Internet has to offer take off and
make it a playground for the WRC. The TV coverage is still important but
the web enables you to go multi-dimensional. (Davenport, 2008, p. 106)

Having dismissed the possibilities of television, Mosley endorsed the

aspirations of the promoter to utilise new media services to improve the
reach and financial aspects of the sport:

In my view, the WRC is made for the Internet with its capability to deliver
the action direct to millions of people. North One Television, the new
owners of ISC [which retains the WRC rights], recognise this….
(Davenport, 2008, p. 105)

While NOS wanted to exploit the end of ‘scarcity’ and the start of
‘plenitude’ on the media side, their management of the WRC would
coincide with the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. There was a con-
certed effort to reduce costs for both competitors and events (Evans,
2009). A secondary tactic was to find new sources of revenue. As a result,
rally cars were cheaper, and out went long-held events and in came new
rallies and a rotation system—meaning some rallies would be held only
every second year. Again NOS and the FIA had differing views here, with
the FIA encouraging the rotation system, ignoring the pleas of the pro-
moter (Evans, 2010). The change was designed to bring in additional
income while trying to protect the history of the sport. Politically and
culturally, this would raise issues in the sport, most notably with the
Monte-Carlo Rally, the most prestigious event being subjected to the
rally rotation system. Initially, the rally was to skip one season in 2009
(Monte Carlo Rally to Join the IRC in 2009, 2008). However, the promot-
ers of the event, the Automobile Club de Monaco (ACM), concluded a
deal with the nascent Intercontinental Rally Challenge (ISC) and would
remain in that championship for three years. This gave the IRC credibil-
ity, and together with Eurosport Events, the then promoter of the ISC,
they managed to be the ones to broadcast multiple stages live in 2011,
where a star-studded field proved that live rallying could be an entertain-
ing television event (Barry, 2021). While the ACM would move their
event back to the WRC, this showed that while the WRC had ‘more’
58 S. Tickell et al.

rallies, they lacked key aspects of fan interest—innovative television cov-

erage, top-end teams and blue riband events.
Financially, the WRC under NOS continued to struggle. They reported
a loss in 2009 and were not confident of making a profit in 2010 (Olson,
2010). However, despite any apparent troubles, NOS retained the pro-
motion rights for the sport for the period 2010–2019, and with the new
agreement the ISC name was formally terminated in a rebranding exer-
cise from NOS (Næss, 2014). This ownership structure would be short-­
lived, with British/Russian firm Convers Sports Initiatives (CSI)
purchasing NOS for the 2011 season, though they would keep the same
staff (Bennett, 2011). CSI, led by London-based Russian businessman
Vladimir Antonov, had been making large acquisitions of “underlever-
aged sports entertainment businesses and making them a success”
(Andronikou & Kubik, 2012). These included sports entities like football
teams and racing events. For the WRC, this would push the sport to the
edge. CSI would collapse under the strain of investments and alleged
criminal transactions including fraud and money laundering by their
owners, for which Antonov would later be jailed (Scott, 2011; “Vladimir
Antonov”, 2019). The fallout left NOS with debts of more than £5.7 mil-
lion and liquid assets of only £1.1 million (Andronikou & Kubik, 2012;
Evans, 2012b). The WRC was trapped in a mess much larger than itself,
and while rescue packages were offered, the FIA remained unimpressed.
Talks collapsed shortly before the 2012 season, and with less than two
weeks before the start of the season, the FIA dictated a stop-gap solution:

The FIA sought urgent unequivocal assurances from NOS that it could
fulfil its contractual obligations and deliver the promotion of the upcom-
ing Rally Monte Carlo and the Championship for 2012 and the future. It
is with regret and disappointment that no such assurance has been given to
the FIA, and therefore today the FIA has been driven to terminate its
­contract with NOS. NOS has conspicuously failed to deliver its contrac-
tual obligations and is in fundamental breach of contract. (FIA World
Rally Championship, 2012)

The 2012 season provided a strange throwback to the early days in that
the FIA would take control of the sport’s promotion. However, before the
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 59

season was out, the new WRC Promoter GmbH was created and awarded
the promotion rights from 2013 to 2022 with Red Bull Media House
and Sportsman Media Group (Evans, 2012a). Through the bankruptcy
process for Convers, it became apparent that the WRC had been finan-
cially struggling, even during good times. In fact, during the 2000–2011
period, the promoter body only achieved a profitable year three times
(Andronikou & Kubik, 2012). It was now evident that the WRC could
not achieve its mega-sport ambition and needed to explore a new path.

Red Bull and the WRC Promoter

The New Media Landscape

The aspirations of anyone in control had to be tempered, as it was not

realistic to aim for Formula 1’s level of financial success and public prom-
inence. After a season with a piecemeal promoter structure, the WRC
Promoter GmbH took control of the WRC for the 2013 season. The
WRC Promoter GmbH would in turn be led and part-owned by the Red
Bull Media Group, a company with a different culture and outlook to
previous promoters of the WRC. They had successfully created, pro-
moted and distributed a mega event, the Red Bull Stratos Jump, that
broke streaming records, alongside owning a television channel and pro-
moting their own sporting competitions like the Red Bull Air Race (for
planes) and Red Bull Crushed Ice, which was composed of extreme win-
ter sports (Rogers, 2014). Their diversified portfolio provided many insti-
tutional skills in the operation of sport and sustainable sport mediatisation.
Culturally, the organisation had a proven record of agility and risk-taking
that could allow them to follow their managerial direction with the
WRC. Their strategic legacy would soon become apparent in two pri-
mary areas—shifting the relationship with the fans and refining the
sporting product.
The changing relationship with the fans would be best demonstrated
by the changes to the broadcast television product. Initially, the WRC+
app for mobile devices enabled streaming and enhanced media delivery
60 S. Tickell et al.

directly to the consumer. The early formation of the app carried a raft of
media including on-board cameras, highlights packages and live radio
(WRC App Launched, 2014). Soon live stages would be added, and then
in 2018 the AllLive package was introduced, bringing 25 hours or more
of coverage per weekend (Nelson, 2018). Through their owned app, they
eliminated the need for broadcast partners and, indeed, any external
forces for mediated change to the sport, and ensured that they could have
a direct relationship with their fans. Effectively, they enacted a ‘betting on
two horses approach’ where the sport would become its own global
broadcaster while selling into national and regional markets, often having
multiple partners in a single market (Tickell & Evens, 2021). It allowed
the sport to progressively increase content to a point where, in 2018,
there was a more than 750 per cent increase in broadcast time from the
previous year and a world away from the three–four hours of highlights
expected in the 2002 season (Carp, 2018; O’Connor, 2004).
Creating the app and showing the leading cars live at each stage of ral-
lies for the first time is a prime example of what was now possible in the
digital age. Furthermore, this move changed the way the story of the
sport was told. More information was available than ever before, which
resulted in teams and media evolving in their storytelling methods, with
teams introducing sophisticated trans-media storytelling to further
encourage fan interest and engagement (Næss & Tickell, 2019).
Additionally, the WRC has been quick to grasp and launch digital prod-
ucts that feature more than the AllLive app, and include products like
eSports, podcasting and social media (WRC Factbook 2020, 2020). The
new direct relationship with the fan, the expanded storylines and the
opportunity to create a multifaceted approach to financialising a niche
sport showed that broadcast television revenue, once the holy grail of
financialisation, was now just one of many opportunities for a niche-­
sport promoter.

A New Political Outlook

The second key change has been to the sport itself. During the reign of
the current promoter, the cars, rallies and sporting regulations have all
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 61

been changed. The AllLive media coverage affected the running of events,
with event length, time between stages and visual aspects all needing
tweaks to fit in with the new media technologies (Tickell & Evens, 2021).
Changes would also be evident in other areas, as professionalisation and
financialisation continued. Alongside the fan experience, the expecta-
tions of sponsors and manufacturers had to be met and this was done
through development of the service park. Rallying competes for the same
sponsorship revenue as other sports, and with motorsports like Formula
1 and sportscar being able to provide high-level corporate entertainment,
rallying was almost obliged to follow. Once even the biggest teams just
had small tents in the service park. Now large structures that could take
days to build and dismantle were demanded to satisfy the needs of corpo-
rate guests (McKellar, 2013b). Despite being a niche sport, the changes
in the wider sporting landscape could still influence the evolution of
rallying.
The manufacturer involvement would continue to change as Red Bull
tried to put their stamp on the Championship. New rules for 2017 meant
that cars were faster than ever before, and the FIA dictated a rule to disal-
low amateur drivers to compete in these cars due to safety concerns
(Evans, 2020b). Additionally, the FIA would create and standardise the
‘ladder’ system for drivers and teams aspiring to rally in the WRC, known
as ‘Group R’. It was a clear statement of intention from Red Bull, the FIA
and the manufacturers to create something more spectacular at the front
line while creating a coherent structure under the WRC. In effect, how-
ever, it ensured that only manufacturer entries could compete at the top
level and placed more power in the hands of the richest teams. Away from
the cars, standardisation of more event elements was another crucial piece
of Red Bull’s vision for a spectacular event. Points for an individual stage
had been awarded for the first time in 2011, under NOS leadership.
However, it would become a key ingredient to create a spectacular ending
to any rally and so the sport changed to facilitate an exciting, made-for-
TV ending. The final stage would start and finish at a standard time, be
part of the AllLive app and be sold to third-party broadcasters. It would
come to be known as the ‘Powerstage’ with the winner receiving five
points (second to fifth on stage would receive points) (WRC Factbook
2020, 2020). With the rally winner getting 25 points, five points can be
62 S. Tickell et al.

considered significant. These stages needed to highlight the WRC’s

strengths given their importance to sporting and media elements.
Consequently, visually spectacular landscapes and action elements like
artificial jumps would increasingly be utilised (Hughes, 2018).
Through these changes, and in particular, from the period of
2013–2020, the sport had experienced a period of the sort of political
and economic stability it had not enjoyed since the push to professionali-
sation began. The ownership structure remained relatively stable with
Red Bull Media House maintaining its ownership, and in 2015, the
Sportsman Media Group was sold to the Swiss multinational corporation
Sports Radar and the share of the WRC Promoter GmbH was transferred
to KW25 (KEK, BLM Commission Report, 2017). Manufacturer engage-
ment remained relatively stable, and while interest at the top level would
wane, manufacturers stayed in the sport at other levels, creating cars for
national, regional or ladder series. The sport continues to face pressure
from consumer motoring and the environmental focus from manufactur-
ers and governments (FIA Environmental Strategy, 2020; Sustainability
Report 2020, 2020; Strategy 2025, 2020; Environmental Report 2020,
2020). This position was backed by former WRC Managing Director
Oliver Ciesla, who referred to the pressure faced as the need to “expand
our visibility and that of the manufacturers that have decided to invest
and race in the WRC” (Thukral & Rauli, 2020). Furthermore, New
Zealand driver turned team owner Hayden Paddon said “[t]he sport of
rallying needs to evolve and quickly before it gets left behind. And EVs
(electric vehicles) are the solution” (Craig, 2020). This is one aspect of the
complex puzzle the sport faces going into the next phase.
The future aside, it is almost impossible to know if the sport has
become profitable during this era, as the financial aspects and subscrip-
tion figures are heavily guarded secrets. However, stability can be viewed
as a positive sign. Undoubtedly, the sport’s culture has changed over this
period, but the use of new technologies and adapting to market pressures
helped achieve stability.
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 63

Discussion and Conclusion

The path to professionalisation and financialisation for the WRC was far
from smooth. The choices presented by the FIA with regard to the pro-
moter were stark. The sport experienced relative stability in its first years
and efforts to professionalise were imposed on it, with disastrous results.
At the beginning of professionalisation, it was evident that replicating a
successful model from another sport was not sympathetic to rallying’s
culture. Until the Antonov affair at least, the WRC had relied on a fan-
base characterised by loyalty to the sport’s roots. This meant a fan culture
with key ingredients like a working-class atmosphere (due to the wide-
spread ‘garage life’ of both fans and drivers), spectating outdoors in all
kinds of weather, and bantering about the action instead of merely watch-
ing it (Næss, 2014). To make things worse in terms of nurturing this
culture, efforts to commercialise and professionalise the sport struck a
middle ground, leaving everybody dissatisfied—both those who thought
the changes were too small to save the sport and those who found the
changes to be a mockery of tradition. It was only after the sport almost
failed that a new path was forged. Overconfidence in the popularity and
financial ability of the media product derived from other motorsport
series would hamper the WRC’s progress, and a new strategy was needed.
When the current promoter arrived, their expertise in niche sport and
their culture of sports management enabled quicker reactions to the pre-
vailing media changes regarding rallying.
Lessons can be taken from the WRC’s mediatisation, including that
the unique cultural aspects of sport need to be maintained and that not
all sports can achieve significant financialisation. To achieve this, system-
atic professionalisation was forced onto rallying, where more modest tar-
gets would be more sustainable. Even when viewing the WRC through
the lenses of the media-sport complex and media-sport triangle, rapid
professionalisation was needed to create a television-friendly product.
Undoubtedly, throughout the early stages of the sport, rally media were
underutilised. As it turned out, however, the wish to achieve rapid finan-
cialisation through media and professionalisation created instability in
the sport. This is demonstrated in Fig. 1, which shows that the first 17
64 S. Tickell et al.

Fig. 1 Timeline of major changes within the WRC management

Fig. 2 Owned media properties of the WRC promotion body, 2001 vs 2020

years of the sport had stable ownership and promoter structure, whereas
the following 17 years were quite unstable. Once the outlook of the pro-
moter changed again, stability returned to the sport.
Moreover, mediated sport changed drastically over the 25 years of the
WRC’s professionalisation, as shown in Fig. 2. It has forced changes to
the ongoing financial and promotional structures in the WRC. The
changes reflect the shift from broadcast scarcity to digital plenitude where
there is a necessity to take advantage of technologies and acknowledge
where the audience exists. In the WRC Promoter GmbH’s situation, cre-
ating an owned app with a direct-to-consumer approach was an accept-
able step for three reasons. The first was that it proved that increasing the
commitment to the previously created branded entertainment base was
possible. Secondly, for a niche sport, ensuring television coverage can be
difficult, and the owned app eliminated this risk. Thirdly, it opened new
paths for media financialisation, where the sport had previously struggled.
Other changes and pressures on the sport like gaming, geopolitics and
environmental factors will continue to exert influence. However, niche
 The Long Winding Road: The Politics and Development… 65

sport’s interaction with professionalisation, financialisation and media-­

sport is important, as shown by the WRC case. As technologies and skill-
sets to reach audiences evolve and effective business models emerge,
sports have more options to create a profitable future. In the end, for the
WRC, stability was achieved when it stopped trying to adapt the sport
according to the successes of other motorsports and started to exploit the
sport’s inherent culture and strengths.

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 Part II
The Early Political Significance
of Motor Racing
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport
and the Third Reich
Eberhard Reuss and Sandra Esslinger

Introduction: Revisiting, Revising,

and Rewriting Racing History in Germany
Today, I believe, nothing that is alive can sidestep politics. Even a refusal of
politics is political; it merely abets the politics of evil.
—Thomas Mann in a letter to Hermann Hesse, 8 April 1945

The history of automobile racing in Germany is often interpreted

through a lens of romanticism, wherein the silver bullets of German
automotive racing streak across the track with a simple minimalist aero-
dynamic elegance and a signature roar—man triumphs over machine and
imminent death. No small part of this romanticised myth-making is the

E. Reuss (*)
Mannheim, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Esslinger
Mt. San Antonio College, Walnut, CA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 75

D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_4
76 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

ever-present need for marketing—marketing of consumer products as

well as of the ideology of the supremacy of Nazi Germany. If one is tied
to the well-established automotive corporations or the original equip-
ment manufacturers in Germany, there is a high likelihood that the suc-
cess of today is strongly supported by their Nazi past. Not to mention
that the ties are not just for industrial grants of governmental monies but
also slave labour, human suffering, and death.
The romantic racing scene is often tied to the narrative of the heroes
behind the wheel, the finish fetish of the cars, the brand or corporation
that produces them, and the imminent struggle against death. The post-­
World War I German racing scene was a perfect setting for political mar-
keting of the relatively new nation state. This was an ideal context for
building the myth of a powerful and modern Third Reich beginning in
1933 in the wake of the losses of World War I. Notably, after the fall of
the Third Reich in 1945, the legendary Silver Arrows became strategic in
the euphemising of Nazi Germany, providing a reason to believe that
things had not been all bad under this regime. This was another permuta-
tion of the romantic myth promoted by the same leading automotive and
racing people who profited from the Third Reich and survived
World War II.

 erman Racing History: The Brown Beneath

G
the Silver
Germans don’t know what they want, but if you tell them they are very efficient
at making it happen.
—Jacques Rivière, L’Allemand: Souvenirs et reflexions d’un prisonnier de
guerre [On German nature: memories and reflections of a prisoner-of-­
war], 1918/1919

Today’s Silver Arrows are once again making motor racing history.
When Sir Lewis Hamilton was cruising the line for another Formula One
World Championship with Mercedes, the headlines trumpeted the great
triumph of the Silver Arrows as though times had never changed. Clearly,
in 2013 when he signed with Mercedes-Benz it was most certainly a
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 77

different historical moment. Unlike his white predecessors, Lewis

Hamilton is mixed-race, the son of a black Grenadian father and a white
English mother. Facing down discrimination as he rose to fame, he now
has a global following and uses his position for environmental and social
activism—combating racism and promoting diversity in motor sport. He
was knighted in 2021 and was named as one of the most influential peo-
ple in the world by Time magazine.1 This is a very different world from
the days when the Silver Arrows originally hit the tarmac, as mixed-race
drivers were absent, and in Nazi Germany, not allowed. There is an aspect
Hamilton also addresses that hasn’t changed enough since then, which is
the persistent exclusivity and racism maintained by institutional barriers
in the sport of Formula 1. Lewis Hamilton is fighting Formula 1 history.
Marketing strategists, canny sponsors, and so on were already around
in Grand Prix racing in the 1930s in the form of the Nazi regime,1 its
propagandists, and Aryan industrialists. They laid the foundation for the
successes of the Silver Arrows that are still celebrated today. They did so
with government subsidies, bonuses for winning, and adoration as
national heroes. Wheels had to roll for victory, and, especially on impor-
tant occasions, the seemingly unbeatable national racing cars were even
adorned with the trademark of their patrons and exploiters—the swas-
tika. The memory of this form of mutual advertising was suppressed,
concealed, and downplayed, for after 1945 the majority of those involved
returned to their factories or to the racing circuits. They regarded them-
selves as profoundly apolitical; doubtless this was why they allowed them-
selves to be harnessed to the Nazi bandwagon. Even decades after
Germany’s catastrophic defeat, many people were still citing the victories
of the Silver Arrows and the building of autobahns as proof that things
were not all bad in ‘those’ days.
In 1958, former Mercedes-Benz racing manager Alfred Neubauer
made the bestseller lists with his memoirs, co-written with journalist and
screenwriter Harvey T. Rowe under the title Men, Women and Engines,2
which simultaneously influenced and transformed the image of the race-
track heroes in their Silver Arrows: “Every one of these names has become
history today—a part of the history of international motor racing in its
greatest and finest era”.3 In this way the myths and legends have remained
alive and are being cultivated as part of the marketing image. When
78 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

historicising this comment, the hyperbolic statement romanticises the

Nazi past as an idyllic time in car racing.
Today, Mercedes-Benz and Audi are more forthright about the activi-
ties of their companies in the days of the Third Reich. Still on the fringes
of modern motor sport events, whenever the original cars or even just
authentic replicas from the Silver Arrow era are rolled out and make their
ear-splitting entrance as in their days of glory, fans are swept up by the
spectacle of these engineering wonders of the 1930s. What must it have
been like for contemporary observers in the 1930s when cars from
Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union raced from victory to victory, proclaim-
ing ‘German superiority’? It would have depended entirely on your sub-
ject position. The majority would have been inspired and indoctrinated.
However, if you were a German race car driver from a marginalized back-
ground your perspective was completely different since you were forced
off the racetrack as part of the Aryanisation of the sport. Jews, Roma, and
black people were persona non grata in the performance of national and
racial identity in these displays, as this would have bastardised the pur-
pose of the political performance.4 The propaganda is clear from the van-
tage point of the marginalised ‘other’, and it was so successful that one
still talks about the legendary superiority of German engineering as part
of the national identity.
According to Victor Klemperer in 1946 in Lingua Tertii Imperii, his
study of the language of the Third Reich:

Nazism cultivated all forms of sport, and from a purely linguistic point of
view it was more influenced by boxing than by all the other sports put
together; but the most frequent and most memorable image of heroism is
that provided in the mid-1930s by the racing drivers: after his fatal crash,
Bernd Rosemeyer was for a while almost on a par with [murdered Berlin
stormtrooper] Horst Wessel3 in the popular imagination.5

He continues:

For a while the victors in international motor racing, behind the wheel of
their competition cars, leaning up against them or working underneath
them, were the most photographed heroes of the day. If a young man did
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 79

not take his heroic image from the muscle-bound warriors, naked or clad
in a stormtrooper’s uniform, as seen on posters and commemorative coins,
then he certainly did so from racing drivers; what both embodiments of
[Aryan] heroism share is the fixed stare, expressing tough, forward-looking
determination and the will to conquer.

Beneath the silver that seems to outshine everything there is a dark

stain, which can be attributed not to tarnish but to the emergence of the
base metal, a suppressed history that is made visible as the silver has been
polished thin.

German Motor Sport Before the Great War

In 1870/1871, Germany was united as a nation. The basis had been cre-
ated by Bismarck with calculated wars, seasoned with bribery and Prussian
supremacy represented by the new aristocratic Kaiserreich. The aristo-
cratic German leaders, princes, kings, and monarchs were a little late to
the stage of nationalism, but nevertheless they soon began their trajectory
towards an imperialist and colonial power. This new nationalism was
established with great enthusiasm.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Germany exploded
with industry and industrialists, who fostered wealth, urban develop-
ment, and modernism. Villas, department stores, museums, motor cars,
aeroplanes, and Zeppelins were introduced into society. The commodi-
ties markets brought goods from all over Europe and allowed Germany
to export goods, which in turn fostered personal and national wealth and
growth. The construction of personal and national identities through cul-
tural/educational experiences and material wealth was the clear next step.
The small automotive industry was fuelled by this shift toward industri-
alisation and the resulting wealth. Motor races were places to see and be
seen as part of the great parade of social status and identity. With Jewish
emancipation, affirmed at the forming of modern Germany, Jews came
to play a significant role in industry and had much at stake to establish
themselves as equal citizens and patriots of the new German nation. It is
in this adumbrated context that the history of the motor car emerges.
80 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

Designer and automotive engineer Carl Benz invented what is consid-

ered the first practical motor car in Germany in 1885. However, French
engineers and worldly men of great nobility or big money, or both, were
the originators of racing with this machinery. The dawn of the twentieth
century was accompanied by the sound of cars and airplanes. Men in
their racing and flying machines inevitably became the idols of martial
and nationalistic times. Land events like the Gordon Bennett Cup
(founded in 1900 for competing national automobile clubs) and the
Grand Prix de l’ACF (Automobile Club de France) developed the leisure
sport of motoring into a professional proving ground for companies,
industry, and business tied to the heated patriotism that characterised the
life and times of Europe before the Great War, World War I.
Carl Benz was not beguiled by building fast cars, and left his Mannheim
company early in 1903 because his financier and commercial CEO Julius
Ganss had appointed the French engineer Marius Barbarou and his com-
patriot crew, who were directed to produce much more powerful cars and
push towards racing laurels. In contrast to the German rival of Benz &
Cie., the Swabian Daimler company gained great renown by winning the
Gordon Bennett Cup also in 1903; by then it was the most important
motor race event worldwide. The victorious car was raced by Belgian
engineer and professional race car driver Camille Jenatzy, yet the car’s
name was not Daimler but Mercedes. This was down to Daimler’s
Austrian client, wealthy Jewish entrepreneur, and patron, Emil Jellinek,
who ordered numerous motor cars for his racing pleasures. And these
specially ordered Daimlers were named after Jellinek’s beloved daughter
Mercédès.
The country of the winning car had the honour of organising the fol-
lowing year’s Gordon Bennett Cup race. In 1904 Germany presented an
event in Roman Imperial style. The headquarters of the circuit, on open
roads in the Taunus woods and mountains of central Germany, was cen-
tred at the Saalburg, a complete reconstruction and reinvention of an
ancient Roman military camp. Hail Caesar (Kaiser)! Kaiser Wilhelm II
was present at the race weekend and had to witness an ostensibly national
defeat to French engineering. Clearly, establishing Germany as a power-
ful modern nation had been the objective of this event; instead, it had
become a theatre for national hubris.
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 81

This event was a game changer. Germany had something to prove,

which in the end signalled an immense boost for motor racing in
Germany. In 1908 racing cars from Mercedes were driven by Germans
and cars from Benz were driven by French and Belgian colleagues—the
German automakers dominated the Grand Prix de l’ACF. As a result, the
French organisers renounced their Grand Prix in 1909 in order to avoid
providing another propagandistic platform for their German rivals.
Despite this renunciation, Benz in Mannheim built the fastest car in the
world. With regard to the European regulations for motor racing, this car
was far too large, so they sent their new speed record-breaker to America
where US pioneer racer Barney Oldfield presented the so-called Blitzen
Benz, blitzen meaning ‘lightning’, and the race car lived up to its nick-
name. Over the approximately 30 years since Carl Benz had invented the
motor car, engine capacities and horsepower had grown increasingly. The
Blitzen Benz with its engine size of 21.5 litres producing around 200 hp
and enabling top speeds of around 200 km/h executed on open roads
without tarmac, was a stunning achievement. In 1911, the Blitzen Benz,
designed under the direction of mechanical engineer Dr Hans Nibel with
the American driver Bob Burman, achieved the world absolute speed
record of 228 kph (141.7 mph).
In those days, wins and records on the racetrack were crucial selling
points for a small elite of customers. Victories on road and track provided
much more tangible proof of technical competence in production mod-
els. And, as in France, the Grand Prix de l’ACF was revived with new
technical rules and smaller engine capacities. In 1908 German driver
Christian Lautenschlager was victorious. He won a second time in the
summer of 1914 in a newly built Mercedes with a 4.5-litre engine only
weeks before the Great War erupted. The knowledge and the commit-
ment of German engineers, mechanics, and race drivers ensured the suc-
cess of German race cars on a racetrack. Now they and their French
opponents/antagonists entered into another kind of warfare the likes of
which the world never could have imagined, with some of the most
nationally and internationally recognised automotive engineers as
resources.
82 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

Returning to Another Battlefield

The devastation of World War I was palpable in German society. Nearly
1.7 million German men were killed, 4.2 million were wounded, and
1.1 million were prisoners of war. Moreover, the influenza pandemic
killed more than 50 million worldwide and impacted families globally.
The war-wounded returned home and artists like Otto Dix provided
deep-cutting depictions of the ongoing suffering the war had produced.
There were many noteworthy features of this war that were fostered by
industrialisation. It was the first to feature the large-scale use of aircraft,
poison gas, tanks, and submarines. Following the armistice of World War
I in Germany, the November Revolution (German Revolution) resulted
in the end of the German Empire, which was replaced by a parliamentary
republic, known as the Weimar Republic—a fledgling democracy. Out of
the war came the burgeoning art, literature, and music culture of the
1920s. A diverse avant garde scene including the Bauhaus, Neue
Sachlichkeit, the UFA film company, Expressionism, and jazz clubs made
Germany a lively intellectual place. Yet, such an ‘open’ and creative place
also carried with it cultural tensions and detractors.
The new German Workers’ Party had been founded months after the
end of the war, in January of 1919. A year later this party changed its
name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) or Nazi
Party. Born out of instability and driven by hate and the promise of
change, the NSDAP slowly gained a hold in German society. They were
not the only group who harboured these sentiments. The right wing of
German society saw these cultural and artistic expressions as degenerate
and immoral. The ‘degenerate’ label absorbed all marginalised identities
as well—it included anyone but heterosexual Aryans. The critique of cul-
ture brought with it a critique of the Weimar Republic itself. Anti-­
Semitism was alive and well as Jews were often exemplary of the ‘other’ in
society. Although Jews definitely were not exclusively designated as the
‘other’, they were seen as the principal outsiders of German society. The
Weimar era needed an escape from the devastation and the unsettled ten-
sions left by war. The Versailles Treaty, which extracted heavy reparations
from Germany and its allies, was yet another significant source of tension
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 83

for the Germans as they were not allowed to rebuild or financially recover
from the devastating losses of World War I. Post-war instability seems to
be the only constant, and provided opportunities for great social and
cultural strides, but also advanced the politics of hate and anger. Radical
anti-Semitism rose with the turn to populism as a means to build nation-
hood and national identity, based on a notion of common ancestry, a
“nationalist völkisch movement”. Additionally, the national identity had
no place for the Jews, and the anti-Semitic political groups enacted vio-
lence against and advocated for the removal of Jews from the citizenry.6
Admittedly, in the period of the Weimar Republic motor sport was a
highly exclusive pastime. The spectacle might entertain the masses, but
this was still far from making motor racing a mass sport. This was in
sharp contrast to conditions in other countries, where not only large sta-
diums and sports halls but also permanent racing circuits were being
built. The AVUS circuit was opened in Berlin in 1921. Yet this urban
motorway, which was originally intended to generate toll revenue for its
private investors, was only temporarily used as a racetrack due to the lack
of paying traffic. In those days the AVUS was the modest German variant
of an international trend towards shifting dangerous racing away from
closed public roads to permanent circuits.7 Between 1925 and 1927 the
Nürburgring was built as a job-creation project in the barren Eifel region
near the Belgian border. At the outset the cost was estimated at 4 million
reichsmarks (RM), but the racetrack eventually cost 14.5 million. The
government was the majority shareholder, so tax revenues continued to
flow in to support the racing business. Investing in automotive racing was
a mutually beneficial arrangement as this drive towards nationalism and
industrialisation served not only the corporations and the economy of
Germany, but also the budding modern military nation state.
In the 1920s the motor car was still the luxury toy and means of trans-
port of a well-heeled few. And in Germany, compared with other indus-
trialised nations, there were only very few of these well-placed motorists.
In raw statistical terms, the homeland of Herr Benz and Herr Daimler
boasted only one car per 100 inhabitants in 1926, while the ratio in
France and Britain was 3.2 per 100 and in the USA a striking 21.7 per
100. Defeat in war followed by rampant hyperinflation had put the skids
under German car makers. Wins and records on the racetrack were
84 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

crucial selling points since they provided much more tangible proof of
technical competence in series production. Thus, it was only logical that
after World War I both leading German companies, Benz and Daimler,
would attempt to position themselves in the market by participating in
international motor sport again. However, under the Weimar Republic,
as elsewhere, success in motor sport was a matter of money. The revolu-
tionary Benz Tropfenwagen (a streamlined, teardrop-shaped car) with a
mid-mounted engine and floating axles, developed by racing manager
Willy Walb and his designers Fritz Nallinger and Hans Nibel and later
run and developed by Adolf Rosenberger,8 made a promising debut in
the 1923 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Driving their non-supercharged
Benz racing cars, with only 90 bhp under the bonnet, Fernando Minoia
and Fritz Hörner came fourth and fifth respectively. Yet in the wake of
the 1923 inflation crisis and an acute shortage of capital, the men from
Mannheim, under pressure from the banks, had no choice but to join in
an Interessengemeinschaft (commercial alliance) with the equally cash-­
strapped Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft. Under the decisive influence of
Deutsche Bank, then two hitherto competing companies completed a
full merger in the summer of 1926; from 1924 the sole responsibility for
motor sport activities had in any case resided with the Daimler branch of
the new twin concern. In the Stuttgart suburb of Untertürkheim more
emphasis was placed at that time on the design of supercharged engines
than on the niceties of bodywork. Since 1923, the man in charge of rac-
ing on the Daimler side was Ferdinand Porsche, the 47-year-old Technical
Director. He had been appointed to succeed Paul Daimler, because the
son of the firm’s founder, after violent disagreements in the boardroom,
had moved to the Horch car company in the eastern German town of
Zwickau.
Many considered Porsche a brilliant ‘engine man’, while others com-
plained about his penchant for sophisticated but hair-raisingly expensive
designs. Since beginning his career with the Austrian firms of Lohner and
Austro-Daimler, this self-made engineer had always thought in large-­
scale terms. He was building giant artillery transporters, with which he
made his name in World War I as an armament specialist with a company
in Wiener Neustadt. Porsche’s move to Daimler came at the right
moment, since he was able to combine motor racing and series car
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 85

production with development contracts for the Army Weapons Office.

The latter was all top secret, of course, since the Versailles Treaty banned
German companies from involvement in the arms business. However, an
imperialist nation state needed a military, and what better way to hide
this enterprise than to engineer under the guise of automobile manufac-
ture? In this way, under Porsche’s direction, the company developed
armoured combat and all-terrain vehicles, tracked vehicles, and a 300 hp
aeroplane engine. However, prior to this, Porsche had been allowed to
build one more Grand Prix racing car for Daimler in the then prevailing
two-litre formula.
On 29 October 1924, at the Gran Premio d’Italia on the Monza cir-
cuit, Porsche’s new Mercedes eight-cylinder supercharged M218 made its
debut. Four cars were entered for the race and their output of about
170 hp at 7000 rpm made them serious contenders for victory. But the
complex handling characteristics of these monsters created problems, and
‘Count’ Louis Zborowski had a fatal accident on the Lesmo bend, whose
cause is unknown. Earlier, top Mercedes driver Giulio Masetti had for-
feited as a result of a broken fuel pipe, and after Zborowski’s accident
Max Sailer, the director, withdrew the two remaining cars of Christian
Werner and Alfred Neubauer/Otto Merz. The new design would never
again be seen in international Grand Prix racing. Any ambitions Porsche
had to build another racing car for the newly formed company of
Daimler-Benz AG were shattered in 1926/1927, when the Board deter-
mined his designs too costly.
The remaining M218 Grand Prix models were converted into sports
cars. Two of them showed up in 1926 at the first German Grand Prix on
the AVUS track, which, with a view to participation by German works
teams, had been opened exclusively to sports cars. The two enclosed
Mercedes racing cars were driven by the two most promising young
German racing drivers of the time, Adolf Rosenberger and Rudolf
Caracciola. Director Sailer, constructor Porsche, and Neubauer, the
future Mercedes-Benz racing manager, watched as Caracciola won the
race, in pouring rain, maintaining a rock-solid 200 kph (125 mph) in the
supercharged eight-cylinder. “It takes a death-defying nerve to drive at
such high speed round an old-fashioned circuit like that”, wrote the mag-
azine Das Auto admiringly. But it was scarcely ten years later that a
86 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

completely new generation of German racing cars, initiated by Porsche

and Nibel, would be tearing round the AVUS at speeds of 340 kph (over
210 mph) with more than 600 hp, and sending virtually an entire nation
into a frenzy of enthusiasm.
Yet that spectacle had risks. Even the practice laps for this first German
Grand Prix were marred by a death, and on the Sunday of the race itself
further serious accidents occurred. Adolf Rosenberger in the lead with
the sister works car Mercedes came off the slippery wet track at about
150 kph (90 mph): his car slammed into a timekeepers’ cabin and three
race stewards were killed instantly. The driver and his mechanic Curt
Coquelline, who was also on board, got away with severe injuries. For
Rosenberger, this accident was formative. He was anaesthetised by the
ether used as an accelerant in the fuel which wafted from the front engine
to the cockpit of the car, but he subsequently expressed concerns about
the balance of the car as it had lost traction in the rain. Nevertheless,
Adolf Rosenberger continued racing for Mercedes-Benz. In 1927 he won
the Klausenrennen with the ‘Großmutter’, the modified Mercedes GP
winning car of 1914. In the same year at the inauguration race of the new
Nürburgring, he finished in second place behind his teammate Rudolf
Caracciola.
The motor racing business had begun to flourish in the 1920s, when
France’s blue Bugattis and Delages vied for motor sport supremacy with
the red Alfa Romeos and Maseratis of Italy and the green Sunbeams of
the UK. It was in those years that the single-seater racing car, the Grand
Prix monoposto, developed into the fastest and most spectacular formula
on the continent of Europe. The class of blue-blooded or well-heeled
gentlemen, who before the Great War competed with ‘running-in’ drivers
paid by the factory—in other words, racing mechanics still took part in
Grand Prix events in the 1920s and 1930s. However, by the early 1930s,
and faced with ever more complex racing car technology, they gradually
lost out to the driving skills of the specialists. In France, the Monegasque
Louis Chiron, and in Mussolini’s Italy Tazio Nuvolari and Achille Varzi,
ended up being the highest-paid artistes at the wheel, national idols and
entrepreneurs on their own account. They were the perfect embodiment
of egocentric commercialism, constantly haggling over the best work
contracts and the top starting money, and anxious to enhance their own
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 87

social status. In short, they foreshadowed today’s sporting super-rich. The

only man thought to achieve this status in German-speaking countries
before 1933 was Rudolf Caracciola. The slightly built son of a hotelier
from Remagen in the Rhineland, he worked his way up from being a car
salesman and weekend racer to signing a work contract with Mercedes.
Caracciola’s talented friend and colleague Adolf Rosenberger, the young
motor racing businessman and Mercedes-Benz works driver from
Pforzheim, opted for another plan as his family were involved in com-
modities, business, and banking. He would take his mentoring ability
and automotive knowledge and parlay these to become Ferdinand
Porsche’s business partner, aiming to get back on the grid of international
Grand Prix racing behind the wheel.
Although Porsche was made Technical Director for the merged
Daimler-Benz AG, post merger he began to lose a power struggle against
Nibel, his counterpart at Benz. After heated disagreements Porsche was
forced to leave the group. In 1928, his contract expired and was not
renewed; an additional factor was disputes over his sometimes faulty but,
in the main, far too costly car and truck models. In the end, Porsche was
taken to court over his financial obligations to Daimler-Benz AG. In a
bitter frame of mind, the disgraced technician moved to the Austrian
Steyr works. But in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Steyr’s bank-
ers collapsed, and the stricken car maker was bought out by its direct
competitor, Austro-Daimler. Porsche was not interested in returning to
work for Austro-Daimler as they had refused to renew his employment
agreement. He was therefore forced by circumstance to become indepen-
dent and founded, with Adolf Rosenberger, the firm of Dr Ing. h.c.
F. Porsche GmbH, Design and Consultancy in Engine and Vehicle
Building. The third man aboard was Anton Piëch, Porsche’s son-in-law.
The initial share capital in 1930 was 30,000 RM. As founder, Porsche
then held 80 per cent of the share capital, his son-in-law Piëch 10 per
cent, and the remaining 10 per cent was held by Adolf Rosenberger, who
also acted as Managing Director (CEO) of the company. Rosenberger,
Porsche, and his handful of Austrian engineers, especially Karl Rabe,
were friends and partners, who worked very closely together. They were
the ‘car guys’. Piëch was the attorney who was seldom involved in auto-
motive building. Thus, the importance of Adolf Rosenberger to Porsche
88 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

should never be underestimated. He not only made his initial investment

in the company, but also gave loans directly and through friends, as well
as technical input. He solicited contracts for the fledgling company and
brought in venture capital to keep it afloat. The aim of the Porsche GmbH
was to develop blueprints for automotive companies, to deliver technical
devices, to build prototypes—and to construct a Grand Prix car for the
Saxonian Wanderer Company. Furthermore, Adolf Rosenberger planned
to race this car on the tracks throughout Europe. At that time, the fact
that the former Mercedes-Benz works driver was Jewish did not present
an ostensible problem, although anti-Semitism was growing at this time.
One did not live in Germany as a Jew without significant challenges.
Meanwhile, the NSDAP had been re-founded in 1925 with a staunch
anti-Semitic stance; in 1928 NSDAP members of the Reichstag had
asked that Jews be excluded from certain professions and later excluded
Jews from rights associated with citizenship, among many others. The
years following World War I saw constant political and economic uncer-
tainty. For some, that uncertainty was far greater than for others.
In the wake of the economic slump and mass redundancies even the
Daimler-Benz AG closed its works-based motor sport activities for finan-
cial reasons in 1932, causing Caracciola to move to Alfa Romeo. That
year he won the German Grand Prix in the Italian monoposto—an open-­
wheel car. This was a signal for motoring clubs and the automobile indus-
try to seek subsidies en bloc for the construction of a ‘German national
racing car’. However, the model for financing these very expensive engi-
neering wonders had to be modified as a result of the Great Depression.
Initially Daimler-Benz AG benefitted from the consequences of the
merger of 1926. The spokesman for the board of Deutsche Bank, Dr
Emil Georg von Stauss, who sat on the Supervisory Board of the Daimler-­
Motoren-­Gesellschaft, had, together with Dr Wilhelm Kissel, Finance
Director of Benz & Cie, set the foundation for the merging of the two
companies. From then on the two managers determined the strategic
decisions for the group. From 1926 Kissel acted as de facto chief executive
of Daimler-Benz AG, even though he was not formally appointed until
1933. The corporation’s chief shareholder was Deutsche Bank, which,
along with Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank, dominated the Supervisory
Board and also provided its chairman in the person of von Stauss.
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 89

Together they were active in an apparently ‘harmless’ movement to ‘keep

the car industry German’. It was under this banner that Kissel and von
Stauss at last planned to commit Mercedes-Benz to motor sport—both in
their own business and in national interests. The clientele and the brand
image both required and furthered this policy even in difficult times.
The steady reduction in manpower and the high prices of luxury cars
had produced sales revenue for Daimler-Benz of 26.85 million RM and
27.76 million RM in 1928 and 1929 respectively. Yet the output figures
remained relatively modest: just over 10,000 cars were manufactured
annually, and the group’s widely scattered production facilities were
working at scarcely half their capacity. By the end of 1930 the company’s
statistics showed a mere 9786 on the payroll, and in March 1932 the all-­
time low of 4958 was reached. Something had to happen.
Porsche, who later created Hitler’s Volkswagen, or ‘People’s Car’, was
not as successful at solving “the problem of an appropriately sized inex-
pensive car designed for the masses” with the prototypes that his design
company later urged Zündapp and NSU to take over. Fortunately,
Rosenberger, as General Manager of Porsche’s Stuttgart design office,
belonged to an exclusive Berlin gentlemen’s club where, among others, he
got to know Baron Klaus Detlof von Oertzen. The latter was chief execu-
tive of the Wanderer car company in Chemnitz and, through Rosenberger,
went into business with Porsche. The 30-strong Porsche design team was
tasked with upgrading a production model into a sports coupé, and
because the car division of a conglomerate better known for its office
equipment like typewriters needed a compelling new image, in 1931
Porsche’s people were also asked to embark on a racing car project for the
new Grand Prix formula. Porsche belonged to the circle of handpicked
experts who in late 1931 were commissioned by the International
Association of Recognised Automobile Clubs to draw up a set of rules for
the new generation of race cars. Starting with the 1934 season, Grand
Prix racing cars were not permitted to weigh more than 750 kg. Before
each race the weighing of vehicles was to be carried out at the trackside,
and the limit to be observed referred to the weight of the empty car (i.e.
without fuel, oil, water, and tyres). The Grand Prix monsters of the time
were significantly heavier than 750 kg, which is why, given the state of
technology, the officials believed that the new designs would need to
90 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

make use of much smaller and lighter engines to keep within the weight
limit.9 German racing cars were able to harness almost double that power
even in the first season of this 750 kg formula thanks to lightweight con-
struction and supercharger technology that was technically beyond their
contemporaries and helped establish the success and the myth of the
Silver Arrows.
The rough design for his new race car, which Porsche finally submitted
in 1932, closely resembled the Benz ‘teardrop’ car from 1923. This was
no surprise, since his business partner Rosenberger had driven that
unusual mid-engine racer and even won the 1925 Solitude Mountain
climb in it. It was also a solution to the problem he faced in the terrible
crash on the AVUS, where the ether and the rear traction had broken
loose from the tarmac that caused him to skid out of control into the
stands. The engine at the back would maintain the weight over the rear
wheels for stable traction. The design was a simple and elegant solution
to earlier challenges posed by the older front engine, rear wheel drive race
cars, which reduced the weight of a drive shaft. Therefore, it was no coin-
cidence that Porsche now positioned the driver in front of the race car’s
engine. Rosenberger may not have been primarily a designer, but his
technical knowledge and experience as a race car driver were essential to
the development of the revolutionary mid-engine race car. It was
Rosenberger who funded the project, despite the failure of the Wanderer
Corporation and the general struggle the automotive industry was having
to stay afloat in Germany during the Depression era. The principal share-
holder of the Wanderer Corporation located in Chemnitz was Deutsche
Bank, which pleaded for sale or liquidation of Wanderer.
However, the history of the German motor industry now took quite a
different turn, because the Landtag (parliament) of Saxony leaped into
the breach and in mid-February 1932 put up a guarantee of 6 million
RM to save over 8000 jobs at the stricken Saxon car makers Audi, DKW,
Horch, and Wanderer. On 28 June 1932—with retrospective effect from
1 November 1931—the four companies were merged under a holding
company that was given the name Auto Union AG and adopted four
interlocking circles as its corporate symbol. With this, the new Auto
Union was to become Daimler-Benz’s most aggressive competitor within
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 91

Germany. The future duels between Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union

would be about victories and the resulting subsidies.
With a certain piquancy, the blueprints for the Auto Union racing cars
would be provided by the former Technical Director of Daimler-Benz
AG, Ferdinand Porsche, and the company’s former works driver, Adolf
Rosenberger, who was keen to drive this Grand Prix car conceived for
Wanderer and now transferred to the newly formed motor group in
Saxony. The commitment for Rosenberger to race the Auto Union car
was so great that a contract was drafted.10 But with this promise also came
increasing anti-Semitic attacks beginning in 1930. In 1931 and 1932
National Socialists were making demands to remove Jews from public
office and even went so far as to suggest that they should be ‘removed’ in
general. On 31 July 1932 the NSDAP secured more seats and influence
with the Reichstag elections, resulting in waves of violent attacks and
even boycotting of Jewish business and firms.11 Fiscal and social upheaval
were eroding the already weakened Weimar Republic.
Meanwhile, only a few kilometres from Porsche’s design office, the
executive directors of the Depression-stricken Daimler-Benz AG were
also being inspired by the new race car formula. Here too the construc-
tion of a German Grand Prix machine was also intended to serve as an
advertising medium—and for this purpose government subsidies had to
be organised. The German government saw value in the subsidies as
German engineering (and implied military prowess) would be put on the
global stage. Von Brauchitsch’s spectacular victory in the AVUS race of
1932 with the streamlined silver SSK resulted in the radio sports reporter
Paul Laven coining the metonym ‘Silberpfeil’ (Silver Arrow). This race
was a perfect pretext for Nibel, the Chief Mercedes Designer, on which
to approach the Reich Minister of Transport, Gottfried Treviranus. Three
days later the two men had a telephone conversation about governmental
sponsorship of the racing car project.
At this stage the intention was simply to make improvements to the
ageing SSK sports car for further use in motor sport: “According to infor-
mation from Mr. Treviranus the sum of 220,000 RM is already guaran-
teed”, wrote Nibel in a file note. “However, he intends to try and get us a
total of 110,000 + 180,000”. At Mercedes-Benz they may have been
sharing the same delusions as the government with its deflation policy
92 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

(“Only a hundred metres from the goal”). But only five days later, on 30
May 1932, the second Brüning cabinet collapsed, and transport minister
Treviranus was among those who lost their jobs. “The system is in free
fall”, noted Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels with glee. On the very
same day Hitler had an audience with Reich President Hindenburg, the
ban on the SA was lifted, the Reichstag was dissolved, and new general
elections were scheduled for 31 July. The Hitler movement seemed to be
close to its goal of taking power in Germany.
These were turbulent times. Mass unemployment was reaching its
height, yet, on 20 June 1932 Hans Nibel nevertheless enquired of the
new Reich Minister of Transport, Eltz-Rübenach, “whether it might not
be possible for us to receive government support for the design and devel-
opment of our racing cars, since we are unfortunately unable to under-
take the exceptionally costly development of racing cars from our own
resources. As far as we know, Italian and French factories that build rac-
ing cars are supported by their own governments, since international
races have a promotional value beyond that for the marque of car in ques-
tion and give a great boost for the industry of that country”.
Four days later Nibel made a personal visit to the ministry and sent
two more letters on the subject of financial assistance, before Eltz-­
Rübenach drafted his final rejection on 30 June. For the moment the
political situation following the cabinet change put an end to any hope of
government subsidies. To get that kind of money there first had to be a
regime that better appreciated the propaganda value of future German
racing victories and knew how to exploit them. In this respect, the car-­
friendly Hitler and the equally keen motor sports enthusiasts among his
entourage would come as a blessing for the national racing ambitions of
the corporate bosses in Untertürkheim and Zwickau.
In addition to Mercedes-Benz, the newly founded Auto Union, whose
plans were famously being forged by none other than Ferdinand Porsche
and Adolf Rosenberger, had already lured another senior employee from
Untertürkheim for future racing duties—Alfred Neubauer, who was seri-
ously considering joining the opposition. However, Kissel had managed
to dissuade him with a generous bonus. Instead, at the beginning of
1933, Auto Union signed up Willy Walb, who until then had been num-
ber two in the Mercedes-Benz racing organisation. Another deserter from
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 93

the executive floor in Untertürkheim was the Chief Press Officer, Dr

Richard Voelter, who, as early as 1 October 1932, had joined DKW in
Zwickau as Head of Advertising on a salary of 850 RM per month. From
then on, Voelter would extract propaganda value from the sporting suc-
cesses of Auto Union, since their racing division reported directly to the
group’s advertising department. Voelter, born in 1892, was a qualified
lawyer who had served in World War I as a cavalry captain. Even in peace-
time this ex-officer regularly turned up for exercises with the military
reserve, and, not least, was a member of the Nazi Party from 1925
onwards—as was his wife Else, who liked to be called “the First Nazi Lady
of Württemberg”. Even before Hitler’s men came into power the ambi-
tious couple opened quite a few doors at Daimler-Benz to their Brownshirt
party comrades. By 1931 the Voelters had separated, but as we read in an
approving assessment by the district military authorities in Chemnitz
dated 25 June of 1936, “Dr Voelter has been active for many years on
behalf of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party”. Even in 1931
when Richard Voelter got divorced and launched his new professional as
well as marital life in Saxony, the abandoned Else remained under the
protection of the Mercedes star in Untertürkheim. After the Nazis seized
power, the former Frau Voelter, in collaboration with the Stuttgart man-
agement, sold production cars on special terms to upper echelon of the
Nazi party. From 1938 onwards Else Voelter was additionally involved in
the ‘Aryanisation’ of Jewish-owned businesses. It was the same Else and
Richard Voelter who as early as September 1926 at the trackside of the
Solitude race had introduced their party leader, Adolf Hitler, to the
Mercedes-Benz team and its then chief designer, Ferdinand Porsche.
Hitler was a particularly good customer for the powerful supercharged
automobiles of Daimler-Benz AG. They were supplied by another very
early member of the Nazi Party, Jakob Werlin, who had been on the
Mercedes-Benz payroll since April 1921. As head of the Munich office,
he was one of the group’s most important and successful car salesmen and
at the same time the principal contact for and with the Nazi leadership.
Its garages were situated at 39 Schellingstrasse in Munich’s fashionably
bohemian Schwabing district. The same building housed the printing
firm of Adolf Müller. Müller printed for the Nazi Party’s publisher, the
Franz Eher Verlag, turning out books, pamphlets, and the newspaper
94 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

Völkischer Beobachter (“Folkish Observer”, which has strong connotations

of race). Thus it was inevitable that Werlin would meet the Nazi leader,
three years his junior, and the two got on famously. The fact that they
both had Austrian roots and shared an enthusiasm for cars was the
clincher. As Werlin wrote decades later, Müller introduced Hitler to him
with the words: “I’ve brought a new customer for you”. The Nazi leader,
who never had a driver’s licence, was now famous (or notorious) in
Munich, already owned two cars made by the somewhat less renowned
Selve company, and wanted to acquire his first big Benz from Werlin.
Forty years later, in a grandiose apologia, Werlin, the former Nazi,
tried to present himself as a highly successful yet totally non-political lob-
byist on behalf of the motor industry: “I had never made any secret of my
acquaintance with Hitler or my role as his advisor, which embraced
everything under the heading of motorisation. I was now actually pre-
pared to stick my neck out. It is true, I helped, with all the resources
available to me, to do things like promote the construction of autobahns
and push through Hitler’s plans for the ‘People’s Car’ [Volkswagen]. I was
the co-founder of the VW factory; and where I could, I promoted motor
racing, which in the 1930s brought victory and fame to Germany’s Silver
Arrows and worldwide sales success for the manufacturers”. This is an
absolutely accurate statement. Werlin was soon a member of Hitler’s clos-
est entourage in Munich, and thenceforth acted as “personal confidant of
the Führer” in all matters concerning motor vehicles. In 1932 he joined
the SS and in the following year the one-time car salesman made a career
leap to join the Management Board of Daimler-Benz AG.
In the critical year of 1932 Daimler-Benz had already activated its
contacts with the Nazis. The NSDAP had been gaining more and more
votes and supporters, and it seemed likely that Hitler’s party would soon
be given a position of responsibility from which it would have a modest
say in the formulation of national policy. How fortunate for the
Untertürkheim company to have a man like Jakob Werlin around. On 14
May Werlin reported to CEO Kissel on a conversation with Hitler:
“Naturally, I did not fail to mention that we have always shown the great-
est goodwill towards the Party, and I gave some examples”. Other compa-
nies could probably not make such a claim, “whereas for many years we
had cherished and nurtured our links with the NSDAP in recognition of
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 95

its prospects and always from devotion to the cause”. And on 18 May
Kissel wrote back to Werlin: “We certainly have no reason to pay any less
attention than hitherto to Herr Hitler and his friends; in fact, he will […]
be able to rely on us just as much as he has done in the past”.
With German President Hindenburg’s appointment of Hitler as Reich
Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and the new Reichstag elections imme-
diately set for 5 March, the SA Brownshirts and the Nazi party were
masters of the streets. Hitler exploited his position as head of government
to consolidate his power.
It was high season for careerists, for the despised Märzgefallene (trans:
soldiers fallen in the month of March), a bitter nickname for opportunis-
tic followers, sycophants, and profiteers joining the Nazi cause, after
Hitler’s NSDAP had won the manipulated Reichstagswahl (federal elec-
tion) on 5 March 1933. The allure of a restoration of national greatness
made Nazism palatable to the majority. Furthermore, motor sport in
those years became a microcosm of the nation as a whole: the drivers were
the pampered idols of a mendacious and criminal system. In return for
overblown theatricality and public affirmation of Aryan tropes, Nazi
leadership allowed drivers relative freedom of action and gave them
undreamed-of benefits.
Thus, the professional racing driver under the Third Reich became the
myth of the age, a man ostensibly quite uninterested in politics, who for
precisely that reason mutated into a profiteer of Nazi policies. The recov-
ery in both economic and national fortunes—which Hitler had promised
the German people—was to occur for a time, and under a policy of mas-
sive rearmament gave the German motor industry cause to be grateful,
since with the help of government contracts it set new production records.
And the works drivers for Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union would, with
victories in their Silver Arrows, contribute to the respect and recognition
paid to the Nazi regime, lending it an outward glamour. But not all race
car drivers would be swept into the ‘glamorous’ Nazi automotive world of
the ‘Silver Arrows’, nor would they benefit from the social construction
of the Aryan hero. Because the automotive industry was a key propa-
ganda tool of Nazi Germany and the drivers key constructors of national
Aryan male identity, one had to be the right kind of German. The sys-
temic and ever-increasing pressure of government-sponsored
96 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

anti-Semitism indicated that Nazi Germany would only make being

Jewish exponentially more difficult. On 30 January 1933, when Hitler
became chancellor, Adolf Rosenberger resigned the same day as CEO,
and he therefore took his first step back from public life as the CEO
(Geschäftsführer) of Porsche, while retaining his shares of ownership in
Porsche GmbH. Rosenberger understood that the business he had
financed, networked, led as CEO, and owned could no longer thrive with
a well-known Jew in such a prominent position.12 The key date in the
symbiotic relationship between the Nazi regime and the German motor
industry was 11 February 1933, when Hitler opened the International
Car and Motorcycle Exhibition in Berlin. He was the first German
Chancellor to grace this show with his presence, using it as a platform to
announce his programme of ‘national motorisation’: abolition of the
vehicle tax, reduction of corporation tax, and enhanced government sup-
port for road-building and motor sport. These proposals were clear sig-
nals that in the Third Reich cars and car manufacturers would play a key
role. From this, Nazi propaganda would successfully mythologise the
Führer as the original ‘creator of the autobahns’. Yet, plans for the ‘auto-
bahns’ had existed since the 1920s and proposed a motorway linking the
Hanseatic cities of the north (Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck) with
Frankfurt in central Germany and Basel just across the southern border
with Switzerland. But such connections counted for little; the only thing
that mattered was that the new Reich Chancellor was a friend of motori-
sation, and for that reason the National Federation of the German Motor
Industry soon launched a ‘Führer Fund’ of 300,000 RM. A year after
seizing power Hitler would finally start promoting the ‘People’s Car’, the
affordable automobile for everyone. Even this had its predecessors, but
only Germany’s first dictator had the will to put wheels on what had so
far been a dream of national mobility. He did so in the face of initial
resistance from a less than enthusiastic industry and its umbrella
organisation.
The man who would design this Volkswagen had already curried favour
with Hitler. Immediately after his speech on 11 February 1933, Ferdinand
Porsche personally thanked the new Reich Chancellor in a telegram: “As
the creator of many notable designs in the sphere of German and Austrian
motor transport and aviation and one who has shared your struggle for
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 97

more than 30 years to achieve today’s success, I congratulate Your

Excellency on your profound speech at the opening of the German
Automobile Exhibition. I hope it will be granted to me and my staff, in
future and to an increased extent, to place our skill and determination at
the disposal of the German people”. Anyone sending such an ingratiating
message could be sure of being given an audience: three months later, on
10 May 1933, Porsche and Hitler met in the Reich Chancellery. Together
Baron von Oertzen and the newly designated Auto Union works driver,
Hans Stuck, not Adolf Rosenberger, were pleading for subsidies for their
Grand Prix car project.
Because he was Jewish Rosenberger was now a liability to the Porsche
GmbH and to Auto Union. Racing was certainly out of the question, but
he hoped to continue his work in a less visible capacity. He kept his 10
per cent of the small company and continued to work out the details of
the Grand Prix car contract between Auto Union and the “Porsche
Hochleistungs-Fahrzeug-Bau GmbH”. The foundation of this private
limited liability company in November 1932 had been Rosenberger’s
idea, in order to secure the financing on all accounts. The Auto Union
contract was finally signed in February 1933 in Zwickau by Rosenberger
and Porsche. Just a few hours later in Berlin the Reichstag was set on fire,
and the hopes of Adolf Rosenberger and so many others would be dashed.

 he Money Behind the Myth

T
of the Silver Arrows
Without the incentive of a massive financial boost from the Nazi regime
in 1933 neither Daimler-Benz AG nor Auto Union AG would have been
able to put their ambitious racing car plans into effect with such speed.
True, in the long run the economic recovery of the German motor indus-
try, actively aided by the fiscal benevolence and propaganda of the Nazi
regime, would have made it possible to finance the design, construction,
and racing of the Silver Arrows from internal resources. Yet, season after
season, the National Socialist state generously subsidised the race car
industry, which then came to be regarded by these corporations as a
98 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

rightful State subsidy. The corporations requested these subsidies politely

but firmly every year, always accompanied by the routine complaint that
expenditure on motor racing had risen massively and that competing for
Germany in motor sport was scarcely affordable without the help of the
Reich. However, the financial aspect of motor racing activities in
Untertürkheim and Zwickau appears to have been perfectly manageable.
The expenditure by Auto Union on its racing division accounted for only
0.7 per cent of total sales in 1937/1938, and never exceeded 0.92 per cent
(1936/1937). Even at the beginning of participation in Grand Prix racing
the corresponding figure for the financial year 1933/1934 was no more
than 0.85 per cent. However, since Auto Union’s turnover rose strongly
year by year until 1938—largely thanks to massive defence contracts and
a lucrative business in official cars—the budget for the Zwickau racing
division was able to grow in step, along with its expenditure on engineer-
ing. In the course of the 1934 Grand Prix season Auto Union had five
cars ready to race, and in 1935 no fewer than seven. By 1936 Zwickau
had lined up a full dozen of these 16-cylinder monsters. In 1934
Mercedes-Benz could call upon six W25 racing cars and in the following
year a total of eight were in Grand Prix trim.
Similarly, the men in Untertürkheim had a budget that fluctuated
around 1 per cent of annual sales. However, after 1935 their figure was
considerably higher in absolute terms, because business activity was
growing significantly faster and was profiting far more from Hitler’s mas-
sive rearmament than was the case with their competitor in Saxony. In
1933, with a turnover of 100.9 million RM, Daimler-Benz AG was still
lagging behind Auto Union AG, which chalked up sales of 116 million
RM for the financial year 1933/1934. In 1936 Untertürkheim’s sales
were 295.1 million RM, against 235 million for Zwickau in the financial
year 1936/1937. In 1937 Daimler-Benz pushed its sales up to 399.1 mil-
lion RM, while those of Auto Union AG were only 276.4 million for the
financial year 1937/1938. It was no coincidence that from the 1938 rac-
ing season onwards Zwickau had great difficulty in matching the finan-
cial and technical outlay of the Mercedes-Benz racing division.
Thanks to the quota system for raw materials imposed by the Nazis as
part of their preparations for war, the motor groups only experienced
significant growth in production outside their rearmament contracts if
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 99

there were export opportunities for their own range of vehicles. To that
extent German racing victories around the world all too quickly became
the proven method of promoting sales of German cars abroad. Yet, every
victory for the Silver Arrows simultaneously heralded the success of the
new Nazi Germany—a fact that did not make export trade any easier.
However, their political advertising for National Socialism earned the
gentlemen of Daimler-Benz AG and Auto Union good money year after
year until well after the war had started.
The direct subsidies were accompanied by additional bonuses based on
their racing success. In the case of Auto Union the bottom-line figure
from 1933 to the start of the war totalled more than 2.75 million RM. As
a proportion of Zwickau’s racing budget each year, the generous govern-
ment contribution ranged from 19.5 per cent to 28.4 per cent. Mercedes-­
Benz received similar benefits, but in 1933/1934 the percentage
contribution was significantly higher. In absolute terms, Untertürkheim
pocketed substantially more—up to 1941 a total of over 4 million
RM. That was not just on account of greater success on the racing circuit,
but also because of preferential treatment. Looking at the absolute finan-
cial outlay of the two racing divisions in the period from 1933 to 1941,
motor historian Peter Kirchberg calculates that Auto Union spent a total
of around 15 million RM, while the Mercedes-Benz figure was about 50
per cent higher. Another historian, Wilfried Feldenkirchen, comes up
with a very precise figure for Daimler-Benz’s racing costs of 18,246,000
RM, though that only covers the period from 1935 to 1940. It omits not
only the racing budget for the year 1933/1934 but also the final ‘state
assistance for motor sport’ of 350,000 RM, dating from February 1941.
We do know, in fact, what it cost Daimler-Benz AG to get into the
750 kg racing formula, from a letter which CEO Kissel wrote on 1 March
1935 to Adolf Hühnlein,5 the head of the Nationalsozialistischer
Kraftfahrer Korps (NSKK: National Socialist Motor Corps), asking for
support of about 1 million RM for that season. Kissel also mentions the
total expenditure for the 1933/1934 period: “Up to the end of last year
the costs amounted to some 2.2 million RM. This is made up of the
design, construction and trials of racing cars, entering them in races, the
application of knowledge gained in races and the adaptation of the racing
cars, as well as expenditure on the drivers themselves and auxiliary staff,
100 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

and any general costs arising from our participation in motor sport”.
Hence, we can put a figure of more than 20.5 million RM on Daimler-­
Benz’s total expenditure in the cause of motor racing from 1933 to 1941,
which is a good five million more than Auto Union spent on its racing
endeavours over the same period.
It is no less interesting to note what Kissel has to say, in the same letter
to Hühnlein, about the subsidies paid to Daimler-Benz AG for racing in
1933/1934: “As you may be aware, the Reich granted us assistance total-
ling some 907,000 RM. Remuneration received from private companies,
especially those with an interest in racing, and from clubs, amounted to
310,000 RM, so that for the racing season up to the end of 1934 we had
a total inflow of about 1,217,000 RM”. In other words, almost 60 per
cent of the Mercedes-Benz racing budget was externally financed in the
early stages of the new 750 kg formula. For the year 1933/1934, the
Silver Arrows’ debut season, the Nazi regime alone paid more than 40 per
cent of the Untertürkheim racing division’s total costs of 2.2 million
RM. Incidentally, Kissel fails to mention the additional income in the
form of starting money and winners’ bonuses from the race organisers.
These international competitions were particularly lucrative because they
brought in foreign currency, money the two companies could use to pay
their star foreign drivers and thus circumvent the rigid currency restric-
tions imposed by the Nazi regime. However, this source of finance began
to dry up gradually in the late 1930s, since, faced with the overwhelming
superiority of the Silver Arrows, foreign clubs and organisers were increas-
ingly reluctant to stage races under the Grand Prix formula that were
essentially a platform for Nazi propaganda and a source of revenue for
German motor companies.
As to the level of Nazi subsidies, the two companies were in fact in a
position to build an alliance and keep each other informed about their
requirements. Both parties could then succeed on the national competi-
tive level, which was strategic in funding, but also played into the Nazi
propaganda machine. On 1 March 1935, after reaching agreement by
telephone, Kissel sent von Oertzen a copy of his letter to Hühnlein. Three
days later von Oertzen sent Kissel a copy of his own letter, beseeching
“the same confidential treatment”, which he had sent to the NSKK leader
the same day, which detailed their expenditures. Von Oertzen told
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 101

Hühnlein that the expenditure for the coming 1935 season would be
around 1.95 million RM, and Kissel had named a figure of 2.1 million
RM. There was an equally similar ring to the doleful justifications by the
directors for the assistance that was so urgently needed: “You, my
esteemed Korpsführer, know what tasks our company has been set, by you
and other ministers, which we have to carry out in addition to our nor-
mal business and the manufacture of our regular range of models. You
also know that Auto Union, as a core German enterprise, is particularly
required to resist the pressure exercised by the power of American capital
(Opel) and we have to defend our position as the purely German con-
tender in the small-car class”. Von Oertzen, as a man with a Jewish wife,
writes with an awareness of what was expected at that time. Kissel strikes
a similarly plaintive note of a suffering national company committed to
motor racing—at a time when Daimler-Benz AG had just rounded off
the financial year 1934 with the best results in the company’s history: “If
it is in fact right in principle that we shoulder some of the burden our-
selves, we ask you nevertheless to understand that, in view of our other
loss-making assignments, we can only do so to a limited degree. We take
the liberty of pointing out that, first and foremost, our branch of industry
and our company are rightly being asked to increase our exports extraor-
dinarily steeply, though this causes us considerable and rising losses. The
business situation in our industry can be described as reasonably good,
thanks to the encouragement received from the Reich government, but in
particular from our Führer and Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. However, the
fact cannot be ignored that we have to set our prices so keenly that they
only permit a very minimal profit, and a series of other considerable cost
factors which strongly influence the profit-and-loss account are
unavoidable”.
The fact that right into the first phase of the war the two groups bra-
zenly asked for and received subsidies and bonuses from the Nazi state
was deliberate and was built into their calculations. As the Romans used
to say: Do ut des! (“I give that you may give!”). Or in more common par-
lance, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. No one hands out
subsidies without getting something in return. Both sides profit. From
government contracts as much as from government subsidies, from
102 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

German racing successes as much as from nationalist propaganda. The

deals were mutually beneficial.

 ace, Motor Racing, and National

R
Socialist Politics
After 1933, any German who wanted to participate internationally in
motor sport had to belong to either the NSKK or another National
Socialist organisation. The only exemptions were for those serving in the
police or the Wehrmacht. For a personality like Georg ‘Schorsch’ Meier,
the outstanding BMW motorcycle racer and part-time works driver for
Auto Union, this requirement was of no small significance at the time: “I
was already a successful cross-country rider when I transferred from the
police to the Wehrmacht, and then when I started winning road races
they all said ‘Come and join the Party or the NSKK,’ but I always said no
and was happy to stay in the Wehrmacht—as a plain ordinary sergeant
who was given leave to race with BMW and Auto Union. True, right
through the war they never promoted me, so by 1945 I must have been
the most senior sergeant in the whole Wehrmacht. But I think I did the
right thing”.
With the exception of Meier all the top German race car drivers joined
a National Socialist organisation. Bernd Rosemeyer, the best and most
popular driver of that era, was a member of the SS, as were the successful
freelance drivers Bobby Kohlrausch and Huschke von Hanstein. The
majority of the other motor sport idols joined the NSKK. In retrospect
the National Socialist Corps of Drivers has often been represented as a
“fairly non-political association of motor sports enthusiasts”. Not a few
have claimed ironically that the initials NSKK stood for Nur Säufer, keine
Kämpfer (“Just Boozers, Not Fighters”), and in doing so try to take the
edge off the Nazi ideology of Hühnlein and his henchmen. This rationali-
sation left its mark, especially after 1945, in the correspondingly lenient
sentences of the Denazification Tribunals, to the extent that a senior rank
in the NSKK was always taken to be the sign of a fellow-traveller rather
than something more sinister; and the later a case was heard—or in some
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 103

cases the longer it lasted—the more likely NSKK membership was to

lead to an acquittal. The Nuremberg war crimes trials had unwittingly
reinforced this approach in Denazification hearings by not classing the
NSKK—or, incidentally, the SA or the mounted SS—as criminal organ-
isations. This assessment by the International Court may have been made
principally for procedural reasons, since the main task of the tribunal
was, of course, to investigate and indict the leading war criminals.
Nonetheless, it led to the judgement that the NSKK was essentially a
playground for harmless car and motorbike buffs. Only in recent years
has this viewpoint been substantially corrected.
The NSKK played a prominent part in the crimes committed against
the Jewish population in what became notorious as the Reichskristallnacht
(9 and 10 November 1938).1 During the war not only was it responsible
for the logistics of transport and supply, but also, in conjunction with
police battalions, it handled the “pacification of the hinterland in the
east”. This deceptively mild formulation conceals among other things the
operations of NSKK units that, under the guise of ‘auxiliary police’, took
part in the deportation and execution of Jews, first in Poland and later in
Russia and Ukraine. Documents held in the Central Office for
Administration of Provincial Justice in Ludwigsburg prove that Adolf
Hühnlein, in his preface to the NSKK souvenir book Wir waren mit in
Poland (“We did our bit in Poland”), was anticipating Nazi war crimes as
early as the spring of 1940: “It has never been our style in the NSKK to
sit on our hands and do nothing until an assignment falls like a ripe fruit
into our lap. When we have to get stuck into the fray, the Corps is there
with the old fighting spirit. So it was only natural that the NSKK did its
bit in Poland like the rest, and in the liberated provinces and the
Generalgouvernement2 we showed our mettle in carrying out our
assignments”.

Followers and Profiteers

After 1945 the racetrack heroes, even if not involved in such crimes,
would consistently downplay the role of the NSKK and its leader
Hühnlein, to say nothing of their own conduct. Yet almost without
104 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

exception they had been members of the NSKK—as had been the man
who would later become Federal Chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, the
defence minister from Bavaria, Franz-Josef Strauss, the magazine pub-
lisher Franz Burda, the classical historian Alfred Heuss, the political theo-
rist Theodor Eschenburg, and many other highly respected Germans. Is
this because the NSKK was so ‘harmless’? Or was because cars and motor-
cycles, motor sport, and male bonding attracted the most adventurous
sons of the upper and lower middle classes to follow the NSKK banner?
Anti-Semites and Nazis, dignitaries and nonentities, young and old were
united in their fascination for technology and German motor racing vic-
tories. It is even possible that such shared enthusiasms and overlapping
interests in Nazi ideology may have undermined the ‘moral resistance’
which the supposedly ‘better circles’ swore to uphold, though even that
claim was often an empty one.
The heroes of German motor sport thus found themselves in the best
of company. Additionally, those who wanted (and were allowed) to com-
pete in races probably did not have many reservations about Nazism. The
important thing was to be one of the winners. More than six decades after
his races during the Nazi dictatorship, racing driver and journalist Paul
Pietsch admitted: “I was just another member of the NSKK. It was only
later that I said to myself: You’re doing yourself no good, my lad. Then I
went off to Italy and did a lot of driving there for Maserati”. True, Pietsch
was not in the first rank of German Silver Arrow drivers. In the 1935 rac-
ing season he was in fact a works driver for Auto Union, but was then—
due to his lack of success—forced to drive privately again before making
a spectacular appearance for Maserati in the first German Grand Prix at
the Nürburgring in 1939, once again attracting the attention of Mercedes-­
Benz and Auto Union. In this way Pietsch was spared the regular promo-
tions within the NSKK that were linked to success on the circuit.
The Nazi-controlled German press, however, was obliged to take these
NSKK ranks very seriously and always mentioned them when reporting
on motor sport, so as to indicate clearly for whose fame and honour the
drivers were racing. Where today a particular sponsor might be men-
tioned, drivers were identified by military rank: the last pre-war race in
the European Championship, the Swiss Grand Prix on 20 August 1939,
was, for example, won by NSKK-Hauptsturmführer Lang, ahead of
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 105

NSKK-Staffelführer Caracciola, NSKK-Sturmführer von Brauchitsch,

and NSKK-Truppführer Müller.
One man who at that time adhered to, or was forced to adhere to, this
contemporary nomenclature was the influential Berlin journalist Siegfried
Doerschlag, who in June 1932 founded his ‘DDD’ (Der Doerschlag
Dienst), a news and PR service for transport and motoring that continued
to flourish right through the Nazi period. On 27 October 1946,
Doerschlag wrote in a letter of mitigation for von Brauchitsch’s
Denazification tribunal: “If Manfred von Brauchitsch is said to have been
a Nazi from 1933 onwards, then by the same token all the great racing
drivers, Caracciola, Rosemeyer, Stuck, Lang, Hasse, von Delius, and oth-
ers were more or less COMPULSORILY forced to join the NSKK, and
then after each victory were ceremoniously promoted by Korpsführer
Hühnlein in front of thousands of spectators at the finishing-line. […]
What they were thinking to themselves was a very different matter”. In
Doerschlag’s opinion the politically flexible conduct of the racing drivers
could be explained by “the psychosis of the Hühnlein era and the boom
in motor racing”. By way of straightforward exoneration, he told von
Brauchitsch: “Of course there was a dictatorship in sport too, and a top
driver like you had to howl with the wolves”. However, the propaganda
they produced was of unparalleled value in reinforcing and building a
national identity of military power and a reputation for German engi-
neering. Yet, these ‘virtuous heroes’ of the racetrack could maintain a
limited culpability.

When Racing and Racism Collide

On 14 November 1946 Dr Anton Piëch, imprisoned with his father-in-­
law Ferdinand Porsche in a French prison on charges of using French
workers as forced labour, wrote a letter to their exiled former partner,
Adolf Rosenberger, now living in California. Piëch was requesting 1000
US dollars to assist them in their release. And he praised what Rosenberger
had done: “You were right from the beginning; it all started with the race
car project…”.13 In the summer of 1935 as part of Aryanising the Porsche
GmbH that had begun on 30 January 1933, Adolf Rosenberger had been
106 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

finally forced to relinquish his 10 per cent ownership to the Porsche fam-
ily only at face value. However, “they must have been drowning in
money”, as Rosenberger put it, due to Hitler’s Volkswagen project the
Porsche GmbH was running. But Porsche was at least in part a Jewish
business as long as Rosenberger was an owner. As a consequence, in July
1935 Adolf Rosenberger was forced to cede his share of the business,
which was transferred to Ferry Porsche. On 5 September 1935,
Rosenberger was imprisoned by the Gestapo and on 23 September was
sent from a police cell in Pforzheim directly to Kislau concentration
camp for alleged Rassenschande (racial defilement).14 He said later that the
only person to help him was Hans von Veyder-Malberg, the man who,
after the Nazis seized power, took over Rosenberger’s position as CEO in
the Porsche company. As a Jew in the Nazi Germany of the mid-1930s
Rosenberger no longer had any legal leverage with which to protect him-
self against state-decreed injustices.

Truth and Fiction

After 1945, Germans moved on from the devastation of war. Only a year
after the end of the war, motor races resumed in Germany, despite petrol
rationing, driving bans, and the suspicions of Allied occupation forces.
New racetracks had to be built since racing had become a popular public
distraction from the everyday post-war austerity. On 18 May 1947 in
Nürnberg, the former Reich Party Arena, known as Norisring, was used
for a motorcycle race to advertise the resurgence of that industry in the
Franconia region. Many of the great racing heroes of the Nazi era contin-
ued their racing careers: Stuck, von Brauchitsch, Meier, Müller, and
Hermann Lang were all back on the racing circuit. Lang himself was
admittedly still in Denazification proceedings and was later classified as a
Mitläufer, or, in other words, someone who shared Nazi ideology without
directly participating in Nazi crimes. On 26 May 1948, he was sentenced
by a tribunal in Stuttgart to pay a fine of 1000 RM10 as a ‘penance’. Lang
appealed the judgement stating, “I cannot see why someone should be
condemned for driving cars and motorcycles very fast in races—the real
reason for my honorary promotions”. The sentencing authority at the
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 107

Central Denazification Tribunal for Northern Württemberg was slow to

respond, but informed Lang in June 1950 that the fine would be reduced
to 219.45 deutschmarks, payable in monthly instalments. “In view of the
low level of political involvement and the losses suffered by the accused,
the court costs represented a hardship. In due consideration of the cir-
cumstances, it therefore seemed justifiable to reduce the costs owed and
to allow payment by instalments”.
In December 1947 Lang’s former racing manager, Alfred Neubauer,
was also classified as Mitläufer by the tribunal for Stuttgart North and
fined 100 RM. In February 1948, Neubauer appealed the decision with
a detailed rationale. His promotion to NSKK Oberscharführer was, he
said, “honorary” and “was only due to the fact that the Werkssturm (fac-
tory unit) of the NSKK in Daimler-Benz AG, to which I was recruited
against my will as a supporting member, felt it incumbent upon them to
give special recognition to my services as manager of our racing team that
had been victorious for so many years”. The appeal resulted in the deci-
sion being overruled in April that year and ended the proceedings against
Neubauer. The former Mercedes-Benz racing manager returned to his
traditional place of work—as did all the other leading contenders in
Hitler’s motor racing battles. At a conference of the Motoring Press Club
held in March 1949 in Burscheid under the auspices of the Goetze com-
pany, Neubauer asked for permission to show the last Daimler-Benz rac-
ing film made in the Nazi period under the title
Victory—Record—Championship. He wanted to show it “in its interna-
tional version to this small private gathering”, which included, as it had
before 1945, Messrs Bretz, Doerschlag, Rosemann, and other old friends.
Nothing had changed. “I have in fact found out”, Neubauer explained,
“that particularly in the British Zone, many sports films with a National
Socialist background are shown with no criticism at all, because of course
recent events cannot simply be erased”.
Former journalist and editor Hans Bretz became the first vice-­president
of the re-founded Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club in 1949 and
finally served as the unchallenged President of Germany’s most powerful
motoring organisation from 1964 until his death in 1972. In the post-­
war period Bretz described the work of the once Nazified ADAC as
“without doubt a deliberate demonstration against the high-handed and
108 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

partisan role of the NSKK in national and international motoring”.

However, writing during the Third Reich, he had played a very different
tune. In 1937, Bretz had written retrospectively about the ten years of the
Nürburgring, recounting that “in 1933, through the liberating and reviv-
ifying deeds of the Führer, German motor sport received a boost which
removed at a stroke all the obstacles with which it had had to battle till
then!” He went on to rejoice that “from a multiplicity of clubs […] a
single club has been formed: the Deutsche Automobil-Club (DDAC)”.
The next year, when writing for Daimler-Benz AG, Bretz had praised
National Socialist sports policy, “which has attempted and achieved ever
new and greater performances! It is to the credit of the leader of German
motor sport, Korpsführer Hühnlein, that these internal and external con-
ditions have been created, firstly through the reorganisation of the
German club structure, which found expression in the creation of the
Deutsches Automobil-Club, then most of all in the concentrated power,
which the Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps [NSKK] has won for itself
under his leadership. Among the men of the Corps, motor sport is no
longer chiefly a striving for personal success but rather an untiring battle
for the success and honour of the nation!”
Porsche was a case in point of the failure of post-war de-Aryanisation
and denazification. On 30 November 1949 Rosenberger, now known as
Alan Arthur Robert, pursued an action before the Stuttgart District
Court for the restitution of his shares of Porsche GmbH based on a law
made in Germany on 10 November 1947 by the occupying Americans
(“Das Rückerstattungsgesets” Law on Restitution—Law Nr. 59). In
1950, Porsche took legal responsibility for having profited from
Aryanising Adolf Rosenberger’s shares by accepting a settlement in court,
which undervalued the true damages faced by Rosenberger. Porsche was
motivated to settle, because their company’s property was held in
Germany by American post-war property control, which could only be
released if they settled with Rosenberger. Only four weeks after the settle-
ment in court the property was released.15
During the Nazi dictatorship Rosenberger had operated in London,
Paris, and elsewhere as the foreign representative of the Porsche com-
pany—with no commercial success, or so the lawyers for Ferdinand and
Ferry Porsche claimed. Rosenberger riposted that this was due to the
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 109

great inventor’s defective designs and absence of patent rights. Porsche

admitted that the Nazi authorities had put pressure on Porsche to part
company with their Jewish employees. Was this in fact the case? Or had
Porsche fired these staff members to seize the opportunities the Nazi’s had
to offer, or was this done because they themselves wished to Aryanise
their own company because they embraced the Nazi ideology?
This was the claim made by Rosenberger. He declared that it was sheer
opportunism to get rid of their Jewish partner. After the war ended,
Rosenberger returned to Germany and sought out the Porsches in
Stuttgart. Ferry Porsche claims that “…Rosenberger suggested that if we
paid him 200,000 DM and he returned half this sum to us ‘under the
table,’ we would not have lost any money. His reasoning was that the
200,000 DM would be tax deductible since it was an indemnification by
us. However, this was an unacceptable offer because it would have put the
Porsche company in a position of tax evasion. We therefore effected a
compromise in which we gave him a new Volkswagen free and several
thousand still marks—but no contract”.16 In effect, Ferry Porsche invoked
anti-Semitic stereotypes of the “dirty Jewish businessman” in his version
of events in a book published in the late 1970s. Porsche provided no
evidence to support his allegations, but Rosenberger had already died in
Los Angeles on 6 December 1967 at the age of 67 and could not counter
the specious claims that assaulted his character. At the time, it seemed as
if his contributions to racing history would be buried with him.
Rosenberger was almost forgotten as it was the SS officer, Rosemeyer, not
Rosenberger, who drove the Auto Union Grand Prix car.
At the same time, the Porsche company became a safe haven for friends
and acquaintances closely tied to the upper echelons of Nazi Germany.17
Albert Prinzing, a highly ranked SS member, became CEO of Porsche,
recruited by his friend Ferry Porsche. Prinzing fostered the growth of the
small Zuffenhausen sportscar manufacturer into a substantial corpora-
tion. Prinzing’s friend, SS-Oberführer Franz Alfred Six, was hired as the
publicity executive for Porsche. Franz Alfred Six was tried as a war crimi-
nal in the Einsatzgruppen Prozess at Nuremberg in 1948. The tribunal
sentenced Six to 20 years imprisonment, but a clemency court commuted
this sentence. Six was released in 1952 and began his work for Porsche.
In 1961, he was called as a witness by the defence during the trial of
110 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

former SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, a major architect of

the Holocaust, in Jerusalem. Six was forced to give his testimony by
deposition in West Germany, because he would have been arrested in
Israel as a war criminal. Baron Fritz Huschke von Hanstein, former
SS-Hauptsturmführer, had a longer tenure in Zuffenhausen. He became
Porsche’s press officer, racing car driver, and race director, playing an
important role within the German racing community. The baron built a
reputation for the little VW-based Porsche 365 among the ‘better class’ of
people, making Porsche the ‘chic’ marque. The charismatic von Hanstein
rose to become an internationally respected representative of German
motor sport. After serving as Porsche’s racing manager, he took up senior
positions in the AvD (Automobile Club of Germany) and the World
Automobile Federation.
It became public knowledge that Porsche employed Nazi war crimi-
nals, when worker protests and international outrage forced former
Waffen-SS Oberbannführer Joachim Peiper to leave his job at Porsche.
Peiper had been a key member of Himmler’s personal staff, was in com-
mand of a unit on the Eastern Front, and after the war, in what was
known as the Malmédy Trial, was condemned to death for the massacre
of Belgian civilians and US POWs in the wake of the Ardennes offensive.
He is considered one of the most heinous of the Nazi war criminals. His
sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but Peiper was granted
early release in 1956 with the promise of employment by Porsche the fol-
lowing year. Post-war German society maintained a camaraderie fostered
by the SS during the Nazi dictatorship. This was particularly true in the
‘non-political’ world of motor racing. The members of this privileged
fraternity benefitted from the specious designation of motor racing as
non-political. The juxtaposition of the Rosenberger trial and the immedi-
ate population of the company with high-ranking SS points to the fiction
of denazification and the mythology of the ‘apolitical’ status of the auto-
motive industry that is even perpetuated today.
Before the Third Reich, automotive racing had been an elite sport. It
became popularised by the Nazi dictatorship and, after 1945, gentrified
in a “return to the hands of the ‘better classes,’ untainted by Nazi ideol-
ogy”. However, the political activities of leaders in the post-war racing
world undermine this narrative. Among von Hanstein’s closest friends
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 111

was Prince Paul von Metternich. The prince was also a Spanish grandee,
Duca de Portella, Conde de Castillejo, Count von Königswart, a major
landowner in the Tyrol, and Grand Prior of the Order of Lazarus in
Germany. He had fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War and had
played his part against the ‘Communist menace’ outside Madrid and at
the capture of Toledo and Barcelona. After the war he began his racing,
became President of the AvD, and finally ascended to head of the inter-
national motor racing federation, the Federation Internationale de
l’Automobile (FIA). Years later Max Mosley was President of the FIA in
succession to the controversial Jean-Marie Balestre18 from 1993 to 2009.
The contributions and influence of the late barrister and racing driver
regarding motor racing, from founding the March Formula One racing
team to his work at the FIA, are many and far reaching, not to mention
his contributions to road safety. However, Mosley was a son of the former
leader of the British Union of Fascists, the late Sir Oswald Mosley. His
association with his father’s fascist political movement included a job as
an election agent running a 1961 by-election campaign featuring racist
leaflets warning about immigrants bringing disease and poverty to the
UK. Max Mosley appreciated the racing community of the 1960s, where
no questions were asked about his father’s fascist politics and the extent
of his own participation in them. Nonetheless, Mosely’s own political
views came under scrutiny in 2018 when he told the Guardian that he
had supported apartheid in South Africa during the 1960s and had felt it
“perfectly legitimate to offer immigrants financial inducements to go
home”.19
Up until the late 1980s, there were no discussions within the German
racing community about the complicity of the racing business with the
Third Reich. Indeed, the end of the war seemed to provide what appeared
to be a ‘safe haven’ for former Nazis. However, the desire to keep the
secret of the German racing world’s Nazi past and the not so apolitical
involvement of its brightest stars came at a price. Keeping one’s own
secrets demanded keeping the secrets of others. Nonetheless, critiques
started to emerge, when the most notable of these figures were deceased
and their legends and myths were called into question. These counter-­
narratives and critiques, like the silenced story of Adolf Rosenberger
(Alan Robert), the Jewish entrepreneur, race car driver, and co-founder of
112 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

the Porsche company, have been established through primary historical

documents extant in public and private archives. However, revealing
these secrets does not mean that Formula 1 racing has left behind its rac-
ist and nationalist past. History is about explaining the present by under-
standing the past in order to change the future. We have exposed the
romanticisation of German automotive racing and its history, which has
obscured its discriminatory underpinnings that must be made visible and
understood if they are ever to be combatted. Historical and moral ques-
tions collide and ought to be confronted in history writing. This disrup-
tion of the shining mythological narrative has been long overdue.

Notes
1. Jonathan Noble “Hamilton named among TIME’s 100 most influential
people”. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/hamilton-­time-­100-­
influential-­list/4879940/. Posted 23 September 2020; accessed 10
May 2022.
2. This was followed in 1959 by a second volume, Master of a Thousand
Horsepower. The memoirs, which Rowe reworked in 1970 and abridged
heavily to make a single volume.
3. Alfred Neubauer, Männer, Frauen und Motoren, Hamburg 1958; Alfred
Neubauer, Herr über 1000 PS. Erinnerungen des Rennleiters Alfred
Neubauer aufgezeichnet von Harvey T. Rowe, Hamburg 1959; cited
from: Harvey T. Rowe, Männer, Frauen und Motoren. Die Erinnerungen
des Rennleiters Alfred Neubauer, 1. Aufl.[der überarbeiteten, einbändi-
gen Fassung] Stuttgart 1970, p. 10.
4. These were the people named in and targeted by the Nuremburg Laws.
However, those outside of the heterosexual ‘Aryan’ identity were
persecuted.
5. Victor Klemperer, LTI. Notizbuch eines Philologen. Leipzig: 1996. 10.
14. Aufl. Leipzig 1996, p. 10.
6. Peter Longerich,. Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 10–13.
7. There was a 9 km straight, then a tight bend at the southern end, and
another 9 km straight leading to the wide northern bend, and then the
whole circuit started again.
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 113

8. Adolf Rosenberger has been written out of history, and because there is
little to no common knowledge of him, a brief description of who this
person was is footnoted here. What has become publicly available regard-
ing Rosenberger has been primarily due to the research and documenta-
ries of Eberhard Reuß, especially Der Mann hinter Porsche-Adolf
Rosenberger ARD/SWR/NDR aired on 24 June 2019.
Adolf Rosenberger was born in 1900 in southwestern Germany in the
city of Pforzheim. He was Jewish and at the age of 17 volunteered to be
a pilot in World War I. He returned from the war as a decorated war hero
and began racing motorcycles. He later took up racing Mercedes motor
cars, which was a typical path for automotive racing after World War
I. He was a record-breaking race car driver and in 1931 became with
Ferdinand Porsche and his son-in-law Anton Piëch one of the three
founders and CEO of the new Porsche company. When in 1933 Hitler
came to power and racing and the industry was Aryanised, the process of
forgetting his contributions was actively initiated. He will return to this
narrative, as his contributions and his removal from the automotive
industry in Germany is illustrative of Aryanising and racist tendencies.
For more information on some of the wealthiest industrialists who
benefitted from Nazi Germany, including Porsche and BMW, please see
David de Jong. Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest
Dynasties, New York: Harper Collins. 2022.
It should be noted here that Porsche AG has shown interest in a dis-
cussion with Adolf Rosenberger gGmbH (Adolf-­Rosenberger.com) to
amend the historical record to include Adolf Rosenberger’s contribu-
tions to the company and reckon with the Nazi past as it relates to
Porsche AG.
9. In theory this meant a smaller cubic capacity and a maximum output of
around 250 bhp.
10. Draft Contract, Adolf Rosenberger, gGmbH, Archives of the Adolf
Rosenberger gGmbH.
11. Longerich, 18
12. This was the beginning of Aryanisation. ‘Aryanisation’ is a term that was
used by the Nazis that referred to the seizure of property from Jews that
removed Jews from economic life, ultimately culminating in the Shoa.
Property, jobs, positions, and more were taken from Jewish people and
given to Aryans. Initially, Aryanisation was hidden under a cloak of ‘nor-
114 E. Reuss and S. Esslinger

mal’ business transactions, until in its later manifestations it was prac-

tised as unabashed thievery.
13. Letter from 14 November 1946 from Mendon prison, France, estate of
the Adolf Rosenberger gGmbH.
14. It is interesting to note, here, that he was arrested on 5 September for
Rassenschande, but the Nuremberg Race Laws were not official until 15
September 1935. He was held in Pforzheim until shortly after the
Nuremberg Laws were in place and transferred to a concentration camp.
Rosenberger’s prominence seems to have been why he was targeted.
Ferdinand Porsche and his son Ferry later insisted that they had made
sure their former colleague was quickly released. Adolf Rosenberger dis-
putes this.
15. Thanks to Dr Christoph Rückel, Attorney, for consulting on the signifi-
cance of the legal action. Rückel and Collegen, Munich, and Chairman
of the Supervisory Board, Adolf Rosenberger gGmbH (Adolf
Rosenberger.com), Munich.
16. Ferry Porsche with John Bentley. We at Porsche: The Autobiography of Dr.
Ing h.c. Ferry Porsche with a foreword by Baron Huschke von Hanstein.
New York: Double Day, 1976. 228.
17. As historian Hans Mommsen writes in his standard work on the
Volkswagen plant in the Third Reich: “Ferdinand Porsche did not trou-
ble himself with the political implications of putting the task of factory
security into the hands of the SS. This measure reflected the strong affin-
ity between the professional technocrats and the SS, who posed as a
highly efficient elite”. At the same time, Mommsen takes a somewhat
benevolent view of this technocrat: “With the sureness of a sleepwalker
Porsche succeeded to a great extent in staying aloof from the chronic
power struggles between the satraps of National Socialism, and, admit-
tedly backed by the unarguable respect he enjoyed from Adolf Hitler, he
was able to maintain a largely independent stance. His unorthodox man-
ner, his relaxed and never subservient way of dealing with the Party nota-
bles, and his international renown as a motor car designer, as well as his
spectacular successes in racing car construction, gave him an exceptional
position within the regime, which in some respects allowed him to break
ranks from time to time”.
It could be put another way: Porsche’s direct line to Hitler gave him
ample opportunity to pursue his own advantage with a ruthless consis-
tency. The central files of the NSDAP record Ferdinand Porsche as mem-
 Racing and Racism: German Motorsport and the Third Reich 115

ber no. 5643287. Having applied for admission on 8 October 1937, he

was accepted retroactively from 1 May of that year. And in the final
phase of World War II, Porsche, aged nearly 70, was to be found in the
ranks of the SS. On 3 April 1944 the central personnel office of the SS
in Berlin received a returned and completed ‘questionnaire for senior SS
officers’ in the name of SS-Oberführer Prof. Dr Ing. h.c. Ferdinand
Porsche. His son Ferry had already joined the staff of the SS Danube
Division as early as 1 August 1941, as no. 346167.
18. Balestre is known to have been a member of the French Nazi division of
the SS during the German occupation of France, but later claimed to
have been an undercover agent of the French Resistance. See “Jean-Marie
Balestre – Obituary”, The Guardian, 31 March 2008. https://www.the-
guardian.com/sport/2008/mar/31/motorsports.mainsection. Accessed
16 May 2022.
19. In 1954/1955 there were discussions within the British press about
Stirling Moss joining Mercedes-Benz: A Jewish racing driver signing in
for a German company ten years after the end of World War II? The late
Sir Stirling seemed to have no problem with it; he wanted to race the
fastest Grand Prix car and the British could not deliver, so he joined
Mercedes-­Benz. His compatriot Mike Hawthorn became the first British
Formula One World Champion in 1958, thanks to Sir Stirling in the
aftermath of the Portuguese Grand Prix. Yet, sometime prior to the 1958
victory, Hawthorn nicknamed Moss ‘Moses’.

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 Henry Ford and the Rise of US
Motorsport
Georgios P. Loizides

Introduction
This chapter revolves around Henry Ford’s involvement in and influence
on early motorsport in the United States. Although Ford had experi-
mented with automobile manufacture since the mid-1890s, it was not
until 1901 that Henry Ford became directly involved in car racing. That
year, he created a stir when he defeated accomplished racer Alexander
Winton in a race at Grosse Pointe, MI. This event, together with a 1902
race in which Ford’s 999 racer (driven by Barney Oldfield) again defeated
Winton at Grosse Pointe, skyrocketed Ford’s fame and helped him secure
funding for establishing the Ford Motor Company. The 1901 race, the
only event in which Ford raced himself, marked the start of Ford’s 12-year
long direct involvement in motorsport, which ended in 1913, the same
year that the moving line production was established at the Ford Motor
Company’s Highland Park plant. This was also the period in which Model

G. P. Loizides (*)
University of Wisconsin – Stout, Menomonie, WI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 119
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_5
120 G. P. Loizides

T sales began to dominate the American automobile market. Following

his early flirting with racing, from 1901 to 1913, Henry Ford primarily
acted as a major car manufacturer, utilizing racing only to further the
interests of developing, manufacturing and selling automobiles.
This chapter will comprise two main parts: the years of Ford’s direct
involvement with car racing, 1901–1913; and the years following 1913,
when his involvement became more indirect and principally served the
interests of manufacturing and sales. A short description of the post-1945
period, when Henry Ford retired from the Ford Motor Company and the
company leadership was taken over by Henry Ford II is added to this sec-
tion. The chapter particularly covers the 1901 and 1902 races at Grosse
Ponte, which proved influential in establishing the Ford Motor Company,
as well as other early racing events in which Ford was directly involved. It
also covers Henry Ford’s post-1913 indirect involvement, through his
Ford Racing team (later renamed Ford Performance), through racing
event sponsoring, through the extensive sales of Model T, and through
the early Ford Motor Company personnel policies, that arguably facili-
tated increases in worker leisure time and disposable income (which he
directed towards the purchasing of homes and cars). As noted, the main
part of this chapter ends with a description of the post-1945 period,
when Henry Ford II, grandson of Henry Ford revived the direct involve-
ment of the Ford Motor Company in motorsport. Finally, this chapter
concludes with a summary of the main points.

 enry Ford’s Direct Involvement

H
in Motorsport: 1901–1913
Although Henry Ford was one of the early players in automobile racing,
he certainly did not father the sport in the United States. That title must
go to railroad heir and plutocrat William K. Vanderbilt and his friends,
who became the first racing enthusiasts in the United States, driving
European cars (McCarthy, 2009). Indeed, by 1901, when at the age of 38
Henry Ford ran his first and only race as a driver, motorsport was already
beginning to flourish in America. In fact, it was the increasing popularity
 Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport 121

of motorsport that encouraged Henry Ford to become involved in racing

in the first place. Henry Ford’s direct involvement in racing lasted, as
noted, about 12 years, until 1913. By December 1913, his plant at
Highland Park had established the moving assembly line production and
was producing an increasing number of Model T. cars. In January 1914,
he established his now famous five-dollar-day, and he became fully
immersed in automobile production.
Ford’s first car, the Quadricycle, took four years to complete and was
finished in 1896. It was “essentially a motorized four-wheel bicycle, with
chain drive, a tiller for steering, and no brakes or reverse gear” (Goldstone,
2016). The four horsepower Quadricycle could reach a top speed of
20 miles per hour. Ford developed this first car while he was working as a
Chief Engineer at the Edison Illumination Company. In 1899, Ford left
the Edison company, after a group of investors founded the Detroit
Automobile Company, the first Detroit company devoted to the manu-
facture of automobiles (Goldstone, 2016; Lacey, 1986). This group of
investors offered Ford a small amount of company stock and the position
of Chief Engineer. Ford remained in the Detroit Automobile Company
for only two years, until it was dissolved in January 1901 (see Agreement
between Detroit Automobile Company and Henry Ford, 1899).
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the popularity of motors-
port in America was increasing rapidly, and so was the average speed in
every race. In 1900 for example, William Vanderbilt won a five-mile race
at Newport, Rhode Island, with an average speed of 33 mph, while in the
same month, Alexander Winton, car manufacturer and famed race driver,
won a 50-mile race in Chicago with an average speed of around 38 mph
(Lacey, 1986). In 1901 it was announced that on October 10, Winton
was going to compete at a newly constructed track in Grosse Pointe,
Michigan. History was in the making. In preparation for the Grosse
Pointe race, Ford assembled a team, which included an electrician from
the Edison plant, Edward “Spider” Huff. Huff and his team developed
multiple innovations that became lasting legacies, such as a special spark
coil, which was housed in an insulating porcelain case (made of denture
ceramic with the help of a dentist)—a predecessor of the modern spark
plug (Lacey, 1986). Huff was to be the riding mechanic for Ford in
the race.
122 G. P. Loizides

Ford’s racer had modest performance capabilities but was light and of
simple construction. It carried a two-cylinder engine that could produce
26 horsepower. By contrast, Ford’s registered competitors at the race had
more experience and fame and drove racers with much more powerful
engines. Henri Fournier for example, the French one-mile speed record
holder, drove a car that could produce 60 horsepower, Alexander Winton’s
racer could produce 40 horsepower, as much as the car belonging to
William K. Vanderbilt Jr. In comparison with these famous drivers driv-
ing large, heavy and powerful racers, Henry Ford seemed to be less of a
competition. When Vanderbilt and Fournier dropped out before the
race, there remained but one certain winner, Alexander Winton. Winton
was such a big favourite to win the race, that the race organizers allowed
Winton’s sales manager to essentially collaborate with them in determin-
ing the trophy, which was chosen to be a cut-glass punchbowl. Winton
even reserved a high visibility spot at his home to exhibit the trophy
(Lacey, 1986; Ford, Edsel II, 2015). On the day of the well-publicized
race, there were more than 8000 spectators present. At the starting line
for the race, there were only three competitors left. One of them devel-
oped a mechanical failure and could not start. This left only two competi-
tors, “the new world-record holder and ace motor manufacturer,
Alexander Winton, and the Dearborn country boy and failed manufac-
turer, Henry Ford” (Lacey, 1986, p. 55). Given the few remaining entries
and the power differential between drivers and racers, the organizers of
the race decided to decrease the number of laps from 25 (25 miles) to just
10, as they felt that there would be little interest in seeing Winton drive
25 laps on his own. This essentially transformed the race from an all-day
endurance race to a ten-lap sprint. The race started as expected, with
Winton propelling himself to first position and gaining in distance from
Ford with every lap. By the end of the third lap, Winton was ahead by
more than a fifth of a mile, and the race seemed all but decided, until the
sixth lap, that is, when Winton’s car developed a problem and began los-
ing power and speed. A cloud began to form behind Winton’s racer as it
was slowing down. Despite Winton’s riding mechanic’s frantic efforts at
repairing the engine on the fly, the car kept losing speed. By lap six, Ford
cut into Winton’s lead significantly, and by the seventh lap, they overtook
Winton as the crowd went wild. Following the race, clearly intimidated
 Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport 123

by the dangerous experience, Ford stated that he would “never again”

race. He never did!
In November 1901, following his win at the Grosse Pointe race and
subsequent fame, Henry Ford secured financial backing once again. Ford
and a group of engineers reorganized the company into the Henry Ford
Company. Within a few months, Ford left the company (or was fired),
following a dispute with his investors in 1902 and went on to establish
the Ford Motor Company the following year (see Ford Motor Company
Articles of Association). The Henry Ford Company was renamed The
Cadillac Automobile Company in 1902. When Ford left the Henry Ford
Company, he concentrated on developing Ford 999, with which he won
his second major race, with Barney Oldfield as driver this time, at Grosse
Pointe, Michigan. Ford’s preoccupation with the development of this rac-
ing car had been at the core of his disagreement with his backers in 1902.
While he was increasingly involved in developing his racing cars, his
backers were more interested in developing and constructing a produc-
tion automobile as soon as possible (Lacey, 1986).
Apart from a short period of fascination with racing beginning in
1901, Henry Ford treated motorsport, like many other automobile man-
ufacturers since the early history of automobile production, as a means to
increase the visibility of their brand, thus increasing sales, as a means to
develop more efficient automobiles, and as a sort of training and develop-
ment area for their engineers. In a 2017 editorial titled “Why Do
Automakers Spend Big Money on Racing?” Autotrader’s Executive Editor
Brian Moody argued, similarly, that automobile manufacturers still invest
in motorsport to increase product visibility and thus sales, to facilitate
product development, and to help train engineers (Moody, 2017). Ford
himself, insisted that he did not personally like the idea of racing. Indeed,
he played down his own interest in racing, by stating that

I never thought anything of racing, but the public refused to consider the
automobile in any light other than as a fast toy. Therefore, later we had to
race. The industry was held back by this initial racing slant, for the atten-
tion of the makers was diverted to making fast rather than good cars. It was
a business for speculators. (Ford, 1922, p. 86)
124 G. P. Loizides

However, during the period around the 1901 Grosse Pointe victory, and
shortly afterwards, Ford seemed preoccupied with further developing
racers. In 1902, while still in the Henry Ford Company, Henry Ford
wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law Milton Bryant that “my Company
will kick about me following racing but they get the advertising and I
expect to make $ where I can’t make c [cents] at manufacturing” (Letter
from Henry Ford to Milton Bryant Concerning Auto Racing, 1902).
Benson Ford Research Center object ID 64.167.1.408. Also see Weiss,
2003, p. 9). Ford’s split interests in manufacturing and motorsport was
commented on by Watts (2005) thus:

the marked contrast between Ford the racer and Ford the manufacturer
only increased tensions with his financial backers. ‘He seemed to be so
taken up with the racing car that that is the thing which made the others
dissatisfied,’ Oliver Barthel observed of Ford’s festering relations with his
stockholders. ‘They merely said that he had the racing fever and they were
through with him.’ This situation contributed to Ford’s dismissal from the
Henry Ford Company in March 1902. (also see Pauly, 2012)

When Ford left the company, he took with him the name (as was his legal
right) and his drafts for a new racer (Lacey, 1986). It is reported that the
disagreement that dissolved the Henry Ford Company was related to his
backers being “intent on attracting customers and so opposed to racing.”
By 1902, Henry Ford was “discontented and pining for a return to rac-
ing” (Pauly, 2012, p. 149).
During the 1901 race at Grosse Pointe, Ford met bicycle racer Barney
Oldfield (Pauly, 2012). Despite having no prior experience in driving
cars, Oldfield was destined to gain fame as a racing driver for the next two
decades. In May 1902, a few months after Ford’s leaving the Henry Ford
Company, he and his team of engineers began building two racers: the
999 and the Arrow. Barney Oldfield drove the 80-plus horsepower 999 to
victory in the Manufacturers’ Challenge Cup on October 25, 1902, a
five-mile race at Grosse Pointe, Michigan. This is often hailed as Ford’s
second big racing victory. However, it is worth noting that a few weeks
before the race, Ford had sold his share of the 999, following a failed test
session.
 Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport 125

After the 1902 Grosse Pointe race, Ford devoted his attention to estab-
lishing the Ford Motor Company and finalizing the development of a
general use car. This gave birth to the Model A, a two-cylinder car.
Meanwhile, Ford rebuilt his Arrow, which had been involved in a fatal
crash, and with his riding mechanic from the 1901 race, “Spider” Huff,
set a new land speed record on iced Lake St Clair on January 12, 1904,
with a top speed of 91.37 mph (as timed and sanctioned by the American
Automobile Association—AAA).
In summer of 1904 Ford partnered with a new race/factory driver,
Frank Kulick. Kulick became one of the first Ford Motor Company
employees, and stayed with Ford until 1913, when Henry Ford withdrew
from racing altogether. Kulick’s first races with Ford were with a racer
that combined two Model A engines, to make a four-cylinder racer. In
June 1907, Kulick drove a six-cylinder production Model K in a 24-hour
race for “stock” cars at the Detroit Fairgrounds. He won after driving
1135 miles (using two cars, as allowed by the rules). Following an October
1907 crash, that left Kulick with permanent injuries, Henry Ford stopped
developing race cars, until 1910.
The lull in racer development did not prevent Ford from participating
in motorsport. In fact, the Ford team participated with two Model T cars
in the very first transcontinental car race, the “ocean to ocean” New York-­
to-­Seattle race that was held in June 1909. One of Ford’s two participat-
ing Model Ts won the race in 22 days (Wells, 2012). It is worth noting
that five months after the victory in the New York-to-Seattle race, it was
discovered that during the race, while crossing Idaho, the Ford team had
replaced the engine of their winning car, and so it was disqualified (Cole,
1991). Meanwhile, after a period of recovery from injuries suffered in the
1907 crash, Kulick continued to win races for Ford. Between 1910 and
1912, he won a number of races around the country driving a specially
modified Model T. In 1911, he ran the one-mile oval track at Detroit
Fairgrounds in 50 seconds flat, setting a new record and beating a 200
horsepower Blitzen Benz, one of the greatest racers in the world at
the time.
As a “stock car,” a car designed for public driving as opposed to racing,
the Model T proved to be a strong competitor in racing as well. This
helped increase public interest in racing (McCarthy, 2007). In 1911, at
126 G. P. Loizides

the inaugural Indianapolis 500, officials barred the Model T team from
participating, after drivers refused to carry several hundred pounds of
extra weight in order to qualify. Once again, in 1913, Henry Ford’s Model
T team, with Kulick as driver tried to enter in the Indianapolis 500 race.
Race officials demanded that the Model T add 1000 pounds of weight in
order to qualify for the race. Indeed, this was a major problem for Ford,
as with its smaller engine, the Model T needed to be light to compete
with the larger engines and heavier racers of the competition. As the
other drivers were driving heavier cars, the Model T was competitive.
Add 1000 pounds to it though, and its engine could not compete with
the higher horsepower engines of the competition. In response to the
demand for more weight, Henry Ford stated “we ’re building race cars,
not trucks” and withdrew the entry. Following this failed attempt to enter
the Indianapolis 500, the Ford Motor Company withdrew from racing
altogether, and abstained from major racing programs until the 1950s,
after Henry Ford’s grandson, Henry Ford II had taken over the company.
Perhaps the greatest reason Henry Ford began to lose interest in racing
in 1913 was that by that time, Model T production and sales were increas-
ing dramatically. Indeed, the end of 1913 marks the time of the introduc-
tion of the moving line production at the Ford Motor Company plant.
By January 1914, the Ford Motor Company had in place a number of
innovations that enabled it to mass produce Model Ts. Standardization of
production reduced the production time for the Model T to just 93 min-
utes (Cassia, Fabio and Ferazzi, Matteo, 2018). Ford’s ability to mass
produce inexpensive cars that won popular races was a recipe for success.
Note that 1914 also marked the time when Henry Ford doubled the
prevailing minimum wage for automobile workers in Detroit—the now
famous five-dollar-day—and established a set of controls to reduce labour
turnover and increase the productivity of his workforce (Loizides, 2014).
Taken together, these developments absorbed much of Henry Ford’s
attention. His newfound status as a major automobile manufacturer left
little time for racing. For Henry Ford, his engagement with racing had
achieved its goal, which was to aid him in increasing car sales. From this
point on, racing for him became a side show. His main preoccupation
was to maintain and increase production and sales of automobiles. In
1906, Henry Ford stated to a number of visitors to his factory that “it is
my whole ambition to build a car that anyone can afford to own, and to
 Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport 127

build more of them than any other factory in the world” (McCarthy,
2007, p. 31). Ford remained true to his early goal, and this goal seems to
have informed much of what he did in his professional life.

Post-1913 Period
The Ford Motor Company remained officially absent from direct partici-
pation in racing events for some decades after 1913. However, Ford-made
cars continued to take part in racing events and had some notable victo-
ries, such as the Romanians Petre Cristea’s and Ion Zamfirescu’s 1936
victory at Monte Carlo in a modified Ford V8, and Jimmi Florian’s
NASCAR at Dayton Speedway win in 1950, also with a flathead V8 Ford.
The mid-1950s witnessed a number of highly publicized racing acci-
dents, such as the Le Mans Disaster of 1955, in which more than 75
people were killed and more than 100 injured when two cars collided
sending debris into the crowd of spectators. These accidents prompted
the Automobile Manufacturers Association to ban participation of its
members in racing activities. The Ford Motor Company participated in
the ban from 1957 to 1962, when Henry Ford II announced that the
company would begin to participate in racing again.
Henry Ford II, grandson of Henry Ford, who was the Ford Motor
Company CEO from 1945 to 1979, revived the company’s participation
in motorsport. In a June 1966 interview in Sports Illustrated magazine he
stressed the importance of the 1966 Le Mans victory in maintaining the
visibility of the company and supporting sales, as well as the importance
of motorsport to the development of “better, safer and more efficient
automobiles for general use” (Sports Illustrated, June 20, 1966, p. 35). The
1960s re-entry of the Ford Motor Company in racing events began a new
chapter of the company’s participation in motorsport and marked the
beginning of the contemporary era of Ford’s participation in automobile
racing. Since the 1960s, the Ford Performance team has won numerous
victories at national and international events, including victories at
Daytona 500 and Le Mans. Most famously, in 1966, Ford won a 1-2-3
victory at the 24-hours race of Le Mans, which was depicted in the popu-
lar 2019 movie Ford v Ferrari. The first three competitors all drove Ford
GT 40 mk. II cars. Ford Performance is still a top participant in motorsport.
128 G. P. Loizides

The publicity and popularity that Henry Ford received from his racing
activities during the first decade of the twentieth century proved impor-
tant in his establishment as a top automobile designer and manufacturer.
Weeks after Henry Ford’s historic victory over Winton at Grosse Pointe
in 1901, his wife, Clara Ford, wrote to her brother, Milton Bryant, that
“Henry has worked very hard to get where he is. That race has advertised
him far and wide. And the next thing will be to make some money out of
it” (Lacey, 1986, p. 59).
The successful participation of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor
Company in racing during the first decade of the twentieth century, cul-
minating to The New York-to-Seattle race of 1909 generated considerable
publicity for the Model T. Following the New York-to-Seattle race, which
was won by a model T, Ford engaged in “grandiose marketing hype,”
presenting the Model T as the “Universal Car” (Wells, 2012, p. 50). The
marketing campaign that followed the race helped propel Model T sales
to newfound heights. The Ford Times had a picture of the winning Model
T and the two drivers on its cover page (Ford Times, No. 19, July 1st,
1909). Another advertisement published in The Horseless Age, Ford pre-
sented the Model T as “the family car of pleasure, the fast car for the busy
businessmen, the reliable car day and night for the doctor, the dependable
car on the farm (The Horseless Age, 1910, p. 17). (For a more general
discussion on how car racing became very popular and a connection
between stock car races and automobile sales see Hall, 2002).
As stated earlier in this chapter, automobile manufacturers typically
support motorsport as a means to increase visibility and sales, to increase
the efficiency of their automobiles and for training engineers and devel-
oping new technologies. To this end, in 2011 the Ford Motor Company
(through Ford Racing) published a book titled Why We Race: Use Ford
Racing to Increase Sales. Clearly intended for distribution to Ford dealers,
the book promotes involvement in motorsport as a way of increasing
sales. In his foreword, Edsel Ford II stated:

Back at the turn of the 20th century… my great-grandfather was deter-

mined to become an automobile manufacturer… but lacked two things:
start-up money, and a reputation of expertise as an automaker. Racing
helped him get both… My great-grandfather believed that racing could
help him establish himself. If he hadn’t believed in the power of racing, the
 Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport 129

Ford Motor Company as we know it probably wouldn’t exist today… The

fact of the matter is, the basics haven’t changed in 110 years. To this day,
auto racing remains a highly visible way to generate excitement about an
automaker’s products, and to demonstrate product superiority and techni-
cal expertise. The intense competition has made it a hotbed of innovation
in several fields—engineering, fabrication, safety, medicine, and various
technologies, to name a few. (Ford Racing, 2011, p. 3)

In his closing remarks, Ford Racing director Jamie Allison argued that:
Simply put, racing is good for business for Ford Motor Company and Ford
dealers… Racing’s on-track competition drives us to continually improve
our engineering and technology… it also gives us a means of developing
and testing a wide-ranging, high-quality line of performance parts… The
high visibility of racing allows us to show the millions of fans what we can
do and how good our products are… And all this works because the excite-
ment and action of racing draws the fans… It’s been 110 years since Henry
Ford won his race against Alexander Winton. And today we’re still doing it
for the same reasons: to help drive innovation and product development;
to prove our products in front of a large audience against tough competi-
tion; and to market our success. (Ford Racing, 2011, p. 31)

Conclusion—Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday

Ford’s direct involvement in auto racing was significant, if somewhat
overstated. Ford was a master at public relations and had the ability and
financial capability to create successful narratives that maximized his per-
sonal benefits. For example, the first racing victory at Grosse Pointe in
1901 was more of a loss to Winton than a victory for Ford. It is not often
recalled in the media that it was a series of fortunate events that allowed
Ford to claim that victory, such as the dropping out of experienced driv-
ers with much stronger racers and the mechanical failure that Winton’s
car developed that gave Ford the victory. Similarly, not many remember
that the speed record he achieved with his Arrow (“the New 999”) at
91.37 mph was broken by William K. Vanderbilt less than a month later,
or that the Model T victory in the New York-to-Seattle race of 1909 was
taken away five months afterwards. These details did not prevent Ford
from utilizing his achievements to increase sales for his cars. Indeed, in a
130 G. P. Loizides

two-page advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post, Ford boasted that

“Every Model T Ford is an Exact Duplicate of the Car that Won the
New York—Seattle Contest” (Saturday Evening Post, 1909, pp. 18–19).
In a fashion similar to the way that Ford utilized his Model T racing
victories to increase sales, he also promoted the development of a V-8
racing engine and its incorporation in production vehicles. Ford certainly
did not invent the V-8 engine, but he and his team were the first to pro-
duce an affordable version of it mounted on a production, mass produced
car, once again incorporating racing technology in a production vehicle,
the Model B, in order to promote automobile sales. It is indicative of the
success of this promotion that upon announcing the car on March 31,
1932, the Ford Motor Company received 100,000 pre-orders, which
doubled within a few days (Lacey, 1986).
In all, motor racing enabled Henry Ford to gain the visibility and pop-
ularity he needed to secure financial backing for his automobile manufac-
turing project. Following the great success of his Model T, he did not
need racing as much. Other major projects had since come to occupy his
time and energy, such as developing his manufacturing endeavours, and
securing and maintaining a dependable and efficient labour force (for a
discussion of this project, see Loizides, 2007).
The true significance of Henry Ford’s direct involvement in motors-
port is that it helped establish the Ford Motor Company as a major auto-
mobile manufacturer and the Model T as the top general-purpose
automobile in America. It should be remembered that at the turn of the
twentieth century, the American market for automobiles was small, with
only 8000 registered cars in 1900. It was Ford’s Model T that propelled
the automobile into a mass market (Billington, David P., & Billington,
David P. Jr., 2007). By 1917, the Ford Motor Company had up to 40%
of the automobile manufacture market (Casey, 1999). The Model T
became the most popular car of the era, with 15 million sold between
1908 and 1927. In 1923, the Model T accounted for almost 55% of
American Automobile manufacture (Wells, 2007).
Today’s involvement of the Ford Motor Company in motorsport is
fuelled by the same considerations it did more than 100 years ago.
Motorsport is most useful in supporting sales through product exposure,
and in development and testing due to the competitive nature of motor-
sport and the extreme endurance it requires from competitors.
 Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport 131

Ford Motor Company and Motorsport Timeline

1895 First automobile race. Paris to ­Bordeaux, France.

1895 First automobile race in the United States. Chicago to Evanston.
1896 Henry Ford unveils his first car: The Quadricycle.
1901 Henry Ford defeats famed race driver Alexander Winton at
Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
1902 Ford 999 (driven by Barney Oldfield) defeats Alexander Winton
at Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
1903 The Ford Motor Company is established.
1903 Ford 999 (driven by Barney Oldfield) reaches a record 60 miles
per hour.
1904 Model T production begins.
1904 Henry Ford in a rebuilt Ford 999 sets the world one-mile speed
record in a frozen Detroit lake.
1907 Ford announced he is abstaining from racing due to safety con-
cerns, following Frank Kulick’s injury at the Detroit
Fairgrounds track.
1909 Ford resumes involvement in racing following the construction
of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and persistent requests by
Frank Kulick.
1912 Frank Kulick drives a modified Model T at 107.8 mph on frozen
Lake St Clair, near Detroit.
1913 Moving assembly line production starts at the Ford Motor
Company.
1913 The Ford Motor Company ceases its motorsport activities.
1914 The five-dollar-day is established by Ford, essentially doubling
minimum wage for automobile employees.
1932 Ford begins production of the Flathead V8 engine; the first
affordable eight-cylinder engine available to the public.
(Important because it was the first “racing” engine easily acces-
sible.) “Everyman’s power for the road, and Everyman’s power
for racing” (https://performance.ford.com/enthusiasts/news-
room/2018/03/mose-­nowland-­tells-­the-­history-­of-­the-­flathead.
html, accessed on 3/4/2021).
132 G. P. Loizides

1936 Petre Cristea and Ionel Zamfirescu win the Monte Carlo race in
a specially modified Ford V8.
1945 Henry Ford II takes over the Ford Motor Company as the
new CEO.
1947 Henry Ford dies.
1950 Jimmy Florian wins the first NASCAR race at Dayton Speedway
with a Ford (flathead V8).
1956 Ford wins its first NASCAR Manufacturer’s Championship.
1957 Ford Motor Company participates in the Automobile
Manufacturers Association’s ban on racing, following serious rac-
ing accidents in the mid-1950s.
1962 Ford Motor Company resumes participation in motors-
port events.
1963 Tiny Lund wins Ford’s first Daytona 500.
1965 Jim Clark (Lotus-Ford) wins Ford’s first Indianapolis 500.
Ned Jarrett wins Ford’s first NASCAR Grand National title.
1966 1-2-3 victory of Ford GT 40 mk. II (V8) at the 24 Hours of
Le Mans.
1968 Graham Hill (Lotus-Ford) wins F1 World Championship.
1978 Mario Andretti (Lotus-Ford) wins F1 World Championship.
1979 Bjorn Waldegard (Ford Escort) wins Ford’s first FIA World Rally
Championship Manufacturers’ Championship
1985 Bill Elliott (Ford Thunderbird) wins Inaugural “Winston
Million.”
1988 Bill Elliott (Ford Thunderbird) wins NASCAR Winston Cup
Championship.
1992 Alan Kulwicki (Ford Thunderbird) wins NASCAR Winston
Cup Championship.
1994 Michael Schumacher (Benetton Ford) wins F1 World
Championship.
1999 Dale Jarrett (Ford Taurus) wins Winston Cup Championship.
2003 Matt Kenseth (Ford Taurus) wins NASCAR Winston Cup
Championship.
 Henry Ford and the Rise of US Motorsport 133

2004 Kurt Busch (Ford Taurus) wins NASCAR Nextel Cup

Championship.
2011 Trevor Bayne (Ford Fusion) wins Daytona 500. This is Ford’s
600th NASCAR Sprint Cup win and the Ford Motor Company’s
15th Daytona 500 win.

References
Billington, D. P., & Billington, D. P., Jr. (2007). Power, Speed, and Form.
Princeton University Press.
Casey, R. (1999). The Vanderbuilt Cup, 1908. Technology and Culture,
40(2), 358–362.
Cole, T. M. (1991). Ocean to Ocean by Model T Henry Ford and the 1909
Transcontinental Auto Contest. Journal of Sport History, 2, Summer,
18, 224–240.
Ford, H. (1922). My Life and Work. Garden City Publishing Co.
Ford Motor Company. (2011). Why We Race. Ford Racing.
Goldstone, L. (2016). Drive!: Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent
the Auto Age. Ballantine Books.
Hall, R. L. (2002). Before NASCAR: The Corporate and Civic Promotion of
Automobile Racing in the American South, 1903–1927. The Journal of
Southern History, 68(3), 629–668.
Lacey, R. (1986). Ford: The Men and the Machine. Little Brown.
Loizides, G. (2007). “Making Men” at Ford: Ethnicity, Race, and Americanization
During the Progressive Period. Michigan Sociological Review, 21(Fall), 3–40.
Loizides, G. P. (2014). Deconstructing Fordism: Legacies of the Ford ‘Sociological’
Department. Edwin Mellen Press.
McCarthy, T. (2009). Auto Mania. Yale University Press.
Moody, B. (2017). Why Do Automakers Spend Big Money On Racing?
Huffington Post. Retrieved February 2, 2021, from https://www.huffpost.
com/entry/why-­do-­automakers-­spend-­b_b_10863974
Pauly, T. H. (2012). Game Faces: Five Early American Champions and the Sports
They Changed. University of Nebraska Press.
Saturday Evening Post. (1909). Every Model T Ford Is an Exact Duplicate of the
Car that Won the New York – Seattle Contest, August 14, pp. 18–19.
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Sports Illustrated. (1966). Here to Show the World (Interview with Henry Ford
II). June 20, p. 35.
Watts, S. (2005). The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century.
Alfred A. Knopf.
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American Automobile Industry. McFarland & Company.
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Agreement Between Detroit Automobile Company and Henry Ford, 1899.

Object ID 64.167.374.1.
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the World No Car Like This. November 23; p. 17. Object ID 64.167.19.546.
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism
and the Mille Miglia
Paul Baxa

Called the “beautiful race,” the Mille Miglia (MM) continues to fascinate
motor sport enthusiasts more than 60 years after it was last staged.
Nostalgia for the race continues and a vintage car event is held every year
in May. The vintage race is run over three days starting and ending in
Brescia and passing through cities like Bologna, Florence, and Rome. The
race’s participants are mostly wealthy enthusiasts who own cars that once
raced in the original MM. In 2007, Philip Selkirk, director of slick docu-
mentaries on motor sport, released a film tracing the 2006 Mille Miglia
Historic Revival (Mille Miglia: Spirit of a Legend, 2007). The film, like
the event it portrays, provides a nostalgic look at the original MM race,
run between 1927 and 1957. A travelogue of sorts, Selkirk’s film inter-
sperses contemporary images with historic footage from the original race
run. In tracing the race’s history, Selkirk’s film shows an Italy that went
from the primitive roads of the 1920s to the Economic Miracle of the

P. Baxa (*)
Department of History, Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, FL, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 135
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_6
136 P. Baxa

1950s. Almost entirely missing from the documentary is Fascist Italy, the
regime that gave the green light to the first MM in 1927.
In fact, Mussolini’s regime is mentioned only once—with reference to
the anomalous MM of 1940. That event was notable because it was run
on a closed, 100-kilometer circuit around Brescia, not the iconic
1600-kilometre route. Run after the outbreak of the Second World War,
the event was festooned with Nazi and Fascist flags in Brescia’s Piazza
della Vittoria. Won by a German-entered BMW, the winning drivers had
swastikas and the SS symbol emblazoned on their driving suits. The
impression given by the documentary is that this was the only MM race
that was impacted by Fascist ideology. It seems that Selkirk forgot that
the previous MM run between 1927 and 1938 were also held under the
sign of the Littorio. In fact, the MM was a unique product of Fascist Italy,
and the race’s Fascist DNA was already deeply ingrained in the event.
Selkirk’s omission of the race’s profound roots in Fascism would no doubt
take away from the nostalgic haze of the Historic Mille Miglia.
Selkirk’s documentary relegates Fascism to the background. According
to the film’s description, Fascism is not more than a “shadow” (Anon,
n.d.). This sums up how the MM is generally viewed today. Like the
cycling Giro d’Italia or the Serie A soccer championship, the MM appears
to transcend politics and ideology. This view holds that Fascist ideology
did not have a great impact on sport despite its attempts to control all
sporting activity and use sporting accomplishments as propaganda.
Historians like Simon Martin have argued that, despite the successes of
Italian sport in the 1930s, sport’s ability to promote Fascism’s “idealized
national identity” was severely limited due to the inconsistencies and
contradictions raised by sports like soccer (Martin, 2004). Martin’s view
has been shared by historians like Daphné Bolz who have pointed out the
limits of Fascist ideology in shaping sport (Bolz, 2016). Others like
Patrizia Dogliani have recognized that Fascism made sport into a “mass
phenomenon” but its goals did not differ from the liberal policies that
preceded the regime (Dogliani, 2000). Recent work has suggested that
Fascism’s restructuring of sport under its authoritarian system did con-
tribute substantially to Italy’s successes in sport (Landoni, 2016). Fascism,
however, did not significantly change the sports themselves.
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 137

A similar argument informs the very few works on motor racing, a

sport that has received much less attention compared to soccer and
cycling. The only scholarly study of the MM recognizes the importance
of the regime in getting the race off the ground but suggests that the race
did nothing more than provide Fascism with propaganda in its efforts to
modernize Italy (Marchesini, 2001). Enrico Azzini’s history of motor rac-
ing under Fascism argues that the regime used structures and events that
were already in place in the 1920s. Fascism, in other words, did not offer
anything innovative to the sport (Azzini, 2011). Motor sport, it is argued,
predated and outlived Fascism. Events like the Italian Grand Prix at
Monza and the MM outlived Fascism. Both Marchesini and Azzini agree
that while Fascism and motor sport were in a mutually beneficial rela-
tionship, the latter remained largely independent of politics.
Challenging these viewpoints, the premise of this chapter is that Fascist
ideology and motor sport identified with each other on a deeper ideologi-
cal level, and that the MM in particular was a uniquely Fascist artefact.
Of all the sports, motor racing was the best placed to exemplify Fascist
values like speed, danger, and the use of avant-garde technology. While
all sports made a contribution to the idea of the New Fascist Man, motor
sport was the ideal showcase for this Fascist-type since out of all the sports
it was the most closely associated to war. Far from being the leisurely tour
shown in Selkirk’s film, the MM brought high-speed cars to the masses.
What they saw was an intensely violent demonstration of speed and noise
de-familiarizing an otherwise familiar Italian landscape. Half of Italy
became what John Bale has called a “landscape of speed” in a way that
cannot be captured by the regulated speeds of the Historic Revival (Bale,
1994). While Selkirk’s film shows cars getting caught in modern day
Italian traffic, the original race was a flat out exercise in speed in a country
that was not yet used to mass automobile ownership.
In order to show how the MM exemplified Fascism, this chapter will
focus on the race programmes and writings of motor sport journalists.
These purely sporting sources, in fact, contributed to the nexus between
Fascist ideology and the MM. The 1935 programme defined the MM as
the “Fascist race par excellence” because of its ability to combine “techni-
cal with popular” success. The MM brought the world’s most advanced
racing machines “into the heart of the crowds” via the open roads of Italy,
138 P. Baxa

and demonstrated the “warrior spirit of the new Italy” (Anon, 1935b).
These words reflected an understanding of Fascism as a revolutionary,
“palingenetic”—signifying rebirth—national force (Griffin, 2007). The
exaltation of the high-speed racing automobile and its breaking of records
and penetration into half of Italy made the MM a part of Fascism’s desire
to impose a new homogeneity on Italy (Bataille & Lovitt, 1979).
Furthermore, the race can be seen as a key element in what Fernando
Esposito has called Fascism’s “mythical modernity” (Esposito, 2015).
Whereas Esposito was referring to the impact of aviation on the Fascist
imagination, the same could be said for the high-performance, super-
charged racing car in races like the MM.
The following chapter will demonstrate that the MM forged a uniquely
Fascist synthesis of elitism and populism through its concept, organiza-
tion, and route. This event played to both the aristocratic roots of the
sport and to the emerging phenomenon of mass sport (Bianda et al.,
1983). It also served the Fascist regime’s policy of “going toward the peo-
ple” devised in the early 1930s by Mussolini’s regime as a way of bringing
the Fascist Revolution to the masses. While the Fascist government did
not create the race, its creators, promoters, and participants built up the
event as a Fascist exercise, demonstrating that sport and ideology were
deeply intertwined. This was evident in the race’s genesis in 1927.

The Concept
The MM began as an idea proposed by the Royal Automobile Club of
Brescia, a city in the north of Italy. In his 1967 history of the race, jour-
nalist Giovanni Canestrini recounts how motoring enthusiasts Franco
Mazzotti, Aymo Maggio, and Renzo Castagneto showed up at his home
unannounced in Milan in December 1926 to discuss a proposed road
race starting and ending in Brescia. The late night discussion was the
culmination of a series of discussions that had taken place throughout
that year. The plan was to run an “unprecedented and one-off race”
between regular production cars using 1600 kilometres of ordinary roads
(Canestrini, 1967, pp. 26–27).
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 139

These four men, later called the “Four Muskateers,” became the orga-
nizers of the MM. They were the founding fathers of the event, and their
legend has revolved around their sporting achievements—not their poli-
tics. The numerous histories of the race have presented them as apolitical
sportsmen, motivated primarily by a desire to revive the fortunes of
motor sport—at a low ebb in the mid-1920s—and get revenge on the
Automobile Club of Milan for stealing the Italian Grand Prix from
Brescia. Canestrini, however, did note that non-sporting ambitions also
played a role, such as the promotion of road building and automobile
ownership. Furthermore, the city of Brescia was ideally suited to host
such an event due to the city’s reputation for embracing industry and
modernization. Canestrini’s point suggested that there was more than
simply sport involved in the genesis of the MM. In a 1927 article in the
Gazzetta dello Sport, quoted in his memoirs, Canestrini called Brescia the
“city of Italy’s rebirth” after the First World War and the race an “homage
to the principle of speed” (Canestrini, 1967, p. 33). Clearly, speed as
ideology figured prominently in the race’s foundation.
For the idea to become reality, the race needed the approval of the
regime. This came from the Fascist Party Secretary Augusto Turati.
Appointed to his position in 1926, Turati had been a leader of Brescian
squadrismo in the years leading up the Fascist March on Rome in 1922.
One of Turati’s squadristi was none other than Count Aymo Maggi, one
of the Mille Miglia’s founders (Chiurco, 1929, p. 407). A veteran of the
Great War and scion of the local aristocracy, Maggi became a racecar
driver in the 1920s enjoying some modest success. Significantly,
Canestrini ignores Maggi’s Fascist past, only going so far as to hint at
Maggi’s “dangerous companions.” The downplaying of Maggi’s Fascism is
also evident in Peter Miller’s admiring portrait of the man and his race
(Miller, 1988). Maggi’s friendship with Turati, however, was decisive in
getting the MM approved in the face of opposition from the President of
the Automobile Club, Silvio Crespi.
Whatever their degree of Fascist sympathy, these men embodied the
idea of the New Fascist Man. Maggi’s childhood friend, Franco Mazzotti,
became a racecar driver and aviator. Like Maggi, Mazzotti came from a
wealthy Brescian family. Although not wealthy, Canestrini also fit the
image of the New Fascist Man having served in the Italian air force in the
140 P. Baxa

First World War before racing cars and becoming a motor sport journalist
in the mid-1920s. Renzo Castagneto, the oldest of the group, would
make his mark as the organizational genius of the event.
In these men and their concept could be found the two key compo-
nents of Fascist ideology—Futurism and D’Annunzianism. Although
they differed in significant ways, these two movements found common
cause in exalting speed, technology, and danger. The avant-gardism of
Futurism, and the decadent populism of D’Annunzio were present in the
MM. To be sure, the Futurists’ dynamic, industrial vision for Italy clashed
with D’Annunzio’s aestheticism and idealized visions of the past; however,
both celebrated automobiles and aeroplanes, and both saw dying in the
cause of speed as a form of martyrdom. F. T. Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist
Manifesto famously exclaimed that the “racing car was more beautiful
than the Victory at Samothrace”1 and went on to rejoice in the car crash
described in that manifesto (Marinetti, 1972). Marinetti later became one
of the founding members of the Fascist Movement in 1919. D’Annunzio
had been an aviator and speedboat commander in the First World War.
His prewar novels, which exalted heroic deaths, included exciting descrip-
tions of driving and flying. In 1921, after his failed takeover of Fiume,
D’Annunzio moved into the Vittoriale on the shores of the Lake of Garda,
near Brescia where he became a distant patron of the MM. His chauffeur
drove in the first race in 1927 (Canestrini, 1967, p. 33).
The MM was designed to promote speed, technology, and danger.
Canestrini noted that the race’s founders had rejected the idea of a rally
race based on regulated speeds. The race had to be flat out over Italy’s
public roads. While the first MM was contested by touring cars, the sub-
sequent editions saw increasing participation from high-speed perfor-
mance cars led by the famous Alfa Romeo 1500 and 1750cc models. By
the mid-1930s, the race was dominated by modified Grand Prix cars, like
the Alfa Romeo Tipo P3. The legends of Alfa Romeo and the MM were
intimately connected and fed off each other. The Alfas pushed the speed
limits in the race and made it into an event for high-performance racing
cars when it was originally intended to be a race for touring cars which
were available to the public. In this way, the MM provided a platform for
the truly avant-garde racing car and advanced the development of the
sports car and sports car racing (Nicholson, 1969, pp. 5–7).
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 141

The idea of running on the open roads also suited the Fascist ethos by
bringing these advanced racing machines to the masses. This was not a
new idea. Open road races were characteristic of motor racing’s pioneer
days, but they ended with the tragedies of the 1903 Paris-Madrid Race,
after which open road races were banned in many countries (Villard,
1972, pp. 88–111; see Stephen Wagg’s chapter in this book). Its revival in
Fascist Italy is suggestive of a regime that was willing to risk the hazards
in order to promote its call to “live dangerously.” Both Renzo Castagneto
and Augusto Turati used that slogan after 27 spectators were killed during
the 1928 Italian Grand Prix. Responding to condemnations from the
Vatican that motor sport exalted a “pagan” obsession with blood sports,
Castagneto justified the deaths as the price paid for progress, and as an
expression of Fascism’s call, once again, to “live dangerously” (Castagneto,
1928). Castagneto’s defence of motor racing brought together the two
strands of Fascist ideology: the importance of automotive progress and
the exaltation of death as a heroic sacrifice, even on the part of spectators.
It is also worth noting that the genesis of the MM came during an
important moment in the consolidation of the Fascist dictatorship, and
the Fascistization of sport. The meeting of the “four muskateers” in
December 1926 came in the same month that the regime centralized all
sporting activity under the aegis of the Italian Olympic Committee
(CONI). This process included the Automobile Clubs of Italy. With this
measure, a rigid hierarchy was imposed on sporting associations that mir-
rored the establishment of the dictatorship (Landoni, 2016, p. 80). The
intersection of the Mille Miglia’s founding, and the dismantling of Italy’s
liberal democracy by the Fascist movement was recalled in the tenth
anniversary programme of the race in 1937. Looking back on the race’s
first edition, Michele Favia del Core, a well-known motor sport journalist
who had also served as CONI’s Secretary General from 1928 to 1930,
noted the particular importance of the year 1927. That year, which served
as the “baptismal font of the Mille Miglia,” also witnessed the full
“charism” of Fascism descend upon Italian sport (Favia del Core, 1937).
The MM was thus born in the year that Fascism enjoyed full political
power in Italy and the liberal democratic state was dead.
142 P. Baxa

The Event
Fascism’s “charism,” according to Favia del Core, was evident in the “mir-
acle” of its organization. Foreign observers agreed. In 1928, the famous
British motor sport journalist W. F. Bradley praised the Italian govern-
ment for its ability to run a race like the MM. “The secret of the whole
thing was the Fascisti (sic) organization,” he wrote in Autocar (Bradley,
1928). Inside Italy, commentators like Lando Ferretti, the head of the
Italian Olympic Committee from 1925 to 1928, exulted in the military-­
like organization and martial discipline of the Italians (Ferretti, 1929).
Praising the race’s organization became a means of emphasizing the race’s
Fascist identity. The 1933 programme noted how by then, “Italians had
grown accustomed to the achievements of the Fascist era” (Anon, 1933).
That same year, the Corriere della Sera proclaimed that the MM was a
“Fascist enterprise that represents a superior will whose most extraordi-
nary prowess has become part of normal life” (De Martino, 1933).
The Fascist “style” permeated the race’s organization. Renzo
Castagneto, the man in charge of organizing and running the MM,
adopted the regime’s dictatorial style. In 1930, Castagneto wrote a piece
for Lando Ferretti’s journal, Lo Sport Fascista, outlining the logistics of
running the race. Not surprisingly, Castagneto paid homage to the
regime arguing that the race was only made possible by the “Fascist and
sporting spirit of the Italian people” (Castagneto, 1930). Throughout
the article, Castagneto demonstrates how this Fascist spirit was mirrored
in the race’s organization. Castagneto’s method was highly centralized
with orders radiating from Brescia to the various “nuclei” in the towns
along the route. This required constant communication with “maximum
and detailed instructions that are necessary to create a homogeneous
work not susceptible to interruptions and sudden changes.” Furthermore,
with a race like the MM, it was necessary to “know how to command
and how to impose oneself ” (Castagneto, 1930, p. 29). Emphasizing the
militaristic method of the race’s organization, the article featured a pho-
tograph of a Fascist militiaman blowing a horn to warn spectators of an
approaching car.
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 143

Castagneto’s authoritarian style of stewarding was not only on display

while the race was in progress, but also in the months and days leading
up to the event. It was demonstrated clearly in his correspondence with
officials in the provinces. As the race became more popular, Castagneto
and the other organizers became more confident in imposing their will
on local party leaders and podestàs, especially when route changes were
made, requiring the race to pass through new locales. Although the route
of the MM did not vary much from its distinctive “figure of eight” shape,
there were some significant modifications made in 1934 and 1938. In
both cases, Castagneto sent out a form letter to the officials notifying
them that the race would pass through their town. After announcing that
this “very noble city” had been chosen, Castagneto reminded them of the
“ardent passion” Italians have for the event and that the success of the
MM was based on the “very rigid application of the rules and the intran-
sigent severity that emanates from the organizers” (Letter from Castagneto
to the Officials of S. Pietro in Gu-Lisiera-Ospadoletto-Anconetta, 1934).
In the correspondence, Castagneto reminded the officials of the “typically
Fascist” character of the race and that this required full cooperation. In
order to reinforce this point, Castagneto quoted the Fascist Party
Secretary, Achille Starace, who wrote that Fascism, “the generator of
energy, glorifier of the tenacity and virtues that assure victory” looked
towards the MM with “trust and sympathy.” The form letter concludes
with an instruction to await circulars from Brescia with Castagneto sign-
ing off “Fascisticamente.”
In his approach to organizing the race, Castagneto was not above
ignoring or dismissing the concerns of party officials. This included over-
ruling Pietro Parisio, the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Royal
Automobile Club, appointed by Mussolini in 1932 (Azzini, 2011, p. 55).
In a letter from the Venetian Automobile Club, Castagneto was informed
that Parisio had visited the Ponte Littorio, the road bridge connecting the
islands that constitute the historical centre of the city of Venice to the
mainland part of the city where the MM was to pass in 1934, and that
he advised that it not be used (Castagneto, 1934). We do not know
exactly how Castagneto responded to the letter, but the bridge was used
for the race.
144 P. Baxa

The Route
While Castagneto’s heavy-handed approach is easily justified by the logis-
tics of running such an event as the MM, it also paralleled the authoritar-
ian nature of the Fascist regime. Castagneto was not afraid to use his
Fascist connections and borrow from Fascist terminology to “impose his
will” on half the country. In the case of the Ponte Littorio, Castagneto
perhaps knew that the inclusion of a recently completed Fascist project
trumped any of Parisio’s concerns. It also suggested the powerful part
played by the route in providing a new reading of the Italian landscape.
While some of the modifications to the route were made to enhance the
speed of the race—thus exalting an important Fascist value—others were
made to emphasize the regime’s stamp on the historic landscape.
The route of the MM was arguably its most iconic feature. The Brescia-­
Rome-­Brescia layout was determined in part by the best roads that existed
in 1927, but also came to reflect the geographical imagination of the
Fascist era. The “figure of eight” layout, immortalized in advertising post-
ers and programme covers, traced the Roman consular roads like the Via
Emilia, the Via Flaminia, Via Cassia, and the Via Aurelia. While the
route was dictated largely by practical concerns, this nod to Romanità
suited the Fascist regime’s propaganda priorities. Meanwhile, the inclu-
sion of Rome as the hinge point of the route was celebrated as the race’s
“moral destination” (Anon, 1933). Although Brescia was the home of the
MM, the importance of Rome was underlined by the fact that the prize
giving was conducted there, at the Headquarters of the Italian Olympic
Committee and presided over by the Fascist Party Secretary. Furthermore,
Mussolini donated a trophy to the car that completed the Brescia-Rome
leg in the fastest time. Arriving first in Rome was thus given a special
distinction.
While these proved important markers in “Fascistizing” the MM, the
race’s layout also provided an opportunity to provide a “Fascist reading”
of the Italian landscape via the passage of high-speed racing cars. One of
the most prolific examples of Fascism’s impact on Italy came through its
urban and architectural projects (Jones & Pilat, 2020). The route of the
MM offered the regime an opportunity to highlight these projects and
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 145

the new landmarks, such as highways, bridges, and urban transforma-

tions. Since the route remained largely unchanged, these Fascist sites
became fixed landmarks of the event thus forging a close identification
between the MM and Fascist architecture. This identification was empha-
sized in the race programmes, especially the “tourist” inserts that started
appearing in 1933. Four projects in particular became part of the iconic
route of the race: the Piazza della Vittoria in Brescia, the “renewed”
Oltretorrente district of Parma, the Ponte Littorio in Venice, and the
Firenze-Mare autostrada.
The 1933 programme’s extensive “guida turistica” was an opportunity
to not only promote Italy but also the public works of Fascism. For exam-
ple, the city of Parma was singled out as the site of a major urban plan-
ning project that transformed the Oltretorrente neighbourhood. The
guide noted how the regime had been responsible for eliminating one of
the most “folkloristic” quarters of the city replacing it with a newer, and
“healthier,” urban plan. The guide referred to this process as a “miracle”
that was greeted with enthusiasm by the inhabitants of the city (Anon,
1935c). The guide went so far as to point out that Mussolini had been
responsible for this “miracle” and even pointed out the date of the tele-
gram that the Fascist leader sent to the prefect of Parma to get the work
done. Parroting the language Fascism used to describe its urban planning
projects, the guide noted how the changes had brought a breath of fresh
air and a modern look to the city. Not lost on the Italian reader was the
fact that this neighbourhood had been known for the resistance it put up
against Italo Balbo’s Blackshirts in the so-called Battle of Parma in 1922
(Franzinelli, 2003, pp. 386–387).
The inclusion of Venice in 1934, as mentioned above, caused some
controversy. The addition to the itinerary of the newly opened Ponte
Littorio brought automobile traffic to the lagoon city for the first time.
Designed by a Brescian architect, Eugenio Miozzi, and inaugurated in
1933, the race offered a prime opportunity to demonstrate how Fascism
had injected modernity into the Lagoon City. The route called for the
cars to cross the bridge twice as they headed to the check point in the
Piazzale Roma where Miozzi had designed what was, at the time, Europe’s
largest parking garage. The checkpoint was located in front of the garage
highlighting its modernist lines. Described by some as an “eye sore,” the
146 P. Baxa

garage and the bridge gave Venice a distinctly modernist stamp signed by
the regime (Plant, 2002, p. 283). The 1935 MM guide celebrated this
contribution of Fascism to the Venetian landscape in this way: “The
genius of the Duce wanted to connect Venice to terra ferma” bringing
“new movement to the ‘city of dreams’” (Anon, 1935c, p. 24). An illus-
tration is included showing a racecar roaring across the bridge with a
counterposing view of a group of gondolas.
The Fascist project that the MM made its own, however, was the Piazza
della Vittoria in Brescia. Designed by Marcello Piacentini, Fascism’s most
prolific and representative architect, the massive square was part of
Brescia’s urban Master Plan. Inaugurated by Mussolini himself in 1932,
the piazza, according to Paolo Nicoloso, became the trademark urban
project of Italian Fascism (Nicoloso, 2011, p. 8). The massive complex,
built in the heart of the city after extensive demolitions, included Italy’s
first “skyscraper,” a 12-story edifice called the Torrione. It did not take
long for the tower to become a totem of the MM after it appeared on the
cover of the 1935 programme. It also figured prominently in photographs
found in the programmes, especially after the Piazza became the site of
the race’s scrutineering area in 1932. The following year, the Automobile
Club moved its headquarters to the square where it became Castagneto’s
race control. Another part of the square that featured in the iconography
of the MM was Arturo Dazzi’s 24-foot sculpture of a nude male figure
representing the “Fascist Era,” a name requested by Mussolini when he
saw the statue in 1932 (Robecchi, 1998, pp. 177–178). In this way, the
Piazza Vittoria, the “essence of the Fascist spirit,” according to architec-
tural historian Richard A. Etlin, and a model of Fascist urban planning,
became closely associated with the MM (Etlin, 1991, p. 418). It also
became an exemplar of the Stile Littorio, a blending of the classical and
modern that became Fascism’s signature style. The 1935 race programme
pointed this out when it described the piazza as being in the “sign of the
Littorio” with its classical allusions and “modernist lines” (Anon,
1935, p. 18).
The Mille Miglia’s injection of Fascist modernity into the Italian land-
scape was reinforced by the inclusion of the Firenze-Mare autostrada in
1938. The modifications to the route that year represented the most sig-
nificant changes since the race began in 1927. The Firenze-Mare
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 147

autostrada was the latest in the regime’s construction of motorways that

went back to the early 1920s. It was also, according to Massimo Moraglio,
the most useless trunk road and a “more fleeting enthusiasm than a real
requirement for the Tuscan region” (Moraglio, 2017, p. 100). What the
motorway did offer was a platform to test racing cars. In 1935, Tazio
Nuvolari used it to set a new record time in the flying kilometre in the
twin-engine Alfa Romeo bimotore. In the case of the MM, the entire 50
miles of the motorway was used, allowing the cars to travel flat out
between Siena and Florence. The stretch of road did not offer much of a
challenge for drivers, nor did it allow the race to exploit the Tuscan scen-
ery. Rather, it was there to increase the overall speed of the race keeping
it in line with Fascism’s cult of speed and the promotion of the regime’s
public works.
Higher speeds and the breaking of records informed the MM concept,
and with it dramatically new readings of the Italian landscape. The MM
turned Italy into what John Bale has called a “landscape of speed” (Bale,
1994). The narrative of the race was shaped by the sectors between the
cities. This breakdown made it easier to follow and recount the race but
it also emphasized speed. Since the cars were sent off at three-minute
intervals, this was the only way to determine the race positions, but it also
allowed Italians to re-imagine the distances between the historic towns of
Italy. A considerable section of the race programmes broke down the sec-
tor times of the previous years’ race. A table in the 1935 programme
showed how all of the sector times had improved since 1927, emphasiz-
ing the Mille Miglia’s purpose as a landscape of speed. Not surprisingly,
the most important sector of the Mille Miglia was the Brescia to Rome
leg. In 1927, it took the leading car seven hours to complete this sector;
by 1932, it took less than six hours. The average speed went up from
81 km/h to 114 km/h in 1933 (Anon, 1935c). Far from being a pictur-
esque backdrop for the “world’s most beautiful race,” Italy was a test bed
for the most advanced sports racing cars of the 1930s. The linking of cit-
ies also allowed the race to transcend the traditional campanilismo (local
patriotism) found in other sports, like soccer. The pitting of one city
against another in Italy’s national game augmented rather than diminish
the regionalism that Fascism aimed to suppress (Martin, 2004). The MM
promised to unite the cities via speed.
148 P. Baxa

The radical compression of space and time created by the MM trans-

formed how the Italian landscape was experienced. The race programmes
attempted to convey this through the accounts of motor sport writers and
participants. It was a race where “every kilometer that passes changes the
landscape and crowds, and the terrain changes along with the variables
faced by the drivers” (Anon, 1933, p. 53). The MM served to shatter the
tranquillity of the familiar and seemingly eternal Italian landscape. For an
entire day, hundreds of towns and villages were subjected to violent dem-
onstrations of modern speed. Motor sport by its nature is a violent sport,
speed, noise, and occasional crashes transformed the otherwise sleepy
towns of Italy and their centuries old cityscapes. Federico Fellini perhaps
best captured this in his 1974 film, Amarcord, which has a scene dedi-
cated to the Mille Miglia’s passage through the town of Rimini in the
1930s. Fellini’s film was based loosely on his childhood memories of
growing up in Fascist Italy, and his MM scene captured what it might
have been like for these cars to pass through the towns. The characters in
the scene reel off the names of the top drivers, while the main character
fantasizes about winning the race.
Fellini’s memory of the MM is in line with how the “disruption” of the
MM was experienced in the 1930s. Motor sport journalists like Aldo
Farinelli often conveyed this in a manner that reinforced Fascist ideology.
In the 1938 race programme, Farinelli declared the MM to be a “mythi-
cal and legendary” undertaking conducted at high speeds without respite,
and that it emanated from “the people” who dreamed of one day con-
quering the road (Farinelli, 1938). The race’s simple formula of “pure
speed on the open roads” gave it a heroic nature, continued Farinelli, and
this had the “power to form public opinion” and raise national conscious-
ness. The people standing alongside the roadside “feel the voice of the
fatherland, the voice of the earth,” intoned Farinelli. Furthermore, the
course unifies “fifty cities and half of Italy in a fraternal way.” The “roar of
one hundred automobiles,” concluded Farinelli, brings the nation,
together.
Implicit in Farinelli’s description is the notion that the MM helped
form the Fascist nation. This discourse was a common one in the race
programme and in the newspapers that covered the race. This included
the work of Emilio De Martino, who wrote for Italy’s most important
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 149

national newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, and also wrote sporting novels,
one of which centred on the MM (Martin, 2017). In the run-up to the
1933 event, De Martino proclaimed that the MM was a Fascist achieve-
ment. The participants did not make this race; rather the race made the
participants (De Martino, 1933). That the MM contributed to the leg-
ends celebrated by the regime is clear with the rivalry between Nuvolari
and Achille Varzi and the rise of Alfa Romeo. While Nuvolari and Varzi
competed against each other in numerous races, their battles in the 1930,
1933, and 1934 MM races have contributed most to their legendary sta-
tus (Marchesini, 2001). Meanwhile, the legend of Alfa Romeo and its
preferential status in the Fascist universe was also tied in largely with the
MM. While the victories of the P2 Grand Prix car in 1924 and 1925
brought the Alfa name to prominence, the Mille Miglia cemented its
mythical status. The race programmes were filled with Alfa Romeo adver-
tising extolling the car’s victories in previous editions. While the marque
struggled on the Grand Prix circuits in the 1930s in the face of German
competition, the MM remained firmly in its hands up until 1938.

Conclusion
The high point of Fascism’s identification with the MM came in 1936,
when the race was used to promote alternative fuels in the face of the
League of Nations’ embargo on Italy following Mussolini’s invasion of
Abyssinia. On the cover of the race programme there is an illustration of
a red racing car resembling an Alfa Romeo passing under a large X deco-
rated with two fasces. The subtitle of the programme reads, “140th day of
the Economic Siege” (Anon, 1936). Inside the programme, articles by
Giovanni Canestrini and Corrado Filippini emphasized the importance
of this tenth edition of the race and its response to Italy’s current interna-
tional situation. Filippini described in the detail the alternative fuels that
some of the entrants would use and their crucial role in weaning Italy off
petroleum-based products (Filippini, 1936). All of this in the cause of
Fascism’s policy of autarchy. As it turned out, those entrants were hope-
lessly slow with one of them finishing 28 hours after the race winner
(Marchesini, 2001, p. 100).
150 P. Baxa

This failure of the MM to provide for the needs of Fascist propaganda

in 1936 should not obscure the very close identification between the
values of the regime and the Brescian race. To be sure, there were limits
to what the MM could provide for Fascist ideology. Azzini and others
have suggested that Mussolini’s interest in the race was inconsistent to the
point of even expressing frustration at the demands placed upon the
regime by the race (Azzini, 2011, p. 43). It is also true that Mussolini
never attended the race in person; nor did he preside over the prize giving
ceremony. And in 1938, Mussolini was very quick to pull the plug on the
race after a car ploughed into a group of spectators killing several specta-
tors including children. Clearly, the call for Italians to “live dangerously”
no longer seemed to have the same appeal in 1938 as it had in the
late 1920s.
The revival of the MM after the Second World War and its current
form as a nostalgic event have blunted the event’s Fascist legacy. The orig-
inal organizers returned minus Mazzotti who had been killed during the
war. Gone was the Fascist imagery and language. However, it is notable
that the postwar revival had echoes of the Fascist past. Giovanni
Canestrini’s article in the 1948 programme, for example, borrowed from
the Fascist anthem when he praised the “giovinezza”2 of the MM
(Canestrini, 1948). In the same programme, Emilio De Martino recalled
the “heroic days” of the 1920s and Nuvolari’s record-breaking 100 km/h
average on the Brescia to Rome leg in 1928 (De Martino, 1948). Michele
Suglia called the MM a “miracle of sport” and a “tonic” for a country that
lacks faith in the future. Moreover, the revival of the great race would
force Italy to “fix its roads” (Suglia, 1948).
The revival of the race and its repackaging as a sign of Italy’s postwar
resurrection echoed the original justifications of the race in 1927. Like
that race, the new MM would act as a sign for Italy’s future greatness and
serve to build roads and the automotive industry. The tribute to the late
Franco Mazzotti, meanwhile, would not have been out of place in the
rhetoric of the 1920s. “From the ardent virility of Count Franco Mazzotti
Biancinelli, and overcoming diffidence and obstacles,” opened the
 The Fascist Race Par Excellence: Fascism and the Mille Miglia 151

tribute, “came the MM, which for the next thirteen years provided on the
roads of Italy epic and unforgettable battles” (Anon, 1948). Without
mentioning Fascism, this description alludes to the values of the Fascist
Man and the MM as the event that will bring back the “heroic.” The
D’Annunzian and Futuristic imagery makes a return in the 1948 pro-
gramme and this is not a surprise as it draws from the same pool of jour-
nalists. By 1951, the iconic “figure of eight” course also returned albeit in
a clockwise motion.
By the mid-1950s, the MM had become once again a major sports car
event attracting the top teams and drivers. Italy was enjoying its Economic
Miracle and the race became a symbol of the new Italy of the First
Republic. The race’s Fascist DNA, meanwhile, faded into the background.
The crashes and deaths continued, however, until a major accident in
1957, which took the life of several spectators, finally ended it. In the
meantime, the race became part of Italy’s sporting folklore and its historic
revival in 1977 a site of nostalgia. Through all of these changes, what
remains is the Fascist artefact. Unlike other major sporting events, the
MM was a product of Fascist Italy. It demonstrates how Fascist cultural
artefacts did not have to germinate within the Fascist state or the party,
rather they could come from below, in this case the local automobile club
in Brescia. Sport was hardly an innocent or apolitical activity. While his-
torians have recognized that Fascism contributed to sport, such as mak-
ing it into a mass sport (Dogliani, 2000) or providing the necessary
political structures (Landoni, 2016), it is possible to see in events like the
MM, a close identification with Fascist values. These values did not dis-
appear with the regime.

Notes
1. A reference to a famous marble sculpture discovered on the Greek island
of Samothrace in the nineteenth century and now on display in the Louvre
in Paris.
2. Italian for “youth” and the title of the official hymn of the Italian National
Fascist Party.
152 P. Baxa

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 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport:
A Comparative Study on South
American Populism
Mauricio Drumond and Victor Melo

On 3 October, 1934, the Brazilian government, under the constitutional

rule of Getúlio Vargas, staged its second international Grand Prix in Rio
de Janeiro, the country’s capital at the time. The date marked the anniver-
sary of the movement that had led Vargas to power in 1930, but the
return to democracy with the new constitution in July meant there would
be no celebration of the movement that had installed a dictatorship for
three years and that had led to a civil war in 1932. Without an official
celebration, the Rio de Janeiro Grand Prix, known as the Gavea Circuit,
was the next best thing. Accompanied by the Argentine ambassador and
other officials, the Brazilian president attended the race and seems to have
been deeply impacted by the victory of a Brazilian driver, Irineu Correa,
as shown by his personal journal:

October 3, anniversary of the Revolution, there was no festivity. I watched

it bitterly. On this day, we only had the auto race. It was an exciting spec-
tacle: a large crowd, a hard track, a dangerous race, some accidents and

M. Drumond • V. Melo (*)

Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 155
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_7
156 M. Drumond and V. Melo

many who stopped before the end. In the end a Brazilian won. How strong
is the national feeling! […] As I struggled to maintain decorum, I was
deeply touched, afraid tears would flow if a stranger had won. And I was
analysing myself, taken by that strange feeling that I tried to suppress.
(Vargas, 1995, p. 331)

Almost two decades later, on 9 March 1952, another populist leader in

South America, Juan Domingo Perón, attended a motor race.
Accompanied by his wife, Eva Perón, the general inaugurated the Buenos
Aires racetrack, named Autódromo 17 de Octubre1. Just like Vargas, who
aspired to celebrate the date that marked the beginning of his rise to
power with the motor race, the Argentine president associated the race-
track with the date that symbolized the origin of the Peronist movement.
Three races were held on that day, with an estimated attendance of over
100,000 spectators. An opening contest of national car makers started
the day, followed by a 500cc motorcycle Grand Prix and a final race with
the most prominent drivers, for the Perón Cup. After winning the main
race of the day, Juan Manuel Fangio, the Formula 1 world champion,
stated that the racetrack was “the best motorway ever built” and that it
was “very safe and attractive to racing” (Lupo, 2004, p. 310). In the fol-
lowing year, the circuit was integrated into the Fédération Internationale
de l’Automobile’s (FIA) Formula One World Championship of Drivers,
as the first race of the year.
The staging of international motor races in Brazil and Argentina dur-
ing the governments of two of their most iconic and notorious presidents
is not a mere coincidence. Both Vargas and Perón, to different extents,
established close relationships to sports, and motor racing had a special
part to play, as seen in the passages above.2 In order to better understand
this connection to motor racing, we must first look at the significance of
sports to both populist regimes.

Populism, Sports and Motor Racing

Contiguous in time and space, the first governments of Getúlio Vargas,
in Brazil, and Juan Perón, in Argentina, shared many similarities.
Empowered at first by a coup d’état known in Brazilian historiography as
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 157

the “1930 Revolution”, Vargas led the country for 15 uninterrupted

years. Acting at first as a dictator in the Provisional Government until
1934, he was voted president in indirect elections held by Congress in
that same year and staged a self-coup in 1937, beginning a new period of
authoritarian rule that ended with a military coup in 1945. Vargas would
return for a second administration through popular voting in 1950, and
acted as president in a constitutional state until committing suicide in
August 1954, on the verge of a new military coup.
Juan Domingo Perón also rose to government after a military coup, in
1943, as a member of the leading military group, called Grupo de Oficiales
Unidos. Even though he was not officially in charge, his influence over the
government was increasingly significant, as was his popularity among the
Argentinian people. After a great display of support in a massive labour
demonstration held at Plaza de Mayo on 17 October 1945, a date that
was afterwards called Día de la Lealtad (Loyalty Day), Perón emerged as
a candidate for the national elections that would be held in February
1946. He was then elected for two consecutive mandates
(1946–1952/1953–1955), governing under the rule of law, but main-
taining many authoritarian traits.3 Just like Vargas, his first government
ended with a military coup, staged in 1955. He would also return to
power though general elections in 1973 to form a second government,
remaining in power until his death the following year.
More than military coups leading them into and out of the govern-
ment, Vargas and Perón coincided in forging a political culture usually
referred to as populism. Commonly seen as “paradigmatic examples of
populist leaders” (Kaltwasser et al., 2017, p. 20), they brought the urban
masses into politics and supported their increased political participation,
but restricted political expression if it was not in their favour. Writing
about populism in Latin America, Carlos de La Torre offers the following
definition of the phenomenon:

I understand populism as a Manichaean discourse that divides politics and

society as the struggle between two irreconcilable and antagonistic camps:
the people and the oligarchy or the power block. (…) Populism produces
strong popular identities and is a strategy of top-down mobilization that
clashes with the autonomous demands of social movement organizations.
However, populist glorification of common people and their attacks on
158 M. Drumond and V. Melo

elites could open spaces for common people to press for their agendas. The
tension between top-down mobilization and autonomous mobilization
from below is characteristic of populist episodes. (De la Torre, 2017,
p. 251-252)

Analysing this definition, it is possible to see the importance of sports

in a populist regime and how agents in the sports field embraced politics
and put forward their own agenda. Claiming to be the true representa-
tives of the people, populist leaders would seek association with elements
with strong popular identification, and sports was undoubtedly an
important symbol of national identity, as stated by Vargas in his above-­
mentioned diary entry. Sporting events already promoted the mobiliza-
tion of crowds and attracted the attention of the urban masses, especially
in popular sports such as football.
Motor racing was also an important tool for the mobilization of identi-
ties and crowds. Vargas’s impressions after Irineu Correia’s victory in the
Gavea Circuit in 1934 are a clear sign of the symbolic power of the sport.
The victory of a national citizen, when competing with qualified outsid-
ers, such as Europeans, was often associated with an alleged natural qual-
ity that marked the national type, which resonated with the populist
glorification of the common people. The inauguration of the Argentine
racetrack in 1952 is also a demonstration of the sport’s capacity for mobi-
lizing crowds. Over 100,000 people flocked to the new circuit, celebrat-
ing a symbol of Perón’s New Argentina.
It is important to stress that this association between populist leaders
and sports should not be seen solely as a top-down initiative, but as a
two-way street. The sporting community, mainly the ruling elite in each
national sport federation, would also seize the opportunity to press for
their own agendas. Grand football stadiums were built both in Brazil and
Argentina, the governments sponsored many athletes and national dele-
gations, and sports apparel reached regions of the countries where it was
previously hard to find. The staging of international races and building of
international-class circuits were certainly major parts of the motor racing
agenda that was carried out by the government.
If sports were useful for the government, the government was also
useful for sports. And when those interests coincided, there were major
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 159

impacts on the material conditions of sports such as motor racing, for

example new cars, renovated tracks, cheaper car parts and racing apparel,
and state sponsorship for national events and drivers. This kind of invest-
ment was usually met by improvement in performances and national vic-
tories. The more important and popular a sport was, the more it could
ask and would receive. Far from being just another sport, motor racing
played a unique role among other sports.
The ideal of modernity was a strong feature of populist discourse under
both Vargas and Perón. These leaders emerged amidst processes of urban-
ization and industrialization. They fought against electoral fraud and
expanded the franchise (De la Torre, 2017, p. 252). They aimed at achiev-
ing standards of the so-called modern nations and were portrayed as effi-
cient managers, who knew how to run the country and would lead it to
its rightful place in the world order. They were building new countries,
the self-proclaimed New State, in Brazil, and New Argentina respectively.
Under their rule, a new youthful generation would achieve their full
potential. Under the rule of Vargas and Perón, Brazil and Argentina
would become modern nations in Latin America.
Due to its relevance of displaying an image of modernity in Brazil and
Argentina, motor racing had a distinctive connotation among sports. Fast
cars and smooth roads were symbols of modernity, and success in the
sport could be portrayed as evidence of being a modern nation.

 he Early Days of Motor Racing in Brazil

T
and Argentina
However important Vargas and Perón were for their respective countries’
motor racing, there was already a vibrant community dedicated to the
sport before their rise to power, a community strong enough to put for-
ward their agenda when negotiating support from the government.
In Brazil, the first official motor race took place in 1908, in the state of
São Paulo, a year after the creation of the Brazilian Automobile Club. The
sport grew in the following years, restrained by the high costs of imported
automobiles and their parts. Nevertheless, races grew in number and
160 M. Drumond and V. Melo

diversity, and eventually involved drivers from neighbouring countries,

mainly Argentina and Uruguay (Melo, 2011).
The second half of the 1920s saw significant increments in the sport.
The first important names in Brazilian motor racing appeared then, such
as Irineu Correa and Primo Fioresi, and regional and national political
leaders favoured the sport (Melo, 2011). Washington Luís, governor of
the state of São Paulo from 1920 to 1924 and President of Brazil from
1926 to 1930, was a strong supporter of the motor industry. His motto
was “governing is opening roads” and he had over 1300 kilometres of
new roads built in the country during his presidency. In 1928, he built
the first paved road in the country, inaugurated the same year, connecting
the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Petropolis.
Washington Luís was toppled by the Revolutionaries of 1930, a few
weeks before the end of his presidency. His contributions to motor rac-
ing, however, endured throughout the new regime. The first important
race held during Vargas’s government was staged on the very road Luís
had inaugurated a few years earlier. In 1932, a hill climb race known as
“The Mountain Slope” took place on the Rio-Petropolis road, with the
participation of German driver Hans Stuck, one of the most prestigious
drivers at the time, who was famous for his hill climbing racing. Stuck
had been invited by the Brazilian driver Manuel de Teffé, who had raced
in Europe during the 1920s and won the race on two occasions, in 1937
and 1943. The race was also organized in 1933, 1944, 1945 and 1946,
with the participation of Brazilian drivers and manufacturers (most
assembled their own automobiles and adapted many imported parts from
different makers).
In Argentina, motor racing had developed somewhat earlier than in
Brazil. The Automobile Club of Argentina was created in 1904 and the
first official race was held in December 1906, in Buenos Aires. The Grand
Premio de la Argentina had its first edition in 1910, from the capital
Buenos Aires, on the coast, to Cordoba, in central Argentina, passing
through Rosario. According to Eduardo Archetti (2001), the first cars
reached Rosario after almost ten hours, and arrived in Cordoba only four
days later. Drivers, machines and mechanics were put under extreme
conditions.
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 161

The cross-country race was staged until 1932 and shows an important
difference between motor racing in Brazil and Argentina. If in Brazil the
races and drivers were centralized in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São
Paulo (the country’s capital and main economic city, respectively), the
Argentine races explored the country and were tools for the reinforce-
ment of the connections of the symbolic identities and touristic routes
that connected the national territory. From 1933 to 1943, the Grand
Premio organized by the Automobile Club of Argentina had a different
route each year and was seen as a way to “enhance knowledge of the
country and foment tourism” (Piglia, 2014).
Meanwhile, a new velocity race was established in 1937, and quickly
grew in popularity in Argentina. After a couple of accidents and casual-
ties in 1933 and 1934, the province of Buenos Aires had outlawed street
racing in the region. A new set of regulations then established a new form
of racing, known as Turismo Carretera (touring-car races). Only “touring
cars” (regular cars) were allowed in the race, and modifications were
severely limited. Their maximum speed was limited to 120 km/h (about
74.5 mph) and they needed to follow the city traffic regulations. Turismo
Carretera races were organized in many different shapes and sizes, and the
most famous Argentine drivers, such as Juan Manuel Fangio, got their
start driving the “touring cars” in these races.
In 1935, an international race was established, between Buenos Aires
and Santiago. The race, nearly 5000 kilometers long, had a speed limit,
and the focus of the race was on endurance, rather than velocity. The
route was extended to 6865 kilometres in 1936 (Archetti, 2001, p. 74)
and a new international race was staged in 1940, from Buenos Aires to La
Paz and Lima, the capitals of Bolivia and Peru respectively, and then back
to Buenos Aires. The Pan-American initiative of integration through
motor racing even had plans for a Buenos Aires-New York race to take
place in 1942, but after 1940, the most significant races were interrupted
due to World War II. They would only return in 1947, under the govern-
ment of Juan Domingo Perón.
162 M. Drumond and V. Melo

 etúlio Vargas, the Gavea Circuit and Motor

G
Racing in Brazil
The process of unifying South America through motor racing, led by
Argentina, did not include Brazil. During the 1930s, while the Automobile
Club of Argentina was organizing touring-car races that would eventually
promote the country at the regional level, Brazilian authorities saw motor
racing as an opportunity to present the country on the international stage
as a modern nation capable of producing fast cars, daring drivers and
exciting races.
The first initiatives were taken at the beginning of the first Vargas
administration. The participation of the leading German driver Hans
Stuck in the Mountain Slope race was the first attempt at the internation-
alization of Brazilian motor racing. A bolder initiative was staged in the
next year. In 1933, the Brazilian government and the Brazilian Automobile
Club promoted the first edition of the Rio de Janeiro Grand Prix, known
as the Gavea Circuit, with the recognition of the Association Internationale
des Automobile Clubs Reconnus, the future FIA.
The early Grand Prix did not attract much international interest and
counted mainly with Brazilians and a few other South American drivers.
Attracting some of the most notorious European drivers would take some
time. Coming to Brazil with all the equipment and personnel needed to
compete in a motor race was difficult, expensive and time consuming.
If in 1933 only a few Argentines and Uruguayans joined Brazilian
drivers, in 1934 newspapers reported 15 Argentines and seven Italians
out of the 44 competitors (Jornal do Brasil, 3 Oct. 1934, p. 23), but most
Italians were in fact Brazilians of Italian ancestry who would represent the
European nation in the absence of renowned drivers. In 1935, some
Portuguese drivers came to compete in Rio de Janeiro, but the winner
was Ricardo Caru, an Argentine. However, the race was marked by the
accident that killed Irineu Corrêa, the Brazilian driver who had won in
the previous year.
It was only in 1936 that top European drivers crossed the Atlantic in
order to compete in Rio de Janeiro: from Italy, Carlo Pintacuda and
Atilio Marinoni, driving Alfa Romeos; and from France, the great star
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 163

was Helle Nice (or Mariette Helene Delangle), who was famous for her
public displays of practices that Brazilian society was reluctant to accept.
The Frenchwoman was a former dancer and actress who dared to chal-
lenge men driving fast and powerful machines. She smoked in public and
wore two-piece swimsuits (Melo, 2011). In spite of the presence of
famous European racers, however, Vitorio Coppoli, from Argentina, won
the race.
The 1937 race also counted with the return of Stuck, driving for Auto
Union (the present-day Audi). The dispute between Italians and Germans
in European motor racing would be re-enacted in Brazilian lanes. It is
important to emphasize that the earlier Italian, and then German, par-
ticipation in international races in the 1930s was directly related to the
Mussolini and Hitler regimes’ stances on international propaganda
through sport.4 The Italians took the trophy with the victory of Carlo
Pintacuda, who would also win in the following year. With the increasing
participation of overseas teams, Brazilian drivers were no longer reaching
top positions and so the Brazilian government created a new money prize,
for the best national driver in the race under the fourth position (there
was already a money prize given to the top four positions).
In 1938, fewer Europeans took part in the race, possibly a sign of the
turbulent times Europe was about to face. Pintacuda won for the second
time, but he would not have the chance to try it again in the following
year. The race did not take place in 1939 and 1940 due to the war in
Europe and difficulties in importing fuel and car parts to Brazil. A new
version of the race, the “National Gavea Circuit”, with Brazilian drivers
only, continued the tradition for the following years. The Brazilian gov-
ernment continued to finance the event. Lourival Fontes, the head of
propaganda during the Vargas administration, defended the event, stat-
ing it was a “sport tradition” in the country and it should be protected
during hard times, such as the country was facing.
The Gavea Circuit was the strongest symbol of the relationship between
motor racing and the government in Brazil. As Vargas’s administration
sought new forms of representation and an improved reputation on the
international stage, motor racing, among other sports, was a relevant tool
used to achieve this goal. At the same time, agents in the motor racing
164 M. Drumond and V. Melo

field used this opportunity for their own benefit. The Gavea Circuit
brought awareness to the sport, attracted the press and new sponsors,
distributed money prizes, and created new opportunities for the estab-
lishment of other circuits and races. In 1936, with the arrival of European
drivers in Rio de Janeiro, a new race was organized in São Paulo, with an
invitation extended to the most notable drivers who had competed in
Rio. As they would already be in Brazil, they accepted the invitation and
took part in the first São Paulo Grand Prix, which eventually led to the
creation of the famous Interlagos Circuit in 1940, once more with finan-
cial aid from Vargas’s government. This venue, however, would only gain
proper attention as the Brazilian leading motor racing arena after the end
of the Gavea Circuit, in 1954. Coincidentally or not, this was the same
year Vargas took his life on the verge of a coup that would once again
remove him from office.

 he First Stages of Motor Racing

T
in Peronist Argentina
The same process can be seen in Perón’s first administration in Argentina.
When he rose to the presidency in 1946, international motor racing ini-
tiatives had come to a halt due to World War II. But this scenario would
soon change, with the support of the new government. In the following
year, international races were resumed with the new version of the
International Grand Prix, Turismo Carretera, then limited to Argentina
and Chile.
The success of the race led to more daring initiatives in 1948, with the
creation of the longest and most dangerous version of the Gran Premio de
la América del Sur del Turismo Carretera, known as the Buenos Aires-­
Caracas. Spread over 9000 miles divided into two sections and 19 stages,
and going through half the countries in South America (Argentina,
Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela), the race is still remem-
bered for its dangerous roads, especially through the Andes, and its many
accidents, such as Fangio’s crash in Peru that put him in the hospital and
killed his friend and co-pilot Domingo Marimón.
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 165

The Argentinian government invested heavily in the prizes in order to

motivate drivers to pursue such a dangerous and expensive endeavour.
There was a significant cash prize for victory in each section or stage of
the race, and the overall winner would receive 10,000 pesos. Moreover,
the Eva Perón Foundation, a government-linked foundation heavily asso-
ciated with sports5, would award solid gold plaques to the two best
Argentines in the race (Donaldson, 2012).
Alongside the return of international racing in Turismo Carretera, the
Peronist administration also invested in Grand Prix motor racing, held at
first in the streets of Buenos Aires. After two Formula Libre initiatives in
1936 and 1941, the Automobile Club of Argentina would seize the
moment to gather governmental support for new competitions in the
most prominent category in motor racing, with the best drivers in the
world. The first two initiatives were composed mainly of Argentinian
drivers, with the participation of several Brazilians, including Manuel de
Teffé, in 1936, and Chico Landi, in 1941.
In a way, the new initiative was somewhat like the Gavea Circuit in
Rio de Janeiro. Public streets were closed in order to receive famous driv-
ers from Europe, invited to promote the image of the new regime in the
international arena. Out of the 13 drivers, six were foreigners: four
Italians, including the two-time winner in the Gavea Circuit, Carlo
Pintacuda, and the famous Achille Varzi, one Frenchman and Chico
Landi, representing Brazil. Among the Argentines, Óscar Gálvez and his
brother Juan were the most prominent drivers, but neither achieved good
results. Two races were held in 1947, and the role of the government is
apparent in the very names of the races. On 9 February, the I Buenos
Aires Grand Prix was named I Gran Premio del General Juan Perón. One
week later, the II Buenos Aires Grand Prix was held, entitled I Gran
Premio de Eva Duarte Perón.
Naming the races after Perón and Evita was a clever, but not unusual,
tool in convincing local authorities to support the sporting competitions.
However, this does not mean that it was the real motive that led the gov-
ernment to invest in the motor races. Like Vargas before him, in Brazil,
Perón’s government pursued the creation of a new image for the country
on the international stage. Sports played a major role in this process, and
motor racing would be a safe bet for government investment. Argentina
166 M. Drumond and V. Melo

already had a reputation for having great drivers and dominated most
major continental motor racing competitions in Turismo Carretera. And
as in the Brazilian case, the national motor racing community used this
opportunity to push their own agenda. In the process, some flattering
moves were common, like naming the Buenos Aires Grands Prix after
Perón and Evita, facilitating government support for the motor racing
project.
The Buenos Aires Grands Prix were held once again in 1948. This
time, the race had more foreigners than Argentinian drivers. Among the
six Italians and two Frenchmen who came from Europe, the most notori-
ous were Achille Varzi, who would later inspire the name of the
Argentinian racing team; Nino Farina, who would become the first
Formula 1 champion two years later; Luigi Villoresi, who won both races
in 1947; and Jean-Pierre Wimille, one of the most successful drivers at
the time. Six Argentines, a Brazilian and a Uruguayan were the represen-
tatives of South America, with Juan Manuel Fangio joining Óscar Gálvez
and Chico Landi. Luigi Villoresi won both races once again with his
Maserati, and Óscar Gálvez was the runner-up in the II Gran Premio de
Eva Duarte Perón. The circuit, however, was not the same one as in 1947,
as it had moved to the Palermo district of the city. The Palermo street
circuit would remain the host of the Buenos Aires Grands Prix in the fol-
lowing years.
The third incarnations of the General Juan Perón and Eva Duarte
Perón Grands Prix were held on 30 January and 6 February 1949. The
first race of the year had two more countries represented on the lineup:
Reg Parnell representing England and B. Bira (Prince Birabongse
Bhanudej Bhanubandh, a member of the Thai royal family), representing
Thailand. But the race was marked by two fatal accidents. French driver
Jean-Pierre Wimille died soon after crashing in his first lap during prac-
tice. According to reports, the driver lost control after avoiding a specta-
tor who was crossing the track. The other casualty came during the race
itself, when Argentine driver Pablo Pessatti died after crashing his Alfa
Romeo. The III Eva Duarte Perón Grand Prix (also known as Premio
Jean-Pierre Wimille in honour of the late driver), held one week later, saw
the first Argentinian victory. Only ten drivers started the race, and Óscar
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 167

Gálvez and Fangio achieved the top positions after all European drivers
had left the race due to mechanical problems or minor crashes.
It is important to note that the Argentinian races were part of a grow-
ing international motor racing appeal, with several Grands Prix organized
throughout the world. Although there was no organized world champi-
onship at the time, the races were all recognized by the Fédération
Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). Nevertheless, the Peronist govern-
ment had already come up with a new strategy for increased success in
motor racing: sponsoring an Argentinian team to compete abroad. It was
time to display the New Argentina on the European racetracks.
The team was managed by Automovil Club de Argentina (ACA) and
had Juan Manuel Fangio and Benedicto Campos as drivers. It was called
Equipo Achille Varzi, in honour of the late Italian driver whose family
would provide its European headquarters. Amadeo Bignami, an experi-
enced Italian mechanic who had worked with Varzi, would double as
team manager and head mechanic. The government had provided each
driver with two cars: a Maserati 4CLT for major races and a Simca-
Gordini 1430cc for smaller engine races. A few months later, a Ferrari
Tipo 166 F2 was also purchased for the team with governmental support
(Donaldson, 2012).
The cars were painted blue and yellow, representing the country’s
colours, and competed in different racing categories in the following
months. Starting in minor races, Fangio and the Equipo Achille Varzi
had instant success. Fangio achieved six victories in the ten races con-
tested in Italy and France, including his debut race on the famous Monza
circuit, driving his Ferrari for the first time. Fangio’s success on European
tracks was not unnoticed by the Argentine people. When the team
returned to Buenos Aires in August, Fangio received the welcoming of a
national hero.
A few months later, the fourth and last international General Juan
Perón and Eva Duarte Perón Grands Prix were held, in December 1949
and January 1950. With representatives from Italy, France, England,
Switzerland, Monaco, Thailand, Argentina and Uruguay, they were the
largest versions up to that year. Italians Luigi Villoresi and Alberto Ascari
were back to the top, but Fangio continued to show prominence, achiev-
ing second place in the first race and the pole position in the second. But
168 M. Drumond and V. Melo

victory in the Argentinian main motor sport event would still have
to wait.
In sponsoring the Argentine team, Perón’s administration took a step
further in his relationship with motor racing. Vargas, however, did not go
that far, or not openly at least. During his authoritarian rule in the 1930s
and 1940s, international motor racing was not as organized as it was after
the war. The growing internationalization of the sport would only achieve
its height by the time Vargas had been ousted and was already preparing
his return by direct elections. In a democratic regime where he was always
under suspicion by the Congress, Vargas would not be able to support a
Brazilian national team as openly as Perón did. Nevertheless, it is believed
that Vargas did support Chico Landi to buy the Ferrari which he drove
for several seasons in Europe, an allegation that Landi himself always
denied (Melo, 2011). Fangio, on the other hand, was quoted as saying:
“When I left for Europe, even if I was happy and pleased with myself, I
couldn’t forget that the move put me under obligation to the government
for backing me, and to the people who supported me” (cited in Donaldson,
2012, p. 81). And that was just the beginning.

 eaching for the Top: Argentina’s Move

R
Towards the Motor Racing Elite
In 1950, the international federation decided to create an international
championship, the FIA Formula One World Championship of Drivers.
It was in this scenario that the Buenos Aires international Grands Prix in
the Palermo street circuit were abandoned. A few years later, the Peronist
government would build their own world class circuit, which was inte-
grated into the Formula 1 season. Argentina was rapidly moving towards
admission to the motor racing elite.
For the first world championship, Fangio was signed by Alfa Romeo
and did not race for Equipo Achille Varzi in the new tournament, where
he eventually achieved second place in 1950 and won the title in 1951.
Fangio would still drive for the ACA team in competitions where the Alfa
Romeo squad did not compete, and this was especially true in Argentina.
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 169

The Argentinian team would not run in the F1 world championship in

1951. However, the Argentine government had a new approach planned
to promote their motor sport prominence—the construction of a national
Formula 1 circuit.
There are different versions to the origin of the circuit but these usually
revolve around a similar theme. When returning to Argentina from their
1950 Formula 1 tour, the Argentine drivers Froilán Gonzáles, Benedicto
Campos, who had run for Equipo Achille Varzi, and Juan Manuel Fangio
were invited to meet president Perón, to talk about their experience in the
competition and to publicize Perón’s image accompanied by the famous
drivers. During this meeting, Perón asked the drivers what could be done
to improve motor racing even further in the country. Fangio was the one
who asked for the construction of a national speedway, to which Perón
would have replied positively (Lupo, 2004, p. 308). Mariano Gruschetsky
(2019) mentions other possible versions, including an initiative of a
wider interest group associated with motor sports, and a meeting with
Perón after the deaths of Wimille and Pesatti in the 1949 Buenos Aires
Grand Prix.
Despite the different versions, it is important to understand that a
project as large as the construction of an international standard circuit is
most likely the result of a well-planned initiative, rather than a decision
made on a whim. The idea was probably pressed by agents of the motor
racing field, perhaps by ACA or by the drivers themselves, hoping to get
one more benefit from a willing government. And this was almost cer-
tainly followed by thorough studies conducted by government officials.
Regardless, the construction was announced by the Buenos Aires munici-
pality in January 1951 (Lupo, 2004, p. 308), with great enthusiasm. The
new motor racing arena would be completed about 15 months later and
would flatter Perón and his political movement in its name, 17 de Octubre.
The inauguration of the circuit, on 9 March 1952, was a major politi-
cal statement. Perón and Evita attended the event, with over 100,000
spectators. Three races made up the opening celebration of the venue.
The main race of the day was a Formula Libre race for the VI Gran Premio
del General Juan Perón, which Fangio won with his Ferrari Tipo 166C. He
would then repeat the feat one week later, in the VI Gran Premio Maria
Eva Duarte de Perón.
170 M. Drumond and V. Melo

The motor race was integrated into the Formula 1 season in the follow-
ing year. It was the first race of the year, held on 18 January, and was won
by reigning world Champion Alberto Ascari, driving for Ferrari. However,
the Italian victory was eclipsed by an accident that killed nine and injured
over 40 spectators. The race had been heavily advertised by the press and
it is estimated that over 400,000 people attended the event. The large
crowd, many of whom had entered the venue through holes in or by
going over the high wire fences that surrounded the speedway, not only
occupied the stands, but were also standing on the sidelines of the race-
track. Donaldson (2012) states that at first the drivers refused to start the
race, but after being pressured by the organizers and even by Perón him-
self, they agreed to do so. On lap 32, Farina lost control of his Ferrari and
plunged into the crowd. Danger was still lurking around the Argentinian
Grands Prix.
The 1954 season was much better for the Argentinian circuit and driv-
ers. The Gran Premio de la República Argentina was once again the open-
ing Grand Prix of the season, and Fangio finally won his home race. He
would later achieve his second world title, being second in the tourna-
ment to his countryman Froilán González.
Fangio would win the Argentina Grand Prix and the world champion-
ship title four years in a row, an impressive feat. However, Perón would
not be able to use all these victories for political gain. The president was
ousted from power by a military coup d’état on 16 September 1955.
Nevertheless, his actions in support of motor racing had led Argentina
from being a regional power, organizing Turismo Carretera races among
its neighbouring countries, to a major country in the motor racing elite.
Fangio’s success in international speedways and the success of the 17 de
Octubre circuit (called only Autódromo Municipal, after the military coup)
were long-lasting legacies of his administration’s support for motor racing.
Brazil would not have a circuit in the Formula 1 season until the 1970s.
The Interlagos circuit, in São Paulo, remained the only major autodrome
in Brazil until 1966, when Rio de Janeiro’s circuit was inaugurated (Elias
et al., 2019). Brazil was once again ruled by an authoritarian regime,
under a military government. The dispute between Brazil’s two main rac-
ing centres, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, led the Interlagos circuit to
undergo major renovations. A few years later, in 1973, the speedway was
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 171

inserted in the Formula 1 season. But the government was very different
to that of Getúlio Vargas. Nevertheless, the support for major interna-
tional motor racing competitions continued. The same is true for
Argentina, where even after the self-proclaimed Liberating Revolution
(Revolución Libertadora) that ousted Perón from power in 1955, support
for motor racing persisted and the Formula 1 fixture was maintained
without interruption until 1960. The populist regimes of Vargas and
Perón were not the only ones that invested in the sport and supported
motor racing. But they were definitely the ones that most aided the sport
in reaching new heights.

Approaching a Finish Line

When comparing Vargas’s and Perón’s approaches to motor racing, it is
imperative to observe and interpret not only the similarities and differ-
ences in both cases, but also how they relate to the particularities of each
time and place.
When Vargas rose to power in 1930, international elite motor racing
was still far from developed in South America. Through the government’s
support, with the creation and promotion of the Gavea Circuit, Brazil
ushered in a new stage in South American motor racing, welcoming some
of the most prominent drivers and fastest cars in the sport. Brazilian
motor racing enthusiasts, organized around the Brazilian Automobile
Club, worked alongside a willing government in order to put Brazil on
the international motor racing map.
This movement was only possible due to the international conditions
of the period. European drivers crossed the Atlantic to face new chal-
lenges and earn more prizes usually with the support of their own govern-
ments. They competed on new circuits and profited with the additional
fixtures, in a sport that was still growing in popularity on a global scale.
The impulse of the fascist Italian regime to use sports for the purposes of
international propaganda, associated with the success of Italian construc-
tors in the sport, was also essential at the beginning of the process. Soon,
Germany’s Silver Arrows joined the Italians in the effort of promoting
their flag through motor racing achievements.
172 M. Drumond and V. Melo

The changes to motor racing’s international organization that took

place in the years following World War II also meant a shift in the way
South American populist governments would relate to the sport. The
post-war sporting community resumed the staging of international
Grands Prix in different parts of the world. In Brazil, Vargas had already
been ousted from power, but the government continued supporting the
Gavea Grand prix, which was resumed as part of the 1946 season.
Argentina, still in the early years of the Perón administration, followed
suit in 1947.
It is important then to consider the differences between the two coun-
tries and their relations to motor sport to understand the final picture.
Given his international success, Fangio achieved the status of national
hero, whereas the Brazilian driver Chico Landi, although the most popu-
lar driver in Brazilian motor racing, was never quite as popular. This was
both a cause and a consequence of the support each driver had received
from the national government. Perón invested more heavily than Vargas
in sports as a whole as a means of propaganda (Drumond, 2009), and
motor racing popularity in Argentina, along with Fangio’s success in
Turismo Carretera, paved the way for governmental investment that even-
tually helped him become a national icon. Moreover, his unparalleled
status in Argentinean sports contributed to further national investment
in motor racing as a whole in the country.
Landi was also a renowned sportsman in Brazil. However, he was never
quite as popular as Brazilian footballers, the greatest sporting heroes in a
country that was less diverse in sports. It was only in the 1970s and
1980s, when the country was going through another period of dictatorial
rule, that Brazilian drivers achieved better results and received greater
recognition by the population. Emerson Fittipaldi was two-time World
Champion in Formula 1, in 1972 and 1974. Furthermore, he was part of
the group that constituted a Brazilian team in the category, much like the
Argentinean Equipo Achille Varzi, but with poorer results. Nélson Piquet
was three-time Formula 1 World Champion, in 1981, 1983 and 1987,
when Brazil was undergoing a process of re-democratization. But the
Brazilian driver who could be better compared to Fangio in terms of
 Vargas, Perón and Motor Sport: A Comparative Study on South… 173

popularity was definitely Ayrton Senna, also three-time champion in

Formula 1, in 1988, 1990 and 1991. Senna is the most popular driver in
Brazilian motor racing history, and his tragic death, which took place at
the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, caused great national commotion.
In Argentina, Fangio was a star of the first magnitude, recognized as
responsible for raising the country’s name to the pinnacle of glory. He
was represented as an example of the nation’s strength and the desired
value of its population, demonstrating the country’s excellence in inter-
national competitions, which served the propaganda purposes and was
constantly emphasized by Perón. Vargas, in turn, did not dedicate as
much attention to sports in general, much less to motorsport, which was
a sport that enjoyed some popularity, though mainly restricted to certain
occasions or to the wealthy social strata. As it did not usually attract the
attention of the masses, it was often overlooked by government efforts.
This is why the Argentinian government’s investment in the sport went
even further than the Brazilian government’s had. The populist feature of
Perón’s administration was not matched in the Brazilian regime formed
after Vargas. The intense Grands Prix seasons motivated the sponsoring
of a national racing team at the first instance, ultimately leading to the
construction of the first international standard Formula 1 circuit outside
Europe and the USA.
Just like Vargas’s administration had done two decades earlier, the
Peronist government entered a new stage in the integration of South
America into international motor racing. The movement was not the
same; it could not possibly be, given the international circumstances of
the time. But the ideal was, indeed, very close to that of the earlier popu-
list ruler: that of using motor racing as a tool in the promotion of his
country, and of his government, both domestically and abroad. And this
movement was not simply a top-down initiative led by a visionary leader
who supported the sport. It was initiated and pushed forward by the
main agents and organizations of that sporting field, who pressed for
their own agendas and worked alongside governmental officials to accom-
plish their goals.
174 M. Drumond and V. Melo

Notes
1. The circuit was renamed after the end of the Peronist government, in
1955. It was then renamed several more times, and is now called Autodromo
Oscar y Juan Gálvez.
2. For concise information on the relationship of government and sports
during the rules of Vargas and Perón, see Drumond (2014) and Rein
(1998). For a comparative approach, see Drumond (2009).
3. There is an extensive debate on the authoritarian features of Perón’s first
government. For an abridged view, see Wolfenden (2013).
4. For more information on Mussolini’s and Hitler’s uses of sport as propa-
ganda, see Arnaud and Riordan (1998).
5. For more information on the role of Eva Perón Foundation in Argentinian
sports, see Rein (1998) and Rein and Panella (2019).

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P. Taggart, P. O. Espejo, & P. Ostiguy (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of
Populism (pp. 251–274). Oxford University Press.
Donaldson, G. (2012). Fangio: The Life Behind the Legend. Random House.
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Gruschetsky, M. (2019). Autódromo, corredores y velocidad. Modernismo

automotor en la Argentina peronista [Rectrack, Drivers and Speed: Auto
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Deporte en el Primer Peronismo: Estado, Competencias, Deportistas [Sport in the
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Nacional de La Plata.
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 Part III
Motor Racing and the Automobile
Industry
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian
Car Industry, 1893–1947
Aldo Zana

This paper focuses principally on the years from the first appearance of a
motor car in the country through to 1940, when Italy entered
World War II.
The years before the Great War were a time of slow-growing mutual
understanding amongst politicians, government and the emerging motor
car industry, which exploited races for market leverage.
The two decades between the Great War and World War II saw the
apex of motor racing celebrations as the fascist regime invested it with
their key concepts: tight discipline, sheer power, daring courage, quest for
victory, total supremacy.
The new Italy that emerged from mid-1945 onwards set a different
stage, on which motor sport was still popular yet it became more autono-
mous without direct connections with politics or government. The focus
was on the impact of the car industry on economic and social issues.

A. Zana (*)
Weston, FL, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 179
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_8
180 A. Zana

Humble Origins
The story (or, maybe, the tale) goes that the first ever petrol car running
in Italy arrived by train on January 2, 1893, in Schio, a small hillside
town in the Vicenza county (in the Veneto Region). The unusual destina-
tion completed the 1892 order by Mr. Gaetano Rossi, the tycoon founder
of one of the premier textile factories in Italy.
The car was a French Peugeot Type-3 animated by a German-designed
V2 565 cc engine, with a 2 HP output.
Such a humble entry of the country into the new world of the automo-
bile went unnoticed by the two pioneers striving to produce the first
Italian-made petrol car: Michele Lanza in Turin and Enrico Bernardi
in Padua.
Once again, the story never determined who was the first Italian to
manufacture and drive a roadworthy internal combustion vehicle. The
Miari & Giusti company, manufacturers of vehicles based on the
Bernardi’s invention, produced a handful of motor cars between 1896
and 1901. The former’s company factory (rather, workshop) was located
in Turin, the town shortly to become the cradle of the Italian automobile
industry.
Politics, administration and government didn’t care about the nascent
industry. Italy was then struggling to find the exit path from decades of
widespread illiteracy, high international indebtedness, underdeveloped
capital markets, lack of primary energy and raw materials (principally,
coal and steel) to feed the new factories of the industrial revolution,
which in Italy arrived late.
Social unrest was at its zenith in the years before the new century: in
1898 in Milan, a peaceful march of workers striking to demand better
working conditions and decent salaries was attacked by soldiers, who
fired on the crowd, killing 82.1 The revenge came two years later when an
anarchist from America shot and killed the king of Italy, Umberto I.
Paradoxically, a superiority complex permeated much of the country,
triggered by the government of Francesco Crispi, who wanted to gain a
front row place among the leading European countries in military power,
colonial acquisition, technology and innovation. This policy won over
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 181

the industrialists seeking wealth through the new mechanical industries,

with the automobile industry leading the way.
Milan was the leading manufacturing centre of the country and the
town already numbered 21 marques producing automobiles in 1901: two
among them, Bianchi and Isotta Fraschini, were destined for a long life
and significant growth. Yet by 1904 it was Turin which was the standard
bearer for the Italian car industry thanks to Fiat, established in 1899, Itala
(1904) and another seven minor marques located in town. The count had
risen to 34 by 1906.
Turin had already been the venue for the first motor car race officially
recorded in Italy: on May 18, 1895, five intrepid automobilistes left the
town aiming for Asti, another town in Piedmont, 29 miles away. It took
the winner, a Mr Federman, the whole day, from sunrise to sunset to be
back in Turin. He drove a Daimler Victoria Phaeton as he was the Italian
representative of the German company.
A total of 917 motor vehicles circulated in Italy in 1901, quite a low
figure in comparison to France, US and UK, yet a threefold increase over
the previous year. In the same year the overall output of domestic motor
car plants amounted to 301, the balance being imports from France and
Germany.
Motoring entered the fast lane thanks to the astonishing success of the
1901 Milan and 1902 Turin car shows. The former sold 120,000-plus
entry tickets; the latter strengthened the domestic leadership of the local
marques as a follow-on of the first ever Italian motor car show in
April 1900.2
In those early years of the new century neither the government nor the
army realized the promise of the automobile despite the increasing atten-
tion created by races and their media coverage.

Motor Racing Moves Out of the Cradle

The pioneer of international motor racing in Italy was a rich bourgeois
from Palermo, Sicily: Vincenzo Florio (1883–1958) of the Marsala
liqueur international fame. Besides the car shows in Turin and Milan as
well as some minor local events recorded as racing contests, Florio was
182 A. Zana

the key promoter of the September 1905 Brescia Motor Racing Week.
The feature race was the Coppa Florio, 324 miles on a three-sided circuit
south of the town. The winner was marquis Giovanni Battista Raggio, a
gentleman driver, driving a 100 HP (14.5 litre) Itala, the marque estab-
lished the previous year in Turin. He won in 4 hours, 46 minutes and
4 seconds, at an average 65.16 mph, and without suffering any trouble
with the tyres, while his fiercest competitor, Vincenzo Lancia (1881–1937)
driving a Fiat, was forced to finish as a backrunner by too many tyre
changes.3
Florio decided to launch a new competition in his native Sicily to pro-
mote the island as a vacation site for wealthy Europeans. History goes
that he conceived the race when he attended the 1905 Gordon Bennet
Cup in France. A circuit without railway level crossings was found in the
hills and mountains south of Palermo, with start and finish on a straight
along the sea, close to the mainline railway to Messina to facilitate the
attendance of large crowds. The Grande Circuito (Outer Circuit) delle
Madonie was tracked: 92.6 miles a lap, highest elevation at 3413 feet.
For most of the peasants living up the Madonie hills, the vision of a
motor car was a devil-like novelty, more exciting than for the inhabitants
of the richer north of the peninsula. As customary with Vincenzo Florio,
the purse was generous, richer for constructors than drivers. On May 6,
1906, at 6:00 a.m. Vincenzo Lancia, driving a Fiat 24/40 HP, 7.4 litres,
was the first of 22 competitors from Italy and France, to be released by
the chief timekeeper. At the end of the gruelling three laps, the winner on
elapsed time was Alessandro Cagno (1883–1971), in an Itala 35/40 HP,
who cashed the 25,000 Lire of the winner purse.4
The broad (of course, relative to the times) media coverage and the
fascination of motor racing pushed the domestic motor car industry to
grow as a significant contributor to the country’s economic system. The
strongest players in the industry survived the financial crisis of 1907–1908,
which forced out of the market the many underfunded and poorly man-
aged small companies producing too few and too expensive vehicles.
The government in those years, known to historians as “Belle Époque,”
understood, at last, the value of the motor car for the military. Many
hundreds of trucks were ordered from Fiat, Itala, Isotta Fraschini and
Ceirano for the war against the Ottoman Empire to conquer Libya. The
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 183

ruggedness of the soil limited the range and scope of the motor trucks:
they were the losers against camels and horses. Nevertheless, the connec-
tion of the motor car industry with government and politics was finally
established.
Such a connection switched the focus from motor racing as the most
effective way of promotion to lobbying at the top government levels,
while the ever-increasing cost of racing forced the leading marques to
establish departments specialized in the design and production of racing
cars. The huge investment was only sustainable by the largest concerns,
with Fiat virtually alone in Italian motor racing until the mid-1920s.
Since the first decade of the century Fiat had widened the reach of
their racing programme to the whole of Europe and America. Vincenzo
Lancia and Emanuele Cedrino (1879–1908) became popular in the US
due to their achievements in major events like the Vanderbilt Cup and
the Beach Races in Ormond Beach, Florida. The American ace-driver
David Bruce-Brown (1887–1912) began his meteoric career as riding
mechanic on the Fiats driven by Cedrino and met his death in a Fiat in
practice for the 1912 American Great Prize in Milwaukee.

A Turning Point: The Great War

The Great War was a turning point for the Italian motor industry. The
Italian government, at last, fully understood the need for motor vehicles,
ordering 32,000 of them for the army. They were confined to short-range
transport behind the lines because the Italian war against the Austro-­
Hungarian Empire was fought in the mountains and the front was con-
stituted as closely facing trenches. A war of movement supported by
motor vehicles was then a concept fully unknown to the Italian Chiefs of
Staff. Nevertheless, they were in favour of exploiting the newest warfare
weapon: aircraft, even though they were forced to go to French and
British manufacturers for them. Nevertheless, Italian motor car compa-
nies received fat contracts to produce aero engines under French licence:
a more profitable business than delivering trucks to the army. The long
delays in outfitting production lines and the overall laggardness of Italian
metallurgical and mechanical industries forced the government either to
184 A. Zana

cancel or to pay only a fraction of the price because the products became
available too late—at the end of hostilities and, often, even later.
The situation was nearly lethal for Itala, which never fully recovered
from the failure to ensure the timely delivery of the 3000 aero engines to
be built under licence of Hispano-Suiza.5
The severe social and political unrest after the Great War was termi-
nated by the fascist government in 1922. It became a totalitarian regime
in 1925, a forerunner of Nazi Germany.

A New Scenario to Exploit

Fiat emerged from the Great War as the dominant motor group in Italy
and widened its reach and scope into aircraft and large diesel engines for
ships. They also continued with motor racing and developed a series of
innovative racing machines: these included the first to show aerodynamic
bodies, the first to use reliable and powerful inline-eight engines and the
first to win in Europe with a supercharged car in 1923.
Fiat now committed themselves to an unscrupulous political exploita-
tion of motor racing. Fiat victories were rendered as victories of the Italian
genius, for its unrivalled superiority, and of course for the will to power
in new fascist Italy.
Mussolini himself lowered the blue flag at the start of the Italian and
European Grand Prix at Monza Autodromo on September 9, 1923. The
media reserved the best of their glorification to the imposing presence of
Mussolini, already elevated to the title of “Duce” (“leader,” from the
Latin “dux”) for his, purportedly, bringing back to life the past glories of
the Roman Empire.
The Gazzetta dello Sport, the largest circulation Milan-based sport daily
paper sold across Italy, opened the lead article about the race: “The whole
of youthful Italy, the Italy of sports, the Italy always moving ahead, the
dynamic Italy of the vital speed that is a multiplier of life, was lined up
this morning waiting for the signal from Il Duce, indomitable master of
will, his arm was outstretched in the way of the Roman Salute every time
the red cars flashed past in front of him.” (In truth, Mussolini left the
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 185

Autodromo immediately after the start, therefore he couldn’t have raised

his right arm at every passing of the dominant Fiats.)
Senator Giovanni Agnelli (1866–1945), Fiat’s founder, president,
CEO and largest shareholder, was in the pits together with the top brass
of the company and the designers of the racing department. Of course,
they all paid the due respects to Mussolini when he paraded in front of
the cars on the grid.
The race, 497 miles, was a long and boring affair. Sunbeam, a brand
based in Wolverhampton in the British West Midlands and then the
fiercest rival of Fiat, didn’t appear and a faint opposition was provided by
the single Miller 122 driven by the American star-driver Jimmy Murphy,
the unusual and underpowered Benz RH (the first rear-engine Grand
Prix car), the French Voisins and Rolland-Pilains.
The Fiats came home with Carlo Salamano (1891–1968) first and
Felice Nazzaro (1881–1946) second 24 seconds behind. Only an unbear-
able pain in the left wrist forced Pietro Bordino (1887–1928) to stop at
mid-race and deprive Fiat of a clean 1–2–3 sweep.
When the ageing Nazzaro was called by Fiat to rejoin the team, the
Gazzetta dello Sport celebrated with the headline: “Felice Nazzaro will
race the Italian G.P. for Fiat—Italy’s first and foremost.” And to further
flatter Fiat (one of the largest buyers of advertising in the country) the
article added: “We convey our profound appreciation to the men manag-
ing Fiat, first of all to the senator Agnelli. He understood that the honour
of the company and, even before, the honour of Italy, required Fiat to
vindicate the defeat in Tours and to triumph in Monza.” The final sen-
tence: “To Fiat, to Alfa, to all our drivers, we address the wish, the appeal,
the battle-cry, the order: ‘Win for Italy’.”
The effect of the Fiat victory found a brilliant recap in the Gazzetta
dello Sport headline when reporting on the race: “Italy in the forefront
again. The red Fiat cars triumphed.” And Corriere della Sera (the largest
circulation daily paper in the Milan and Monza area) wouldn’t be out-
done. The first lines of the opener on their front page flashed: “Our tri-
umph was and is complete and gigantic. Italian drivers, Italian cars,
Italian tyres—Pirelli—won against all competitors.”6
The media reports confirmed the complete alignment between the fas-
cist regime and the car manufacturers when it came to proclaiming the
186 A. Zana

Italian superiority in every facet of modernity, automobiles and also air-

craft (yet the latter is another long and quite different tale).
Adhering with supine resignation to the orders of the regime, both
media and car industry downplayed the incidents and the deaths of driv-
ers: a normal occurrence when driving those unsafe, often unreliable rac-
ing cars. Nothing, not even a death, should have disturbed the triumphs
of Italian skill and know-how. The news of the death of Ugo Sivocci
(1885–1923), works driver of Alfa Romeo, on the eve of the 1923 Italian
and European Grand Prix was ignored by the dailies until the day of his
funeral in Milano on September 12, four days after the deadly incident.
If racing were for the glory and power of Italy, the dead were “Fallen
Heroes” to be glorified and then very quickly forgotten. This was the fate
of Enrico Giaccone (1890–1923), Fiat works driver, who was killed on
August 28, 1923, during the early trials for the Monza race. Bordino,
seated beside him in the car, suffered a fracture of the left wrist which,
later in the Grand Prix, forced him out at mid-race.
The censorship by the regime of news about racing accidents found a
blatant example in the case of the tragedy in the Italian Grand Prix at
Monza on September 9, 1928. Emilio Materassi (1899–1928), then a
front row driver, was killed together with 21 persons standing in the front
of the grandstand. It would be the worst motor racing incident anywhere
until Le Mans in 1955 (see Stephen Wagg’s chapter on the politics of
safety in motor racing in this book). Nothing was either written or said
about it in the news of the day and the whole issue was soon forgotten.

Mussolini, the Number One Testimonial

Such was the aura around motor racing that Mussolini committed him-
self to mime the role of a racing driver when demonstrating his penchant
for Alfa Romeo. He used to drive at such a crazy and unsafe speed that
even Enzo Ferrari, then the works racing driver, was scared to death when
he had to assist Mussolini in a test run of a new Alfa Romeo RL/SS sports
car he had personally delivered in 1924 as a present from the company.
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 187

Mussolini also believed in his ability as an aircraft pilot, preferring

bombers as background to his photo-ops for which he was clad in flying
overalls, goggles and cap. And right arm stretched in the roman salute.
On August 25, 1925, he signed a message to be forwarded to the
motor car people, from the bosses to the factory apprentices, from the
racing drivers to the (rich, very rich) owners of touring cars. It proclaimed,

The car is the machine of our time, the typical machine of our period. It is
an instrument which multiplies our living opportunities through space. It
is a delicate and powerful machine hosting titanic rhythms in its gentle
heart. I dream of cars able to easily move through earth, sky, and sea and
come back. We will have them, and then we’ll adhere to the Corporation
of the Integral Speed.7

Today, it’s too easy a job to mock such an essay of lunatic poetry and
foolish foresight. It was then a well-thought move to push the Italian
motor manufacturers to adhere to the directives of the fascist govern-
ment, that is, to focus on the domestic market and avoid costly innova-
tions aiming at keeping up with international competition.
Mussolini’s clear and proven affection for motor cars is often general-
ized to the whole fascist regime as an evolution of “Futurism,” the art
movement created in Italy in the early years of the century. Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti, the magniloquent guru of Futurism, wrote in 1916:
“The magnificence of the [all] Creation became richer through the beauty
of speed. A racing car sporting a long bonnet adorned with big tubes
resembling steel snakes spitting explosive breath is a violent god made of
a new steel race.”8
The theory is an untenable one. When the fascist party was founded by
Mussolini in 1919, the battle cry was for violence in order to establish a
totalitarian regime in which the State dominated every side and facet of
the entire society. Nobody in the party was so educated and acculturated
as to be interested in an art movement which promoted war, speed, reck-
lessness as the artistic credo. By sheer chance, those were some of the
keywords of the fascists and it became a too easy follow-on to define,
many years later, Futurism as the forerunner of Italian fascism.
188 A. Zana

Protectionism and Victories on the Circuits

The government agreed to Fiat’s request to protect the domestic market
from foreign competitors seeking to open assembly plants in Italy to
avoid the excessive import duties: Ford, for instance, had a plant in Trieste
and Citroen had one in Milan. The advances of General Motors to estab-
lish a joint venture with Isotta Fraschini in Milan were promptly rejected
following governmental pressure triggered by Senator Agnelli. We cannot
forget that the 1920s and the 1930s were decades of strong protectionism
across the whole of Europe.
The output of motor vehicles in Italy remained low, despite the propa-
ganda generated by every car industry player: in 1923 total production
(including trucks and buses) amounted to 37,450 units and this was
raised to 63,800 in 1926. Export was the main market: from 12,773 units
(56% of total production) in 1923 to 34,191 (54%) in 1926. Fiat alone
accounted for 81% of overall 1926 vehicle domestic production. In 1925,
117,500 motor vehicles circulated in Italy, which translated into 1 motor
vehicle for every 271 inhabitants. In the same year, the ratio was 1 to 7 in
the US, 1 to 52 in UK and 1 to 53 in France.9
There was still a long way to go to motorize the country, furthermore
because by 1930 exports still amounted to 44% of production. Despite
the heavy taxation on imports from other European countries, the for-
eign market was once again the most profitable for the Italian car manu-
facturers, due to the focus on medium-high range vehicles preferred by
the more affluent foreign customers.
Through the 1920s the victories of Fiat and Alfa Romeo in interna-
tional races helped to promote the everyday use of the automobile in Italy
while supporting the foreign market penetration. By the end of 1926,
three prominent and rich gentlemen of Brescia had launched a powerful
programme for the effective promotion of the motor car. They were
Aymo Maggi (1903–1961), a nobleman fond of Bugatti and other high-­
performance cars; Renzo Castagneto (1891–1971), a road racing motor
cyclist and Franco Mazzotti, count Biancinelli Faglia (1904–1942),
whose family was among the largest shareholder of Isotta Fraschini. They
were joined by the authoritative journalist Giovanni Canestrini
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 189

(1893–1975) of the Gazzetta dello Sport daily and won the approval of
the Brescia fascist chief, Augusto Turati (1888–1965). On March 27,
1927, the “Coppa delle Mille Miglia” was born of the idea of showcasing
everyday automobiles all across the country while racing on the open
roads that the government had begun to improve. Yet, neither the most
emphatic propaganda nor a people-oriented race could conceal the reality
of a modest motor industry, light-years behind the structure, methodol-
ogy, volumes, commercial and after-sale service organizations of Ford and
the other leading US marques. Italian manufacturers offered cars at too a
high price because the cost of production was excessive due to the small
volumes and the as yet unfinished application of the principles of Fordism
and Taylorism.
These principles key managers, technicians and designers of the Fiat
concern had observed in their study tours to Detroit and factored into
the construction of the new huge plant of the Lingotto, Turin, in 1922.
This plant was an industrial complex never seen before across Europe: 1.6
million square feet of covered surface, due to be doubled in a few years,
buildings five floors high with a continuous front 1.4 mile long. Raw
materials and components entered the ground floor, production moved
up through the floors till the finished car (more precisely, the fully fin-
ished chassis) was ready to the test run on the track on top of the build-
ing, 0.60 mile long with two steeply banked turns.10
The interconnection of the motor industry with the government found
the institutional go-between in the association of the manufacturers,
which became increasingly permeated by the governmental fascist repre-
sentatives, which reduced, slowly and steadily, its influence as a negotia-
tion platform.
For the manufacturers, motor racing was the most effective way to
throw sand in the eyes of the regime and the whole Italian people. The
media built up the tale of Tazio Nuvolari (1892–1953) against Achille
Varzi (1904–1948), the two greatest Italian racing drivers in the years
between the two wars. Their personal behaviour and the driving style
were at the opposite: Tazio, vehement, always close to the limit (and,
often, even beyond); Achille, cool, rational, straight to the objective. And
they always raced one against the other: if Achille drove Alfa Romeo,
Tazio chose Maserati, if Achille was due to join Maserati, Tazio joined the
190 A. Zana

German Auto Union. The perfect recipe to win people’s passion even in
the difficult times of the 1930s.
And difficult they were. The aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street crash
hurt the European racing environment and Italian car manufacturers
deeply. Alfa Romeo was saved by the State and diverted to a focus on the
production of aero engines under licence of the British Bristol company;
Itala went bankrupt, Lancia was too small to feel the troubles, Fiat sur-
vived thanks to their size and redirecting production towards entry-level,
lower-cost cars.
To maintain positive relations with the fascists was of paramount
importance to Fiat: in 1932 their products constituted 74.4% of the total
Italian motor vehicle output. In the same year they named “Balilla” the
new entry-level sedan, “Balilla” being the nickname of a member of the
fascist youth organization (the organization, named Opera Nazionale
Balilla, was split in three categories: Figli della Lupa 0–8, Balilla 8–14,
Avanguardisti 14–18). To tell the truth, the car wasn’t priced low at
10,800 Lire. i.e. three years of the per-capita Italian GDP. Nevertheless,
it sold well: in two years 41,000 units entered the market. In the same
year 1932 the number of cars owned by Italian families was 188,331.11
Fiat terminated their racing presence in 1927 when senator Agnelli
ordered the destruction of all the racers still in the department together
with drawings, designs and technical documents.
Alfa Romeo had provided the continuation of the winning record of
Fiat since 1925. If the GPR-1, the first racer of the marque in 1923, was
a failure triggered by its withdrawal from the Italian and European Grand
Prix in Monza as a sign of respect for the death of Sivocci, the 1925
Type-P2 was an enduring success. The many similarities with the Grand
Prix Fiats came mainly from the design of Vittorio Jano (1891–1965),
who was “stolen” by Enzo Ferrari from the Turin racing department and
became the chief race car designer at Alfa Romeo.
Alfa Romeo, despite producing a small volume of high-performance
and very expensive cars, applied in their racing department the concept,
the quality and the organization of a large factory. Furthermore, they
could count on a workforce proud to be “Alfisti” with the mission to
strive for victories in the name of Italy’s glory. Another building block of
the marque excellence was the subterranean rivalry with the Turin
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 191

company, even though the direct one on the tracks lasted less than
two years.
On top of this there was the Mussolini’s personal penchant for the
marque. He was always welcomed by the Alfa Romeo workers while, on
the contrary, he understood the hostile feelings of the Fiat workforce and
management when in 1932 he paid a visit to the Lingotto plant to cele-
brate the tenth anniversary of the fascist revolution. The outcome was a
permanently negative feeling on the part of Mussolini against Senator
Agnelli (named a senator in 1923) while he had to accept that the com-
pany was anyway essential to the objectives of the imperial will of power
of fascism.
By contrast, Mussolini praised the Alfa Romeos as being: “Fast like my
thought.”12 And fast they were, establishing a leadership in Grand Prix
racing thanks to their first “Monoposto” Type P3 driven by aces of the
like of Varzi, Nuvolari, Louis Chiron (1899–1979), Rudy Caracciola
(1901–1959) and René Dreyfus (1905–1993). The surprise victory of
Tazio Nuvolari in a P3 Alfa Romeo, in the 1935 German Grand Prix is
still inscribed in the myths of motor sport.
The 1934 750 kg Grand Prix formula opened the years of German
dominance by Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. The Italian competition,
Alfa Romeo, was annihilated. Politics and propaganda weren’t any longer
enough to hide the endless string of defeats, made more difficult to accept
by the “betrayal” of Varzi in signing for Auto Union to solve the teething
troubles of the rear-engine P-Wagen.
The State support to Alfa Romeo got some payback from the October
12, 1936, victory of Nuvolari, driving an Alfa Romeo 12C-36, in the
George Vanderbilt Cup on the winding Roosevelt Raceway built in Long
Island, a few miles east of New York City. Without the German teams,
Nuvolari and the Scuderia Ferrari teammates Antonio Brivio (1905–1995)
and Nino Farina (1906–1966) had an easy task. Behind Nuvolari, in
second came the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Wimille (1908–1949) in a
Bugatti T59/50B. Brivio finished third, 1 minute 4 seconds behind
Wimille due to an unscheduled pit-stop in the closing stage of the race.
Farina was DNF (Did Not Finish).
It was an event to celebrate well beyond media decency: an Italian vic-
tory in the US on Colombus Day (actually a day later). The Gazzetta dello
192 A. Zana

Sport opened with the headline: “Tazio Nuvolari takes a bullying win on
the American continent routing all opponents from the Old and New
Worlds and proving once again the supremacy of the Italian auto indus-
try.” The side article on the front page carried the headline: “Italian tri-
umph on the anniversary of the everlasting glory of Christopher
Columbus.”
Italian daily newspapers were too eager to glorify the country’s motor
racing supremacy as the result of the wise and effective politics of the
regime to take notice of what Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York
City, said at the prize-giving ceremony: “We are all proud of Nuvolari.
This is a great day in the history of Italian motor sport. From now on it
will be difficult to beat the Italians. The country is on the move and, as
long as men like Nuvolari set the pace, Italians will soon be the dominant
player in the sport.”
La Guardia’s statement reflected the now-established custom of pre-
senting motor races as a fight fought by national heroes aiming for the
further glory of Italy and fascism. The mid-1930s recorded the climax of
the regime, and the largest percentage of Italians felt proud to live in fas-
cist Italy. Enzo Ferrari, the owner and general manager of the Scuderia
entering the Alfa Romeos winners in the US, wrote his commentary on
the race: “This year in which the Nation wonderfully achieved the
supreme mission that history and politics committed to the fascist revo-
lution, the Empire has been at last re-established thanks solely to the
power of the rejuvenated Italy.”13
In 1936 Italy proclaimed the conquest of the Empire of Ethiopia, the
independent East African country in the mainland next to Eritrea and
Somalia, which were already Italian colonies. It was a war of cold-blooded
aggression, tragically late on the colonial conquests of the nineteenth cen-
tury, which resulted in the death of thousands of civilians by poison gas
and mass aerial bombings.
The aggression was condemned by the League of Nations (the pre-war
precursor of the United Nations), which imposed embargoes on Italian
exports and imports. This embargo lasted roughly a year and was rather
easy to circumvent. For instance, the Italian army managed to buy some
3000 Ford medium trucks directly from the company plants in Detroit
and Dagenham, UK. Italian-made trucks had proved to be too heavy,
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 193

large and unreliable to negotiate the tracks on the Ethiopian highlands,

the terrain being more suitable for camels, mules and horses.
The Vanderbilt Cup victory was therefore a unique event to revive the
links of Italian motor racing with its government. Mussolini went to visit
the Milano Alfa Romeo plant on October 27, 1936, to celebrate the
American victory and urge everyone to work harder for the glory of Italy.
Once again, it was left to Enzo Ferrari to write the compulsory closing
lines of the article reporting on the visit: “The last words of the Duce ora-
tion are welcomed with a supreme ovation, never ending.”14

Sliding Towards a New War

The years 1936 and 1937 saw a new word become widespread across the
country: “Autarchy.” Italian companies and the populace at large were
ordered to buy and use products—food, clothes, motor vehicles and
energy—all made 100% in Italy. The order stemmed from the sanctions
imposed on Italy by the League of Nations and was exploited by the
regime to mitigate the growing international isolation of the country,
whose currency was too weak to support imports and whose politics was
moving towards the fateful and tragic embrace with Nazi Germany.
The 1937 count of motor vehicles produced by the domestic factories
amounted to 26,631 units, pushed +25% up by the success of the new
Fiat smallest car, the 500 “Topolino” (Mickey Mouse). Priced at Lire
8900 when the pro-capita GNP amounted to Lire 3200, it didn’t comply
with the directive of providing every family a car, yet it was affordable
enough to stimulate artisans to produce special lightweight bodies and
provide the right platform for many racing, “Sports,” versions. The engine
was usually tuned and bored to 626 cc for a 25 HP output at 4600 rpm
(figures of the Siata racing version). The body was shaped as an alumin-
ium light open racer and this car was later widely known as the “Barchetta.”
Racing Topolinos soon became the entry-level into motor racing,
adhering to the loose government-imposed rules. They became so popu-
lar that a new class was established for the domestic races. In 1938, 28
Sports Topolinos started in the Mille Miglia and they also became the
backbone of the many local events on dangerous circuits laid across towns
194 A. Zana

and sided by rows of houses. Safety was a forgotten word. The worst acci-
dent happened during the Mille Miglia: on April 3, 1938, while racing
through Bologna, the driver of a Lancia Aprilia lost control and smashed
into a group of bystanders, killing 10, 7 children among them, and
wounding 24.
In the late 1930s, the motor car industry deeply modified its relation-
ship with politics, i.e. the fascists: one-way only. Companies scaled down
on the government’s orders and silently suffered through the restrictions
on the availability of imported fuels, the backwardness of the Italian met-
allurgical industry, the lowered production volumes due to the stagnant
and too small domestic market and the shutting down of the export
channels.
If Mussolini and the regime had dreamed of a motorized country based
on modern roads (the first Italian motorway opened in 1924 and ran
from Milan to the north) and state-of-the-art factories producing reli-
able, elegant, and correctly priced cars, they had tragically failed. The
objective of 700,000 units yearly output planned by the fascist govern-
ment for 1938 was actually not reached until 1961 (759,140) in what
was then a completely different world, with regard to GNP and demo-
cratic government.
The 1938 output (the final whole year before the war) peaked at less
than 54,000.
Anyhow, Italy as a whole had to flatter Mussolini. Senator Agnelli
signed a telegram of slavish obedience to Il Duce when the road tax on
cars was lowered for 1939 in a last-minute move to improve the circulat-
ing fleet: “Fiat technicians and workers join me in acclaiming you, Duce,
who opened a new era for empowering the development of the motor car
industry and for promoting additional labour. As ever, our products and
our personal feelings follow your orders on the autarchy. Yours
faithfully.”15
Gone were the times when the red racers flashed round the European
tracks at a winning speed. Alfa Romeo exploited State money to carry the
flag against the all-conquering Germans. And they secured positive out-
comes only when the German marques Mercedes and Auto Union didn’t
show up, like in the 1936 George Vanderbillt Cup. Maserati was building
a visible presence in the Voiturettes (little cars)16 races despite being a very
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 195

small company committed to racing cars only and lacking any significant
support from the State, the regime or the media. Nevertheless, racing
continued to enjoy the support of the top representatives of the regime,
more interested in media publicity when appearing on the circuits than
hoping to witness victories like in the past.
Mercedes-Benz made a fool of the Italians at the 1939 Tripoli Grand
Prix, the opening event of the season held on the fast Mellaha circuit
close to Tripoli in the Italian colony of Libya. It was one of the most
modern and better structured racing sites in the world, usually hosting
either Formule Libre or Grand Prix races. Knowing that the Germans
would have once more been the winners if they had entered their Grand
Prix cars, Italians changed the formula only six months in advance: they
selected the Voiturette class setting the stage for a triumphal show by the
1.5 litre Maseratis and the new and promising Alfa Romeo 158.
What a surprise when on May 7, 1939, in Tripoli Mercedes-Benz
entered two brand new W165 supercharged V8 1.5 litre single-seaters,
designed, built, and race-readied in six months. They won hands-down.
Italians, including Marshal Italo Balbo (1896–1940), a top-brass of
the fascist regime and governor of Libya, had to swallow from the poison
cup once again. It was another blow against additional moves to promote
the national motor industry and it terminated the overemphasized gov-
ernment support to racing showcased in the past decades.
Furthermore, World War II was approaching.

The Rise of a New Scenario After World War II

In the final day of April 1945 when the war ended in Northern Italy,
which had been occupied by the Wehrmacht and run by a puppet fascist
government, 80% of Italian road and rail infrastructure was either
destroyed or badly damaged; the hydroelectric plants were still working
by 90%; the industrial framework was damaged by bombing yet it was
preserved from the complete destruction planned by the retreating
German troops thanks to the insurrection driven by the Resistenza
(Maquis) fighters and supported by the workforces who protected facto-
ries and machinery.17
196 A. Zana

The main Fiat and Alfa Romeo plants in Turin and Milan had been
partially destroyed by Allied bombing; yet, the smaller automotive facto-
ries and workshops in the countryside were able to start again as soon as
raw materials, fuel and tyres became available either on the black or regu-
lar markets.
Alfa Romeo saved their precious racing cars, dispersing them in hide-
outs around Milan. Many racing cars, mostly of the small pre-war classes,
had been carefully preserved by a minority of rich privateers and artisans.
They all were eager to resume racing.
The first post-war race was held on December 16, 1945, in Naples: it
was a short in-town hillclimb won by a Pietro Fordilisi driving a home-­
built Alfa Romeo Special. Many local around-houses races followed in
1946, regardless of the difficult situation in which the national governing
bodies of motor sport had found themselves during the fall-out from the
fascist past in the aftermath of the war.
The key event was the Turin Grand Prix on September 1, 1946, along
the tree-lined alleys of the Valentino Park. It was open to the future F1
single-seaters, i.e. 1.5 litres supercharged and 4.5 litres atmospheric.
Thirty-four entrants came from Switzerland, France, UK and Italy driv-
ing Maseratis, Delahayes, ERAs and the winners-to-be Alfa Romeo 158s.
The winner was Achille Varzi on a 158 in front of teammate Jean-Pierre
Wimille, who followed him across the finish line eight tenths of a second
in the prearranged order.18
Motor racing had restarted despite the Monza Autodromo, the only
purpose-built motor racing venue in the country, being still cluttered by
thousands of wrecked vehicles scrapped there by the Allied Armies.
The Mille Miglia resumed on June 21–22, 1947, with 153 competitors
at the start while the entrants nearly doubled to take advantage of the
availability of a set of new tyres (then almost impossible to find on the
regular market) and a full tank of fuel. Despite the awful road conditions,
54 made it back to Brescia. The winner was Clemente Biondetti
(1898–1955) driving a pre-war 8C 2900B Berlinetta Alfa Romeo owned
by Emilio Romano who was seated with him in the car.
The government now ignored motor sport. The priorities were the
relaunch of production in the largest plants of the likes of Fiat and Alfa
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 197

Romeo as well as the improvement of living conditions of the workforce

and the whole country.
Interactions between motor sport and politics were gone for good
despite the still strong popular interest theoretically exploitable as an
effective source of attraction for political propaganda.
Italian democratic governments stayed alert to the economic and social
impact of the car industry. The policies of modernization of the country
found a strong platform in motorization, thanks to a network of new
state-of-the-art motorways, the improvement of the roads and the avail-
ability of affordable cars. Fiat managed only in the mid-1950s to market
family cars at a price lower than the yearly average salary of an employee.
The improved social and economic scenario provided the platform for
new and existing marques in the car industry. Maserati, no longer under
the ownership of the Maserati brothers, continued with the small, yet
painstakingly produced, batches of racing and high-performance cars;
Cisitalia (derived from Compagnia Industriale Sportiva Italia) was born
and had a short yet glorious life in Turin; Abarth, founded in Bologna in
1949, but soon moved to Turin, where their reputation grew, began sell-
ing low-cost tuning components which would later evolve into manufac-
turing winning race cars; Osca (Officine Specializzate Costruzione
Automobili—Fratelli Maserati), also begun in Bologna, revamped the
skill and the winning tradition of the Maserati brothers; Stanguellini
grew out of its pre-war humble origins in Modena in 1900; the many
artisans of the “Etcterini” (small jewel-like racing cars) began a long-­
lasting winning strike; Enzo Ferrari entered the first car manufactured
under his own name in the Circuit of Piacenza on May 11, 1947.
Billions of words have been written and told since then about Ferrari
and it is beyond the scope of this paper to recap the key steps of the rise
of Ferrari among the most praised car marques and to win a prominent
worldwide position within the top brands.
Every facet of other Italian post-war marques and cars has been and
continues to be scrutinized and added to the knowledge of scholars and
enthusiasts.
In post-war democratic Italy, governments showed interest in the
motor car industry only when it related to social issues. Racing was no
longer a priority symbol of national pride and power.
198 A. Zana

The State abandoned Alfa Romeo ownership when the firm was already
sunk in a black hole of losses. It didn’t move a finger when Fiat swallowed
every other Italian motor car manufacturer of some significance: Alfa
Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and Ferrari. It continued to support Fiat every
time their market position or financial performance showed signs of
weakness.
In the twenty-first century, Fiat merged with US-based Chrysler com-
pany and established the FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automotive) Group in
2014, which was due to become second fiddler in the French PSA Group
in 2020.
Ferrari still carries along the mission of representing Italian motor rac-
ing at the top, i.e. F 1. And they seek neither interactions with politics
nor State support.

Notes
1. This was part of a series of disturbances sometimes known as the Milan
Barricade Fights.
2. Based on Bossi, Giovanni; Zana, Aldo: “I Saloni dell’Auto a Milano
1901–1947” (Milan 1901–1947 Car Shows). AISA (Italian Association
of Motor Historians), Milano 2021.
3. Published in: “L’Illustrazione Bresciana—Issue 5/1905”. Brescia 1905.
4. Published in: Canestrini, Giovanni: “La favolosa Targa Florio”. LEA
Editrice, Roma 1966.
5. Published in Biffignandi Donatella: “Itala, splendore e declino di una
marca prestigiosa” (Itala, splendor and decline of a prestigious marque).
AISA Paper No. 64, Milano 2005.
6. Published in Zana, Aldo: “Monzanapolis—The Monza 500 Miles and
the endless America-Europe challenge”. Società Editrice Il Cammello,
Turin 2017.
7. Translated from the original manuscript signed by Benito Mussolini on
Ministero degli Esteri (Foreign Affairs Ministry) letterhead, supplied by
the Giovanni Bossi Automobile Archive.
8. Published in Castronovo, Valerio: “Fiat 1899–1999—Un secolo di sto-
ria Italiana” (Fiat 1899–1999—A century of Italian history). Rizzoli,
Milano 1999.
 Politics, Motor Sport and the Italian Car Industry, 1893–1947 199

9. Data published in Bossi, Giovanni; Zana, Aldo op. cit.

10. Data published in Castronovo, Valerio op. cit.
11. Data published in Boscarelli, Lorenzo: “Progressi della motorizzazione e
società italiana“(Motoring development and Italian society). AISA Paper
No. 58. Milano 2003.
12. Published in Bigazzi, Duccio: “Il Portello—Operai, tecnici e imprendi-
tori all’Alfa Romeo 1906–1926” (The Portello—Workers, technicians
and managers at Alfa Romeo 1906–1926). Franco Angeli, Milano 1988.
13. The lines about the 1936 George Vanderbilt Cup are taken from Zana,
Aldo op. cit.
14. Published in the house organ: “Scuderia Ferrari—Issue 14”. Modena,
November 5, 1936.
15. Published in Boscarelli, Lorenzo op. cit.
16. This was the official designation of a class of racing cars with engine max.
capacity 1.5 litres, less costly and not as fast as the GP racers.
17. Published in Bossi, Giovanni; Zana, Aldo op. cit.
18. Published in Silva, Alessandro: “Back on Track—Grand Prix and
Formule Libre racing 1946–1950”. Fondazione Negri, Brescia 2019.
 British Motor Sport and the Rise
of the Garagisti
Mark Jenkins, Nick Henry, and Tim Angus

This chapter charts the evolution of the UK’s ‘Motorsport Valley’ (MSV)1
from its humble beginnings as a leisure activity for the mechanically
minded, to its continued status as ‘the jewel in the crown’2 of British per-
formance engineering, and a globally significant economic cluster. This is
an account of the emergence of an industry and economic cluster under-
pinned by the evolution of specialist technologies and engineering capa-
bility. The term ‘Garagisti’ is used to encapsulate this distinctive
engineering culture and production model.

http://www.garagisti.net/ accessed 18 June 2020.

M. Jenkins (*)
Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
N. Henry • T. Angus
Coventry University, Coventry, UK
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 201
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_9
202 M. Jenkins et al.

Motorsport Valley in the UK is estimated to have a combined turnover

of £9 billion, encompassing 4300 firms (mainly small-and medium-sized
enterprises, SMEs) and 41,000 employees.3 We describe six key periods
in the evolution of Motorsport Valley (‘the Silicon Valley of motorsport’)
and, critically, the rise of the ‘Garagisti’—Enzo Ferrari’s disparaging term
for the British race car constructors. From early beginnings between the
First and Second World Wars we chart the emergence of the first com-
mercial businesses in the nascent motorsport industry of the 1950s and
1960s, through the shift into new technologies and materials of the 1970s
and 1980s, to a period of exponential growth and professionalisation in
the 1990s and 2000s. This has culminated in the financial, environmen-
tal and societal challenges of the period from 2010 to 2020. In the fol-
lowing we outline six key phases and summarise with some conclusions
regarding the future of the motorsport industry in the UK.

Beginnings
In which we describe the beginnings of the car clubs and hobbyist engineers
who developed light, nimble race cars, using a bricolage of technologies and
components, ideal for racing on closed circuits.
The beginnings of the twentieth century saw the establishment of two
formal institutions in Europe which became, and remain, central to the
sport of motor racing. In 1897 the Automobile Club of Great Britain was
formed; this organisation, renamed the Royal Automobile Club (RAC)
in 1907, became the official regulatory body for UK motorsport activi-
ties. Paris, in 1904, saw the formation of the Association Internationale
des Automobile Clubs Reconnus which was to become the Fédération
Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), now the global regulatory body for
motorsport worldwide.
As motor racing evolved through the 1920s and 1930s, the UK had
started building racing cars with marques, often represented in the tradi-
tional British racing green, such as Bentley, Aston Martin and English
Racing Automobiles (ERA). These cars were typically large, powerful
machines, with the engine located in front of the driver, and which relied
on horsepower to deliver performance on public road-based tracks such
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 203

as Le Mans in France and the Mille Miglia in Italy. During this interwar
period grand prix racing was dominated by Germany’s white Auto Unions
and Mercedes; France’s blue Bugattis and Talbots; and the red Italian cars
of Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Maserati.
The first purpose-built race circuit in the UK opened in 1907.
Brooklands, near Weybridge in Surrey, used a banked oval format, allow-
ing the cars to travel fast round the bends, and was very much the domain
of the affluent racing enthusiast. Brooklands became a site not just of the
nascent motorsport industry in the UK (both two and four wheeled) but
also of the aviation industry. In the early post First World War era it was
one of the largest aircraft production facilities in the UK. Brooklands
maintained its position as the pre-eminent site of both the sport and
industry of motorsport until 1939, when the site was requisitioned for
the aviation industry for the war effort in the Second World War, and
racing permanently ceased at the venue. In the 1930s, Brooklands
monopoly of circuit-based events in the UK was broken by the opening
of Donington Park circuit in the East Midlands in 1931. Donington Park
became established as the second main UK-based permanent circuit in
1931 until it also was requisitioned for war purposes in 1939. Unlike
Brooklands, however, Donington was revived in the 1970s under con-
struction magnate Tom Wheatcroft’s patronage. In addition to these two
permanent interwar circuits, temporary circuits such as South London’s
Crystal Palace, a public park which ran events from 1927, bolstered the
venues available in this period.
Following the end of the Second World War, two particular motor rac-
ing clubs, both located in the south of the UK, provided fertile ground
for the germination of the Garagisti. They epitomised the rise of a new
form of racing car technology, centred on the UK—and which set in
train the global dominance of British-based racing car production for the
last 60 years.4 The first meeting of the Bristol Motor Cycle & Light Car
Club had taken place in November 1911,5 later transforming into the
Bristol Aeroplane Company Motor Club, based at Filton near Bristol.
This, in turn, became the 500 Club6 which was established in Bristol in
1946 and continues today. This organisation established regulations for
500cc race cars thereby providing a formal regulatory framework for the
small light cars which went on to revolutionise international racing in
204 M. Jenkins et al.

Formula 1 (F1) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Today, as then, regula-
tions remain key to all forms of racing (and the continued power of the
regulatory body, the FIA).
One of the more successful initial 500cc designs was created by John
Cooper of Cooper Cars in Surbiton, Surrey. Based not far from the old
Brooklands circuit, the circuit was where John Cooper had in the pre-war
era first discovered his interest in motorsport. First raced at the Prescott
hill climb, near Gloucester, in July 1946,7 the Cooper Mk1 used front
suspension assemblies from two scrapped Fiat Topolinos and married
these to a J. A. Prestwich (JAP) 500cc speedway motorcycle engine (built
in Tottenham, London). There were no engineering drawings, the com-
ponents were simply laid out using chalk marks on the garage floor.
Because the motorcycle engine used a chain drive, the simplest arrange-
ment was to put the engine behind the driver and as close as possible to
the driven rear axle, thereby creating a classic ‘mid-engine’ layout.
The 750 Motor Club was founded in 1939 to exploit the competition
potential of the Austin Seven production car. Its simple construction
made it ideal for modification and the creation of ‘specials’ based on the
chassis and powertrain. The inaugural meeting of the club was held on 29
March in Willesden, North London.8 After a number of small events
during the summer, including a race at Crystal Palace, it had to make do
with a series of occasional meetings at pubs and hotels during wartime,
until hostilities ceased in 1945. The club was founded by two journalists,
Bill Boddy and Dennis Jenkinson, but its most famous member was
Colin Chapman whose successful Lotus specials are probably best exem-
plified by the front engine Lotus Seven, which is still manufactured in the
UK at the time of writing under the Caterham brand.
Initially the most popular form of competition for these clubs was the
hill climb, with competitors attempting to set the fastest time to ascend a
hill such as those in Prescott in Gloucestershire and Shelsley Walsh in
Shropshire. However, after 1945 an abundance of disused military air-
fields with hard surface perimeter roads made the ideal locations for
wheel-to-wheel circuit racing. Both the 500 and 750 Motor Clubs made
frequent use of an ex-RAF airbase at Silverstone, north of London, where
they could travel, hold an event and return within the day. In 2023 six
out of the seven UK based F1 teams (out of a total of 10 F1
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 205

teams worldwide) had operations located within a triangle defined by

drawing (100 mile) lines between London, Bristol and Silverstone. This
demonstrates the locational importance of both the airfield-based cir-
cuits, and the technological and engineering influence of the aviation
industry to the development of MSV.

The Constructors
Specialist race car constructors, such as Cooper and Lotus, were selling their
products to aspiring racers using technologies which created light, nimble and
extremely fast racing cars.
Although motor racing was not a new phenomenon post-Second
World War, businesses which existed specifically for the purpose of build-
ing and selling affordable racing cars and their components were. With
Cooper formally creating a race car company in 1947 and Lotus in 1952,
the Garagisti were born. Lotus was originally based in London before
moving to Hertfordshire and then, finally, Norfolk. However, this didn’t
translate into British success in grand prix racing for several years. In fact,
the first British success in the post-war era came when Vanwall won the
inaugural Formula 1 Constructors World Championship in 1958. This
was also the first year that a British driver became F1 World Champion,
although Mike Hawthorn had done so while driving for Enzo Ferrari.
Vanwall founder, Tony Vandervell, had been one of the investors in the
British Racing Motors (BRM) project. Frustrated with a lack of progress
by BRM, Vandervell purchased a V12 Ferrari—his Thinwall bearing
company was already a supplier to Ferrari, Enzo himself having described
Vandervell as the meteoric builder of the Vanwall.9 The car was renamed as
the ‘Thinwall Special’. From using modified Ferrari cars, Vandervell then
built his own car at his factory in Acton, West London, using an engine
developed by Norton motorcycles and utilising a Rolls Royce military
vehicle crankshaft.10 The tubular spaceframe chassis was designed and
built by John Cooper of Cooper Cars and further developed by Colin
Chapman of Lotus. Chapman also suggested that they spend time
improving the aerodynamic design of the body and enlisted the help of
Frank Costin who worked for British aviation manufacturers De
206 M. Jenkins et al.

Havilland. Costin had been influential in the aerodynamic development

of the early Lotus cars.
During the 1950s Cooper had become the world’s biggest manufac-
turer of racing cars.11 Having started with the mid-engine 500cc cars,
they had also moved into front engine Formula 2, Cooper-Bristol single
seaters. The real breakthrough in terms of competitive performance came
from a partnership between Cooper and engine builder Coventry Climax.
Coventry Climax made fire pump engines from their base in Coventry in
the English Midlands, which had become widely used in the UK during
the Second World War. The ‘feather weight’ portable fire pump engine
had a capacity of just over 1000cc. Both John Cooper and Colin Chapman
recognised that such a light and powerful engine would be ideal for a race
car and lobbied Climax to produce a suitable version for automotive use.
From these small beginnings Climax went on to produce 1988 automo-
tive engines in 1957.12 A Cooper Climax car achieved its first grand prix
victory at the Argentine Grand Prix of 1958 with Stirling Moss at the
wheel. Ironically, this was not a victory for the factory Cooper team, but
a private British-based entrant—Rob Walker, heir to the Johnny Walker
whiskey fortune, who had decided to use his wealth to go motor racing.
This was not only the first win for an engine designed as a fire pump, but
the first win for a car with an engine positioned behind the driver (‘mid-­
engine’) since the beginning of the Formula 1 World Championship in
1950. In 1959 and 1960 Cooper Climax won the constructors world
championship, the first time it had been achieved in consecutive years.
The Garagisti had arrived.

Garagisti
Led by Cooper and Lotus the Garagisti develop the dominant designs in
Formula 1 motor racing and forced Enzo Ferrari to ‘put the ox behind cart’.
The traditional way to design and build a grand prix car was to con-
struct a spaceframe—an arrangement of metal tubes designed to hold the
suspension points, the engine, the driver and contain all the major com-
ponents, including fuel tanks. As the cars became smaller and lower in
order to improve handling, fabricating and fitting aluminium fuel tanks
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 207

inside the spaceframe became increasingly difficult; in addition, the flex-

ing of the chassis often resulted in leaks which could mean retirement
from a race. Colin Chapman came up with a typically pragmatic solu-
tion13—rather than build a frame and fit the tanks into it, why not
strengthen the fuel tanks to become a structural part of the car and then
bolt the suspension and engine onto them? The Lotus 25 became the first
Formula 1 car since the Second World War to use this monocoque chassis.
A major problem for the Garagisti in the early 1960s was a change in
engine regulations. In 1963 the FIA had stipulated that from 1 January
1966 F1 engines would have to be either 3000cc normally aspirated or
1500cc turbo-charged. This meant that the hugely successful Coventry
Climax power unit was at the end of its time. Faced with the challenge of
making significant investment to create a 3000cc engine, Climax decided
to step away from racing engines to concentrate on their core business.
Colin Chapman made an agreement with two of his former employees,
Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin, who had now formed a specialist
engine-tuning business—called Cosworth—that they could design and
build a 3000cc engine for £100,000. All Chapman had to do was to find
the funding. This came from the Ford Motor Company and the result
was the Ford Cosworth Double Four Valve (DFV) engine, built at the
firm’s factory in Northampton, close to the Silverstone circuit and at the
heart of what subsequently became Motorsport Valley.14
The engine was light and powerful, and most importantly a stressed
component allowing the Garagisti to simply bolt the engine onto the rear
of the monocoque and then attach the rear suspension and gearbox to the
rear of the engine. All of this resulted in a lighter and stiffer race car
which had the capacity to win grand prix. Lotus designed their type 49
car specifically for this engine. The car and engine combination emphati-
cally won on its first race—the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on 4 June
1967. Originally the plan was for the engine to be provided exclusively to
Lotus, but Ford’s Walter Hayes recognised that this had the potential to
totally dominate the sport and, to Chapman’s dismay, made the decision
to make the engine available to other grand prix teams from 1968.
Cosworth’s first customer after Lotus was Surrey-based Tyrrell Racing’s
Ken Tyrrell: This meant that anyone with enough money, and in the first year
it was only £7500, went to Cosworth and you came away with an engine
208 M. Jenkins et al.

that was capable of winning the next race and that went on for many years.
This is the reason why there are now so many British Formula 1 teams—
because that engine was available.15
The Ford DFV changed the balance of power away from the teams
who built their own engines such as Ferrari, BRM and Honda, and
towards those who concentrated on building the chassis and bought the
engines from Cosworth. This included teams such as Lotus, Tyrrell,
McLaren (based in Surrey), Brabham (also in Surrey) and Williams (in
Oxfordshire). It also moved racing car creation away from the vertically
integrated organisations who built all of the car, to horizontally focused
specialists who came together to create the racing car. In the UK these
were the specialist networks that became the basis of Motorsport Valley
and featured other names such as gearbox manufacturers Hewland (based
in Berkshire) and fuel cell manufacturers Aero Tec Laboratories (head-
quartered in Milton Keynes). Race car construction focused on designing
car chassis, suspension systems, aerodynamics and other aspects of han-
dling performance, safe in the knowledge that if the constructor had the
DFV engine they would be highly competitive. In 1971 and 1973 every
grand prix in the World Championship series was won by a car fitted
with the Ford DFV engine. The Garagisti didn’t just put the ox behind
the cart, they revolutionised a production system built on horizontal net-
works of world-class specialists working together to create race winning
cars—networks geographically located in the South and Midlands of the
UK (Motorsport Valley).
Aerodynamics had been around the periphery of motor racing for
many years. Frank Costin, brother of Cosworth’s Mike Costin, worked
for aircraft builder De Havilland and had helped influence the design of
early Lotus and Vanwall cars. But the idea of aerodynamics as a central,
rather than peripheral, technology in race car development only started
when full-width ‘wings’ were first used on grand prix cars at the Belgium
Grand Prix of 1968.
The radical shift that really brought aerodynamics to the fore in the
late 1970s was led by Lotus, like many innovations during this period.
During a period of poor performance Colin Chapman had asked techni-
cal director Tony Rudd to take a totally fresh look at racing car design in
order to try and find a new breakthrough. This came when
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 209

aerodynamicist Peter Wright, using the moving-ground wind tunnel at

Imperial College London, discovered that by sealing the sides of a wide
bodied concept design model a dramatic improvement in downforce
could be achieved. This effectively made the underside of the car an
inverted wing, with moving skirts along the side of the car used to create
a sealed area of low pressure directly under the car. Italian American
driver Mario Andretti described the performance of the resulting Lotus
78 as like ‘being painted to the road’.16 Enzo Ferrari initially resisted these
innovations from the Garagisti, insisting that his cars would never wear
skirts,17 but eventually he realised that the Scuderia was being left behind
and relented. Ferrari was now following the Garagisti.

Growth
Exponential growth in the industry—fuelled by record audience numbers on
TV—leads to the constructors growing and branching out into supercars and
related businesses.
When Frank Williams founded his Formula 1 team in 1969 there were
five people involved, and that included Frank and driver, Piers Courage.
By 1980 this had risen to 62 employees, by 1990 to 148 employees and,
in the period from 1990 to 2003, the size of the team increased by a fac-
tor of over 3 to 475 employees (excluding those involved in creating the
engines used by the Williams team). The main reason for this exponential
growth during the 1990s was a significant increase in the viewing audi-
ences, primarily for Formula 1, which, in turn, encouraged an influx of
sponsors, from a range of sectors including tobacco, drinks, electronics
and computing. Motor racing entered a period of globalisation of its
sport—and with it the associated global production of racing cars, with
its centre in the UK-based MSV, flourished.
With this escalation in revenues the teams found themselves in a race
to build up resources to develop their cars more quickly to stay competi-
tive. In the early days of aerodynamics the F1 teams had made use of
specialist wind tunnels at research facilities such as the Aircraft Research
Association in Bedford and at universities such as Cranfield, Southampton
and Imperial College London; but now teams were building their own
210 M. Jenkins et al.

wind-tunnels in order to test and develop innovations as fast as possible.

As these wind-tunnels worked at a reduced scale from the actual car, scale
models had also to be built in the early stages at 33 or 40% and then
increasing to 50 and 60% to achieve greater accuracy. In addition to
using physical wind-tunnels the teams also began to develop their appli-
cation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in order to simulate air
flow on a computer, again to speed up and improve the development
process. All of these changes meant an increased number of specialists to
work in these areas, it also meant that the skills needed to bring together
these different technologies in order to design and develop the fastest car
were also in short supply and wages and costs therefore increased just as
quickly.
During this time the Garagisti were moving ahead not only in Formula
1, but also in terms of developing professional management capabilities
and expanding their corporate portfolios. McLaren developed their own
‘supercar’, the McLaren F1, in a bid to emulate Ferrari both as a brand
and in the range of products they offered. Meanwhile Ferrari also estab-
lished an operation to design and develop their F1 cars in the UK, under
the leadership of former McLaren Technical Director, John Barnard.
Based in Surrey, this was known as the Guildford Technical Office or
GTO for short. Although much of the focus in motor racing is on the
development of single-seat racing cars, Motorsport Valley was proving
attractive to other formats such as rallying—with the world rally opera-
tions of Subaru, Mitsubishi and Hyundai all locating in MSV in this
period. Outside single-seat racing cars developed for F1, firms based in
MSV also began to dominate other international single-seat racing cate-
gories such as the US-based Indycar series. Here, MSV-based firms such
as Reynard, Lola and March were market leaders, and the main US-based
Indycar manufacturer, Penske, also moved its Indycar chassis design and
manufacture to MSV, in a move mirroring that of Ferrari in F1 with GTO.
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 211

Global Players
Research into the size, scale and scope of the sector leads to growing evidence
of its contribution to the UK economy and, perhaps more importantly, inter-
national recognition of the UK’s capabilities in high-performance engineer-
ing, technology transfer and continuous innovation.
The ban on tobacco advertising instigated by the World Health
Organisation was implemented in Formula 1 in 2006 (although some
teams still maintained tobacco companies as corporate partners—such as
Ferrari with Philip Morris). It paved the way for many new types of spon-
sor to enter into motorsport: from software to shampoo, telecoms to
transportation and banking to beer. But perhaps most importantly in this
period was the influx of the global automotive manufacturers and, with
it, investment from these OEMs (original equipment manufacturers)
into MSV. The relationship between the car makers and the car racers had
frequently been close, but rarely enduring. Enzo Ferrari’s equipe—
Scuderia Ferrari—had started life, not as a builder of race cars, but as the
works racing team for Alfa Romeo. The first time the Ferrari prancing
horse had appeared on a racing car it was on the side of an Alfa Romeo.
It was only in the late 1940s that Ferrari began to construct his own
engines and then build cars around them. Ferrari is the only automotive
manufacturer that has been competing in Formula 1 since its inception
in 1950, Enzo’s perspective was always that Ferrari was a racing team;
they sold cars to the public in order to fund their racing. In contrast the
automotive manufacturers’ historical perspective has been that it is a mar-
keting and sales investment to race cars in order to promote them to the
public: ‘race on Sunday sell on Monday’.
Aside from Fiat who had acquired a stake in Ferrari in 1969, the Ford
Motor company had been involved in F1 motor racing for many years
mainly through their initial investment in the Cosworth DFV engine,
which carried the Ford logo. However, in the early 2000s many manufac-
turers made the transition from the side-lines to significant investment in
F1 teams on the back of the increasing media profile of F1. Ford acquired
Milton Keynes-based Stewart Grand Prix at the end of 1999 and created
a team around their Jaguar brand. BMW started supplying engines to
212 M. Jenkins et al.

Williams in 2000 and then acquired the Swiss-based Sauber team in

2005 to create their own team. In 2000 Renault bought the Benetton
team, based in Enstone, near Oxford. In 2005 Honda acquired the
British American Racing (BAR) team, located at Brackley, near to
Silverstone in Northamptonshire. Toyota made the move from sports car
racing to Formula 1 in 2002 when they created their own operation
located in Cologne, Germany. Mercedes acquired a majority stake in the
UK engine builder Ilmor in 2002, renaming it Mercedes Benz High
Performance Engines and eventually moving to becoming a F1 construc-
tor in 2010 when they acquired the Brawn F1 team, which had taken
over the Honda operation, and formed Mercedes AMG F1.
In seeking to have a presence in world motorsport, large numbers of
OEMs sought out the network of UK SMEs in Motorsport Valley as the
suppliers of and/or production centre for motorsport vehicles. In 1995,
for example, a supply chain analysis of the world’s four most prestigious
international motorsport championships noted that all the winning cars
were UK-assembled and the UK share of components exceeded 60% in
three cases and reached a third in the remaining case.18 These cars included
the seemingly Italian Benetton F1 car and seemingly Japanese Subaru
Impreza in World Rally. In 2000 the first ever National Survey of
Motorsport Engineering and Services was carried out for the UK-based
Motorsport Industry Association (MIA), funded by national govern-
ment. The survey discovered that total annual turnover for the sector in
2000 was put at £4.6 billion, total employment estimated at 38,500 per-
sons across over 4300 firms engaged in some form of motorsport activity,
and exports of £2 billion accounted for 43% of annual motorsport
turnover.19

Challenges
Bounce-back from two global financial crisis, and responding to the accelerat-
ing technological, commercial and societal challenges driven by the low car-
bon and environmental sustainability agenda.
Over the period 1990–2000, the top 50 UK motorsport engineering
firms experienced an (unadjusted) growth in average turnover of some
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 213

523% and growth in employment of some 227%.20 If, however, the

1990s are seen as a period of boom for the UK motorsport industry, then
the 2000s are seen as an era when MSV both moved to maturity and saw
its competitive advantage challenged on a number of fronts by emergent,
or growing, global competitors—and economic recession.
Following a (semi-)global recession, by 2002 many of the sector’s lead-
ing companies had experienced job losses representing around 5% of
total employment (although job loss was not restricted to the UK indus-
try alone), international circuits such as Silverstone and Rockingham
were experiencing redundancies and high-profile motorsport engineering
companies such as Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) and Reynard had
entered into receivership. Furthermore, analysis of the supply chains of
winning cars in the leading four global motorsport series (F1, CART,
F3000, WRC) over the previous decade showed a worrying trend. By
2002, none of the winning cars were now UK-built and the overall UK
average percentage share of the declared supply chain stood at 33%,
down from 39% in 2000 and 62% in 1995.21 Notably, these declining
shares were driven by the renewed competitiveness of the traditional
competitor industries of Italy, France and Germany rather than those
new ‘developing economy’ entrants who had purchased a global motors-
port event in the hopes that performance engineering would follow.
Yet a detailed global mapping of the motorsport industry in 2005
revealed ‘bounce back’ as the size of the UK industry now stood at £6
billion or 0.5% GDP (a greater share of GDP than in any other national
economy), accounted for a 50% share of the key global companies (‘con-
structors’) and continued to dominate global supply chains. Nevertheless,
the UK industry remained under strong competitive pressure from a
resurgent Italy and the acquisitive activities of US global finance.22
In 2008–2009, the industry faced a new global financial crisis and its
repercussions. Global corporations across the world, including OEMs,
retrenched, and one of the investment drivers of motorsport—sponsor-
ship—dried up. Instead, MSV capabilities began to be reimagined as part
of the transition to a low-carbon economy and, specifically, as intrinsic to
supporting the UK’s automotive and transport sectors’ low-carbon transi-
tion (including light-weighting, energy efficiency and electrification).
This move to industry diversification articulated motorsport and its
214 M. Jenkins et al.

‘performance-engineering’ at the centre of ‘technology-driven diversifica-

tion’ ranging from new materials such as carbon fibre, composites and
nanotechnology through new forms of composite, high temperature, fab-
rication and digital manufacturing to low-carbon, energy-efficient trans-
port including charging technologies, distributed power systems, (kinetic)
energy recovery systems and non-combustion engine powertrains. This
initiative reflected how ‘low carbon motorsport’ became deeply inter-
twined in a broader ‘leveraged’ industry offer of prototyping and testing
capabilities to accelerate the development of low-carbon, energy-efficient
technologies for the global automotive sector and beyond. Motorsport in
the UK had truly put ‘R&D lab’ alongside its historical role as ‘marque,
brand and billboard’.
Other developments in MSV at the time included: spin-off Flybrid,
subsequently acquired by Torotrak, and whose F1 Kinetic Energy
Recovery Systems technology was sold to Volvo and put in vehicles such
as London buses, trams and JCB diggers; the 2014 global launch of
Formula E, an electric-powered single-seat championship, with its global
base at Donington Park; a Williams Hybrid Power engine winning the Le
Mans 24 Hour Race for Audi; new partnerships in aero/space, defence
and special vehicles; energy (Ecofisk); health and well-being (GSK); and,
in 2012, 43% of surveyed Motorsport Industry Association members
reporting selling into ‘other’ sectors such as energy, electrical and medical
and over half believed that ‘energy-efficient, low-carbon technologies will
be at the heart of future growth’.23
Remarkably, a ‘dipstick test’ of the largest ten non-F1 MSV motors-
port companies showed that by 2012 they had already bounced back
(again) with their highest combined turnover ever, and had significantly
higher employment than in 2009.24 Moreover, by 2014, in its core mar-
kets, and in the face of global financial crisis and disruptive technological
transition, MSV had both retained its historical market dominance and
captured significant shares of new technology markets and investment. A
supply chain mapping identified a continued global Formula 1 UK share
of between 70–75% of supply chain value but, in addition, a 40–60%
global supply chain value share of the new Formula E based on electric
power and a 40% share of the transitioning Endurance Sports Car mar-
ket.25 Thus, a global mapping of all three supply chains showed that
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 215

whilst Europe, Japan and, to a lesser extent, the East Coast of the USA
were strongly represented in these three supply chains, a total of 72 of
151 (48%) firms in these growing high-value global supply chains resided
in the UK, most within MSV.
There has been also continued diversification from the motorsport
businesses with Red Bull Technologies moving into high performance
automotive in collaboration with Aston Martin, as well as event manage-
ment with their MK7 facility in Milton Keynes. Mercedes AMG have
entered into electric racing series Formula E. F1 spin-off Williams
Advanced Engineering are providing the battery systems for the third
generation of Formula E single-seat electric racing cars due to compete in
the 2022–2023 season. They are also supplying the battery systems for a
new electric SUV off-road series ‘Extreme E’ for which cars have been
built by specialist French electric car constructor Spark Racing
Technologies and which had its inaugural season in 2021. One of the
largest non-F1 organisations in the UK motorsport industry, Prodrive, is
extending its capabilities in both hybrid and all electric technologies
which includes a partnership with Swedish electric truck maker Volta.
Inward investment into MSV continued through this period with a
consortium led by Canadian clothing billionaire Lawrence Stroll acquir-
ing Silverstone-based Force India F1 team in August 2018, with further
investment in performance car manufacturer Aston Martin leading to a
renaming of the team to Aston Martin F1 for 2021. The Williams family
stepped down from the motorsport business they started in 1969 with
US-based investment organisation Dorilton Capital acquiring the team
in August 2020. Further US-based investment was secured by McLaren
to support their racing activities with MSP Sports Capital acquiring a
minority stake in McLaren Racing in 2020 that will increase to 33% by
the end of 2022.
The early decades of the twenty-first century ended as we started with
this chapter: namely, British-based performance engineering, and a glob-
ally significant economic cluster, based on networks of SMEs, technolo-
gists and engineers drawing in global investors and investment to meet
the new racing and technology challenges of mobility in the digital age.26
And, in an initiative to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, seeing
Formula One Management co-ordinate ‘Project Pitlane’, the
216 M. Jenkins et al.

development of new ventilator technologies was undertaken by seven

UK-based F1 teams to respond to the crisis in March 2020.

Conclusions and Reflections

Sixty years after its emergence, the MSV cluster continues to flourish and
hold global economic primacy in its core activity of motorsport produc-
tion and much further beyond. It remains a cluster comprising a dense
and critical mass of numerous interdependent local and globally net-
worked specialists in high value, technologically led testing and develop-
ment, small-batch production, low-volume manufacturing and aspects of
servitisation (such as around agile production systems and big data). The
initial Garagisti have become a professional knowledge community of
expert individuals and entrepreneurs, while the process of organisational
churn so evident in Formula 1 team ownership remains in MSV.27
Yet neither is this to say that the cluster’s core characteristics have
stayed the same—there are signs that aspects of the glue of clustering has
changed. One suggestion is indeed that key firms of long-run status such
as McLaren (racing cars and automotive), Prodrive (prototyping and rac-
ing services), Xtrac (gearbox) or Alcon (brakes) have increasingly become
ever more key infrastructural pillars of the cluster. In a system initially
renowned for its horizontal SME regional networks, these large pillar
companies have become economic anchors in their own right (and even
more akin to the highly valued foreign direct investment plants of global
manufacturers). A key aspect of this development has been the role of the
industry body—The Motorsport Industry Association (MIA)—which
has built a series of important networks and channels with both local and
national government—and in overseas markets—as this historically anti-­
state industry (the motorsport industry has traditionally avoided any
form of bureaucracy which has included close contact or collaboration
with government) has learnt to work with the state (and its support)
given hard won recognition of the industry’s economic, technological
and brand value. With awareness, longevity and brand has come institu-
tional incorporation with cluster members now deeply engrained in local
and regional policy-making machinery alongside supporting, for
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 217

example, skills and education initiatives, global trading and business

leadership. With the potential rise of pillar companies of global reach
there have been suggestions that supply chains may be inexorably moving
offshore and that there is a danger of hollowing out (although even here
the cluster is distinctive for the challengers remain Germany, Italy, Japan
and the USA rather than the BRICs or global South). Arguably, such
fears may mostly be being directed at the mature if globally expanding
core of motorsport whereas, in contrast, the cluster’s development of
high-performance technology within the industrial paradigms of low car-
bon, big data and Industry 4.0 has seen new forms of collaboration, inte-
gration and embeddedness with the broader spatial and regional economic
context within which the MSV cluster has historically ‘sat’.28
So the Garagisti have risen and transformed to become part of one of
the most recognised and distinctive industrial clusters in the world, sit-
ting alongside the likes of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Hong Kong
finance. The journey we have described has involved shifts and changes
along the way, moving from the artful and pragmatic technologies of
Cooper through the modularisation of knowledge with the advent of the
Cosworth DFV, through to the branding of UK Motorsport Valley and
the institutional engagement of the UK government at local, regional and
national level. The cluster continues to evolve and provides a unique
capability in technology integration and experimentation which has
proved to be both resilient and adaptable. Arguably the Garagisti live on
within the cluster’s agile networks of people and production today and,
although Enzo’s epithet ‘Garagisti’ is often portrayed as contemptuous,
one suspects there was also an element of heavily disguised admiration in
there as well.

Notes
1. Henry, N., Pinch, S. and Russell, S. (1996) ‘In Pole Position? Untraded
Interdependencies, New Industrial Spaces and the British Motor Sport
Industry Area 28, 1, pp. 25–36; Henry, N., Angus, T., Jenkins, M. and
Aylett, C. (2007) Motorsport Going Global: The Challenges Facing the
World’s Motorsport Industry Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
218 M. Jenkins et al.

2. Motorsport Industry Association (2013) Review of Motorsport Valley’s

Business Cluster. Motorsport Industry Association, Stoneleigh Park,
Warwickshire.
3. Motorsport Industry Association (2013) Review of Motorsport Valley’s
Business Cluster. Motorsport Industry Association, Stoneleigh Park,
Warwickshire.
4. Henry, N., Angus, T., Jenkins, M. and Aylett, C. (2007) Motorsport
Going Global: The Challenges Facing the World’s Motorsport Industry.
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
5. https://bristolmc.org.uk/a-­brief-­history-­of-­the-­bmclcc/ accessed 16
June 2020.
6. http://500race.org/history/club-­history/ accessed 18 June 2020
7. Nye, D. (1983). Cooper Cars. Osprey Publishing Limited, Long Acre,
London. p. 14.
8. Morgan, D. (2009). Seven Fifty Motor Club: The birthplace of modern
British motorsport. Haynes Publishing, Yeovil, Somerset.
9. Ferrari, E. (1963). The Enzo Ferrari Memoirs. Hamish Hamilton, London.
10. Nye, D. (1993). Autocourse History of the Grand Prix Car 1945–65.
Hazleton Publishing, Richmond, Surrey.
11. Nye, D. (1993). Autocourse History of the Grand Prix Car 1945–65.
Hazleton Publishing, Richmond, Surrey.
12. Nye, D. (1993). Autocourse History of the Grand Prix Car 1945–65.
Hazleton Publishing, Richmond, Surrey.
13. Crombac, G. (2001) Colin Chapman: The Man and His Cars. Haynes
Publishing, Yeovil, Somerset.
14. Jenkins, M., Henry, N. and Angus, T. (2002) ‘Motorsport Valley and the
Global Motorsport Industry: The Development and Growth of the
British Performance Engineering Cluster’. SAE Motorsport Engineering
Conference Proceedings; Henry, N., Jenkins, M., Burridge, M. and
Geach, N. (2001) The National Survey of Motorsport Engineering and
Services: 2000. Motorsport Industry Association, Stoneleigh Park,
Warwickshire.
15. Quotation from Case Study: Cosworth Engineering in Jenkins, M. &
Ambrosini, V. (2007). Advanced Strategic Management: A Multi-
Perspective Approach. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 266.
16. Crombac, G. (2001) Colin Chapman: The Man and His Cars. Haynes
Publishing, Yeovil, Somerset. p. 284.
 British Motor Sport and the Rise of the Garagisti 219

17. Interview with Mauro Forghieri, conducted by first author, 18

October 1999.
18. Henry, N., Angus, T and Jenkins, M. (2003) A Study into the UK
Motorsport and Performance Engineering Cluster. Department for Trade
and Industry, London.
19. Henry, N., Jenkins, M., Burridge, M. and Geach, N. (2001) The National
Survey of Motorsport Engineering and Services: 2000. Motorsport Industry
Association, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire.
20. Henry, N., Jenkins, M., Burridge, M. and Geach, N. (2001) The National
Survey of Motorsport Engineering and Services: 2000. Motorsport Industry
Association, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire.
21. Henry, N., Angus, T and Jenkins, M. (2003) A Study into the UK
Motorsport and Performance Engineering Cluster. Department for Trade
and Industry, London.
22. Henry, N., Angus, T., Jenkins, M. and Aylett, C. (2007) Motorsport
Going Global: The Challenges Facing the World’s Motorsport Industry.
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
23. Motorsport Industry Association (2013) Review of Motorsport Valley’s
Business Cluster. Motorsport Industry Association, Stoneleigh Park,
Warwickshire.
24. Motorsport Industry Association (2013) Review of Motorsport Valley’s
Business Cluster. Motorsport Industry Association, Stoneleigh Park,
Warwickshire.
25. Jenkins, M., Henry, N. and Angus, T. (2014) Developing UK Motorsport:
A Supply Chain Analysis. UK Trade and Investment, London.
26. https://www.sqw.co.uk/insights-­and-­publications/evolution-­of-­the-­high-
performance-­technology-­and-­motorsport-­cluster/
27. Henry, N. and Pinch, S. (2000) ‘Spatialising knowledge: Placing the
Knowledge Community of Motor Sport Valley’, Geoforum, 31, 2,
pp. 191–208.
28. Doel, C. and Green, C. (2016) The Evolution of the High Performance
Technology and Motorsport Cluster at Silverstone. SQW, Cambridge.
 Part IV
Motor Racing and the Politics
of Gender
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed:
Injury, Death and the Politics of Safety
in the History of Motor Racing
Stephen Wagg

Few sports can have taken more human lives, nor inflicted more serious
injuries on its participants, than motor racing. Moreover, for much of its
history those who came to watch the racing were in as much jeopardy as
the drivers themselves and ancillary staff (mechanics and race marshals,
for example) have from time to time been added to the sport’s substantial
death toll. A politics of safety can be discerned in motor racing from the
late 1960s, a politics that was not always either uncontested or rooted in
altruism. This chapter looks historically and analytically at the develop-
ment of safety culture in motor racing.

S. Wagg (*)
International Centre for Sport History and Culture, De Montfort University,
Leicester, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 223
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_10
224 S. Wagg

F ive Minutes After the Second Car Was Built:

Danger and Early Motor Racing
Motor car manufacturer Henry Ford is reputed to have said that motor
racing began ‘five minutes after the second car was built’.1 This, of course,
is hyperbole, but it’s true nevertheless that the early decades of the motor
car were characterised by the growth of (often lethal) competition. While
much pioneering motor technology took place in Germany, most motor
racing around the turn of the twentieth century was staged in France or
Italy: France, it has been suggested, had many straight roads and Italy was
the last country to restrict racing on public highways—it was banned, for
example, in Germany and the United Kingdom.2 These races in the first
instance were conducted on public roads and over long distances, usually
between cities: the Paris Rouen race of 1894 was among the first. These
races were fraught with danger and often resulted in numerous fatali-
ties—the Paris-Madrid race of 1903, for instance, is widely described as
the ‘Race of Death’: eight people (five racers and three spectators) were
killed.3 In Italy the Targa Floria, a race through the mountains of Sicily,
was inaugurated in 1906 and the equally prestigious, 1000-mile, Mille
Miglia in 1927; it was eleven years later, following the deaths of ten peo-
ple (including seven children) in the Mille Miglia, that the Italian govern-
ment called a halt to open road racing.4 Meanwhile, purpose-built circuits
began to appear, the first being Brooklands in Surrey (UK) in 1907.
Drivers of the early motor racing cars were drawn heavily from the
higher echelons of western European and American society and related in
diverse ways to the prospect of danger and death. Many were European
noblemen, such as the Florentine aristocrat Prince Scipione Borghese, an
adventurer who won the first Beijing to Paris race in 1907,5 or Giulio
Masetti, who dominated the Targa Floria in the early 1920s and died in
the Targa Floria of 1927. Many such men were fascinated by speed and
the possibilities of the motor car and had invested commercially in these
possibilities: French nobleman Jules-Albert de Dion, for instance, won
the first Paris to Rouen race in 1894 and later formed one of the pioneer
automobile companies. English racing driver and car importer Charles
Jarrott, who raced between 1900 and 1904, expressed the ethos and early
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 225

dominance of the ‘gentleman racer’: ‘Obviously the competitive element

existed between the various manufacturers of cars taking part; they
entered a race in the hope that they would […] beat their rivals; but the
general idea underlying the whole event was the desire to prove to the
world that motor cars would go, and that they were capable of travelling
long distances in a reliable and speedy manner. Dozens of [the drivers]
were independent, racing their own cars [and] were so enamoured of the
sport as a sport, as to make the mere question of money subservient to
the keen desire to drive a racing-car and to race’.6 This keen desire com-
bined with the fallibility of new, work-in-progress technology to enhance
the likelihood of injury or death—to drivers and to curious watchers at
the roadside.
In time, however, the industrialisation of car production and the
growth of motor racing as a showcase for different brands of vehicle wid-
ened the net of recruitment to the driving seats of racing cars. The biog-
raphies of the leading racing drivers of the 1920s and 1930s seem to
reveal a growing number from working or lower middle-class families.
Many—the Americans Barney Oldfield (1878–1946) and Jimmy
Murphy (1894–1924), Frenchman Robert Benoist (1895–1944), Swiss
driver Christian Lautenschlager (1877–1954), Germany’s Christian
Werner (1892–1932), August Momberger (1905–69) and Hermann
Lang (1909–1987), Italians Ugo Sivocci (1885–1923), Pietro Bordino
(1887–1928) and Clemente Biondetti (1898–1955) and others came to
motor racing variously from comparatively humble beginnings via jobs as
mechanics, engineers, test drivers or racing motor cyclists. They invari-
ably drove what were effectively works cars, thus promoting particular
models: in Italy, for instance, motor racing was established in the 1920s,
supported notably by the leading car makers Alfa Romeo, Maserati and
Bugatti.7 Such men were racing as a condition of their employment and
sheered axles, failing gearboxes, skids and burst petrol tanks were the
common coin of their working lives. Death and serious injury thus
became occupational hazards for many drivers and they developed strate-
gies for dealing with this. One, it seems, was fatalism. The Italian driver
Alberto Ascari, for example, famously withheld affection from his chil-
dren: ‘I prefer to treat them the hard way. I don’t want them to love me
too much. Because they will suffer less if one of these days I am killed’.8
226 S. Wagg

(Both Alberto Ascari and his father Antonio, also a racing driver, died in
race crashes—Antonio in the French Grand Prix of 1925, Alberto doing
some practice laps at Monza in 1955.) Another acclaimed Italian racer
Tazio Nuvolari showed similar sangfroid in, reputedly, never booking
return tickets when travelling abroad to race.9
Accounts of the career of Nuvolari, who raced cars between 1930 and
1950, provide important insights into the ways in which the prospect of
death or serious injury were handled in the culture of motor racing
between the world wars. Nuvolari himself was among the first celebrities
thrown up by this culture. As such he was marketed as a daredevil.
However, New Zealand driver Thomas Cholmondeley-Tapper, who
raced against Nuvolari, argued that this sort of publicity belied Nuvolari’s
professionalism: ‘Nuvolari […] was often called in his own country the
‘Son of the Devil’—fearless—but from my acquaintance with him I
found this catchphrase inaccurate. He would make no secret of his dislike
of a particularly dangerous section of a course and, in spite of what
appeared to be extremely abandoned driving, he did in fact know exactly
what he was doing and possessed sound judgment and knowledge of his
capabilities’.10 This professionalism, in the cases of Italy and Germany,
was often allied to a strident nationalism, blended in the 1930s with fas-
cism. In both countries success at motor racing betokened a thriving
automobile industry which in turn heightened international prestige. Of
Nuvolari it was said: ‘it was only natural and human for Nuvolari to ren-
der a machine useless when assailed by a mass of rivals, and when it was
a question of defending the national flag and prestige. If he risked his life
with inferior means against the German’s massive offensive, he did it for
these reasons…[…] Again and again he had smashed his car or himself,
in one race after another, because of his unflagging determination to
overcome the tremendous advantage in power of the German machines’.11
When professionalism trumped patriotism and Nuvolari accepted an
offer of better financial terms from the German team Auto Union, Italian
fascist leader Benito Mussolini interceded with Ferrari, Nuvolari’s previ-
ous Italian employers, to bring him back.12 Nuvolari incurred many inju-
ries during his racing career and his biographers remark that it was ironic
that he should die in his bed;13 his death, in 1953, seems nevertheless to
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 227

have been occupationally related—he died of emphysema, brought on by

the inhalation of petrol fumes.14
In Nazi Germany great political stress was laid upon the notion of
death as an honourable outcome while racing for the fatherland. The
Third Reich gave much financial support to the principal German car
firms—Mercedes Benz, Auto Union and Porsche—and encouraged com-
petition between them.15 They also saw the German motor racing teams,
such as the Silver Arrows (which raced between 1934 and 1939), as
important flagships for national regeneration. When leading German
racing driver Bernd Rosemeyer, a member of Hitler’s paramilitary SS
organisation, was killed attempting a land speed record in 1938, Hitler
said: ‘For all of us it is painful to know that one of the very best and most
courageous of those pioneers in the international recognition of German
engines and vehicle manufacturing, Bernd Rosenmeyer, had to lose his
life so young [he was 29]. But he, and all the men who, in those tough
races, sit at the wheel of our cars or ride our motorcycles, are fighting
with us to give bread, wages and reward to the German working man’.16
It seems fair to say that, while there was disquiet about the deaths
caused by motor racing in the 1920s and 1930s, this disquiet was, first,
on the whole not expressed by the drivers and, second, it was more likely
to follow the deaths of spectators than of competitors. A section of the
world’s third purpose-built racing circuit at Monza, north of Milan, was
abandoned after the death there of driver Emilio Materassi and twenty-­
eight spectators in 1928 and, as we’ve seen, deaths of spectators provoked
the banning of open road racing by the Italian government in 1938.

 oing What They Enjoyed? Body Count

D
and the Beginnings of a Safety Debate
in Motor Racing in the 1950s and 1960s
Formula 1 (F1) was inaugurated in 1950 and, for motor racing, the two
decades that followed the Second World War are sometimes recalled as a
golden age, a time ‘when sex was safe and racing was dangerous’.17 A pic-
ture is often painted of a social milieu in which daring young males defied
228 S. Wagg

death at the wheel and, if they survived, mostly spent their non-racing
time as ‘playboys’ in the company of glamorous young females. As the
headline of a recent article argued, ‘Formula One drivers accepted the
risks. This was the life they loved’,18 a rationalisation often heard at race
meets in the post-1945 era. In other typical retrospections, David Hobbs,
an ex-racing driver who had made his F1 debut in 1969 is reputed to
have talked in 2009 of how in his day ‘real men’19 raced at Spa, venue for
the Belgian Grand Prix, at which fifteen drivers were killed between 1957
and 1969, and in 2013 Ferrari historian and writer John Lamm reflected
thus on the death of Count Wolfgang von Trips at Monza in 1961, in a
crash that killed twelve spectators: ‘you have to understand that death in
motor racing was not uncommon then. At the time, people were still
used to people dying around Formula One, even spectators. Sounds
weird, doesn’t it?’20
Accounts, however, suggest that politically the situation as regards
death and injury in motor racing during the 1950s and 1960s was far
more complex than this. Several factors were in play.
First, while some drivers were live-for-the-day bon viveurs, others now
embraced the same sober professionalism that had been perceptible
before the war. For example, leading tyre technician David ‘Dunlop Mac’
MacDonald wrote of British driver Dick Seaman, who had died in the
Belgian Grand Prix of 1939, ‘Seaman had more in common, probably,
with our serious young post-war stars who have made Britain pre-­eminent
in racing than with the devil-may-care fellows of my early days at
Brooklands’, citing Seaman’s ‘brilliant ability and close attention to
detailed preparation for races’.21 (Seaman’s professionalism derived in
part from his admiration for Nazi Germany and it extended to conced-
ing, on his deathbed, that, at the time of his soon-to-be-fatal accident, he
had been driving too fast for the conditions.22) Tony Brooks, who made
his Formula 1 debut in 1956 spoke in similar terms of Stirling Moss:
‘Stirling was probably the first really professional driver. Behind the wheel
I took it just as seriously as he did, but out of the car I wasn’t trying to be
commercial, whereas Stirling was’.23 That would not, of course, mean
that Moss and a rising generation of professionally minded racing drivers
would lobby for greater safety—indeed Moss himself stated baldly in
1963 that the risks that drivers and spectators took were simply ‘their
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 229

affair’ and, as with a number of his contemporaries, he opposed the use

of safety belts24—but Moss, like other upcoming drivers, would nonethe-
less now be likely to have a thought-out position on the safety aspects of
his work. Now drivers might see it as a test of their professionalism to
deal with the prevailing hazards; equally, perhaps, they could see the haz-
ards as an unacceptable barrier to the exercising of this professionalism.
In a book of 1961, the Scottish driver Innes Ireland expressed himself
broadly opposed to increased safety measures—‘I don’t go for the busi-
ness of improving the safety of the track—the circuit—itself. If a circuit
is there to be raced on, it’s there to be raced on, and, if it includes some-
thing a driver doesn’t like, such as a brick wall or a house, then he must
learn to drive around it. I think one must put up with whatever a circuit
presents and drive accordingly. In any case danger is part of the game’. In
the next breath however, Ireland admits that the circuits in the French
city of Rheims and Cordoba, Argentina, have hazards that must be
removed.25 It would, naturally, be more difficult for drivers concerned
about safety to publish their concerns: this could damage their public
image and their employability. These concerns were nevertheless expressed
privately. The American Phil Hill, who began driving for Ferrari in 1959,
was one who developed a more cautious philosophy: years later he recalled
his inner conflict, on the one hand wanting ‘to race, to excel’ and, on the
other, ‘wishing to stay alive and in one piece’.26 In the end, he had not, he
reflected, been ‘gung-ho enough’, or prepared to die, for his ruthless
employer Enzo Ferrari.27 Hill’s sensitivities were scorned by other drivers,
such as the Briton Mike Hawthorn, who called him ‘Auntie’,28 masculin-
ity being the predictable subtext to many of these discussions. Nevertheless,
feeling about safety sometimes ran high enough for a particular track to
be shunned: for example, in 1961, British racing teams boycotted Monza,
known in Italy as the ‘Death Circuit’, because of its notorious high bank,
over which cars had often careered, endangering spectators.29 But, in the
late 1960s, drivers who questioned safety at race tracks could still get
short shrift. Max Mosley, who began as a Formula 2 driver in 1966,
recalled, ‘When I suggested to any of the officials I encountered that the
racing was unnecessarily dangerous, the response was always: “You don’t
have to do it if you don’t want to, it’s entirely voluntary. And, if you think
a corner is dangerous, slow down”’.30
230 S. Wagg

The second factor which was now promising to change the politics of
safety in motor racing was the labour market position of the drivers. This,
historically, had been weak. As Moss pointed out, back in 1954, when
bravery was thought to be the key ingredient to a successful driving
career, Mercedes Benz had received 4000 applications to join their racing
team.31 In these circumstances team bosses such as Alfred Neubauer
(Mercedes Benz, 1926–55) and Enzo Ferrari, who had founded the
Scuderia team in 1929, had been hard taskmasters, largely because they
controlled access to some of the best cars: indeed in 2004 of Ferrari his
former mistress recalled, ‘He never betrayed his cars. Other things, per-
haps’.32 Increasingly, though, skill and professionalism—scarcer
resources—were required. As Mike Hawthorn implied in 1964 an elite
corps of drivers had become established on the Grand Prix circuit: there
were now ‘only about twenty jobs going with the leading continental
teams and nobody bothered to advertise them in the Situations Vacant
columns’.33 Hawthorn, who had become Formula One World Champion
in 1958, also declared himself to have been ‘caught out by the speed with
which I had become an international celebrity’.34 Provenly successful
celebrity drivers would, in time, be better able to dictate terms, on safety
and other matters, to the racing teams and to the circuit proprietors, as
the next few years would show.
A third factor was body count, which was growing. Here there were
some fatalities that could not escape the political attention of bodies out-
side of the sport. The most influential of these incidents was at the Le
Mans 24-Hour race in 1955. A collision involving three cars resulted in
the death of one driver and, according to recent estimates, around 130
spectators.35 The race was not stopped; indeed, during this period of races
it was not customary to stop races in the event of fatalities. Universally
recognised as the worst accident in motor racing history, the carnage at
Le Mans in 1955 resulted in the banning of motor racing in several coun-
tries; in one—Switzerland—the ban still stands.
The crash that marked the end of the Mille Miglia in 1957 featured a
driver who embodied many of the early, devil-may-care myths that had
surrounded motor racing. Alfonso de Portago was a Spanish aristocrat,
athlete and playboy who had once said that racers lived in ‘a world that
only a few understand’.36 In a typically flamboyant gesture, he had
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 231

stopped his Ferrari during the race to kiss one of his current girlfriends,
the Hollywood actress Linda Christian, and had refused a tyre change.
When the tyre in question subsequently burst, Portago’s vehicle had left
the road, killing eleven people—nine onlookers (five of them children),
Portago (whose body was cut in two) and his navigator, Edmund Nelson.37
Besides bringing the Mille Miglia to an end, the incident drew stern criti-
cism from the Vatican38 and Enzo Ferrari was charged with manslaughter,
a charge not dismissed until four years later.39
While these incidents did not necessarily lead to many structural
changes to motor racing circuits, where safety concerns were still often
being rebutted, they did heighten political concerns about the safety of
the motor car as a means of transport. After all, a key raison d’être of
motor racing was to showcase motor cars for sale to the public and the
implications of the catastrophe at Le Mans were clear. With over seventy
people already confirmed dead the defiant headline on Autosport maga-
zine’s principal report of the crash read ‘JAGUAR VICTORY AT LE
MANS: British Cars Take 13 out of 21 Places’.40 The following week cor-
respondents wrote to castigate Labour politician Jennie Lee for calling
motor racing a ‘blood sport’41 and the week after that a further letter
commiserated with Jaguar for ‘losing a great deal of publicity from a
really great performance’.42 Mercedes Benz, who had ordered the imme-
diate withdrawal of their drivers, removed their cars from Le Mans and
questioned the continuation of the race, pulled out of motor racing and
did not return until 1989.
The greatest public concern over the motor car, however, was in the
United States, where a political debate over the safety of the automobile
itself took place in the mid-1960s. The writer A.J. Baime describes how
Ford sales executive Lee Iacocca attended the Indianapolis 500 race of
1964 and grimaced at the sight of two drivers (Eddie Sachs and Dave
MacDonald) being killed in cars with ‘Powered by Ford’ emblazoned on
the side: the cars had ‘turned in to blazing coffins in front of hundreds of
thousands of spectators’.43 The following year the campaigner Ralph
Nader published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed,44 condemning the
automobile, and President Johnson declared a crisis on American high-
ways. This brought anxious responses from Ford and Enzo Ferrari, who
blamed accidents on careless driving, along with Senate hearings and an
232 S. Wagg

FBI investigation of Nader. With car sales falling in 1966 the US passed
the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, compelling safety fea-
tures in cars.45 Iacocca argued that such measures were a breach of
Americans’ civil rights46 and is reputed to have told President Nixon in
1971 that ‘safety has really killed all of our business’.47
A fourth factor was technology. Gung-ho masculine codes and phi-
losophies built around the proximity of death notwithstanding, progres-
sive motor engineers were developing safer racing cars and administrators
were overseeing the admission of important, if piecemeal, safety innova-
tions into Grand Prix racing. As veteran motor racing commentator
Murray Walker reflected, in 1949, the year he began broadcasting, ‘driv-
ers were of no consequence. The cars had their engines at the front and
the drivers wore thin cotton trousers, short-sleeved T-shirts and linen
helmets. They had no safety belts and their cars were flimsy death traps’.48
Cars in the 1950s were fast but unreliable. Driver reminiscences bear this
out. Stirling Moss, for example, remembered driving a Maserati at Monza
in 1958 at 160 mph when the steering wheel sheared off.49 Such mishaps
were still common.
Innovations made in the 1950s were few, but significant: crash helmets
(affording minimal protection by modern standards) became compulsory
in 1952; disc brakes began to replace drum brakes in 1955 and, the same
year, Australian driver-engineer Jack Brabham became the first person to
enter a Grand Prix (the British) in a mid-engine car; he was also the first
person to win in one, in 1959. Rear-engine cars were introduced in 1957
and adopted by all teams by 1961;50 the last front-engine car to start a
Grand Prix was in the British Grand Prix of that year, with occasional
driver Jack Fairman at the wheel. Tony Brooks commented years later
that this ‘makes sense when you’re trying to put the power down through
the back wheels. Design never looked back after that’.51 In 1962 the
British Lotus team introduced a car with an aluminium monocoque52
chassis, a major significance of which was that the car was less likely to
catch fire; earlier models were made of highly flammable, magnesium-­
based materials and many drivers had burned to death. The design of this
new chassis was credited to engineer Colin Chapman, founder of the
Lotus team. Chapman was pro-safety measures and opposed the gung-ho
arguments of drivers like Ireland,53 but he also ran a racing team and
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 233

innovations such as this were made not solely to improve safety but to
enhance the possibility of winning races.
The 1960s saw a number of further important reforms. By the end of
the decade F1 cars had roll bars (introduced in 1961), double-braking
systems and protected fuel tanks and their drivers were obliged to wear
harnesses, fire-resistant clothing and shatterproof visors.54 Straw bales,
long a vestigial protective feature of the motor racing tracks, were finally
banned in 1967.
But driver death still stalked the motor racing circuit and the devil-­
may-­care ethic still thrived in parts of the racing fraternity: sometime in
the 1960s Piers Courage, a driver from a wealthy brewing family who
would die in the Dutch Grand Prix of 1970, was asked by his (disapprov-
ing) father why he enjoyed motor racing so much. He replied ‘Well, Dad,
you had the war’.55
In the late 1960s the campaign for greater driver safety had barely begun.

 hicken Noises: Jackie Stewart and the Rise

C
of Driver Militancy
Jackie Stewart, who made his Formula 1 debut in 1965, is often rendered
as ‘the man who transformed motor racing’56 and it is certainly the case
that no driver campaigned harder for safety measures in motor racing
than Stewart. But social change is never the work of one individual alone
and it’s important to consider the circumstances in which Stewart’s initia-
tives were taken.
A number of things are crucial to note about Stewart’s campaign. He
rejected the longstanding buccaneer/gladiator notion of the racing driver
and embraced instead the growing professionalism—professionalism
which, for Stewart, was embodied in the Argentine Juan Manual Fangio
who had won twenty-four Grand Prix and been five times World
Champion in the 1950s. Fangio had been able to choose the best cars,
had avoided serious injury and had provided for his future by setting up
a business (a filling station and a Mercedes Benz dealership) in Buenos
Aires.57 Second, as observed earlier, the market position of top drivers was
234 S. Wagg

stronger than in the past; they were now heavily in demand and better
able to dictate terms. Teams needed them as much as they needed the
teams. Stewart, for example, at one point turned down Enzo Ferrari;
Ferrari, confident always that any driver would want to drive one of his
cars, was not used to such negotiation and is said to have retorted ‘What
does he want? The factory?’58 Third, drivers continued to die in large
numbers: in his memoirs, Stewart cited an eleven-year window (1963–73)
during which he had seen fifty-seven friends and colleagues killed in
motor racing, including four established drivers during four months in
1968.59 Furthermore, Stewart readily recognised both the commercialisa-
tion of popular culture of the time and his own business prospects within
that: ‘There was much to do in the 1960s. Britain was emerging from
post-war austerity and bursting out in a colourful blaze of music, fashion
and social freedom. Everything seemed so new and, as an F1 driver with
a growing profile, I was swept along in all the excitement’.60 He recalls: ‘If
there was a corporate function where I knew there would be interesting
people to meet, or a business relationship where I thought I could make
a worthwhile contribution, I found it […] almost impossible to say ‘no’.61
Stewart insisted: ‘I wanted a life after driving a car’.62 Such a future orien-
tation was wholly incompatible with the live-for-the-moment ethos to
which some drivers still subscribed. (Stewart frequently stressed the
importance of family life—by contrast, Stirling Moss, first president of
the Grand Prix Drivers Association (GPDA) at its inauguration in 1961,
had said that being married to a racing driver was like being married to a
soldier. Moss had insisted that the GPDA was not a trade union and
talked of modified circuits only in the interests of greater safety for spec-
tators.63) Stewart became a client of talent management company IMG
(International Management Group) in 1968 and the same year arranged
to live in tax exile in Switzerland.
Stewart used a serious accident which he suffered at the Belgian Grand
Prix at Spa in 1966 as a catalyst for his initiative. Spa had always been
regarded as one of the more hazardous circuits in the motor racing calen-
dar and water on the track had heightened the dangers to drivers on this
occasion.64 The largely inactive GPDA was revived under Stewart’s lead-
ership and called for: inspections of Grand Prix circuits; the removal of
trees and telegraph poles and the installation of Armco (safety) barriers;
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 235

and the compulsory providing to drivers of flameproof apparel, certified

helmets and safety belts.65 Spa was boycotted by drivers in 1969 and the
following year the GPDA committee voted 7 to 2 (with two abstentions)
to boycott the German track Nurburgring unless certain safety measures
were taken.66 That same year, one of the seven, the Austrian driver Jochen
Rindt, who had also gone into tax exile in Switzerland, became Formula
1’s first (and only) posthumous champion, having been killed in practice
prior to Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
In assessing the Stewart campaign, two things should be added.
First, Stewart’s initiatives were resented and resisted in some quarters:
track managers were concerned about the expense of upgrading their cir-
cuits and there were moves against the GPDA.67 The authorities had their
supporters in the motor racing press: Motor Sport writer Denis Jenkinson
condemned Stewart for ‘his pious whinings [which] have brain-washed
and undermined the natural instincts of some young and inexperienced
newcomers to Grand Prix racing and removed the Belgian Grand Prix
from Spa-Francorchamps’. […] Can you really ask me in all honesty to
admire, or even tolerate, our current reigning World Champion Driver?’68
Once his campaign was underway Stewart himself recalls Innes Ireland
making chicken noises at him at a Grand Prix.
Second, Stewart felt moved to make his own medical provision, hiring
medical specialists to be on hand when and where he was racing.69 This
seems to have represented a recognition of the continuing dangers of
motor racing and an acknowledgement that thoroughgoing safety poli-
cies in motor racing were yet to come. The final section of this chapter
explores the reasons for this.

 ead Drivers Are Bad for Business:

D
Sponsorship, Safety and Motor Racing After
the Death of Ayrton Senna
Three principal factors—the growth of sponsorship in motor racing,
allied to the sports growing global profile; the political struggle during
the 1980s and 1990s to control the commercial future of Formula 1; and
236 S. Wagg

the concern to make motor racing bodies safe from prosecution—com-

bined to produce a culture of safety in motor racing in the twenty-first
century. Although its promotion was contested (and criticisms of it are
still heard) this culture has led to minimal loss of life or serious injury in
elite motor racing.
As regards safety, the 1970s and 1980s saw a continuation of the pat-
tern of periodic protest and piecemeal reform. There was also some spo-
radic, safety-related militancy. In 1975 the GPDA threatened a boycott
of the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona claiming that track safety rails
were not bolted properly.70 The race eventually took place, amid rumours
that the cars would otherwise be confiscated by police, and five spectators
were killed when the car of German driver Rolf Stommelen went into the
crowd. The following year the Dutch driver Niki Lauda suffered severe
burns in a crash during the German Grand Prix at Nurburgring, a track
of which he had been a vocal critic.71 Later that year Lauda and other
drivers drove only a token lap in the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji, having
deemed the circuit unsafe because of heavy rain.72 There were dissenters:
James Hunt for example, carried on driving when the others withdrew
and won the race. Later the same year, prior to the Canadian Grand Prix
there, drivers raised doubts about the safety of the venue, the Mosport
International Raceway in Ontario and a GPDA meeting was called;
James Hunt, although, bizarrely, member of the association’s Safety
Committee, refused to attend, saying ‘To hell with safety. All I want to do
is race’.73
However, ten Formula 1 drivers died in races during the 1970s and
this seems to have triggered an acknowledgement at the level of Formula
1 governance (now in the hands of British entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone)
that something further must be done. In 1978 Ecclestone appointed
Prof. Sid Watkins, a neurosurgeon, to be the official F1 doctor, the initial
emphasis being placed on measures to treat, rather than to prevent, injury.
As Ecclestone recalled in 2012, ‘we discussed many aspects of safety and
medical issues. We agreed that we needed a proper hospital at the track in
the form of a fully equipped medical centre to stabilise injured drivers
with immediate treatment, and a helicopter to transport them subse-
quently to specialist facilities, and that the helicopter pad had to be as
close to that trackside hospital as possible’.74 Helicopter cover, on-site
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 237

medical centres and designated receiving hospitals were all established

over the next few years. If a circuit refused to cooperate, Ecclestone
threatened to send the drivers home.75 Only two drivers—the Italian
Riccardo Paletti and Canada’s Gilles Villeneuve—died in Grand Prix in
the 1980s, although two others (Patrick Depailler of France and Elio de
Angelis of Italy) died testing.
This was not all down to altruism. In 1978 Ecclestone had become
chief executive of the Formula One Constructors’ Association (FOCA)
and he drove a hard bargain in his dealings with the race organisers.
Patrick Duffeler, executive in charge of sport sponsorship at tobacco cor-
poration Philip Morris (now heavily invested in motor racing) suggested
that Ecclestone liked to use safety as a pretext in these negotiations:
organisers would have to pay more or risk losing the race because of
‘unsatisfactory safety arrangements’.76 Moreover, FOCA soon came into
a long-running dispute with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile
(FIA), the world governing body for motor sport. FIA was quartered in
Paris and held by Ecclestone and FOCA counsel Max Mosley to favour
the continental works teams over the British teams quartered in Motor
Sport Valley (see the chapter by Jenkins, Henry and Angus in this book),
by proposing vehicle specifications that British teams could not afford
and/or did not have the time to meet. Here, once again, the vocabulary
of motive77 in the various exchanges was one of safety. For instance, in
1980 the FIA banned skirts—aerodynamic devices adopted by British
teams such as Lotus which made cars go faster. The ban was to take
immediate effect (instead of after the regulation two-year period) because
it was introduced on safety grounds, immediately putting British teams
at a disadvantage. Mosley judged that virtually any reform could be given
a safety rationale and responded with counter proposals, couched, simi-
larly, in the language of safety—a language likely to prevail if matters
came to court in France. This culminated in the so-called Concorde
Agreement between FOCA and FIA in 1981.78
If Ecclestone himself is any guide to the prevailing attitudes to death
and injury in Formula 1 at this time, it appears that the historically mas-
culine and breezy obliviousness to risk was still in play. In 1982, follow-
ing the two aforementioned driver deaths in quick succession, Ecclestone
repeated the rationalisation he would likely first have heard at motor
238 S. Wagg

races in the 1950s: ‘When a driver dies, he goes out doing what he wants
to do. I don’t find that depressing at all’.79 In 1990 he told journalists that
driver deaths were ‘a form of natural culling’.80 But whatever the currency
of these sentiments in the social world of motor racing, they became
unutterable at an official level in 1994, following the deaths of Austrian
driver Roland Ratzenberger in practice for the San Marino Grand Prix at
Imola and, the following day, of three times World Champion Ayrton
Senna in the race itself. Two weeks later another Austrian, Karl Wendlinger,
crashed in practice for the Monaco Grand Prix and, although he sur-
vived, was in a coma for several weeks.
Reaction to these events showed that motor racing had moved on. It
was now a widely televised event with a global audience: each race was
seen by around half a billion people in over 180 countries.81 Senna him-
self represented the consummation of a process, begun in the 1930s, by
which the racing driver had become a national icon: on his death the
Brazilian government declared three days of national mourning and
Senna was given a state funeral, at which Ecclestone, though he had come
to Brazil, was told he would not be welcome. Senna’s brother Leonardo
told a press conference: ‘The motor sport authorities are only interested
in money’.82 More importantly for Ecclestone and Mosley, the latter hav-
ing just assumed the presidency of the FIA, racing was now heavily
dependent on its sponsors, who were understandably very anxious about
the torrent of adverse global publicity that followed Senna’s death. The
roots of this situation went back to 1968 when on-car advertising had
been approved. The first companies to have their logos on Formula 1 rac-
ing cars were predominantly the tobacco companies and brands, includ-
ing Gold Leaf, John Player and Marlboro. The last thing that these
companies, who were trying to counter widely accepted medical findings
that smoking was injurious to health, wanted was to have their products
associated with violent death. The writer Russell Hotten put it bluntly:
‘Dead drivers are bad for business’.83 Senna’s death crash had taken place
at 200 mph, had been witnessed by a huge television audience and his car
had borne a huge logo for Rothmans cigarettes. Mosley recalled ‘a full-­
blown crisis. Commentators were asking what was wrong with Formula
One; the big car manufacturers and sponsors were talking openly about
pulling out; and there were even suggestions from politicians that Formula
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 239

One should be banned. I found myself having crisis meetings with senior
car industry executives’.84
Mosley responded, importantly, with a two-pronged strategy. An FIA
Expert Advisory Safety Committee was immediately set up under the
chairmanship of Prof. Watkins. Watkins was tasked (a) to investigate
ways of making racing safer. This would embrace not only the better
response to accidents (more helicopters; safety cars; extrication teams and
so on85) but ways of mitigating serious injury (head-and-neck protection;
collapsible steering columns; and, crucially, the reduction of speed)86 and
(b) to extend his research to cover occupant safety in road, as well as rac-
ing, cars.87 Mosley himself announced restrictions on aerodynamics and
engine power; if the teams did not agree to these then the championship
for 1995 would be cancelled. As motor sport writer Alan Henry recalled,
‘the teams blatantly told Max to his face that he was nuts’.88 But Mosley
had his eye firmly on the broader picture. Motor racing, he argued, would
suffer commercially and politically if fatal accidents continued. He had
noted that, in theory, FIA was responsible for all motoring. A safety cam-
paign that embraced the ordinary motorist would be seen as an intrinsi-
cally good thing, but it would also put motor racing morally in credit in
the political sphere—particularly the European Union (EU). Mosley
found out that there had been no new legislation in the European parlia-
ment to protect car occupants since 1974 and, noting that the EU now
had stronger powers under the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and against
motor industry opposition, he led a delegation of experts to the European
parliament to discuss sweeping new safety measures. Astutely, he argued
to the EU that, as things stood, it was then currently safer to crash in an
F1 car than on a typical road. The new measures became effective in 1998
and Mosley claimed subsequently that road deaths across the EU had
fallen by 50%.89 But Mosley made his ulterior motive plain. He had told
the FIA Senate ‘that if there were ever another major accident like the one
at Le Mans in 1955, we would need friends in politics if we were to pro-
tect motor sport. It would be too late to start wooing politicians after the
event; we would need them onside immediately, already briefed about
the lives that were being saved because of what motor sport was doing for
the ordinary road user. If we had a big accident without all this in place,
we would risk politicians banning motor sport’.90
240 S. Wagg

Conclusion
Since 1994, Formula 1 has seen only one driver fatality—that of the
Frenchman Jules Bianchi, who died in 2015, nine months after crashing
in the Japanese Grand Prix of the previous year. The reforms initiated by
Mosley and Watkins appear to have done their work, reducing not
crashes, but the fatal consequences of crashes, and thus protecting the
Formula One brand. People still die racing motor cars—in 2013 Spanish
racing driver María de Villota Comba died as a result of injuries sustained
in a crash while she was test-driving at Duxford aerodrome in England
the previous year and British driver Sean Edwards perished when his
Porsche crashed at the Queensland Raceway in Australia; he was giving a
lesson and in the passenger seat. But there is seemingly wide acceptance
of the comparative safety of high velocity cars now: indeed, in 2013
British driver Anthony Davidson felt able to tell the motor sport press
that motor racing had lost its ‘fear factor’: ‘I feel a driver should be chal-
lenged and should be punished for mistakes. It’s what makes people fol-
low the sport in quite a gruesome way—it’s the danger, racing drivers
should be heroes’. He fell short, though, of calling for a return to the
hazards and carnage of earlier decades: ‘We don’t want to see fans get
injured or drivers get injured or killed but the drivers should get pun-
ished. On some modern circuits it’s pathetic when you see drivers going
off the track and nothing happens’.91 And the following year American
motoring writer Jordan Golson detailed how Formula 1 cars were now ‘so
amazingly safe’ that drivers could hit a concrete wall nose-first at 150 mph
and walk away with only minor injuries.92 A further endorsement of this
view came the same year from retired driver Vic Elford, who had driven
in various forms of competition between the 1950s and 1983:

I think in one respect it has changed for the worse. In virtually all forms of
racing, motor racing now has become so safe. I’m not—well, to a certain
extent, I am—criticising safety because driving in racing today, it is virtu-
ally impossible to get hurt, really badly hurt. It does happen occasionally,
but it’s almost out of the question getting hurt or getting killed. So, drivers,
particularly younger ones coming up, know that they can get away with
doing almost anything and they do it, which, to a certain extent, destroys
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 241

racing, because you get a whole load of accidents that would have never,
ever happened 40 years ago because we wouldn’t have dared do the things
they do.93

If a case is nowadays to be made against motor racing it will be made

on environmental grounds and not those of the safety of the partici-
pants.94 One final irony is that, in 2017 with driver safety now virtually
assured, membership of the GPDA among Formula 1 drivers stood at an
unprecedented 100%, with many drivers feeling that new owners Liberty
Media were unclear as to where they ‘wanted to take the sport’. Drivers’
grievances were now often concerned with motor racing as a spectacle
and included ‘the rise of pay TV and fewer viewers/followers as a result’;
‘negative press spirals due to political fights via the media’; ‘badly thought-­
out television camera angles that do not portray the speed and drama of
the cars’.95

Notes
1. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/463800461596553855/ Access: 1st
October 2019.
2. See Richard Williams Enzo Ferrari: A Life London: Yellow Jersey Press
2002 pp. 38–9; Russell Hotten Formula One: The Business of Winning
London: Orion Publishing 1998 p. 4.
3. https://www.caotica.com/the-­r ace-­o f-­d eath-­p aris-­m adrid-­r oad-­
race-­1903/ Access 2nd October 2019.
4. Williams Enzo Ferrari p. 110.
5. See Luigi Barzini Peking to Paris: Across Two Continents in an Itala
London: Penguin 1986.
6. Charles Jarrott Ten Years of Motors and Motor Racing London: E. Grant
Richards 1906 p. 97.
7. Williams Enzo Ferrari… p. 26.
8. Gerald Donaldson ‘Alberto Ascari’ https://www.formula1.com/en/driv-
ers/hall-­of-­fame/Alberto_Ascari.html Access 3rd October 2019.
9. Christopher Hilton Nuvolari Derby, UK: Breedon Books 2003 p. 14.
10. Hilton Nuvolari p. 219.
242 S. Wagg

11. Count Giovanni Lurani and Luigi Marinatto Nuvolari London: Cassell
1959 p. 153.
12. Ivan Rendall The Chequered Flag London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
p. 140. Nuvolari drove once for auto Union in the Swiss Grand Prix
of 1938.
13. Lurani and Marinatto Nuvolari p. 201.
14. Adriano Cimarosti The Complete History of Grand Prix Motor Racing
Croydon: Motor Racing Publications 1990 p. 137; Williams Enzo
Ferrari p. 135.
15. Eberhard Reuss Hitler’s Motor Racing Battles: The Silver Arrows Under the
Swastika Yeovil, UK: Haynes Publishing 2008 p. 67.
16. Reuss Hitler’s Motor Racing… p. 320.
17. Blake Z. Rong ‘The Golden Age of F1 Was Also Its Deadliest’ https://
www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/news/a29613/the-­golden-­age-­of-­
f1-­was-­also-­its-­deadliest/ Posted 18th June 2016; access 7th
October 2019.
18. Colin Drury “Formula One drivers accepted the risks. This was the life
they loved’: Italy, 1957’ The Guardian 3rd November 2017 https://www.
theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/03/1957-­mille-­miglia-­ferrari-­louise-­
king-­peter-­collins Access 7th October 2019.
19. Quoted in Thomas Macaulay Millar ‘When Men Were Men, And
Burned to Death’ https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/
when-­men-­were-­men-­and-­burned-­to-­death/ Posted 21st December
2009; access 7th October 2019.
20. ‘Back in Time: The Tragic Tale of ‘Count Crash” (unattributed) https://
flagsandwhistles.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/back-­in-­time-­the-­tragic-­
tale-­of-­count-­crash/ Posted 1st November 2013; access 7th October 2019.
21. David MacDonald (‘Dunlop Mac’) and Adrian Ball Fifty Years with the
Speed Kings London: Stanley Paul 1961 pp. 49–50.
22. See Jonathan Glancy ‘The master race’ Observer Sport Monthly 1st
September 2002 https://www.theguardian.com/observer/osm/
story/0,6903,782811,00.html Access 8th October 2019.
23. Bruce Jones Formula One: The Illustrated History London: Carlton Books
2015 p. 16.
24. Stirling Moss, face to face with Ken Purdy All But My Life London: Pan
Books 1965 [First published London: William Kimber 1963] p. 145.
25. Innes Ireland Motor Racing Today London: Arthur Barker 1961
pp. 124–6.
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 243

26. Michael Cannell The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most
Dangerous Era London: Atlantic Books 2011 p. 144.
27. Williams Enzo Ferrari pp. 225–6.
28. Cannell The Limit pp. 143 and 130.
29. Cannell The Limit p. xiii.
30. Max Mosley Formula One and Beyond: The Autobiography London:
Simon and Schuster 2015 p. 36.
31. Moss and Purdy All My Life p. 103.
32. Richard Williams ‘Mistress of the maestro of Maranello’ The Guardian
23rd January 2004 https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2004/jan/23/
formulaone.comment Access 7th October 2019.
33. Mike Hawthorn Challenge Me the Race London: Motoraces Book Club/
William Kimber 1964.
34. Challenge Me… p. 104.
35. For accounts of the disaster, see Christopher Hilton Le Mans ’55: The
Crash That Changed the Face of Motor Racing Derby: Breedon Books
2004; Mark Kahn Death Race: Le Mans 1955 London: Barrie and Jenkins
1976; Raphael Orlove ‘Just How Horrifying Was The Worst Crash In
Motorsports, Le Mans ‘55?’ https://jalopnik.com/just-­how-­horrifying-­
was-­the-­worst-­crash-­in-­motorsports-­1589382023 Posted 14th June
2014; access 7th October 2019; David Greenhalgh ‘Le Mans 1955, A
Lawyer’s View’ http://www.dailysportscar.com/2013/04/27/le-­
mans-­1955-­a-­lawyers-­view.html Posted 27th April 2013; access 7th
October 2019.
36. Cannell The Limit p. 203.
37. The best account of the incident is Cannell The Limit pp. 152–7.
38. See Hotten Formula One… p. 8.
39. See ‘One of the toughest moments in Enzo Ferrari’s life’ https://for-
mula1.ferrari.com/en/happened-­today-­07-­27/ Access 8th October 2019.
40. Autosport 17th June 1955 p. 747. Mike Hawthorn, one of the drivers
involved in the accident, had won the race in a Jaguar.
41. Autosport 24th June 1955 p. 802. The castigation came from Mr and
Mrs Holden of Pinner, Middlesex.
42. Autosport 8th July 1955 p. 15.
43. A.J. Baime Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari and Their Battle for Speed and
Glory at Le Mans London: Bantam Books 2010 p. 153.
44. Ralph Nader Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the
American Automobile New York: Grossman Publishers 1965.
244 S. Wagg

45. See Baime Go Like Hell… pp. 282–98 for a full account.
46. Lee Iacocca, with William Novak Iacocca: An Autobiography New York:
Bantam Books 1986 p. 309.
47. Peter Wyden The Unknown Iacocca London: Sidgwick and Jackson
1988 p. 189.
48. Murray Walker Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken: My Autobiography
London: Collins Willow 2002 p. 231.
49. Moss, Purdy All But My Life p. 105.
50. Martin Williamson ‘A brief history of Formula One’ http://en.espn.
co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/3831.html Undated; access 8th
October 2019.
51. Jones Formula One… p. 15.
52. A vehicle structure in which the chassis is integral with the body.
53. Ireland Motor Racing Today p.125; for a brief biography of Chapman, see
http://www.grandprixhistory.org/chap_bio.htm (undated); access 8th
October 2019.
54. See https://www.f1technical.net/articles/24 Access 8th October 2019.
55. Adam Cooper Piers Courage: Last of the Gentlemen Racers Yeovil: Haynes
Publishing 2010 p. 17.
56. Jackie Stewart: The man who transformed motorsport The Scotsman
26th May 2017 https://www.scotsman.com/news/jackie-­stewart-­man-­
who-­transformed-­motorsport-­3096630 Access 24th February 2023.
57. Richard Rae ‘Heroes’ heroes: Sir Jackie Stewart, former Formula One
world champion, on Juan Manuel Fangio’ The Sunday Times 17th
October 2004 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/heroes-­heroes-­sir-­
jackie-­stewart-­former-­formula-­one-­world-­champion-­on-­juan-­manuel-­
fangio-­fq0whrstnbt Access 10th October 2019; see also Gerald
Donaldson Fangio: The Life Behind the Legend London: Virgin Books
2009 pp. 14, 37.
58. Williams Enzo Ferrari p. 272.
59. See Jackie Stewart Winning Is Not Enough: The Autobiography London:
Headline 2007 pp. 146–51.
60. Stewart Winning… p. 209.
61. Stewart Winning… p. 207.
62. Jones Formula One… p. 112.
63. Moss, Purdy All But My Life pp. 129–31.
64. Stewart Winning… pp. 134–8.
65. Stewart Winning… pp. 154–5.
 It Was Ironic That He Should Die in Bed: Injury, Death… 245

66. Stewart Winning… pp. 162–3.

67. Stewart Winning… pp. 172–3.
68. Quoted in Damien Smith ‘Stewart vs Jenkinson: safety in motor sport’
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/history/f1/stewart-­vs-­jenkinson-­
safety-­motor-­sport Posted 25th July 2012; access 11th October 2019.
69. Stewart Winning… pp. 153–4.
70. James Allen ‘Analysis: What happens when F1 drivers become unified’
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-­gpda-­drivers-­union-­association-­
988401/1383354/ Posted 13th December 2017; access 12th October
2019.
71. See Niki Lauda (with Herbert Volker) For the Record: My Years with
Ferrari London: William Kimber 1979 p. 47.
72. See Tony Dodgins ‘The day Lauda wouldn’t risk his life – and there was
no stopping Hunt’ The Guardian 29th September 2007 https://www.
theguardian.com/sport/2007/sep/29/motorsports.sport2 Access12th
October 2019.
73. Gerald Donaldson James Hunt: The Biography London: Virgin Books
2003 p. 211.
74. ESPN Staff ‘Ecclestone pays tribute to Watkins’ http://en.espn.co.uk/f1/
motorsport/story/88903.html Posted 14th September 2012; access 12th
October 2019.
75. Professor Sid Watkins Life at the Limit: Triumph and Tragedy in Formula
One London: Pan Books 1997 pp. 24–6.
76. Tom Bower No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone London: Faber
& Faber 2012 p. 84.
77. A concept originated by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills. See
C. Wright Mills ‘Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive’.
American Sociological Review Vol. 5; No. 6 (December 1940)
pp. 904–13.
78. Mosley Formula One and Beyond… pp. 139–51.
79. Quoted in Bower No Angel… p. 123.
80. Quoted in Bower No Angel… p. 164.
81. Susan Watkins Bernie: The Biography of Bernie Ecclestone Yeovil: Haynes
Publishing 2011 p. 290.
82. See Richard Williams The Death of Ayrton Senna London: Bloomsbury
1999 pp. 8 and 16.
83. Hotten Formula One… p. 39.
84. Mosley Formula One and Beyond… p. 250.
246 S. Wagg

85. See Professor Sid Watkins Beyond the Limit London: Macmillan 2001
pp. 30, 41 and 47.
86. Watkins Beyond… pp. 6, 31 and 167.
87. Mosley Formula One and Beyond p. 254.
88. Alan Henry The Power Brokers: The Battle for F1’s Billions Minneapolis:
Motorbooks International 2003 p. 158.
89. See Mosley Formula One and Beyond pp. 357–9 and 363.
90. Mosley Formula One and Beyond p. 360.
91. Giles Richards ‘Anthony Davidson says motor sport has lost the ‘fear
factor’ to safety’ The Guardian 20th October 2013 https://www.the-
guardian.com/sport/blog/2013/oct/20/anthony-­davidson-­motor-­sport-­
safety Access 13th October 2019.
92. Jordan Golson ‘How Today’s F1 Cars Are So Amazingly Safe (And
Horribly Uncomfortable)’ https://www.wired.com/2014/07/formula-­
one-­car-­safety-­comfort/ Posted 7th July 2014; access 13th October 2019.
93. Terry Shea ‘Vic Elford: Versatile racer excelled in every form of motors-
port he contested’ https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/vic-­elford
Access 30th January 2021.
94. See, for example, the editorial ‘Motorsport should be banned’ in the
Scottish newspaper The Herald 4th June 2007 https://www.heraldscot-
land.com/news/12777625.motorsport-­should-­be-­banned/ Access 13th
October 2019.
95. Andrew Benson ‘Formula 1 drivers’ union gets ‘100%’ membership due
to concerns over future’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/
42314309 Posted 13th December 2017; access 13th October 2019.
 From Powder Puff to W Series:
The Evolution of Women-Only Racing
Chris Lezotte

Introduction
In October 2018, the W Series—an all-women single-seater racing cham-
pionship featuring the world’s top female racing talent—was introduced
with great fanfare to the international motorsports community. The series
was heralded as a unique opportunity to promote female drivers into
Formula One, universally regarded as the ‘absolute pinnacle of global
motorsport’ (W Series, 2020). Reactions to the announcement fell into
two disparate—and vocal—camps. Proponents praised the series as an
important platform for women to showcase racing ability, as well as for
its potential to carve a pathway for female drivers to higher-level racing.
Opponents decried the series as regressive and belittling to women,
claiming ‘segregated racing’ carries the implication that women aren’t
capable of competing at the same level as men.

C. Lezotte (*)
Independent Scholar, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 247
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_11
248 C. Lezotte

The conflicting responses to the W Series announcement should not

be surprising. Whether or not women are best served by separate or equal
opportunities has long been a subject of discussion, investigation, and
unwavering opinion. Female-only spaces have been praised as locations
where women are allowed to test themselves without male criticism or
intimidation; conversely, they are also viewed as intrinsically inferior to
provinces historically dominated by men.1 Feminists are also divided on
the matter. Liberal feminists view recognition of gender difference as a
barrier to equal rights and participation; they promote working within
the structure of mainstream society to integrate women into that struc-
ture (Gendered Innovations, n.d.). Those who ascribe to difference femi-
nism see value in recognizing male and female differences; they argue that
the gender-neutrality promoted by liberal feminists harms women
‘whether by impelling them to imitate men, by depriving society of their
distinctive contributions, or by letting them participate in a society only
on terms that favor men’ (Grande Jenson, 1996, p. 3). Motorsports,
where women’s participation is the exception rather than the rule, has a
long and complicated history of women-only racing that affects how the
W Series, and all segregated racing activities, is considered by participa-
tors and observers alike.
An examination of women-only racing over the past 75 years therefore
provides an opportunity to consider how segregated motorsports have
both empowered and limited female participation in a historically male-­
dominated arena. Such an investigation has the ability to uncover the
methods by which women have negotiated entry into a venue where men
hold the ultimate power, and women are routinely considered as less. The
subject of women in racing has not received a great deal of attention in
scholarship. Popular literature focuses primarily on exceptional women—
individuals who have achieved success and notoriety in the male world of
motorsports.2 In academia, communication and technology studies
scholars Sloop (2005) and Pflugfelder (2009) broaden the scope beyond
famous female racers through research that explores relationships between
gender, women’s bodies, and automobility. The association of racing and
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 249

masculinity is the subject of scholarship produced by Shackleford (1999),

Yongue (2014), and Fleming and Sturm (2011). Matthews and Pike
(2016) examine the gendered processes that influence attitudes and
behaviors toward female racers. While the majority of these investiga-
tions bring attention to the woman in racing as an exception, interloper,
and curiosity, they rarely consider how a particular motorsports arena can
affect how a female racer is perceived, or influence her ability to fail or
succeed. Looking at the female racer through participation in women-
only events will not definitively determine whether or not women are
best served by gender-segregated motorsport opportunities; rather, it will
offer insight into how women have constructed alternative avenues into
the male-­dominated province of auto racing.
Motorsports is an overarching term that encompasses various types of
motor-vehicle racing but is most often associated with the automobile.
Motorsports takes many forms and is conducted on a variety of courses
in event-specific vehicles. The most recognizable racing events are the
single-seater, open-wheeled series such as Formula One (F1) and IndyCar,
and the multi-seated, closed-wheeled series that include the National
Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and the World Rally
Championship. Motorsports is truly international, with drivers hailing
from all parts of the globe and events taking place all over the world.
Although motorsports is one of the few activities in which men and
women may compete together on a level playing field, women are vastly
underrepresented among racing competitors. In the United Kingdom,
for example, women comprise only 8% of registered racing license hold-
ers (Matthews & Pike, 2016, p. 1534). Due to the small number of
female drivers in motorsports in general, this examination does not focus
on a specific location, racing category, or vehicle type. Rather, it calls
upon a variety of examples from multiple arenas where women have
engaged in segregated racing. Extending the inquiry in this manner pro-
vides an opportunity to observe how women-only racing has been pro-
moted, performed, and assessed over time.
250 C. Lezotte

Early Auto Racing and the Woman Driver

In the early auto age, before mass production brought automobility to
‘every man,’3 the horseless carriage was accessible primarily to those with
considerable financial means. In late nineteenth-century America, the
automobile was most often regarded as a toy rather than a tool, ‘an expen-
sive whirligig produced for the amusement of the effete rich’ (Seiler,
2008, p. 62). Although the association of the automobile and masculin-
ity has been accepted as a given throughout automotive history, at the
turn of the twentieth century, in both Europe and the United States, it
was wealth and status, rather than gender, that determined who could
operate a motor vehicle. Thus it was not unusual for well-off women to
join men as driving enthusiasts.
The permission awarded to early women drivers allowed them to call
upon these ‘toys’ to expand social, physical, and political horizons. Female
motorists of significant means were, in fact, the first to engage in and
document cross-country automobile trips. While these tours often served
as car company publicity stunts—to demonstrate the ease with which
‘even’ a woman could operate their vehicles—they also effectively pre-
sented women on the national stage as legitimate motorists. As Scharff
(1991, p. 77) writes, ‘female cross-country drivers, literally revealing
themselves to the public eye in their open vehicles, challenged the notion
that women ought to remain sequestered at home.’
For some women who engaged in these activities, long-distance tours
were not enough. To satisfy a newfound passion for driving, they turned
to racing. The world’s first organized auto race was held in 1894 in France;
a year later, the Chicago Times Herald sponsored the first organized
American auto race. By the early 1900s, informal and formal racing
events were being held in Europe and the United States in a variety of
venues. On both sides of the Atlantic, upper-class women gained notori-
ety, if not success, as female racers. Note Kreszock, Wise, and Freeman
(2014, p. 105), ‘leisure time and access to resources allowed these women
the luxury of stepping outside of socially prescribed conventions for
women’s behavior.’ In 1901, Camille du Gast, a wealthy French widow,
became known as the ‘first female star of motorsports’ due to her perfor-
mance at the 1901 Paris-Berlin race (Gilboy, 2018b). In Britain, at the
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 251

1905 Brighton Speed Trials, Dorothy Levitt won her engine class, the
Autocar Challenge Trophy, and ‘the right to call herself the fastest woman
on earth’ (Gilboy, 2018b). US driver Joan Newton Cuneo, who began
racing in 1905, broke speed records and defeated some of the top male
motorists of the age. She went on to become perhaps the most well-­
known female motorist in the country until being abruptly shut down in
1909 by the American Automobile Association (AAA) when women
were officially and unceremoniously forbidden to participate in
AAA events.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the US ban on female racers was imple-
mented shortly after the introduction of the mass-produced, gasoline-­
powered automobile. The increased performance possibilities of the more
powerful engine effectively and irrevocably associated the gas-powered
automobile with masculinity. Notes Berger (1986, p. 257), ‘everything
about the car seemed masculine, from the coordination and strength
required to operate it, to the dirt and grease connected with its mainte-
nance.’ As cars became more affordable and accessible, framing the
gasoline-­powered automobile as a masculine technology became a way to
limit women’s automobility. The association of masculinity and automo-
bility was not only applied to cars, but became part of the motorsports
credo. The unfounded belief that women were unable to adequately con-
trol automobiles gained increasing traction in the racing world. As
Kreszock, Wise, and Freeman (2014, p. 105) assert, ‘auto racing, like
leisure driving, continued to be portrayed as a male pursuit.’ The behav-
ior culturally ascribed to femininity—‘natural impulsiveness and timid-
ity, inability to concentrate and single-mindedness, indecisiveness and
foolhardiness, weakness, and utter estrangement from things mechani-
cal’—was accentuated to demonstrate the unsuitability of the female
body for placement behind the wheel of powerful race cars (Scharff,
1991, p. 26).
After the 1909 AAA ban, female motorists were only welcome at exhi-
bitions, speed trials, and the ‘occasional small-town competition that
defied the organization’s rules’ (Macy, 2017, p. 66). The situation differed
in Europe, however. Motor racing at Brooklands was beginning to draw
large crowds; eyeing a potential for profit, race authorities relented and
allowed women onto the track, albeit in special-event, women-only races.
252 C. Lezotte

In 1909, seven female competitors entered the Ladies’ Bracelet

Handicap—Brooklands’ first official race for women.
The United States discontinued all racing during World War I; how-
ever, this did not stop promoters from organizing ‘special’ all-ladies rac-
ing competitions. In 1918, an event was scheduled for the all-female
Speederettes in Stockton, California. Tragically, an accident on the track
left two dead; as a consequence, notes McCarthy (2007, p. 75), ‘American
women’s racing faded back into the margins of sporting life for more than
three decades.’4
While women’s racing was suspended in the United States, a change in
ownership at Brooklands made female participation possible in the
United Kingdom. Taking over the motor racing circuit after her hus-
band’s death in 1926, Ethel-Locke King created new opportunities for
women. This action—which promoted rather than discouraged female
participation—led to what Matthews and Pike (2016, p. 1538) describe
as the ‘golden age for women in motorsport.’ Organizations such as the
Ladies’ Automobile Club at Brooklands and L’Automobile Club féminin
de France became important networks for the development and promo-
tion of women racers. In these European venues, women had the oppor-
tunity to demonstrate that they could race as competitively as men.
World War II altered the opportunities for female racers in both
Europe and the United States in conflicting ways. In Britain, the postwar
period witnessed a change in attitudes regarding female racers; the pre-
vailing mood, writes Bouzanquet (2009, p. 85), was ‘no longer conducive
to women on the tracks: public-spiritedness required that every woman
look after her war veteran and produce children.’ Changes at Brooklands,
the establishment of new racing venues, the retirement of former female
racers, and increased emphasis on the dangers of the sport contributed to
the return of traditional opinions ‘opposing women drivers’ involvement
in motor-racing’ and the monopolization of motorsports resources in
favor of men (Matthews & Pike, 2016, p. 1540).
In postwar America, however, women—nearly invisible on the race
track since the AAA ban—were the beneficiaries of new motorsports
opportunities. Prior to World War II, less than 25% of women had driv-
ers licenses.5 Rising prosperity and the move to the suburbs in the decades
following World War II, however, led to the necessity of a second car for
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 253

the woman of the household. Women gained a familiarity with how

automobiles worked as well as an appreciation for how cars improved
their lives. They also realized how enjoyable driving could be; many
sought to experience the car as more than a tool of domestic technology.
The ‘democratization of American leisure’ was quickly taking over post-
war America; members of the middle and lower classes sought to experi-
ence the same forms of play as the rich (Culver, 2010, p. 9). Notes Kinney
(2013, p. 195), ‘the use of the automobile as an instrument of play, which
ranged from going out for an enjoyable Sunday afternoon drive to serious
competitions based on time, speed, and distance reflected that process.’
The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) began to sanction road rac-
ing in 1948. Motorsports, which had long existed as an activity for the
rich, soon became accessible to those of lesser means. While sanctioned
sports car racing favored the wealthy, other racing venues opened to auto-
mobiles and drivers of various persuasions. Stock car racing soon replaced
midgets and other forms of open-cockpit racing in popularity through-
out the United States. These amateur competitions became fan favorites
as anyone with a vehicle and a bit of daring had the opportunity to par-
ticipate. The majority of competitors in these events ‘were in the game for
the excitement of it, for the fun, along with the social aspects’ (McCarthy,
2007, p. 119). Women who accompanied boyfriends or husbands to the
race track were soon offered the opportunity to compete in separate ladies
races. These all-female events were referred to by a term forever linked
with women’s racing: Powder Puff. 6

Powder Puff
Over the past 70 years, ‘powder puff’ has served as an umbrella term to
describe women-only competitions in sports—US football the most
notable example—traditionally associated with male athletes. In motors-
ports, the phrase most often refers to contests performed in a variety of
venues and vehicles in which women compete separately from men. The
use of ‘powder puff’ to describe ladies-only auto races appears to have its
origins in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Small town newspapers, report-
ing results from the local race track, would call upon the term to qualify
254 C. Lezotte

and single out women’s participation.7 The special ladies races were cre-
ated to address a number of concerns. Women who accompanied boy-
friends or husbands to the track often had little to do once arriving but
watch and wait. In the masculine world of motorsports, women served
primarily as uniform washers, picnic-lunch makers, and cheerleaders to
their male companions. Given that race officials often treated women as
‘less important than the cars in attendance,’ it is not surprising that female
interest in the race experience soon began to wane (Cabatingan, 2013).
Race promotors—fearful that women’s lack of enthusiasm would keep
boyfriends and husbands from bringing cars to the track—saw an oppor-
tunity to keep women occupied and, in the process, increase the gate.
Girlfriends and wives were encouraged to ‘borrow’ cars from male com-
panions and race against each other as a special attraction. On most
tracks, the races were often more spectacle than serious competition.
Standridge (1988, p. 77) recalls, ‘the women also had to participate in a
“Gong Show” type agenda. […] they might have to run so many laps,
stop to eat a piece of watermelon, run up into the stands and kiss the man
of their choice, then resume the race. Or stop after so many laps to wres-
tle with a greased pig.’8 Powder Puff, notes Cabatingan (2013), ‘were the
type of events in which women were treated as less significant and where
the men would kindly lend their race cars to women for just a few laps
around the track. Clearly, women competitors were not taken very
seriously.’
Powder Puff events also served to appease male egos under a pretense
of gender equality. While many women desired to test their skills by com-
peting against male drivers, procedures in place often made it impossible
to do so. Of women’s SCCA races, contest board representative Ignazio
Lozana Jr (qtd in Hull, 1958, p. 104) explained, ‘very few of our women
drivers have a car to drive during the men’s races, since they are usually
being driven by a man in those events. Should we discontinue the ladies’
races, it would mean we would have at the most two or three women
drivers in our program, whereas in the ladies’ races we have had as many
as 25 starters.’ While this explanation suggests that ladies races were
implemented to increase female participation, retaining men’s interest
and involvement in racing was no doubt a greater concern.
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 255

Powder Puff participants often had limited driving experience, but

were encouraged to take part to show support for a male companion’s
motorsports hobby.9 While some men were reluctant to hand over the
keys to unschooled wives or girlfriends, most viewed women’s participa-
tion as a way to gain approval—if not rationalization—for their own
racing addiction. Many women participated tentatively, more interested
in displaying support than winning trophies. However, there were some
women—dissatisfied with roles as tagalongs—who desired to race com-
petitively. But because most tracks prohibited women from racing against
men, Powder Puff competitions became the primary way to develop con-
fidence behind the wheel, gain track experience, hone racing skills and
strategies, and ‘show the guys that they could do it, too’ (McCarthy,
2007, p. 210).
Women’s passion for racing came from a variety of sources. Some were
exposed to cars through male family members.10 Women connected to
men in the sport had a distinct advantage over those who did not.
Explains Kreitzer (2017, p. 210), ‘female racers relied heavily on male
relatives who were already accepted as racing insiders to help jump start
their racing careers.’ Others, while growing up with a love of cars, did not
consider racing until the opportunity presented itself. Vicki Wood—after
watching an all-woman’s race at the Motor City Speedway—was con-
vinced she could drive better; she subsequently entered a race on her
husband’s dare. Auto journalist Denise McCluggage, writes Roberts
(2015), ‘persuaded her editors that she could better report on auto racing
from behind the wheel than in the press box.’ Yet due to track restric-
tions, McCluggage began her racing career in Powder Puff derbies, which,
as she remarked, ‘seemed to me rather like mud wrestling, staged as a
spectacle for men to chuckle over rather than serious competition. But it
was a chance to drive, so I put up with the hair-pull aspects’ (qtd in
McCarthy, 2007, p. 147). In the minds of many female racers, ladies
races provided the opportunity to ‘earn the respect of the men so they
could eventually drive in any race’ (McCarthy, 2007, p. 210).
Powder Puff women had to navigate significant obstacles. Although
racing during this period was an amateur sport, it could be expensive. The
price of entry fees, equipment, and upkeep could add up quickly. Women
rarely had cars or equipment of their own, so had to beg or borrow cars
256 C. Lezotte

and racing gear from male relatives or complete strangers. Auto mainte-
nance was an issue, as husbands or significant others wouldn’t always be
available or willing to help with car repairs or upkeep. Although Powder
Puff events varied from state to state and track to track, they were all regu-
lated by men, who, as Forsyth (2016, p. 174) asserts, kept a tight hold and
‘steadfastly refused to let the women have more time or more races.’
Yet despite the barriers women encountered, racing often had a posi-
tive and powerful effect on their lives. Interviews conducted by Hull
(1958) with fellow SCCA members suggest that women raced not only
to support male companions, but also to expand social networks, gain
confidence, and escape from everyday lives. Powder Puff provided women
with the opportunity to develop advanced driving skills, make important
contacts, gain a little notoriety, and prove themselves as serious racers.
Many who went on to achieve a number of ‘firsts’ in women’s motorsport
began racing careers in Powder Puff.11
Other than premier events such as the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR
championship, American postwar racing was primarily an amateur
pastime. Races were run for trophies; cash prizes were banned, as were
donations from sponsors, car makers, owners, or local businesses. It was
up to each driver to finance his or her racing habit. While the conditions
under which men and women raced were not the same—women received
less track time and had fewer and shorter races than male counterparts—
all racers were held to the same restrictions in terms of sponsorships and
financial remuneration.
As the decade concluded, top drivers from the sports car circuit were
being lured by the considerable cash prizes of Formula One and interna-
tional competition. US racing organizations fought back by creating rac-
ing events with comparable financial awards. Smaller venues—losing top
drivers and paying crowds—sought sponsors to stay in business. While
the move toward the commercialization of motorsports affected all ama-
teur racers regardless of gender, it was ultimately responsible for the
decline of all-female racing. Powder Puff events—and the women who
participated in them—were not regarded as legitimate and, as such, were
unable to attract commercial support. Without amateur ladies races,
women lost an important platform from which to gain experience and
exposure.12
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 257

Women’s Racing Teams

While ladies races were often the subject of derision and disparagement,
they were, without question, instrumental in bringing the racing experi-
ence to an increasing population of female motorsport enthusiasts. As the
professionalism of racing resulted in reduced possibilities for female driv-
ers, women’s racing teams emerged as one of the few opportunities to fill
the void. During the 1970s, two racing organizations—in Europe and
the United States—developed all-female racing teams. While the primary
motivation was the marketing and promotional potential of photogenic
female racers, the very existence of these teams allowed for increased
women’s motorsports participation.
During the early 1970s, Bob Neyret, a French dentist and former rally
competitor, convinced Aseptogyl, a brand of toothpaste created by his
company, to sponsor a European all-female rally team. The assembled
group included individuals with varying degrees of driving skills.
Speedqueens blogger H.-G. Rachel (2010) writes, ‘Neyret always had an
eye on the promotional value of his team, and he made little secret of
favouring pretty drivers.’ Photos of the team—outfitted in matching
pink racing ensembles—were part of Aseptogyl’s wide-reaching PR cam-
paign. As Bouzanquet (2009, p. 150) asserts, ‘The media impact was
enormous and magazine L’Equipe presented this bright pink stable on its
front page (those small saloon cars were painted in red, white, and straw-
berry pink).’
The team’s first outings in 1973 were early-season Alpine rally events
in France and provided challenging competition as well as all-important
promotional opportunities. Over the next 20 years, Team Aseptogyl had
varying degrees of success. The racers claimed a number of Ladies Cups;
most noteworthy was the win at the 1975 Morocco Rally. Team Aseptogyl
inspired the formation of other all-ladies rally teams in Europe, which
included a group of female racers in the Alfa 1500TI selected from the
Alfa Romeo network, and Peugeot entering 504s in African rallies. While
Team Aseptogyl served primarily as a marketing tool for its owner, spon-
sors, and race promoters, it also brought attention—both positive and
negative—to individual drivers in particular and motorsport women in
258 C. Lezotte

general. It provided female racers with talent and ambition the opportu-
nity to participate in an activity that had long existed as a masculine
enclave. Many who spent a season or two driving for Team Aseptogyl
were able to fashion solid careers as rally drivers, no small feat for a female
racer. Yet more significantly, Team Aseptogyl and the all-female racing
teams it inspired suggested that women in motorsports were not, in fact,
exceptions to the rule, but were part of a growing population of serious
and competent female racers.
Around the same time in the United States, the Macmillan Ring-Free
Oil Racing Team sponsored a group of female racers known as the Motor-­
Maids. The team was first assembled in 1966 to compete in the Daytona
24 Hours. Yet much like the European racing scene, the focus on the
all-­
female team was more promotional than professional. Publicity
focused not on driving skills, but personal appearance. A 1966 press
release (Ring-Free, n.d.-b) describes Donna Mae Mins as ‘a bubbling,
bouncing blonde bombshell of energy. Her famous “Think Pink” ward-
robe on the track has become her trademark.’ News (Ring-Free, n.d.-a)
devoted to Liane Engeman calls attention to her clothing choices: ‘Liane’s
trademarks are her white turtleneck sweaters and a purple racing outfit
that emphasizes the fact that this racing driver is all girl.’
Emphasis on physical appearance served two purposes. First, of course,
was the utilization of attractive women as a promotional device. As
women were a rarity in motorsports, female racers garbed in bright pink
racing apparel made them stand out; they were perceived as a novelty, ‘eye
candy’ for male spectators, or an exciting diversion for speed enthusiasts.
Secondly, it determinedly and purposefully framed female racers as
appropriately feminine. As Kreitzer (2017, p. 206) argues, postwar cul-
ture increasingly stereotyped female athletes as ‘unfeminine in demeanor,
mannish in their appearance, and incapable of maintaining heterosexual
relationships with men.’ Calling attention to women’s sexual attractive-
ness implied that not only are unfeminine—code for lesbian—women
absent in motorsports, but participating in motorsports will not move a
woman’s sexual orientation in that direction.13 Selecting heterosexually
appealing women and outfitting them in attire to accentuate their ‘femi-
ninity’ assured spectators and participants of both genders that female
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 259

racecar drivers were ‘non-threatening women who continued to adhere to

traditional female gender roles as attractive sexual partners […]’ (Kreitzer,
2017, p. 206).
Despite the unwarranted focus on physical appearance, participation
as a Motor-Maid did create opportunities for a few of its members. Ring-­
Free sponsored Suzy Dietrich driving a Lotus 20 in some single-seater
races, competing in Formula A and Formula Continental. Janet Guthrie,
driving for Ring-Free until 1971, went on to become the first woman to
qualify and compete in the 1977 Daytona 500; she was also the first
woman and Top Rookie at the Indianapolis 500 the same year. Competing
as a Motor-Maid provided its drivers with experience, exposure, and
future racing possibilities they were unlikely to have received otherwise.
In September 2020, two all-female crews competed in the 24 Hours of
Le Mans, the world’s most famous endurance race. The ‘Iron Dames’
were making their second appearance as members of the all-female Kessel
Racing crew. They were joined by newcomers the Richard Mille Racing
Team, three talented drivers competing together for the first time.
Although faced with shortened training sessions and reduced track time
due to COVID, both teams had modestly successful runs. The Iron
Dames claimed ninth place from the 22 starters in the LMGTE Am
Category, matching their result from the previous year. The Mille team,
despite a lack of experience in endurance racing, finished an impressive
ninth of the 24 LMP2 crews in their debut outing. The inclusion of these
teams resulted in the highest female participation in the 24 Hours since
10 women competed in 1935.
The women recruited for the ELMS (European Le Mans Series) teams
were experienced and successful drivers and hailed from all over the
globe. While all looked forward to the possibility of driving at Le Mans,
some were less than enthusiastic about competing as part of an all-female
team. However, as an effort supported and promoted by the Women in
Motorsport Commission, the racers came to understand participation as
not only beneficial to their own careers, but also as an incentive to get
more women involved in motorsport.14
Unlike previous all-female racing teams, promotional possibilities took
a back seat to talent on the track. When approached to oversee the Mille
project, Signatech team boss Philippe Sinault explained, ‘whatever the
260 C. Lezotte

project is, it has to be a real project and not just a marketing tool’ (qtd in
Brunsdon, 2020). The teams were built around strong, experienced, and
serious racers; the marketing focus was on individual and collective abil-
ity rather than on femininity or the color of the racing suits. In an infor-
mal survey of press surrounding both the 2019 and 2020 events, there is
no mention of the women’s physical appearance, sexual orientation, mar-
ital status, or whether or not they had children. Within the historically
masculine motorsport enterprise, there is a perception that female-only
teams—and the drivers that inhabit them—are inherently second-rate.
Many competitors expressed reluctance to join the teams for that reason.
However, the talent and teamwork on display at Le Mans demonstrated
that with support, sponsorship, and opportunity, women could achieve
success and respect in the motorsport arena.

Women’s Racing Series

In the early 2000s, the women’s racing series emerged as an alternative
all-female racing concept. While the all-female racing team expanded the
opportunities for women’s participation in high-performance racing
events somewhat, women remained a significant minority. The women’s
racing series was therefore created to address the lack of women in the
higher echelons of motorsport by providing more openings for more
women to develop the skills and experience necessary to move on to the
next level. One of the earliest—and more unconventional—examples of
this concept was Formula Woman, an all-female based motor racing
championship created and marketed in association with the British media
from 2004 to 2007. More than a race series, Formula Woman shared
many of its components with the burgeoning reality television and celeb-
rity culture boom taking place throughout the United Kingdom in the
early 2000s. Original Formula Woman press officer Alison Hill praised
the reality TV structure for its potential to ‘put us on the map a lot faster
than using a traditional introduction into a race series’ (qtd in Falconer,
2004). The series was also promoted as a ‘male-free’ zone; as the applicant
invitation read, ‘the charm of Club Formula Woman is that we operate in
an entirely female environment, removing the stigma of intimidating,
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 261

male-dominated driving days’ (Men’s Stuff, 2005). The promoters did

not solicit established racers; rather, a team of 16 finalists was selected
from over 10,000 applicants. Prospective drivers were subject to a series
of assessments in driving skill, physical fitness, and media and public rela-
tions management.
Formula Woman drivers were initially intrigued by the prospect of
participating in an all-female motor racing series. As they were relatively
new to the racing scene, the women believed the unique experience
would mold them for a possible career in the sport, and hoped the televi-
sion exposure would create lucrative promotional and sponsorship pos-
sibilities. However, as Matthews and Pike (2016) reveal, problems with
the format, organization, and financial backing led to difficulties on and
off the track. The women complained of lack of media coverage—the
series was ignored by mainstream motorsport publications—which less-
ened the opportunity for individual sponsorship and recognition. In the
later years of the series, after sponsors withdrew material and financial
support, the women were expected to provide their own funding. Thus
while Formula Woman was created with the intent to provide increased
motorsport opportunities for women as well as to expand female interest
in the sport, it ultimately failed to do either well.
That over 10,000 applied to the Formula Woman program certainly
suggests a growing female interest in motorsport. And despite its inability
to capture a loyal audience in its original incarnation, the Formula
Woman series has, in fact, been scheduled to relaunch in post-COVID
2021.15 The media attention brought to the W Series has unquestionably
provided an impetus for various racing organizations—including Formula
Woman—to encourage female interest in motorsports.
The W Series was introduced in October 2018 as ‘a unique ground-­
breaking free-to-enter single-seater motor racing series for women drivers
only’ (W Series, 2020). The all-female Formula 3 championship series
was conceived to promote female drivers into Formula One. The W
Series objective, notes CEO Catherine Bond Muir, is not only to provide
top-notch racing for spectators and viewers on a global scale, but also to
‘equip its drivers with the experience and expertise with which they may
progress their careers’ (W Series, 2020).
262 C. Lezotte

In its inaugural season, 18 drivers representing 13 countries—chosen

from nearly 100 top female drivers across the globe—participated in six
races at some of Europe’s premier F1 racing venues. Those selected were
required to take part in rigorous training programs centered on driving
techniques, simulator exposure, technical engineering approaches, fit-
ness, and media, conducted by instructors with Formula One experience.
Efforts were taken to address the inequalities that plague many of the
world’s premier racing series. Drivers were not expected to attain spon-
sorships or to shoulder any financial responsibility; all expenses were cov-
ered by the series organization. The women competed in identical
series-owned Tatuus T-318 Formula 3 cars rotated after each race to
remove any hardware advantage from the competition. Not only was the
series free to enter for all its drivers, but awarded significant prize money
(total of $1,500,000 US) all the way through to 18th place in the final
standings.
The 2019 series was a modest success; it experienced an increase in
viewer interest and ratings after each race. By the end of the first season,
the W Series was broadcast in over 50 countries reaching up to 350 mil-
lion households. The first W Series champion—Britain’s Jamie
Chadwick—took home a $500,000 prize and was subsequently named as
a development driver for the Williams Formula 1 Team. At the end of the
season it was reported that in 2020, the top eight championship drivers
would collect points toward an FIA Super License, an important entry-
way into Formula One.
The COVID pandemic canceled the 2020 W Series. However, as part
of a new partnership with Formula One, the W Series will be on the sup-
port bill for eight Grands Prix in 2021.16 The partnership not only lends
legitimacy to the all-female series, but further underscores the W Series’
role in the preparation and promotion of female racers into the upper
tiers of motorsport.
Despite the mostly positive press, W Series entered the racing arena
under a cloud of controversy with much to prove. Not everyone—the
media, racing organizations, race promoters, and the women them-
selves—was convinced that a woman-only series was a step forward.
Opponents argued that since motorsports is one of the few competitions
in which women can compete directly with men, female racers should
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 263

take every opportunity to do so. Grassroots racer Kiem Tjong exclaimed,

‘I absolutely believe women can—and should—race at the same level as
men, and I believe a women-only series is insulting and demeaning’ (qtd
in Gilboy, 2018b). Other objections focused on prize money offered as a
‘lure’ to female competitors when it could be better spent funding racers
in non-segregated events. Veteran racer Pippa Mann asserted, ‘I am
strongly opposed to segregation as the only option of these female racers
to find the funding to continue to compete as a viable pathway forward’
(qtd in Hall, 2019). Detractors also claimed that much like the all-female
racing competitions that preceded it, W Series is primarily a PR move, as
women’s success in these venues has little influence within the masculine
F1 culture or in providing future opportunities for female racers. As
Sturm (2021) explains, accomplished female drivers signed by teams are
most often ‘relegated to testing or “development roles.”’
The debate surrounding the W Series echoes that which has accompa-
nied most configurations of female motorsport since Powder Puffs entered
the racing arena. For much of its existence, women’s racing has been con-
structed as a frivolous and inconsequential sideshow, a trivial endeavor, a
catwalk of second-rate drivers in pink racing suits. Although women’s
racing has come into its own in the twenty-first century, it cannot com-
pletely escape such long-standing, disparaging associations. It is therefore
not surprising that many choose to dismiss all-female racing as a way to
distance themselves from these pervasive sexist, stereotypical representa-
tions. In addition, throughout automotive history, critics have drawn on
gender stereotypes—women as emotionally unstable, physically weak,
and intellectually deficient—to frame women as inferior drivers (Scharff,
1991). These assumed biological character deficits have carried over into
motorsports, where women are considered less able to perform in a com-
petitive field. Opposition also rests in ‘an industry with a long history of
conservatism’ (Gilboy, 2018b). The focus on female racers as a group
rather than individuals with singular objectives and accomplishments is
antithetical to the conservative notion of individualism—success based
on hard work, perseverance, and personal accountability rather than ‘spe-
cial’ assistance—to which many women in motorsports subscribe.17
The arguments against the W Series assume an either/or position: only
one platform—segregated or non-segregated—best serves female racers.
264 C. Lezotte

However, the W Series frames itself as an addition to, rather than replace-
ment for, non-segregated racing. The W Series objective is not to com-
pete with non-segregated events for female support and participation,
but rather to increase opportunities for women throughout motorsports.
As Bond Muir notes, ‘with W Series as a catalyst, we hope to transform
the diversity of the sport—and perhaps even encourage more girls into
professions they had not previously considered. That will mean as much
to us as helping develop a female Formula 1 world champion’ (qtd in
Gilboy, 2018a). With the completion of its first successful season, and
the announcement of the 2021 association with Formula One, many of
those originally opposed to the W Series are now its cheerleaders. As
2019 champion Jamie Chadwick exclaimed, ‘When you realize it isnʼt
about segregation, we are all trying to achieve the same thing, to get more
women involved in motorsport, itʼs a really positive step’ (qtd in
Parkes, 2019).

Conclusion
Each side of the gender-segregated vs integrated racing conundrum
makes a compelling case for how women in motorsports are best served.
Champions of integrated racing argue that women will not be considered
equal in motorsport until they compete head-to-head with men. Those
on the opposing side contend that, because women have traditionally
had fewer avenues into motorsports than their male peers, female racing
provides an important and necessary entryway into the higher echelons
of competition.
There can be little question that the history of motorsports is a mascu-
line one. Even in its earliest years, when well-connected societal women
were conditionally accepted into the racing arena, traditional assump-
tions and biologically deterministic attitudes toward women framed
motoring and motorsports as exclusive male preserves. As Matthews and
Pike (2016, 1536) note, ‘the monopolization of early motor-racing
resources by males, a masculine industry from which the motor car
emerged, and pervasive assumptions of driving skill were to become so
internalized over time they became commonsensical, with motoring and
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 265

motorsport constantly identified as a natural masculine quality […].’

One hundred years later, the position of motorsports as a nearly impen-
etrable male enterprise remains.
Women with an interest in racing have therefore had to devise particu-
lar strategies to enter what has long existed as an exclusive masculine
fraternity. Without many of the connections available to male racers—
rising through the ranks of karting, coming from a family of racing
enthusiasts, having an intermediary in the racing community, associating
with a social group of other drivers, experience in and an affinity for
working on cars, racing mentors—women must often rely on other
methods. While some rely on ‘intrepidity backed by the simple desire to
get out of the bleachers and onto the track’ (Gilboy, 2018b), others, as
demonstrated here, get their start through participation in women-only
racing events.
This examination of female-only racing over the past 75 years does not
attempt to answer the question of whether or not women are best served
by gender-segregated racing. Rather, it offers insight into how women
have constructed alternative avenues into the historically masculine—
and often unwelcoming—motorsports arena. Through an inspection of
women’s engagement in female-racing venues—from Powder Puff to W
Series—it provides an opportunity to consider how segregated racing has
both limited and empowered women’s motorsports participation.

Notes
1. Women-only spaces are often advocated as locations in which women
are safe from misogyny in its many forms. See Lewis et al. (2014) and
Leathwood (2004).
2. Examples include material devoted to a singular racer—for example,
Joan Cuneo (Nystrom, 2013), Guthrie and King (2005), and Patrick
and Morton (2007), or ‘best of ’ collections from Bullock (2002) and
Bouzanquet (2009).
3. Writes Scharff (1991, p. 55), ‘Ford designed the Model T to be literally
Everyman’s Car: sturdy, thrifty, and powerful.’
266 C. Lezotte

4. The Speederettes incident confirmed race organizers’ worst fear, that ‘an
accident involving a woman would bring down the public’s wrath upon
the sport’ (Macy, 2017, p. 65).
5. While there is an absence of statistics on women’s automotive participa-
tion before 1963, historian Margaret Walsh (2011, p. 59) estimates that
in the prewar era, only a quarter of US women of legal driving age held
drivers licenses.
6. In 1882, Ellene Alice Bailey was granted a patent for the powder puff, a
soft, cosmetic pad used to apply powder to the skin, from which the
women’s race drew its name.
7. In his collection of stock racing memorabilia from the 1950s, Easton
(2014, p. 27) includes a Big Flats Airport Speedway ticket admission
stub in which ‘Ladies Powder-Puff Race’ is listed as a special event along-
side the ‘rollover of a stock automobile off a ramp!’
8. The Gong Show was an amateur talent contest which aired for 13 years on
American television. Three celebrities auditioned a series of acts—many
of them outrageous—and unceremoniously dismissed the ‘losers’ by
striking a large gong.
9. SCCA racer Hull (1958, p. 11) writes, ‘there is no use denying the fact
that most women who go in for racing do so because their husbands or
someone they are fond of is interested in the sport and, rather than have
another woman snap up their men or be a sports-car widow, they
go along.’
10. As an example, Ileen Merle Dessie (Forrest) Goodman grew up in a fam-
ily—three brothers and an uncle—of prominent auto racers. She started
competing in Powder Puff races in 1949 at Cejay Stadium in Wichita,
Kansas, becoming the women’s champion that year (Lawrence, n.d.).
11. Louise Smith, Vicki Wood, Denise McCluggage, Sara Christian, and
Ethel Flock Mobley are just a few Powder Puffs who went on to success-
ful racing careers.
12. While Powder Puff events are still held today, the majority are fundrais-
ers for charities such as Races Toward a Cure (breast cancer) and the
American Cancer Society.
13. A press release (Ring-Free, n.d.-b) refers to Janet Guthrie as a young lady
‘with all her femininity’ who spends weekends ‘tearing down and rebuild-
ing the engine of her Jaguar.’ Guthrie’s advanced mechanical knowledge
and ability—characteristics most often associated with masculinity—are
tempered by referencing her feminine good looks.
 From Powder Puff to W Series: The Evolution of Women-Only… 267

14. The Women in Motorsport Commission (FIA, 2019)—presided by

Michèle Mouton—was established in 2009 to ‘demonstrate that women
are recognized by the highest body responsible for the sport,’ ‘promote
the place of women in motorsport through the media […],’ and ‘develop
social and educational programs to include greater participation of
women in motorsport.’
15. For Formula Woman relaunch updates see https://www.formula-
woman.co.uk.
16. Britain’s Jamie Chadwick successfully defended her W Series title in
2021, and repeated in 2022 after the season was shortened prematurely
due to financial reasons. For 2023, Chadwick has joined Andretti
Autosport as the first woman in 13 years to compete in Indy NXT—the
junior open wheel category just below IndyCar—which, remarks
W Series CEO Bond Muir, ‘is a sign that the W Series pipeline is
working’ (qtd in Blackstock, 2022).
17. As noted in my work on women in muscle car culture (Lezotte, 2013),
women who subscribe to a conservative ideology do not frame their
accomplishments as representative of what women as a group can do;
rather, they see themselves as individuals who have attained goals despite
gender barriers in a male-controlled automotive culture.

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 The Awkward Gender Politics
of Formula 1 as a Promotional Space:
The Issue of ‘Grid Girls’
Honorata Jakubowska

This chapter aims to discuss the issue of the presence of so-called grid
girls during Formula 1 (F1) races. It presents motorsport as a male world
within which women play a decorative role. Particular attention is drawn
to the decision of Liberty Media, the owner of F1, to drop ‘grid girls’
from the races in 2018. The discourse on this decision, as the chapter
reveals, has been focused on women’s objectification and ‘modern’ values,
on the one hand, and women’s empowerment and agency, on the other
hand. Surprisingly, it has also revealed backlash towards feminism, which
the grid girls have accused of having caused them to lose their jobs. As
presented in the chapter, despite the F1 authorities’ decision, women still
play some decorative roles during the races. The concept of ‘glamour’ is
proposed as an analytical tool to understand the permanent presence of
models and hostesses during F1 events and the grid girls’ attitudes.

H. Jakubowska (*)
Faculty of Sociology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 271
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_12
272 H. Jakubowska

Introduction
Although motorsport has been perceived as a gender-equal sport, that is,
an activity that “allows men and women to compete against each other”
(Matthews & Pike, 2016: 3), from its beginning, it has been dominated
by men. Men constitute the vast majority of competitors but also manage
motorsport and the development and organization of different types of
racing (Charters, 2006; Matthews & Pike, 2016). Additionally, men
dominate the motorsport audience and are the main targets of marketing
activities. “In short, “It’s a guy thing” ” (Charters, 2006: 83).
Women as drivers are barely present in professional motorsports,
although some of them have been recognized in car racing history
(Charters, 2006; Ross et al., 2009). For example, Louise Smith, a
NASCAR driver from 1945 to 1956, known as the ‘first lady of racing’,
was the first woman inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of
Fame in 1999. Janet Guthrie was the first woman professional driver to
compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500. Finally,
Danica Patrick was one of the most successful female drivers, with her
historic victory in the 2008 Indy Japan 300 being the only win by a
woman in an IndyCar Series race (Arendt, 2021). Regarding Formula 1
(F1), only five female drivers have competed in the races so far. The first
of them was Maria Teresa de Filippis, who participated in the races in
1958 and 1959. Maria Grazia “Lella” Lombardi debuted in the F1 in
1974 and is the only woman who has scored points in F1 (1975). The
three other female drivers were Divina Galica (1976–1978), Desire
Wilson (1979) and Giovanna Amati (1992). In the twenty-first century,
women have not participated in F1 races and have been only test drivers
(Women in Formula One – a brief history, n.d.).
Although women have become more visible in different roles within
the teams, such as designers, strategists or even team principals (Sturm,
2021), F1 remains a male-dominated sport. Usually women have played
supporting roles, acting as grid girls, models, wives or girlfriends. These
‘duties’ have not only marginalized their position in motorsport but also
maintained the sport’s heteronormativity (Matthews & Pike, 2016;
Pflugfelder, 2009). The appearance and tasks assigned to grid girls, such
 The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional… 273

as advertising cars, sponsors and locations, as well as posing for pictures

and applauding the winning drivers, highlights the sexualization and
objectification of their bodies while effectively illustrating the status of
women in this male world.
However, F1 has not remained unaffected by socio-cultural changes.
On the one hand, women’s increasing emancipation and the ongoing
battle for gender equality and women’s rights, versus, on the other hand,
a greater awareness of sexual harassment, women’s objectification and
increasing resistance towards any form of harassment, as evidenced by the
#metoo movement, raised doubts around the continued presence of ‘grid
girls’ during the races. An apt illustration of this was the decision of
Liberty Media, the owner of F1, to drop grid girls from its race weekends,
beginning with the 2018 season. The decision applied to not only F1 but
also Formula 2 (F2) and GP3 series races. As Sean Bratches, F1 Managing
Director of Commercial Operations, stated: “While the practice of
employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula 1 Grands Prix for
decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our brand values and
clearly is at odds with modern-day societal norms” (Formuła 1 już bez
grid girls, 2018). Although in the following weeks the F1 authorities
agreed to the presence of the grid girls during some events, for example,
Sochi Grand Prix (Jakubowska, 2018), the decision constitutes a valuable
starting point for analysing the status of the grid girls and the changes in
F1 regarding this.

Motorsport as a Male World

The automobile, both in everyday life and professional sports, is per-
ceived as part of a male world; as noted by Balkmar (2012), the relation-
ship between men, masculinity, and cars is perhaps one of the most
taken-for-granted gendered relations one can think of. Cars and other
motorized vehicles are closely tied to the construction and perception of
masculinity (Letherby & Reynolds, 2009; Mellström, 2002, 2004; Uteng
& Cresswell, 2008), and they are seen as an “extension of man” (Sloop,
2005: 194).
274 H. Jakubowska

Motorsport can be described using the term ‘homosocial’ (Lipman-­

Blumen, 1976), which refers to the male bonds that reproduce gender
order, male dominance and privileges. According to Bird, homosociality
is closed related to hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1987) and, as such,
can be defined as “heterosociality” (Bird, 1996: 121), which is character-
ized by, among other things, competitiveness and the sexual objectifica-
tion of women. Competition is an intrinsic feature of sport, at least at a
professional level, and the objectification of women takes place by exclud-
ing them from sporting competition and assigning ornamental roles to
them. However, women’s objectification and male rivalry can also be
referred to the role of sexual activity and sexual storytelling in the cre-
ation of male status in a group of men and male bonding (Flood, 2008).
Shackleford (1999), analysing the NASCAR racing world, uses the con-
cept of ‘fraternity’, which is based on, for example, masculine exclusivity,
which can be both formal and informal. In the second case, it is often
related to the other features of fraternity, such as a proprietary knowl-
edge. Women, through their exclusion, are denied access to knowledge or
are perceived as not having enough knowledge. In this sense, the motor-
sports community resembles football fans, mainly groups of ultras fans
that are homosocial and based on the idea of fraternity. Although women
have an increased presence among the fans, they still constitute a minor-
ity and are excluded from many activities and conversations on football
even when they are present in the stadiums (Jakubowska et al., 2020).
Similarly, women also constitute a minority amongst motorsport fans
(Fleming & Sturm, 2011; Naess, 2014; Sturm, 2014).
Motorsport based on male fraternity and the assumed close relation-
ship between masculinity and cars could be perceived as “a potential
retreat from wider social changes in the light of current transformations
in gender relations, and what is still loosely termed a crisis of masculinity”
(Thurnell-Read, 2012: 250). When other social life fields are feminized
(Messner, 1988), fraternity in male sports seems to remain a bastion of
hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1987).
 The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional… 275

Women in Decorative Roles

The history of grid girls in F1 began in the 1960s in Japan. Rosa Ogawa,
the Japanese model and singer, has been recognized as the first ‘race
queen’, advertising an oil company during a motorsports event (Saner,
2018). Over the next two decades, promotional models appeared in other
countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and
tight-fitting outfits became their unofficial uniform (Brennan, 2018).
During the races, grid girls held up the grid number and welcomed and
cheered for the best three racers on the podium. They were used by the
teams for events and promotional purposes. However, they were not only
perceived as performing their duties during a particular Grand Prix (GP)
event but also, in a wider context, as ambassadors of F1 and the hosting
cities and countries. During some races, for example, at the Russian,
Austrian or Malaysian Grand Prix, grid girls wore traditional clothes.
Although they were often sexualized in this attire, they also represented a
cultural connection or symbolic link to the host nation and its traditions.
This argument was used to restore grid girls (Now Singapore ignoring F1
‘grid girls’ ban, 2018) that will be discussed later in the chapter. It should
also be noted that for some grid girls, for example, Kelly Brook, Nell
McAndrew or Jodie Marsh, their work during F1 races allowed them to
become widely recognized and to develop long-term modelling careers
(Tippett, 2020).
Matthews and Pike (2016: 10) noted that the gendered roles were well
established by the 1970s with “the advent of increased sponsorship and
professionalism of motorsport”. With the professionalization of car races,
women were often excluded from sports competition and its technologi-
cal aspects while being reduced to a promotional role. As rightly noted by
Tippett (2020: 189):

Although the inclusion of grid girls in F1 served to represent women in

some capacity within the world of motorsports, their identity was consis-
tently disconnected from the sport itself and was more readily connected
to the sponsors of the event. The grid girls were never involved in the tech-
nical, sporting or engineering side of the sport and existed solely as aes-
thetic—often sexualized—figures.
276 H. Jakubowska

The sexualization of women in motorsport does not solely concern the

grid girls but also the relatively few female drivers. The examination of
the advertising images of female racers has led to the conclusion that the
pioneer racers were portrayed “with little or no emphasis on traditional
femininity”, while it is common in the case of more recent racers (Ross
et al., 2009: 14). The female drivers who participated in the advertise-
ments in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were presented similarly to their
male counterparts. Advertising messages drew attention to their compe-
tencies and expertise, not gender. In the last twenty years, it has changed,
as Danica Patrick’s example explicitly illustrates. Although Patrick’s sports
competencies still have been underlined, much more attention has been
drawn to her gender and physical attractiveness. Collectively, a bigger
focus on femininity can be seen as an element of heteronormative gender
order in motorsports and something imposed by the men who dominate
in this world. However, looking at the issue from a neoliberal perspective,
as Lippe von der (2013) did in her analysis of beach volleyball’s dress
codes, one can say that presenting an attractive, feminine and sexualized
body is not solely forced on women, but it is a strategy chosen by them-
selves, a way to attract both media and sponsors’ attention (see also
Thorpe et al., 2017; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018). This approach is similar
to how grid girls operate in motorsport, as will be discussed later.
It should be noted that while F1 remains almost inaccessible to female
drivers (Sturm, 2021), “in other elite series however, women are compet-
ing more regularly” (Matthews & Pike, 2016: 15). Although it requires
further analysis, the perception of F1 races as media event could provide
a possible explanation. Media coverage depends to a large extent on the
assumed tastes of viewers. Men constitute the majority of sports fans and,
as the analysis has revealed, are interested in men’s events (Jakubowska,
2015). Even though women are formally allowed to participate in F1
races, resistance to their participation may result from the assumption
that the (male) audience is interested in male rivalry and prefer to see
women in passive and ornamental, rather than active, roles. As the analy-
sis of different sports’ media coverage has revealed, in the case of niche or
less popular sports, the athletes’ gender loses its significance (Jakubowska,
2015: 183). It means media and sponsors perceive female and male ath-
letes in a similar way. It can partially explain why it is particularly difficult
 The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional… 277

for women to compete in F1, the most mediated and popular motors-
port, while they are more visible in other motorsports.
This statement can be supported by the example of speedway in
Poland, one of the most popular sports in the country. Although women
are formally allowed to compete in the races, only a few of them have
been given this opportunity, and the dominant image of women in speed-
way is that of the ‘umbrella girls’. Therefore, similar to F1, on the track
women mainly have passive roles, contrary to men who play active roles
as competitors. However, it should be noted that umbrella girls were
removed from participating in some speedway events (e.g., the Grand
Prix in Sweden).
The decorative or supporting role of women can also be observed in
other sports disciplines (e.g., in boxing, kickboxing and mixed martial
arts). Dana White, the chief of the Ultimate Fighting Championship
(UFC), when answering the call to drop these girls from the events, stated:

[…] you can look at any sport you like, nobody treats women better than
we do. And I’d suggest these people calling on them to be banned go have
a look at what these girls do with the company, the type of money they’re
making. Do that and you’ll realize these girls are as important to our brand
as anyone else in the company. And that’s exactly the way we treat them.
(Stonehouse, 2019)

Hostesses, umbrella girls, ring and octagon girls are all on display dur-
ing particular sports events and media coverage. Moreover, they have a
large, often sexualized, circulation on the Internet. One can easily find
many images presenting, for example, the ring girls or rankings of the
most beautiful or sexiest umbrella girls. At the same time, they use social
media to promote themselves to gain interest and attract attention, which
can be converted into financial benefits.
While hostesses are still present during some sports events, the author-
ities of other sports disciplines have taken a similar position to F1. The
Professional Darts Corporation decided to remove walk-on girls, present
in the sport since the 1980s, only a few days before F1’s announcement.
In the case of cycling, criticism was levelled at the podium girls kissing
the winner on the cheek and the cyclists’ behaviour towards these girls
278 H. Jakubowska

(Which sports still use, 2018). The decision of the organizer of the UCI
Road World Championships in 2017 in Bergen (Norway) to replace
hostesses with young female and male cyclists wearing folk costumes can
be perceived as one of this critique’s consequences. Finally, attention also
turned to the presence of cheerleaders during sports events, as evidenced
by Tobias Karlson’s (a Swedish handball player) statement about cheer-
leading as an activity that objectifies women during the European Men’s
Handball Championships in 2016 (Organista & Mazur, 2016).
Commenting on the performance of the cheerleaders, the player stated:
“I've become somewhat accustomed to it, having played in the Bundesliga,
but come on... What year is it now! There are so many other great things
you can do during match breaks” (Euro 2016 w piłce ręcznej.
Reprezentantom Szwecji przeszkadzają… cheerleaderki, 2016). His state-
ment has been supported by the Swedish television experts, as well as the
Swedish handball fans.
Therefore, while some sports disciplines still use women in decorative
roles, others, including the majority of motorsport disciplines, have given
up this practice. However, somewhat surprisingly, it seems that only the
ban on grid girls in F1 has seen a significant backlash emerge. Before
presenting the discussion itself, it is worth having a closer look at F1
events and one of their main features—‘glamour’.

The ‘Glamour’ of Formula 1

As noted by Sturm (2014: 68), F1 “is viewed as the pinnacle of motor
racing (if not all motorsport), with many of the world’s best drivers racing
expensive, sophisticated and high-tech machines at circuits around the
globe”. F1 races attract a significant number of live and TV audiences all
around the world. In 2019, a total of 4.16 million spectators attended the
21 Grand Prix F1 races, and the most attended race took place at
Silverstone (UK), where approximately 351,000 fans watched the race
live over the weekend (Lange, 2020). More than 300,000 spectators also
observed the events in Mexico and Australia. The total number of specta-
tors has steadily increased in recent years (e.g., in 2016, it was estimated
to be 3.74 million). This growth also concerns the TV audience. In 2019,
 The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional… 279

the cumulative global TV audience stood at 1.9 billion and was 9%

higher compared to 2018 (F1 broadcast to 1.9 billion total audience in
2019, 2020).
The numbers show that F1 is not only a live sports event but also an
important media event: a “spectacular and seductive” (Kellner, 2010,
quoted after Sturm, 2014: 69) global media spectacle. Furthermore,
Sturm (2014: 70) states that “representationally, Formula One is con-
structed as a glamorous and high-tech global spectacle of speed”—a mix
of speed, expense, the exotic and glamour. In a similar vein, Noble and
Hughes relate F1’s glamour to “impossibly fast cars driven by brave and
handsome young men of all nationalities in a variety of exotic backdrops
throughout the world, with beautiful women looking on adoringly”
(Noble & Hughes, 2004: 25, quoted after Sturm, 2014: 70). With refer-
ence to glamour, women are overtly emphasized for their significant con-
tribution to making F1 races ‘glamorous’. As noted by Kennedy (2000):

the role of “beautiful women” in providing that glamour is evident (…)

like the yachts in the harbor, which are frequently in shot, both in the pre-
lude to the race and when the cars repeatedly drive past them, and the
champagne prefigured in the Moet trackside advertisement, they are part
of the prize for the victorious hero driver. (p. 65)

Once again, one can see that women do not play an active role in
direct competition. They are treated as one of the beautiful objects that
create the events’ atmosphere and are part of the prize reserved for the
men competing on the track. A similar role is played by them during the
car shows, where male spectators come to see both luxury cars and beau-
tiful women. In both contexts, women are sexualized, objectified and
perceived solely by their attractive bodies.
The glamour of F1 races is based on ‘spectacular’ sights and cities that
can be admired during races, such as the Monaco Grand Prix as well as
the money involved, luxurious lifestyles, male drivers and fast cars (Sturm,
2014). Women, playing the role of adornments or trophies, complete
this image. From this perspective, as Turner (2004: 205, quoted after
Sturm, 2014: 70) states, F1 can be perceived as “the ultimate male fanta-
sist’s sport: fast cars, expensive kit, global jet-setting and beautiful women
with spray-on smiles”.
280 H. Jakubowska

Tippett (2020), in her analysis of the grid girls’ discourse in the British
media, also uses the concept of ‘glamour’. In doing so, she refers to one
of the meanings proposed by the Oxford Dictionary (2018), where
‘glamour’ is understood as ‘denoting or relating to sexually suggestive or
mildly pornographic photography or publications’.1 In this context, as
the example of glamour models reveals, using their bodies to earn money
and working in the sex/glamour industry can be perceived not only as
women’s objectification but also as empowering or a form of empower-
ment (Coy & Garner, 2010; Tippett, 2020). The same can be said about
the grid girls in F1.

 o More Grid Girls: Between Objectification

N
and Empowerment
Despite its still very masculine nature, motorsport has been influenced by
the wider socio-cultural changes concerning women’s status, gender rela-
tions and the ways of presenting female bodies (also in a sports context).
One of the most visible but also questionable manifestations of these
changes was a decision to eliminate grid girls from F1. Grid girls were
often replaced by grid kids, that is, children selected from the junior driv-
ers who take part in, for example, go-kart competitions. It should be noted
that F1 was not the first to decide to eliminate grid girls from its motors-
port events. This happened three years earlier, in April 2015, during the Le
Mans sportscar race of the World Endurance Championship (Saner, 2018).
The decision of the F1 authorities to drop grid girls from the races
provoked a broad discussion that has been analysed by Jakubowska
(2018). The data informing the study were taken from a range of news
outlets accessed via the Internet between 31 January, that is, the date of
Liberty Media’s decision, and 20 April 2018. Sixty samples from national
newspapers’, TV news channels’, radio stations’ online services, racing
websites and sports websites were gathered. In sum, Jakubowska (2018)
provided the following findings. The main argument used by F1 manage-
ment was related to the assumption that the tradition of using grid girls
during the races is no longer in line with modern socio-cultural norms.
As F1 management stated:
 The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional… 281

While the practice of employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula 1
Grands Prix for decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our
brand values and clearly is at odds with modern-day societal norms.
(Formuła 1. “Grid kids” zastąpią “grid girls”, 2018a)

Specifically, the focus on women’s attractive and sexual bodies and

their decorative roles has been treated as contradictory to modern norms.
This could be read within the frames of ‘political correctness’—one of the
modern rules; however, there was no single statement in the research
sample that presented ‘political correctness’ as an important principle
worth following. On the contrary, it has always been seen in this discus-
sion in a negative way, as ‘exaggerated’ or ‘crazy’ and, as a consequence,
harmful. This point of view has been presented mainly by the grid girls
themselves:

It is disappointing that Formula 1 has followed the minority’s vote to be

politically correct. (Charlotte Gash, one of the grid girls for the BBC,
quoted after: Prochota, 2018) Wake me up when all this crazy political
correctness is over. I love to be a grid girl. (Sophie Wright, quoted after:
Prochota, 2018)

In each case, ‘political correctness’ was viewed as a rule that imposes

artificial norms and change on customs and traditions that have existed
for many years (Jakubowska, 2018: 122).
The grid girls, who have been active participants in the discourse, have
focused mainly on the loss of their jobs, the possibility to earn money and
voluntary choice with regard to their jobs:

Because of these feminists, they have cost us our jobs! I have been a grid girl
for 8 years and I have never felt uncomfortable! I love my job, if I didn’t I
wouldn’t do it! No one forces us to do this! This is our choice! (Lauren-Jade
Pope, quoted after Kuczera, 2018)
I love my job. I’m respected, paid well & proud to represent the team
I’m working for. It’s not right for anyone, let alone ‘feminists’ to judge our
job when quite frankly they are putting so many women out of work.
Where is the equality & empowerment here? (Lucy Stokes, quoted after:
Formuła 1. Grid kids zastąpią grid girls. Środowisko protestuje, 2018b)
282 H. Jakubowska

The grid girls also emphasized a lack of behaviour that could be per-
ceived as inappropriate (e.g., proclaiming a lack of sexism or sexist prac-
tices). They also stressed that their point of view was not taken into
account when the decision was made. It should also be noted that their
voices were supported by several F1 drivers and by more than 11,000
supporters who had signed a Change.org petition (2018).
Specifically, the grid girls accused ‘feminists’ of causing the loss of their
jobs, although ‘feminists’ have remained almost inactive in the ‘grid girls’
discourse. This is even more puzzling as the decision was taken by men—
key people in F1 and Liberty Media and those generally dominant in
sports, mainly the so-called male sports and organizations (Claringbould
& Knoppers, 2012; Hovden, 2000; Pfister & Radtke, 2009). However,
in the dominant discourse on women and sport, related to the second
wave of feminism, the role of hostesses in sport is considered as one of the
prime examples of women’s sexualization and objectification. Therefore,
it seems that feminism can be considered here as a representative of ‘mod-
ern’ norms and values and as one of the forces that has imposed some
decisions on the sports field, although usually not directly. From the grid
girls’ point of view, as the above quotations reveal, feminism (at least its
second, most recognized wave) seems to be perceived as repressive (simi-
larly to political correctness) and/or unprogressive (Tippett, 2020).
The decision to drop grid girls from the races can be read within the
frame of different waves of feminism (Jakubowska, 2018). On the one
hand, such a ban is in line with the assumptions of the second wave of
feminism, where women’s sexualization can be seen as imposed by men
and used as a tool to attract the attention of male sports fans and sponsors
(Davis, 2010; Khomutova & Channon, 2015; McLeod, 2010).
Contextually, moving away from such overt and explicit practices is also
timely given the increased awareness, discussions and backlash to forms
of women’s objectification as well as global #metoo movements. On the
other hand, as the third wave of feminism or post-feminism suggests, the
sexualized body can also be seen as a tool of female empowerment and
agency (Gill, 2003, 2008; Heywood, 2008). In this context, a woman is
not sexualized by others (men) but decides herself to emphasize her phys-
ical attractiveness and sexualized femininity. Taking the example of grid
girls, their work will not be perceived here as imposed by heterosexual
 The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional… 283

norms of motorsport worlds, but a free choice of young and attractive

women to get attention and make money due to their beauty. In her
analysis of the grid girls’ discourse in the British media, Tippett (2020:
189) locates the debate with a post-feminism framework:

The debate over the termination of the F1 grid girls has resulted in a
dilemma in British culture over sexual autonomy and choice. Instead of
sexualisation being deemed objectifying in this context, there has been a
move towards perceiving sexualisation as a form of bodily proprietorship
and economic independence for women.

As Tippett (2020) reveals, three main topics dominated the British

media discourse on grid girls: (1) [dis]empowerment, (2) choice and (3)
disputed feminism. Regarding the first, being a model (hostess) has been
perceived as both an empowering and disempowering profession. The
grid girls have been perceived as representing either “an emancipated
state of modern femininity” or “outdated image that isn’t in keeping with
modern values” (Tippett, 2020: 193). This dichotomy goes in line with
the differences between the feminist movement’s waves and their percep-
tion of exposing female physical attractiveness and women’s agency.
The discussion on choice has concerned the bodily and economic
autonomy of grid girls, but also women in general. In the analysed dis-
course, the grid girls have been seen as celebrating their femininity and
using their sexualized images willingly to gain recognition and earn
money. However, as noted by Tippett (2020: 194), the chance to obtain
empowerment through promotional modelling is only available to a lim-
ited category of people, namely those that are young and attractive, usu-
ally white, and female, while some social categories, including Black and
minority ethnic (BME) groups or older women, are generally deprived of
this right. Moreover, men do not usually play decorative roles during
sports events; however, some exceptions can be indicated with, for exam-
ple, the ‘grid boys’ at Monaco Grand Prix or ‘ring boys’ during women’s
fights in mixed martial arts (MMA) (Jakubowska, 2018). Therefore,
although grid girls perceive their role as a free choice and women’s
empowerment, one should be aware that this way of increasing empower-
ment is limited only to these women who meet the current criteria of
284 H. Jakubowska

physical attractiveness. As Tippett (2020: 192) observes, “Many social

groups are excluded from even applying, let alone partaking, in promo-
tional modelling. Due to this, there are inherent contradictions in this
form of empowerment”.
The third topic that dominated the British discourse on grid girls was
feminism and whether it limits or reinforces women’s rights. This discus-
sion was related to the grid girls’ accusations towards feminism indicated
previously in the chapter and dominated by a post-feminism approach.
However, some discourse’s actors perceived the decision of F1’s owner as
appropriate in the time of #metoo movement and wider socio-cultural
changes (Tippett, 2020).

Conclusion
The decision of F1 has also been criticized by some Grand Prix (GP) race
organizers. A few of them have decided to still use hostesses during the
events, but in a different, although still promotional, role. For example,
during the Monaco Grand Prix in 2018, female models did not hold
placards displaying driver numbers but were seen “taking pictures and
displaying messages on social media for a luxury watch brand” (Ikonen,
2018). Women also had promotional roles related to airline companies
during the Bahrain and China Grands Prix. After negotiations with
Liberty Media, grid girls were also present during the Sochi Grand Prix
the same year, as well as in Austria and Singapore (Now Singapore ignor-
ing F1 ‘grid girls’ ban, 2018). ‘Rebellious’ organizers of the GPs have
argued that ‘beautiful girls’ have traditionally been associated with the
auto industry (Russia hopes for grid girls return in 2019, 2018). They
also emphasized their important role in the events’ media coverage
(Ikonen, 2018) and in the promotion of the country and local brands, as
in the case of Singapore (Now Singapore ignoring F1 ‘grid girls’ ban,
2018). Therefore, although grid girls have been deprived of their previous
tasks (so as not to break F1’s new regulations), they have not entirely
disappeared from F1 races.
Women have managed to break through a glass ceiling in F1 to some
extent, and one can see an increasing number of women working for F1
 The Awkward Gender Politics of Formula 1 as a Promotional… 285

teams in a range of diverse roles previously unavailable to them, includ-

ing as team principals, engineers, strategists, mechanics and so forth
(Sturm, 2021). However, equally, F1 remains a male world as evidenced
by a lack of female drivers and the domination of men among the teams’
employees (Sturm, 2021). Moreover, women, as mentioned above, still
play decorative roles during the F1 events and function to make them,
together with fast cars and luxurious lifestyles, ‘glamorous’. F1 is not only
a sport event, but also run as media, corporate and commodified events
that are primarily dominated by men, who also constitute a vast majority
of fans. From this perspective, the glamour provided by women can be
understood as their objectification. In contradistinction, as the grid girls’
discourse has revealed, the role of females in F1 can be perceived within
the frame of female agency and empowerment. From this perspective,
women’s bodies are still on display, but by their choice. A beautiful and
sexy body becomes here a source of women’s power, and if women are
objectified, it is their own choice in accordance with post-feminism (or
the third wave of feminism). Therefore, one should speak rather about
women’s ‘subjectification’ (Gill, 2003), that is, objectification made by
‘subjects’ than their objectification. In this context, it should be reminded
that the grid girls have emphasized that their work has always been their
free choice and that they have liked it very much. Being a model during
F1 races can be seen as an example of working in the glamour industry,
where money is earned due to the exposition of attractive and sexualized
body images. However, one cannot forget that women who do not fit
into heteronormative patterns of beauty are deprived of access to such
opportunities or industries.
The decision to drop grid girls from the races provides intriguing
insights into issues of women’s objectification and empowerment, the
glamour industry and feminism. One can say that the F1’s owner deci-
sion has also been in line with the assumptions of second wave of femi-
nism and social movements such as #metoo. At the same time, the grid
girls’ reaction can be read within the frame of the third wave of feminism
(or post-feminism). From both perspectives, the discussion is focused on
women’s bodies that are sexualized and used to draw attention and, con-
sequently, bring financial profits. Although the decision to ban the grid
286 H. Jakubowska

girls could be seen as favourable to women (against their objectification),

the grid girls’ opinions have not been taken into account. In this sense,
women (grid girls) have been objectified and deprived of the right to
decide how they want to use their bodies. A confrontation of different
waves of feminism visible in the ‘grid girls’ discourse reveals that women’s
agency and empowerment, also expressed by ‘subjectification’, remains a
challenge in male-dominated worlds, such as motorsport.

Note
1. It is worth noting that the dictionary also uses the example of Monte
Carlo, where the Monaco GP takes places, defining ‘glamour’ as ‘an attrac-
tive or exciting quality that makes certain people or things seem appeal-
ing, the glamour of Monte Carlo’.

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 Part V
Motor Racing and the Politics
of Race
 A Political and Economic Analysis
of South Africa’s Historical Relationship
with Formula One Motor Racing,
1934–1993
Gustav Venter

Introduction
On 14 March 1993 the Frenchman, Alain Prost, won the opening race of
that season’s Formula One World Championship held at the Kyalami
racing circuit north of Johannesburg in South Africa. To date this repre-
sents the last international Formula One race to be held in South Africa,
and the intervening 28-year gap belies the fact that the country has had
an intimate history with motor racing’s ultimate contest, including pro-
ducing the 1979 World Champion, Jody Scheckter. The 1993 South
African Grand Prix was held at a significant political and sporting junc-
ture for the country, falling within a brief but volatile period of transition
from the end of structural apartheid in 1990 to the country’s first demo-
cratic elections—and arrival of black majority rule—in 1994. In sporting
terms South Africa was welcomed back into the international fold in
1991 when its national cricket side toured India, followed by

G. Venter (*)
Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 295
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_13
296 G. Venter

participation in the 1992 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New

Zealand and the Olympic Games in Barcelona the same year. Formula
One motor racing also returned to South Africa in 1992, having previ-
ously visited in 1985.
These important developments within politics and sport during this
transitional period were merely an extension of the close historical rela-
tionship between these two domains within the South African context. In
this regard there is a well-established body of literature probing this rela-
tionship, particularly during the apartheid era. Douglas Booth’s The Race
Game (1998) and Robert Archer and Antoine Bouillon’s The South
African Game (1982) stand out as two oft-cited works on this topic.
Elsewhere much of the analytical focus has been on the most popular
team sports in the country, namely rugby union (Grundlingh et al.,
1995), cricket (Murray & Merrett, 2004) and football (Alegi, 2004), as
well as the role of anti-apartheid organisations in directing pressure
towards the apartheid regime within the realm of sport (Lapchick, 1975).
The 1993 South African Grand Prix, however, serves as a useful point of
entry for expanding the broader sport-political analysis into motor sport.
This paper endeavours to analyse South Africa’s historical position within
Formula One racing as well as the arc of this relationship—one which is
somewhat unique in that South Africa was never formally isolated by the
world governing body even at the height of apartheid. This serves as a
stark contrast to other major codes which had been isolated since the
1960s. South Africa’s Olympic participation also seized in 1960—a full
25 years before the final apartheid-era, South African Grand Prix was
held in 1985.
This analysis attempts to probe the particularity of the relationship
between Formula One racing and South Africa by focusing on the politi-
cal, economic and social dimensions during the second half of the twen-
tieth century. Through the use of contemporary writings, media sources
and selected private documents it builds on the recent work of Naess
(2017, 2020) by adding further depth to South Africa’s historical entan-
glement with Formula One racing. In doing so it makes a novel contribu-
tion to the broader literature on the history of South African sport by
taking up a hitherto underutilised analytical vantage point.
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 297

Origins of Motor Racing in South Africa

The introduction of the automobile in South Africa dates back to 1896
when a local businessman, John Percy Hess, imported a Benz Velo to the
Transvaal Republic towards the end of that year. This “horseless carriage”
ran under its own power for the first time in January the following year
when it was publicly demonstrated in Pretoria (Wheels24, 2016). It did
not take long for motor racing to gain a foothold in the country as the
Royal Automobile Club (RAC) was established in 1901, followed by the
first motor racing event in South Africa held at Cape Town’s Green Point
cycling track in 1903 (Lupini, 2020a). It took a couple of decades before
the arrival of the first motor manufacturing plant in South Africa, when
Ford opened what became the company’s 16th overseas operation in Port
Elizabeth on 19 January 1924. This was soon supplemented by a General
Motors plant in the same city two years later (Fourie, 2017, p. 61).
As far as racing was concerned the RAC became the controlling body
for motor sport in the country and was affiliated to Association
Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR)—the forerun-
ner to the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA)—in 1931
(Loubser, 2013, 6%). The first motor racing event of any international
standing occurred on 27 December 1934, as East London hosted the first
ever South African Grand Prix on its 15.2-mile Marine Drive street cir-
cuit. This was initiated as a private endeavour by Edward “Brud” Bishop,
the motoring editor of the local Daily Dispatch newspaper at the time.
The thought of creating such an event had come to him in 1933 while
taking a morning reconnaissance drive on a completed section of coastal
road along the west bank of the Buffalo River which runs through the
city. This drive germinated the idea of using the completed road loop as
a racing circuit (Bishop, 1965, p. 9). Through his marketing efforts the
event—to his surprise—also attracted four international entrants, includ-
ing British-based American millionaire, Whitney Straight, and English
racing driver Richard Seaman. Straight ended up winning the race in
front of an estimated crowd of 42,000. According to Bishop (1965,
pp. 11–25) this was the first international road racing event held outside
298 G. Venter

of Europe, and the large attendance served as an early indication of the

potential interest in high-profile motor racing events in South Africa.
The years leading up to World War II saw the rapid expansion of motor
racing events and infrastructure in South Africa. East London hosted
four more South African Grands Prix annually in January from 1936 to
1939 on a shortened version of its Prince George Circuit (as it was
renamed in 1935). Bishop was also instrumental in the construction of
the Earl Howe Circuit north of Johannesburg over a period of four and a
half months in 1936—a project that was completed at a cost of £32,000
and just in time to host the first ever Rand Grand Prix on 30 January
1937 with an estimated crowd of 55,000 in attendance (Bishop, 1965,
p. 37). Earl Howe, whose full name was Francis Richard Henry Penn
Curzon, was a cofounder of the British Racing Drivers’ Club and winner
of the 1931, 24 hours of Le Mans race. He actively participated in races
in South Africa and was a key role player in building up the reputation of
these events (Bishop, 1965, p. 45). The Earl Howe circuit would host one
more Rand Grand Prix on 16 December 1937 prior to World War II—a
race that included a number of international participants—before ulti-
mately becoming the site of a housing estate (Bishop, 1965, p. 50).
During this period leading up to World War II there were similar
developments in the Cape as the British property developer, Arthur
Edwards—builder of the Grosvenor House Hotel in London—invested
a reported £70,000 into the construction of a racing circuit on land
which he had acquired in Tokai just south of Cape Town (Bishop, 1965,
p. 44). The first Grosvenor Grand Prix was held there on 16 January
1937, followed by two more pre-war events in 1938 and 1939. The suc-
cess of these races during the 1930s proved that South Africa had the
potential to become a significant centre for international motor racing—
a process that was ultimately interrupted by World War II. The post-war
period saw rapid changes to the country’s political and economic land-
scape which in turn impacted the subsequent trajectory of motor racing.
At this point it is also worth comparing the early development of
motor racing in South Africa to competitive sport elsewhere in the coun-
try. In this regard the initial formation of organised sports bodies stretched
back to the second half of the nineteenth century when British immi-
grants and soldiers were instrumental in spreading codes such as cricket,
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 299

football and rugby union, among others. Football, for example, saw the
formation of its first national body—the South African Football
Association (SAFA)—in 1892 (Bolsmann, 2010, p. 30). This was a
whites-only organisation that reflected the colonial relations and prac-
tices of the time. Subsequent years saw the formation of similar control-
ling bodies for other racial groups, with the South African Coloured
Rugby Football Board (formed in 1897) constituting the first black
national sports body (Alegi, 2004, p. 18). By the early 1950s some codes
had up to four separate controlling bodies organised along racial lines
(Archer & Bouillon, 1982, p. 153). This was also in line with South
Africa’s apartheid policy, instituted in 1948, which formally entrenched
racial segregation into all aspects of South African life, including sport.
For example, the Population Registration Act of 1950 classified citizens
into one of four recognised racial groups, namely black (African),
coloured, Indian or white. In the South African context the term
“coloured” is used to denote people of mixed racial heritage. In addition
the Group Areas Act of 1950 designated geographical “group areas” for
each population group, and required citizens to carry permits if they
wanted to enter different group areas to that of their own racial group.
While organised sport was quick to gain a foothold among South
Africa’s black, coloured and Indian racial groups during the first half of
the twentieth century, motor racing essentially remained a white preserve
on account of its high economic barriers to entry. Archer and Bouillon
(1982, p. 112), for example, point out that the broad development of
organised black sport followed the same trajectory as that of white
sport—but with a slight time lag—with “the exception of those minor or
technical sports which requires resources black people do not have—such
as yachting, motor racing, power-boat racing, skiing and all the aerial
sports”. This deviation by motor racing from the broader development
path of the most popular sport codes in South Africa is worth bearing in
mind when analysing subsequent developments during the post-World
War II period.
300 G. Venter

Rapid Change in the Post-War Period

The most significant political development in the years immediately after
World War II was the ascent to power of the National Party in 1948
which was accompanied by the implementation of its apartheid policy.
This would eventually set South African sport on a collision course with
the international community, but during the early years of the policy,
sport was able to continue unabated within the international sphere. As
far as motor racing was concerned there were some notable developments
at international level with the AIACR being renamed as the Fédération
Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) in 1946 (Naess, 2020, p. 31). A key
objective at this point was for the FIA to become the sole controlling
body for international motor sport. This was soon followed by the cre-
ation of the first Drivers’ World Championship under the auspices of the
FIA in 1950—a seven-race international series won by Guiseppe Farina
in an Alfa Romeo that year. This represented the beginning of interna-
tional Formula One motor racing in the competitive form that we know
today (Naess, 2020, pp. 36–37).
On the domestic front East London remained a major racing hub in
South Africa after the war, although it would take well over a decade for
the South African Grand Prix to make its return to the calendar. By this
point both the Earl Howe Circuit north of Johannesburg and the
Grosvenor Circuit near Cape Town had been converted to housing estates
(Bishop, 2020, p. 59)—perhaps an indication as to the economic chal-
lenges in maintaining such facilities sustainably over the long run. The
first post-war event of national importance was the Van Riebeeck Trophy
race run at Paarden Eiland in Cape Town in 1948 (Loubser, 2011, p. 25).
New circuits also sprang up in the Natal Province, and races were held at
different locations in the Transvaal including the Germiston Airfield and
the Grand Central Circuit between Johannesburg and Pretoria which was
inaugurated in 1949 (Loubser, 2011, p. 32). Racing also took place across
the border in Lorenço Marques, the capital of Portuguese East Africa at
the time, in 1950, while Cape Town began utilising the new Gunners
Circle industrial park as a racing venue a year later (Lupini, 2020b).
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 301

A significant development took place in 1953 with the establishment

of South Africa’s own Drivers’ Championship consisting of a formalised
racing calendar with points on offer at various races around the country
(Lupini, 2020b). This competition was conducted on an annual basis
until 1986 and formed the backbone of local single-seater racing. The
range of racing venues available in South Africa continued to expand dur-
ing the 1950s, including a new track in the Cape at the Eersterivier air-
field as well as the Palmietfontein Circuit near Alberton on the East
Rand. Races were also conducted at Salisbury in Rhodesia (Lupini,
2020b). In East London the early 1950s represented a transitional period
whereby race organisers were not yet in a position to host events of inter-
national standing and instead conducted a series of winter handicap races
on a preliminary 1.75-mile Esplanade circuit which proved highly dan-
gerous (Bishop, 1965, p. 57).
By 1958 a local East London hotelier, Cedric Vice, had taken over the
chairmanship of the South African Grand Prix Organisers group, and set
about establishing the return of this event to the racing calendar. The
initial challenge was finding a circuit since the pre-war Prince George
Circuit was regarded as being too long for this purpose given the require-
ment that cars should pass spectators on numerous occasions in order to
boost the racing spectacle (Bishop, 1965, p. 58). By June 1959 the organ-
isers had constructed a new 2.5-mile version of the Prince George Circuit
which included only a 0.5-mile section of the old layout. The site was still
able to capitalise on the Indian Ocean backdrop, and the project was
completed at a reported cost of R80,000 to the East London City Council
(Bishop, 1965, p. 58). The South African Grand Prix made its return to
the national calendar on 1 January 1960—the sixth instalment of this
event. Of note was the participation of British racing great, Sterling Moss
(who finished second in the race), along with a number of other overseas
participants including the likes of Paul Frère (the eventual race winner)
and Lucien Bianchi of Belgium, as well as fellow British racers Chris
Bristow, Dick Gibson and Bruce Halford (Lupini, 2020c). The seventh
South African Grand Prix was held later that same year in December,
with Moss again in attendance and this time taking the victory in front
of a reported 70,000 spectators. Again a strong foreign contingent was in
attendance, with Sweden’s Joakim Bonnier taking second place and
302 G. Venter

Australia’s Jack Brabham taking third (Bishop, 1965, p. 60). The follow-
ing year, in 1961, Jim Clark came away as the South African Grand Prix
winner, beating Moss into second and Bonnier into third with 67,000
spectators in attendance (Bishop, 1965, p. 61).
The participation of foreign racers in South African events became
commonplace from 1955 onwards (Loubser, 2011, p. 26) and increased
into the 1960s, although Bishop (1965, p. 59) pointed to the challenges
of attracting high profile names such as Moss, Jim Clark and Graham
Hill sustainably over the long term given the high appearance fees they
commanded. Another important factor worth considering is the fact that
racing events were not exclusively profitable ventures. Bishop (1965,
p. 38) himself indicated that they “did not make money” from the pre-­
war Earl Howe Circuit events where he was directly involved. He put this
down to the way the hastily constructed track ultimately turned out.
Apparently his desire to offer an alternative to East London’s fast, pictur-
esque circuit resulted in too many extreme corners being implemented
on the Earl Howe Circuit. This, in his view, made for slow racing with
little excitement, coupled with other factors such as a lack of sufficient
entry roads for spectators. This served as early evidence that purposely
built racing circuits were challenging properties to maintain, hence the
preponderance of racing events on airfields which were facilities that nat-
urally served a dual purpose.
The gradual expansion up to 1960 of South Africa’s racing profile and
infrastructure after World War II has to be positioned within the overall
economic trajectory of the country at the time. The dawn of the 1960s
was to be the start of a period of unprecedented economic growth for the
country as a whole, despite the initial political and economic fallout from
the events at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960 where 69 black protesters
were killed by police (Grundlingh, 2008, p. 143). The event made inter-
national headlines and the immediate aftermath saw significant capital
flight from foreign investors, but this proved to be a short term trend as
the National Party government quickly exerted control by imposing
import and exchange controls and clamping down on political unrest.
This included the banning of the African National Congress (ANC) and
Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) as well as the eventual imprisonment of
Nelson Mandela and other leaders within the anti-apartheid opposition
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 303

(Grundlingh, 2008, p. 144). These measures ultimately set the table for a
period of rapid, extended economic growth as foreign capital began to
flow inwards and local investors piled into the stock market. According
to Grundlingh (2008, p. 144) South Africa’s economic growth for the
remainder of the 1960s outpaced “nearly all Western countries by regis-
tering an average growth rate of 6%” on an annual basis. South Africa
also became a republic and withdrew from the Commonwealth in
1961—a sign that despite the initial political and economic turmoil in
the wake of Sharpeville, the country was now confidently striding for-
ward on its own terms under the iron fisted leadership of its prime min-
ister, Hendrik Verwoerd. The aforementioned economic growth during
the 1960s is an important factor to foreground when considering the
subsequent developments within motor racing during the same period.

 outh Africa Joins the World

S
Championship Calendar
Having re-established the South African Grand Prix in East London in
1960, the local organisers set their sights on having the race formally
included as part of the FIA’s World Drivers’ Championship series. For
this purpose Cedric Vice travelled to Europe in 1961 where he attended
the French Grand Prix at Rheims and consulted with the FIA on the
process for applying for World Championship status. Upon his return to
East London an application was formally lodged and this ultimately
proved successful (Bishop, 1965, p. 58). As a result the ninth South
African Grand Prix—staged on 29 December 1962—was the first one to
be included on the World Championship calendar. It proved to be a
championship decider in both the driver and constructor categories of
the competition—the latter having been inaugurated during the 1958
season. Graham Hill claimed victory—and his first world title—in front
of a record crowd of 90,000 (Loubser, 2011, p. 29), when Jim Clark was
forced to retire from the race due to an oil leak while comfortably leading
with 20 laps remaining. Hill’s British Racing Motors (BRM) team also
claimed its first and only constructor’s title in the process (Bishop, 1965,
304 G. Venter

p. 64). South Africa had now established itself as an international racing

destination of some repute as the sport continued to grow steadily domes-
tically. From 1960 to 1975 the South African Drivers’ Championship
was even run under international FIA Formula One regulations, essen-
tially meaning that it was hosting its own national Formula One champi-
onship—the only country with such a distinction during that time
(Loubser, 2011, p. 28). The next two South African Grands Prix, held in
December 1963 and January 1965, retained their World Championship
status, but this was not the case for the final South African Grand Prix to
be held in East London—the 12th instalment of the race held on New
Year’s Day in 1966. The FIA had removed the status on account of the
introduction of a new three-litre formula that season, maintaining that
South Africa would not be a good location to introduce this change on
account of its geographical distance from Europe where development was
taking place (Loubser, 2011, p. 30).
Another significant milestone during the 1960s was the opening of the
Kyalami racing circuit north of Johannesburg in 1961. The Grand
Central Circuit had started to age by the late 1950s and the resulting
uncertainty surrounding its long-term prospects prompted the tenants,
the Sports Car Club of South Africa, to consider an alternative venue
(Loubser, 2011, p. 32). Eventually this led to the formation of the South
African Motor Racing Club (SAMRAC) in January 1961 consisting of
representatives from different Transvaal-based motoring clubs with the
intent of financing and planning a new circuit. The group was also able
to count on the support of Dave Marais, the mayor of Johannesburg at
the time (Loubser, 2011, p. 32). Marais, incidentally, was also the chair-
man of the recently formed whites-only National Football League
(NFL)—the first professional football league in South Africa (Venter,
2016, p. 261)—and was therefore a keen supporter of white sport in his
capacity as mayor.
The two central influencers within SAMRAC were Johannesburg
natives Francis Tucker—an attorney by trade and the club’s chairman—
and Alex Blignaut, a racer with some potential who functioned as the
club’s sporting secretary. Tucker was also a very accomplished rally driver
himself, and both would go on to dominate South African motor racing
administration in the coming years. In fact Blignaut would in later years
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 305

be described as “South Africa’s Mr Motor Racing” and “South Africa’s

Bernie Ecclestone” on account of his single-minded and somewhat dicta-
torial approach to getting things done (Mills, 2013, p. 119). After much
consideration and deliberation a site was eventually found for the new
circuit that was to become Kyalami—the name being an adaptation of a
word from the Sesotho language meaning “my home” (Johannesburg
Motor Racing, 1971, p. 23). The site was subsequently purchased from
the owner, Mrs Violet Marie Elgey, for a sum of R80,000. Caltex obtained
sole advertising rights as an oil company to the venue for three years and
the civil engineer and car enthusiast, Basil Read, proceeded with the con-
struction project. Other notable sponsors and advertisers during the early
years were the United Tobacco Companies (a Southern African conglom-
erate formed in 1904), the Coca Cola Export Corporation, South African
Breweries and Dunlop South Africa (Johannesburg Motor Racing, 1961,
p. 32). The South African arms of the likes of Ford, British Petroleum
and Shell also became involved from the mid-1960s onwards
(Johannesburg Motor Racing, 1965, p. 25). Another revenue stream
came from life membership subscriptions to the newly created Kyalami
Grand Prix Club. The total cost of the initial construction of the cir-
cuit—including the land purchase—was estimated at R200,000. Kyalami
was opened by Dave Marais on 4 November 1961 (Loubser, 2011,
pp. 34–36).
The significance of the arrival of Kyalami was captured by the origina-
tor of the South African Grand Prix, Edward Bishop, when he wrote in
1965 (p. 59) that he had no doubt that “if the SA Motor Racing Club
had not emerged on the Rand in 1961 later to build the Kyalami circuit
and share in overseas drivers’ starting prices, it would have been impos-
sible for East London to carry on alone”. He did also report, however,
that according to Tucker SAMRAC had made a loss of about R10,000 on
the first four Rand Grands Prix staged at the venue during the early years
of the circuit’s existence—another indication that generating profits from
high-level motor racing was extremely difficult even during an economic
upturn. A key factor here was the cost of attracting foreign drivers and
teams to participate in these South African events. The Rand Daily Mail
(1962b, p. 7) reported in 1962 that the British Racing Motors (BRM)
team was paid R3600 in starting money to appear in that year’s Rand
306 G. Venter

Grand Prix held at Kyalami on 15 December. Similarly the UDT-Laystall

team was reportedly paid R1800 and one can reasonably assume that Jim
Clark’s Lotus team—the eventual race winners—would also have been
well remunerated (no figure is provided in the report). So while the pres-
ence of these drivers certainly added to the spectacle of these events—the
1962 race was reported to have had a “big crowd” (Rand Daily Mail,
1962a, p. 6) in attendance—the reality was that attracting them came at
a significant expense which made it difficult to generate profits from
these races.
The escalating costs of hosting the South African Grand Prix—reported
to be more than R70,000—eventually caught up with East London and
in 1966 the organisers indicated that the city would no longer be able to
host the event. Tucker and Blignaut stepped in on behalf of SAMRAC
and offered to host the event at Kyalami (Loubser, 2011, p. 39). By this
point the Automobile Association (AA) of South Africa had taken over
control of motorsport in the country on 1 January 1966 after the previ-
ous controlling body, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) was disbanded
at the end of 1965. The AA therefore became South Africa’s representa-
tive body on the FIA and subsequently requested that the South African
Grand Prix regain its World Championship status (Loubser, 2011, p. 39).
According to the South African motor racing enthusiast, Andre Loubser
(2011, p. 323), Alex Blignaut went to great lengths to achieve this objec-
tive when he attended the 1966 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch with
the intent of stating Kyalami’s case directly to prominent FIA officials in
attendance. Apparently Blignaut went up to Swedish driver Joakim
Bonnier—who was already strapped into a camera car at the back of the
grid for the filming of John Frankenheimer’s movie, Grand Prix (to be
released later that year)—and demanded an introduction to the FIA offi-
cials. Bonnier replied that he was about to start a race, only for the remark
to be ignored with Blignaut “virtually dragging Bonnier from the car’s
cockpit to effect the introductions”. When the FIA met later that year to
consider the application the decision was reportedly carried by one vote.
Beginning in 1967 Kyalami would go on to host 19 consecutive South
African Grands Prix—all but one of which carried World Championship
status. The sole exception was the 1981 race which came during the mid-
dle of a power struggle between the Fédération Internationale du Sport
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 307

Automobile (FISA)—the governing body for Formula One at the time—

and the Formula One Constructors’ Association (FOCA). Having con-
sidered South Africa’s post-World War II rise to international prominence
within Formula One motor racing the analysis needs to turn to the politi-
cal dimensions of this trajectory, particularly in contrast to developments
within other major sport codes in the country during this period.

Political Forces Enter the Fray

Despite South Africa’s surging economic growth during the 1960s the
apartheid policy was beginning to prove problematic for sport as far as
international relations were concerned. A significant development in this
regard was South African football’s suspension by the world governing
body, FIFA, in 1961. In this regard there had been much effort from
within the non-racial sports movement domestically to have the white
controlling body expelled from the international football community
(Bolsmann, 2010, pp. 37–39). The fundamental characteristic of non-­
racial sport organisations was that they rejected apartheid’s racial classifi-
cation system. As such they refused to comply with legislation which
dictated that sport should be played separately among the different racial
groups and instead chose to operate on an integrated basis without gov-
ernment permission. In practice the non-racial sports federations tended
to be dominated by members from the coloured and Indian population
groups, but they were open to anybody willing to directly challenge the
political system of segregation. It also brought them into direct opposi-
tion with racially defined sports bodies which cooperated with the white
controlling structures within the government system. This represented a
significant fissure within black sport more broadly and also bred deep and
long lasting resentment between players and officials from either side of
this divide. Given this backdrop, political developments within football
serve as a useful lens through which to consider South Africa’s evolving
relationship with international Formula One motor racing. A key consid-
eration here was the existence of alternative controlling structures within
South African football that were organised on a non-racial basis and
functioned outside formal government-backed structures. This
308 G. Venter

constituted a direct opponent to the white controlling body and it actively

campaigned with FIFA to replace the white federation as South Africa’s
international affiliate. Such a direct opposing structure was absent within
domestic motor racing, largely on account of the sport being one largely
driven by private wealth and privilege. The absence of such a formal non-­
racial motor racing federation with its own circuits and events meant
that—unlike a sport like football—there was no entity that could func-
tion as a domestic pressure point against South Africa’s expanding inter-
national motor racing connections.
It is also worth reflecting on the activities of arguably the most impor-
tant body that campaigned against apartheid sport internationally,
namely the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC).
This entity was originally formed in South Africa in 1962 but had to be
reconstituted in exile in 1966. Bruce Murray (2001, p. 668) points out
that SANROC’s initial focus during the 1960s “was on the Olympic
arena”, and hence Formula One motor racing represented an activity not
immediately within its crosshairs since there were bigger targets to aim
for, such as South Africa’s potential Olympic expulsion. Here SANROC’s
efforts proved successful as South Africa’s exclusion from both the 1964
and 1968 Summer Olympic Games ultimately led to a full expulsion
from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1970. Other nota-
ble developments along the sport-­political axis during this period included
cricket’s d’Oliveira affair that resulted in the 1968–69 England tour to
South Africa being cancelled in the midst of controversy, thereby focus-
ing the collective gaze of the international sporting community on the
political and social situation in South Africa (Venter, 2019, p. 2). During
this period the issue of South African representation on the FIA did come
up for discussion as the newly formed AA’s application for membership
was put up for vote. The AA was ultimately admitted and this was a
reflection of the FIA’s desire to remain non-political in outlook—a com-
mon approach adopted by international sports bodies up this point
(Naess, 2020, pp. 48–49).
Yet the pressure would continue to mount on South Africa elsewhere,
as proposed cricket tours to England (1970) and Australia (1971) were
cancelled, while rugby tours to Great Britain (1969–70) and Australia
(1971) were accompanied by increasingly strident protests (Venter, 2019,
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 309

p. 2). This resulted in the South African government changing tactics and
introducing its “multinational” sports policy in April 1971 as a means to
deflect some of this international pressure. The policy contained limited
reforms to apartheid sport whereby competition between South Africa’s
four different racial groups was now permitted within certain parameters.
This had the bizarre result of allowing different racially defined teams to
play against each other, but not allowing individual teams to be racially
mixed. It served as an attempt to portray a limited form of racial integra-
tion on the sports field to the international community, while still shoe-
horning this policy into the overall apartheid doctrine of “separate
development” for South Africa’s different racial groups (Venter, 2019,
pp. 2–3). Multinationalism was designed to retain (or regain) South
Africa’s international status within those codes that had come under pres-
sure from the anti-apartheid movement, but was ultimately unsuccessful
as a counterweight to broader political developments within the country.
In this regard the Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976 represented a water-
shed moment for the country politically (Welsh, 2009, p. 101). The
uprising saw mass protests by black school children against the imposi-
tion of Afrikaans as a language of instruction erupt in Soweto, south of
Johannesburg. The protests spread to other areas around the country and
elicited a violent response from police who fired on protesters, resulting
in 176 official deaths. After this set of events no amount of racial mixing
on the sports field would convince the international community to look
favourably on the situation in South Africa. This had broad ramifications
for sport as South Africa was finally expelled from FIFA at the latter’s
Montreal Congress that year (Bolsmann, 2010, p. 41), and any hopes of
regaining international status in other codes via further reforms to multi-
nationalism were extinguished. Yet Formula One motor racing continued
to take place in South Africa annually during this period as Kyalami
remained a fixture on the World Championship calendar. In order to
understand the circumstances behind this South African sporting anom-
aly, the analysis needs to consider a number of aspects.
At a very basic level it should be noted that Kyalami was an extremely
popular destination for the travelling circus that was the Formula One
World Championship. Usually held in March towards the back end of
the South African summer, it offered a pleasant contrast to the cold
310 G. Venter

European winter. A notable ingredient in this mix was the existence of

the Kyalami Ranch Hotel in close proximity to the circuit complex. The
hotel was founded in 1963 by a South African-born former KLM pilot,
Bill Forssman, and his wife, Anneke, with the intent of creating an ideal
stopover destination for air crews. The venue subsequently became a key
component within the “Kyalami experience” as drivers, team members
and the international media were provided with splendid hospitality in
luxurious seclusion (Loubser, 2011, p. 292).
More importantly, there were key structural differences between the
FIA and an organisation such as FIFA, for example, and it is argued here
that this also contributed to South Africa’s retention as an international
racing destination. While FIFA was significantly impacted by the wave of
decolonisation in Africa and Latin America from the 1950s onwards—
the issue of South Africa’s membership even had a significant impact on
the outcome of the contest for 1974 FIFA presidency (Darby, 2008,
pp. 259–272)—the same cannot be said for the FIA. An organisational
snapshot from 1976 is instructive in this regard. The April issue of Motor
Sport magazine that year summarises the various structural components
within the FIA at that point with a focus on competitive racing. The
body which oversaw this domain was the Commission Sportive
Internationale (CSI)—a branch within the FIA which in turn had eight
sub-committees that oversaw different aspects of racing. The most nota-
ble members of each committee were listed and the vast majority hailed
from Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Monaco,
Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada and the United States. South
Africa’s Alex Blignaut even served as a deputy organiser on the Formula
One committee (Jenkinson, 1976, p. 368). So despite the fact that FIA
membership was increasing and consisted of 81 affiliated countries for
sporting purposes by this point, it is clear that decision-making power
was mostly concentrated among a group of Western countries with long-­
standing participation in international motor racing. These countries
were far more likely to accept South Africa’s continued presence within
the Formula One fraternity compared to an influential block of African
or Caribbean countries, as was the case in FIFA, for example. It should
also be noted that in 1970 the FIA amended its statutes by re-­emphasising
the fact that it was a motoring organisation and “not engaged in matters
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 311

of race, politics or of religion” (Naess, 2020, p. 53). This would have

provided further justification for ignoring the South African issue.
Finally, any analysis dealing with the institutional dynamics of Formula
One from the 1970s onwards would need to consider the role of key
individual beginning with the rise to prominence of Bernie Ecclestone.
Erik Naess’s recent work (2020, pp. 54–59) provides a detailed analysis of
this chain of events. By the early 1970s Ecclestone had positioned himself
as a power broker between the Formula One teams on the one hand, and
race organisers on the other. Teams were happy for him to negotiate on
their behalf and he was able to streamline elements of the World
Championship by obtaining better terms from freight operators, govern-
ments and other stakeholders (Naess, 2020, p. 57). In order to placate the
fears of race organisers—who were opposed to his rising influence—he
was able to guarantee full starting grids by forcing teams to commit to
full race participation as a group. This was a potentially attractive propo-
sition for race organisers since teams were previously able to choose which
races they would enter. On the other hand, he was also able to exert
greater influence over the racing calendar by maintaining leverage over
race organisers—if they were unwilling to accept his package deal offer
comprising competition, logistics and hospitality components, he would
always be able to turn to an alternative venue (Naess, 2020, pp. 57–58).
From a political perspective this meant that even if there were teams
that had reservations about competing in South Africa—highly doubtful
at this point—they would not have been in a position to refuse participa-
tion on account of the agreement they had in place with Ecclestone. In
addition, racing organisers themselves had no incentive to boycott the
World Championship on account of racing taking place in South Africa,
since their primary concern would have been to generate revenue for
their own facility by remaining on the international calendar. Unlike the
Olympic Games, the FIA was not in charge of a single global event vul-
nerable to mass withdrawals such as the African boycott of the 1976
Montreal Olympics (again with South Africa as the central issue). Instead
the Formula One World Championship consisted of a relatively small
circle of participants, teams and venues that mostly functioned as private
enterprises. In this context commercial factors—rather than political
ones—were always likely to carry the day. This point was driven home in
312 G. Venter

1979 when Ecclestone himself purchased the highly indebted Kyalami

circuit (and its liabilities) for one Rand from SAMRAC on the day of the
South African Grand Prix (Loubser, 2011, p. 43).

Towards the End of the Road

Loubser (2011, p. 42) has highlighted the challenges associated with
escalating event hosting costs during the 1970s and that SAMRAC was
essentially operating within the volatile entertainment industry which
carried a number of risks. The 1973 oil crisis, for example, was an unfore-
seen international event that had a significant impact on racing in South
Africa given the resulting fuel shortage that followed. The precarious
financial situation which enveloped SAMRAC during this period can
also be gleaned from a cabinet memorandum compiled by Piet Koornhof,
the Minister of Sport and Recreation at the time, at some point after the
1975 South African Grand Prix. SAMRAC had made an appeal to
Koornhof for financial support, and the memorandum requested the
cabinet’s approval for an additional R100,000 to be added to the
Department of Sport and Recreation’s budget for the purposes of hosting
the 1976 South African Grand Prix the following year (Koornhof,
1975, p. 3).
According to the memorandum SAMRAC experienced no financial
difficulties during their first hosting of the 1967 event, but their financial
position had gradually deteriorated beginning in 1968 already, leaving
them at a crossroads where they could no longer fulfil the financial obli-
gations required for hosting the 1976 South African Grand Prix. The cost
of hosting the 1974 event was listed as R300,000, increasing to
R340,000 in 1975, and projected to be R380,000 in1976. This excluded
additional administration costs which were R81,854 in 1974 and R114
886 in 1975, leaving SAMRAC with a balance sheet deficit of R70,000 in
1974 and R150,000 in 1975 (Koornhof, 1975, pp. 1–2). It is also reveal-
ing that by this point SAMRAC’s largest annual administrative expense
was listed as interest on existing loans, which was R41,928 for the
1974/75 year—a clear indication of the difficult situation it found
itself in.
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 313

The reason provided for this state of affairs was the costs associated
with ensuring that Kyalami kept up with international standards in order
to retain its place on the calendar. This included increased safety measures
to prevent deaths, improved media and radio facilities as well as improved
facilities for spectators. Up until 1973 Kyalami had been voted as one of
the top five racing destinations by the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association—a
title that it won in 1969. But in 1974 it fell to 12th on the list on account
of its media and radio facilities lacking behind (Koornhof, 1975, p. 2). As
justification for further financial support Koornhof argued that the South
African Grand Prix was by this time the country’s only annual world
championship event in any major sport, and that it had brought signifi-
cant media coverage and prestige to the country. Australia and Japan had
already tried to usurp its place on the 15-race championship calendar—
something that would almost certainly occur in future without additional
support (Koornhof, 1975, p. 2).
Koornhof ’s cabinet request of R100,000 was in fact a watered-down
version of SAMRAC’s original request of an annual administrative con-
tribution of R125,000 from the department. They also indicated that an
alternative option was for the state to purchase Kyalami for R1.3 million
with SAMRAC then entering into a long-term lease agreement. Koornhof
indicated that his department’s budget was itself under pressure and
could not make provision for either of these requests as part of normal
expenditure. He did, however, make reference to possible use of a general
funding scheme comprising financial assistance to “special projects that
included projects of national and international scope such as world
championship events” (Koornhof, 1975, p. 3).
While it is not exactly clear what the outcome of this specific funding
request was, it should be noted that the strategic projects and events later
associated with the so-called Information Scandal which erupted in 1978
were unfolding in the background during this period. The crux of the
scandal related to a secret slush fund operated by South Africa’s
Department of Information and deployed across a myriad of strategic
projects designed to improve South Africa’s image both at home and
abroad. One such venture was the establishment of The Citizen newspa-
per in 1976 as an English language counterweight to the existing English
media outlets that were often critical of the government and apartheid
314 G. Venter

(Jones, 1998, pp. 328–329). In order to conceal the government’s involve-

ment in the newspaper, the Afrikaner entrepreneur, Louis Luyt, was
recruited as a front man. In his autobiography, Luyt (2003, p. 102) states
that the government sponsored the South African Grand Prix through
The Citizen, a fact also confirmed by the Secretary of Information at the
time, Eschel Rhoodie, in his own account of the scandal (Rhoodie, 1983,
pp. 774–775).
Of note is the fact that in 1976—the very same year for which
SAMRAC requested government support for the race from Koornhof—
The Citizen suddenly arrived as the event’s title sponsor. The official race
programme contained a note on the sponsorship which was reported to
be for an amount of R220,000 “provided by Louis Luyt through his
newspaper, The Citizen” (Johannesburg Motor Racing, 1976, p. 5). Luyt
was being cast as a generous businessman setting an example for others to
follow by supporting sport financially. The reality was that the govern-
ment was channelling the support funding through Luyt with the news-
paper as the front mechanism. It was also somewhat unusual that this was
being done six months prior to the first copy of The Citizen actually see-
ing the light of day! The race took place on 6 March, while the first edi-
tion of The Citizen only appeared on 7 September later that year. It is
therefore strange that the title sponsor of such a high profile event was a
product that consumers could not yet access—although Rhoodie (1983,
p. 774) claims that the sponsorship was indeed intended to “generate
publicity for The Citizen”. Ultimately this was probably the confluence of
two factors, namely Koornhof ’s desire to support one of the few high
profile international sport events that remained on the South African
calendar, coupled with the Department of Information’s intention to
establish The Citizen as a powerful mouthpiece to counteract local and
international criticism of apartheid. The sponsorship was continued for
two more years in 1977 and 1978, with the reported total spending across
the three races totalling more than R700,000. In the 1978 race booklet it
was announced that the sponsorship was ending that year (Johannesburg
Motor Racing, 1978, p. 5).
In the context of these events and the Information Scandal subse-
quently becoming public at the end of 1978, it is not surprising that
Kyalami was sold to Ecclestone in 1979 given that SAMRAC’s financial
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 315

life support had basically been severed. According to Loubser (2011,

p. 43) Ecclestone took on existing liabilities of R460,000 as well as the
commitment of carrying the R600,000 cost for hosting the 1979 race—
hence a total commitment of more than R1 million. However, a year
later in 1980 the circuit was put up for auction—apparently due to accu-
sations of a conflict of interest since Ecclestone was at the time a share-
holder in the Brabham Formula One team, the head of FOCA and at the
centre of Formula One’s commercial rights dealings (Naess, 2017,
p. 539). The circuit was purchased for R1.4 million by local developer
Bobby Hartslief who formed an events company named Kyalami
Entertainment Enterprises (KEE) as a means to generate a return on the
investment. According to Loubser (2011, p. 43), Hartslief was supported
by an anonymous backer. In later years investigative journalists alleged
that Ecclestone might have been this backer and managed to retain his
interest in Kyalami by providing guarantees to Hartslief ’s lender, Rand
Merchant Bank, for the same amount (Collins, 1997).
Despite the financial challenges of hosting the South African Grand
Prix at Kyalami the event continued uninterrupted until what proved to
be the final edition under apartheid in 1985. Some financial relief was
obtained through sponsorship legislation that was in place up to 1984,
whereby companies sponsoring major events with international profiles
qualified for a double deduction of the sponsored amount from their tax-
able income. This was in line with the government’s desire to promote
exports, but was ended once entities began to abuse the mechanism
(Finansies en Tegniek, 1986). On the political front, Naess (2017, 540)
indicates that Ecclestone, along with his close associate Max Mosley, did
begin to reconsider South Africa as a venue by 1982. They even engaged
in discussions with multiple Zimbabwean ministers over the possibility
of moving the Southern African race across the border to the newly inde-
pendent country, but nothing ultimately came from this.
It was not until the 1985 race that the political question once again
took centre stage as the French teams Renault and Ligier were instructed
by the French government to withdraw their participation (Naess, 2017,
540). The Australian driver of the Lola-Hart team, Alan Jones, also failed
to show up to the circuit on the morning of the race—apparently feeling
unwell. However, years later in his autobiography he claimed that this
316 G. Venter

was done after Ecclestone offered him first place prize money to secretly
withdraw in order to avoid a backlash against team sponsor, Beatrice
Foods Company, in the United States (Jones, 2017). During the build-
­up to the race the FIA came out strongly by issuing a statement that none
of the 64 member nations of FISA (formerly known as the CSI)—includ-
ing a number of African countries—had raised an objection against the
South African Grand Prix during the Plenary Conference held in Paris
ten days before the race (Collantine, 2008a, as cited by Naess, 2017,
p. 540). Consequently the race did go ahead with Britain’s Nigel Mansell
taking the victory, but when the provisional calendar for the 1986 season
was released a few months later South Africa was demoted to reserve sta-
tus (Autosport, 1986, p. 4). What was not known at the time was that
Kyalami would not return as a Grand Prix venue until 1992.
Sources provide conflicting accounts over the exact reasoning behind
Kyalami’s eventual disappearance from the Formula One calendar after
1985. According to one of Ecclestone’s biographers, Terry Lovell, the
announcement by certain television networks that they would no longer
broadcast the South African Grand Prix was the final turning point which
led to Ecclestone finally scrapping the race (Collantine, 2008b). Journalist
Nigel Roebuck, reflecting on the events in 2011, states that once the
1986 motorcycle Grand Prix at Kyalami was officially cancelled “it
became clear that neither would F1 be going back to South Africa any
time soon”—thereby intimating that political motivations ultimately car-
ried the day. When considering media sources from the time it becomes
clear that the door remained open for Kyalami to host a race in 1986.
According to local press reports in December 1985 it was in fact South
African race organisers themselves who withdrew their application to
open the 1986 season on 9 March, citing the weak Rand as the decisive
factor (Simpson, 1985, p. 1). Given that the organisers’ contract with
FOCA was in US Dollars, this created a significant problem once the
Rand suddenly nosedived in August 1985 in the wake of President
P.W. Botha’s infamous Rubicon speech. The historian David Welsh
(2009, p. 231) describes it as “an epoch-making speech whose cata-
strophic impact probably hastened the end of apartheid, as well as pro-
voking more opposition to Botha inside his party”. By 28 August 1985
the Rand was trading at 34 US cents—an all-time low (Welsh, 2009,
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 317

p. 232). This represented a drastic escalation in costs for hosting the

South African Grand Prix, and consequently it was placed on the reserve
list in the hope that the situation would improve. Southern Sun Hotels,
the main sponsors of the 1985 race, had also indicated that they should
not be considered for a race in March the following year given the “cur-
rent economic climate in South Africa” (The Cape Times, 1985, p. 1). It
was reported that the 1985 Grand Prix cost the sponsors 1.7 million US
Dollars (Simpson, 1985, p. 1).
In November 1986, Kyalami Entertainment Enterprises (KEE)
announced a new development plan for the circuit at a press conference
which essentially entailed selling off the top half of the complex to a
property developer and remodelling the circuit layout. At that same press
conference Laurie Mackintosh, financial director of KEE, blamed the
South African government for the loss of the South African Grand Prix
by not providing sufficient financial support to the event. He claimed
that KEE still had two years remaining on their contract with FOCA and
that a Grand Prix could still have taken place if funding could have been
sourced. He stated that placing the blame on the political situation was a
“convenience” (The Star, 1986, p. 13). In a symbolic end to this historical
era even the famous Kyalami Ranch was sold in 1987 due to an extended
labour dispute with the Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union (HARWU)
(The Citizen, 1987, p. 11).

Formula One’s Return in 1992–93

The abolition of apartheid legislation in 1990, coupled with the freeing
of Nelson Mandela, paved the way for South Africa’s reintegration into
the international community. While the actual political transition was
uncertain leading up to the 1994 elections, the sporting transition was
much smoother as international federations welcomed South Africa back
with open arms. It was in this context that Grand Prix racing was able to
return to the remodelled Kyalami in 1992. Motor Racing Enterprises
(MRE)—the promoters that owned the operating rights to the circuit at
the time—were able to secure a five-year Formula One contract ahead of
five other countries, and the event was positioned as a means to showcase
318 G. Venter

the potential of post-apartheid South Africa (Aupiais, 1992, p. 37).

Finance Week described the race as “the beginning of a mammoth public
relations exercise which will turbocharge foreign tourism” to South Africa
(Aupiais, 1992, p. 37).
Despite the successful hosting of the race as the 1992 season opener in
front of an estimated 100,000 spectators, questions soon emerged regard-
ing the long-term feasibility of the venture. Hosting Formula One races
were certainly not getting cheaper, and the South African government
began rolling back certain concessions to sponsors of sport events
(Coetzee, 1992, p. 11). The exchange rate also continued to hover near
three Rands to the Dollar, and consequently many of the historical finan-
cial forces were still in play. The situation worsened towards the end of
1992, when it emerged that the holding company that owned the circuit
was put into provisional liquidation by a major South African bank. This
was part of a rapidly unravelling scandal around a much larger holding
company, Tollgate Holdings Group, of which the racing components—
including MRE—formed subsidiaries (The Citizen, 1992, p. 1). The
1993 South African Grand Prix went ahead at Kyalami, but on the day
after the race the chairman of MRE, Mervyn Key, was arrested on fraud
charge ranging between R40 million and R60 million connected to the
collapse of Tollgate Holdings (The Star, 1993, p. 1). He was ultimately
acquitted, but in the short term this chain of events threw South Africa’s
Formula One ambitions into turmoil, prompting rumours of an impend-
ing sale of Kyalami.
It was also reported that attendance figures for the 1993 South African
Grand Prix “were somewhat down” from those of the 1992 race, and that
spectators were staying away from other local race meetings at the circuit
on account of “the cold, clinical approach of the promotors at Kyalami”
which had been widely condemned (Chequered Flag, 1993a, p. 5). Dave
McGregor, MRE’s other shareholder (along with Key), stated that the
1993 Grand Prix incurred a loss of about R1 million—this despite
reported financial support totalling more than R17 million from the gov-
ernment and title sponsor Panasonic (Haler, 1993, p. 14). Chequered Flag
Magazine’s reporting of these events paints a picture of a desperate situa-
tion, including a public spat between McGregor and AA Motorsport, a
subsidiary of the Automobile Association of South Africa, over unpaid
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 319

fees by MRE for services provided by AA Motorsport during the 1992

and 1993 South African Grands Prix. AA Motorsport claimed that an
amount of R732,000 was still owed by MRE for the 1993 race alone—a
figure which McGregor disputed. Subsequent to Key’s arrest McGregor
was also removed from various AA Motorsport Committees, and he also
claimed that his home phone had been bugged during this period (Haler,
1993, p. 14).
Negotiations over the potential purchase of Kyalami by the AA from
the circuit’s holding company, Kyalami International Circuit, continued
into May 1993. Of note were attempts by MRE to attract spectators back
to local races by slashing ticket prices for a race meeting held on 1 May
and improving the fan experience with measures such as providing public
access to the pits. According to McGregor a total of 27,000 spectators
attended the event which resulted in the organisers running out of tickets
and programmes. He also claimed that he had lined up a consortium of
funders to rival the AA’s bid for Kyalami, and that they were so confident
of acquiring the circuit that they “were already planning their turn of the
century party at Kyalami” (Chequered Flag, 1993b, 3). Indeed, a month
later it was reported that McGregor’s consortium, Catterick Investment
Holdings, had been successful in outbidding the AA with a total commit-
ted sum of R40 million (Chequered Flag, 1993c, p. 3). However, despite
claiming that it had the backing of unnamed Italian property developers,
Catterick’s funding failed to materialise when it came to concluding the
transaction, thereby plunging the future of Kyalami into uncertainty
again (Chequered Flag, 1993d, p. 11). To make matters worse, MRE
itself was placed into liquidation for failing to come up with R500,000 it
still owed to AA Motorsport, resulting in the cancellation of a Kyalami
race meeting scheduled for 10 July. MRE was reported to be R17 million
in debt at the time of this unravelling (The Citizen, 1993, p. 10).
The saga concluded within a month as the AA finally took ownership
of the circuit for a reported purchasing price of R31.2 million. This led
to a number of structural changes, including the formation of a new
company, AA Racing, with the mandate to run the track and its facilities.
However, at the time of this reshuffle the AA was quick to indicate that
high profile international events such as the South African Grand Prix
would only go ahead if they were going to be financially sustainable
320 G. Venter

(Chequered Flag, 1993e, p. 2). By August of 1993 the Grand Prix was
still provisionally scheduled as the opening round of the 1994 Formula
One World Championship, but this was going to require a great deal of
external financial backing in order to become a reality. Of particular sig-
nificance was the political juncture at which South Africa found itself
during late 1993. The country’s first ever democratic elections were
approaching in 1994 and the National Party, having ruled uninterrupted
since 1948, was losing its grip on power amidst an atmosphere of insta-
bility and uncertainty as the transition to black majority rule approached.
In the context of these developments the prospect of securing govern-
ment backing for the 1994 South African Grand Prix was highly unlikely.
In October the FIA issued a calendar for the 1994 Formula One season
with South Africa’s absence confirmed (Motor Sport, 1993, p. 4). Bernie
Ecclestone also indicated earlier that South Africa’s challenges with regard
to hosting the Grand Prix were down to finances, and that a return to the
calendar was going to prove difficult once the race fell away (Chequered
Flag, 1993f, 3). That assessment proved to be prophetic as South Africa
is yet to host another Formula One race after the 1993 event.
This might seem somewhat incongruous with the country’s regular
hosting of sport mega-events during the post-apartheid period, including
the rugby (1995), cricket (2003) and football (2010) World Cups.
Formula One racing lacks some of the crucial aspects present in the other
codes, however, most notably South African competitors at the highest
level. The sport has also been somewhat detached from the government’s
unification efforts predicated on sporting prestige and success in the
international arena. This is largely a structural issue since racing is a pri-
vate endeavour which sits outside the purview of the Department of
Sport and Recreation. As such racing organisers cannot rely on the same
sort of high level government investment available for an event such as
the FIFA World Cup, for example. Racing also lacks the widespread
appeal of the large team sports since it is a lot less accessible to the poorest
members of society. Compare this, for example, to the story of South
Africa’s 2019 Rugby World Cup-winning captain, Siya Kolisi, who rose
from poverty to the pinnacle of his chosen sport.
There are, however, renewed murmurings regarding a possible Formula
One return to Kyalami in the future. A bidding group is presently headed
 A Political and Economic Analysis of South Africa’s Historical… 321

up by Warren Scheckter, the nephew of South Africa’s 1979 Formula

One world champion, Jody, with the intent of getting South Africa back
onto the international calendar. Over the years there have been a number
of similar attempts without any success, although Formula One did con-
duct some pre-season testing in South Africa during the early 2000s
(Lupini, 2021). It remains to be seen whether this bid will prove to be
successful. Naturally an important emotive component to such an
attempt is the fact that the Formula One world championship does not
contain any races in Africa. Formula One CEO, Stefano Domenicali,
and seven-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton, have both expressed a
desire to change this state of affairs. However, throughout the history of
Formula One commercial considerations have invariably trumped senti-
ment, and this remains the most significant challenge to a potential South
African return.

Conclusion
When considering the historical arc of Formula One motor racing in
South Africa a contrasting picture emerges. On the one hand the sport
represented a close reflection of the economic development of the coun-
try more broadly, particularly in the post-World War II growth period.
On the other hand it constituted an outlier as far as its relationship to the
political realm was concerned. In this regard it experienced very little
disruption from the anti-apartheid movement, and was able to continue
uninterrupted throughout the sports boycott until economic forces even-
tually caught up to organisers in the mid-1980s. The sport’s political
insulation was partly due to its structure domestically—being a largely
white preserve and lacking direct organisational opponents within the
non-racial movement. In addition the organisational contours of the
world governing body, the FIA, and the role of key individuals such as
Bernie Ecclestone, ensured that South Africa faced far less pressure from
the international community than was the case with other high-profile
sport codes such as rugby, cricket or football. As such the hosting of
Grands Prix proved far less precarious from a political perspective, but
the situation was significantly different when it came to economics. In
322 G. Venter

this regard Formula One ventures had proven to be a costly exercise from
the very beginning, and government support was of critical importance
particularly during the rapid commercialisation of the sport during the
1970s. Ironically it was a political event—namely P.W. Botha’s Rubicon
speech in August 1985—that served as a catalyst for the final economic
collapse of the South African Grand Prix under apartheid. Formula One
racing made what proved to be a brief two-year return during the post-­
apartheid period but was ultimately subjected to many of the same chal-
lenges faced during the 1980s and was unable to regain a sustainable
foothold in the country. The sport’s historical relationship with South
Africa from 1934 to 1993 does, however, offer a useful vantage point
from which to study the country’s broader historical, political and eco-
nomic forces, particularly given its unique trajectory compared to those
of other sport codes.

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 On Recovering the Black Geographies
of Motorsports: The Counter-mobility
Work of NASCAR’s Wendell Scott
Derek H. Alderman and Joshua Inwood

A Reckoning in NASCAR
The summer of 2020 proved to be a consequential moment in confront-
ing the role of racism in American motorsports and specifically NASCAR
(National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing). Unlike other major
US professional sports, major league stock car racing has remained almost
all White. The NASCAR racetrack has a strong tradition of spectators
waving Confederate battle flags and other performances of Whiteness,
creating for many drivers and fans of colour an unwelcoming place more
reminiscent of early- or mid-twentieth-century America than the early

D. H. Alderman (*)
Department of Geography & Sustainability, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, TN, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Inwood
Department of Geography & Rock Ethics Institute, Pennsylvania State
University, State College, PA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 327
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_14
328 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

twenty-first century. Yet, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by

Minneapolis police in late May 2020 and Black Lives Matter protests
across many American cities, NASCAR decided to prohibit the flying of
the Confederate flag at its races and properties. This gesture seemingly
signalled an important turn in the sport’s recognition of its role in per-
petuating racist symbols and thereby racist values. At the very least,
NASCAR realized it could not afford to be seen as ignoring the wide-
spread social outcry over the killing of Floyd (Romo, 2020).
As a conservative and entrenched cultural institution, NASCAR was
predictably slow in rebuking a racist symbol, even after engaging in sig-
nificant pro-diversity programming over the past several years. In 2015,
rather than issuing an outright ban, racing officials had asked fans to
refrain from displaying the Confederate flag at races. While some com-
plied, others were defiant, and waved and defended the flag (Bernstein,
2015; The Guardian, 2015). Motivated as much by commercial sponsor-
ship and media market forces as moral responsibility, NASCAR occupied
an uneasy relationship with the history and symbols of White Supremacy.
NASCAR increasingly recognized the flag was a public relations barrier
to the goal of expanding audiences and corporate sponsors, but it also did
not wish to alienate or anger its traditional White southern fan base.
Helping to push this long overdue prohibition of the Confederate flag
was the demands of Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr., the only African
American driver currently in NASCAR’s top competitive series (Griffith,
2020). Wallace had gone much of his still young career experiencing rac-
ism in motorsports, but he had not previously pursued activism. Wallace
stated that he was highly affected by the killings of George Floyd, Ahmed
Arbery, Breona Taylor, and other African Americans as well as the public
protests against these senseless deaths (Cwik, 2020; Macur, 2020b). As a
statement of solidarity with these protests for racial equality and calls for
unity, Wallace’s car for the June 2020 Martinsville, Virginia, race promi-
nently displayed #BlackLivesMatter along with the words “Compassion,
Love and Understanding” and the image of interlocking hands—one
Black and one White—painted on the front of his car (McCarriston, 2020).
Reaction to Wallace’s stand against the Confederate flag and NASCAR’s
support of him exposed racial fracture lines in the sport, and in America
more generally. On the one hand, a large number of drivers, pit crew
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 329

members, and others stood in support of Wallace, whose activism was

also praised by fellow Black athletes in other sports (Long, 2020). One
important supporter has been NBA legend and Black entrepreneur
Michael Jordan, who in the months after the Confederate flag ban joined
forces with champion driver Denny Hamlin to start a new NASCAR rac-
ing team that debuted in 2021 with Wallace as the lead team driver. The
new team originated partly out of social activism, a desire on the part of
Jordan to address systemic racism and increase Black participation in a
sport he follows, an interesting shift given Jordan’s purported reluctance
to speak out against racism in the early phases of his career (McRae,
2017). The involvement of Jordan likely also resulted from his realization
of the lucrative brand and sponsorship rewards that await the remaking
of NASCAR’s racial image (Abrams, 2020).
At the same time, Wallace’s denouncement of the Confederate flag also
drew sharp criticism (Macur, 2020a; Spear, 2020). Some fans and mem-
bers of the wider public—including then US President Donald Trump—
castigated the Black driver and NASCAR for yielding to what they
considered pressure from the left (Quinn, 2020). Around the time of
Wallace’s opposition to displaying the Confederate flag, his racing team
would find a noose hanging in their assigned garage at the Talladega
Speedway in Alabama. Although the FBI concluded that the noose had
hung in the garage for some time and was not directed at Bubba Wallace
specifically, the investigation did nothing to answer the question of how
such an insensitive symbol of racialized lynching would ever be found in
a NASCAR racing facility to begin with (Martinelli, 2020).
Bubba Wallace’s antiracist protests and the still unreconciled place of
race within NASCAR culture prompt us to consider the larger history of
racism within auto racing. Although receiving limited attention from
scholars, motorsports are deeply involved in reinforcing racial inequality
while also being a site for resisting that inequality. Racing historian Daniel
Pierce (2004) noted some time ago the need to examine the important
history of African Americans in auto racing, which he described as largely
“hidden” and “untold.” As we argue in this chapter, understanding and
addressing the racialized aspects of NASCAR requires recovering its
“Black geographies” (Bledsoe et al., 2017; Hawthorne, 2019). Black
geographies clearly see that racism underpins the organization of
330 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

motorsports spaces and movements, but it simultaneously recognizes that

people of colour have resisted their exclusion from the racing industry by
developing antiracist places, practices, and knowledge systems.
In the over 15 years since Pierce’s (2004) call, scholarly examinations
of African American racers remain limited in number and under-­theorized
(Poehler, 2020). Racing literature lacks a framework that adequately situ-
ates the motorsports experience as part of rather than apart from the
broader operation of White supremacy and attendant Black geographies
of resistance. Our chapter offers such a needed historical and theoretical
treatment and explores, for illustrative purposes, an African American
figure noted for challenging the colour line in NASCAR—Wendell Scott
(1921–1990). In 1963, well over 50 years before the rise of Bubba
Wallace, Scott became the first of only two Black drivers to win a race
in NASCAR’s highest competitive division (Wallace would be the second
to win at the elite level, in October 2021). In his 13-year NASCAR career
Scott had 147 top ten finishes (with one victory) in 495 tries in the
Grand National Series (equivalent today to the top NASCAR Cup series).
More impressive he competed throughout the segregated South and
raced during the tense days of the Civil Rights Movement. He faced dis-
crimination, humiliation, and even violence on and off the track from
NASCAR officials, tracks owners, fellow drivers, sponsors, and specta-
tors. Scott did have some assistance from sympathetic Whites, but that
help was never a given, and many allies helped quietly or even anony-
mously without publicly challenging the racism in the industry. Wendell
Scott’s story reminds us that racism in NASCAR could not be reduced to
the stubborn presence of insensitive Confederate symbols, but it also
involved a set of wider practices of oppression with major consequences
on the self-determination, livelihood, and wellbeing of African Americans
within the NASCAR universe. “For Wendell Scott, every race was a
struggle and every struggle was about race” (Karpf, 2008, np), and these
struggles took major tolls on his health and finances.
Compared to other historic African American racers, Wendell Scott’s
story is well known. Multiple halls of fame have inducted him to their
ranks, including the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2015. Hollywood loosely
based a 1977 feature film (Greased Lightning) on Scott’s life. Later, docu-
mentarians (Holley & Karpf, 2011) and biographers (Donovan, 2008)
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 331

would treat him and his struggles more deeply. In this same vein, we offer
a fresh re-reading of Wendell Scott’s career. We situate Scott within a
wider understanding of African American antiracist responses to the
racialization of motorsports and focus on the Black geographies of mobil-
ity he created in stock car racing. Through the course of his career, he
actively redefined the conditions under which he and his cars could move
freely and competitively within and against a White supremacism in
NASCAR. Unlike Bubba Wallace’s recent stand against racial inequality,
Scott did not easily fit within conventional definitions of protest and
activism. Rather, Scott, like many Black drivers before and since, chal-
lenged discrimination in auto sports by engaging in “counter-mobility
work” (Alderman & Inwood, 2016), such that the very work of driving
became part of his political practice. Drawing heavily from Scott’s biog-
raphy (Donovan, 2008), our chapter highlights the bodily, social, and
technological practices he employed to maintain if not enhance his
mobility around tracks and to and from races—thus ensuring his surviv-
ability, material reproduction, right to belong in NASCAR. Before delv-
ing into Scott’s biography and racing career, we offer some important
background discussion on the study of race, mobility, and social justice in
and through motorsports from the perspective of racial spatiality and
specifically Black geographies.

The Racialization of Racing

Sports cultures, as systems of power relations, are involved in the con-
struction of social identities, both dominant and marginalized, and are
thus complicit in the creation of racial inequalities (Shobe, 2008). In
exploring how sporting practices become constructed around racial hier-
archies, Harrison (2013) introduced the concept of “racial spatiality,” a
term meant to draw attention to the key roles that place, space, and geo-
graphical movement play in racism. Racial spatiality captures how the
everyday processes of racism work to secure and legitimize sports-related
spaces as White and thus restrict and discourage participation and repre-
sentation from people of colour and other minoritized communities.
Inspired by Harrison’s work, Jansson and Koch (2017) argue that sports
332 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

spaces and spatial practices are imbricated in the uneven processes and
politics of exclusion and belonging along a number of different axes of
difference and identity, such as nationality, class, gender, and race. They
cite the cogent remarks of Coleman (2006, 98), who calls for scholars to
“elucidate how sporting arenas and playing fields [and arguably also race-
tracks] serve as sites where racialized thinking is manifested, performed,
and perpetuated – and [most importantly in the context of Black geogra-
phies] resisted.” The issue of resistance is important here because, as
Schein (2006) asserts, the process of racialization is never complete or
uncontested. Indeed, despite the long and continuing story of racial dis-
crimination within sports, there are noted historical and growing con-
temporary examples of African American athletes embracing social justice
and challenging racial spatiality in a variety of ways (Cooper et al., 2019).
The scholarly neglect of race and racism in motorsports exists despite
the fact that the racetrack, across many different arms of motorsports, is
a highly racialized space. As late as June 2020, African American racecar
driver and journalist Rob Holland (2020) could identify only a small
handful of Black drivers currently competing at highest levels of global
motorsports, noting in particular the scarcity of African American com-
petitors. British racer Lewis Hamilton has won multiple championships
in Formula One, but he is the first and, to date, only Black driver within
that segment of motorsports. Hamilton has been a vocal critic of the
weak stand of F1 on fighting racism, and he has established a commission
to improve the diversity in grand prix racing (Associated Press, 2020;
Smith, 2020). The hegemony of Whiteness and the absence of Black
bodies on racetracks are especially evident in NASCAR. Since the found-
ing of the Association in 1948, only eight African Americans have raced
a car in its elite series, with only two racing for extended periods of
time—Wendell Scott and Bubba Wallace. Aside from Wallace, the only
other African American drivers actively competing in NASCAR are Rajah
Caruth, Jesse Iwuji, Blake Lothian, and Armani Williams—all driv-
ing in lower-tier national racing divisions.
Stock car racing’s lack of diversity is not incidental but foundational to
its historical development. The sport was “developed primarily by and for
White, working-class men” of the southeastern United States and during
a time of conservative, if not unreconstructed, views on race and civil
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 333

rights (Pierce, 2010, 9). NASCAR’s founder, Bill France Sr., and other
association executives openly believed that competitive Black drivers were
bad for business. During NASCAR’s first decades of expansion in the
1950s and 1960s, the organization’s leaders courted the support of segre-
gationist politicians such as Alabama’s George Wallace and South
Carolina’s Strom Thurmond and their White voting constituencies to
build the storied speedways of Talladega and Darlington, respectively
(Donovan, 2008; Goodman, 2020). Illustrating the close ties linking
NASCAR with right-wing US politics, France would later serve as the
Florida campaign manager for George Wallace’s failed presidential bid in
1972 (Pierce, 2010). Furthermore, as Kusz (2007) and Newman and
Giardina (2008) have discussed, NASCAR became an effective vehicle of
White cultural nationalism and a neo-conservative racial politics: a con-
nection amplified during the Presidency of Donald Trump (NASCAR
CEO Brain France endorsed Trump for president in 2016).
Notwithstanding NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity programme, created in
2004 to train female and minority drivers, Michael Jordan’s ownership of
a racing team, and the activism of Bubba Wallace, the racing association
continues to resemble what critical sports scholar Kyle Kusz (2007) noted
over 15 years ago. He argued that NASCAR projects “a racially exclusive
image of America” that reproduces White privilege and power (Kusz,
2007, 81).
Well before the formation of NASCAR in 1948 and throughout much
of the first half of the twentieth century, the AAA (American Automobile
Association), then the major governing body for much of US motors-
ports, refused to allow Blacks to compete in its racing events. This pushed
early African American drivers such as the noted Dewey Gatson to com-
pete against White drivers in outlaw or unsanctioned races under the
pseudonym Rajo Jack DeSoto (Poehler, 2020). Joseph “Joie” Ray Jr., an
open-wheel and stock car driver from Louisville, Kentucky, was the first
African American licensed by the AAA in 1947, just few days before
Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in professional baseball. But
unlike what we saw in baseball, Ray was not followed by a wave of Black
drivers desegregating US motorsports (Anonymous, 2017). Indeed, it
would not be until 1991 that the first African American, Willy Ribbs,
would qualify for the Indy 500. The only other Black driver to run at the
334 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

Indy 500 was George Mack, finishing 17th in 2002. Situated within a
Midwest that had become the epicentre of the early twentieth-century
rebirth of the KKK, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s history was
rooted in enforcing a Jim Crow racial spatiality that segregated spectators
and disallowed people of colour from not just driving but also serving as
mechanics or on pit crews at tracks (Gould, 2002). In the wake of Black
Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, Ribbs lamented the limited
progress made in the push for social justice since his historic run and
called for the IndyCar series to pursue greater diversity in drivers and fans
along with an “African-American presence among mechanics and engi-
neers” (quoted in Brown, 2020, np).
As noted before, our chapter analyses NASCAR and motorsports from
a Black geographies approach (Bledsoe et al., 2017; Hawthorne, 2019;
McKittrick & Woods, 2007), which centres the situated knowledge, con-
tributions, and struggles of Black communities. Such a perspective names
and analyses the harmful effects of racial exclusion, but it does not do so
at the sacrifice of acknowledging the dignity, resilience, and resistant
agency of people of colour in living with and against White supremacy.
Bonds and Inwood (2021) warn against reducing White supremacy sim-
ply to racial animus or the actions and worldviews of far-right extremists
and hate groups. Rather, it is a more fundamental relation of power and
system of racialized privilege embedded in and reproduced through many
aspects and spaces of everyday life (including the racetrack) that unjustly
structure the life chances and material wellbeing of Black communities.
Motorsports are filled with important political moments in which African
Americans sought to make a place for themselves within a White-­
dominated racing industry historically opposed to their right to partici-
pate and succeed. In this respect, the careers of Bubba Wallace, Wendell
Scott, Willy Ribbs, and others are part of a broader narrative of African
Americans challenging racism in motorsports, recognizing that this resis-
tance comes in many forms and cannot be confined to overt protests
experienced in 2020.
We encourage readers to appreciate that antiracist activism includes
the daily and seemingly common sense practices that African American
racers and others carried out in surviving, negotiating, and subverting the
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 335

racialized spatiality of US auto sports. It is important to pay attention to

how Black drivers have historically responded to being excluded from
mainstream racing by creating their own Black geographies—those places
of competition, promotional strategies, communities of support, knowl-
edge flows, and mechanical innovations that destabilized racist ideas that
being a major league racer was a livelihood and cultural identity reserved
exclusively for Whites. This history includes, among many chapters, the
creation in the 1920s of the Colored Speedway Association, a racing cir-
cuit where the best Black drivers and mechanics competed in several
Midwestern cities. The Gold & Glory Sweepstakes was its marquee race,
held at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds and drawing tens of thousands
of fans of colour along with marches and threats of violence from White
supremacists. One of the Association’s chief racing stars was four time
Gold & Glory winner Charlie Wiggins, known for his great skill under
the hood as well as on the track and who was not allowed by the AAA to
run in the White-only Indianapolis 500 (Gould, 2002).
Also against the racial spatiality imposed by the AAA, the late 1940s
saw the formation of the Atlanta Stock Car Club (ASCC) a league of
Black drivers hosting car races on their home track in Lithonia, Georgia,
and across the Southeast. ASCC racers included many talented but now
largely unknown racers such as George and Ben Muckle, Richard “Red”
Kines, Arthur “The Decatur Express” Avery, James “Suicide” Lacey, and
Charlie Scott (no relation to Wendell Scott). Charlie later would be the
first African American to compete in NASCAR’s top division in 1956,
although for only one race (Minter, 2014). African American racing pio-
neer Leonard Miller famously founded a number of racing teams and
associations. In 1972, he was the first Black owner to have a car qualify
for the Indy 500, and in 2005, Miller and his son would become the first
African American owned team to win a NASCAR track championship
(at the regional Late Model Stock Car Division). In 1973, Leonard Miller
founded the Black American Racers Association. While short-lived (five
years), the organization grew to 5000 members and sought to racially
diversify spectatorship, develop programmes for developing Black driv-
ing talent, reduce sponsorship inequities facing African Americans, and
increase the American public’s recognition of the forgotten achievements
of Blacks in motorsports (Miller & Simon, 2010).
336 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

Motorsports as Mobility Politics

As we consider how best to remember and recover the Black Geographies
of motorsports, it is not enough simply to record and narrate their histo-
ries. Also important is developing a framework for interpreting and cast-
ing significance on the practices of African American drivers and how
their actions and movements on and off the track constituted a form of
antiracism. We suggest that racism within NASCAR is rooted within a
racialized mobility politics which restricted the presence and movement
of African Americans on racetracks as well as across the wider US land-
scape. Mobility as we use it here refers to geographic mobility, which is
when physical movement becomes invested with social meaning (positive
or negative) and embedded within structures of power, including White
supremacy (Cresswell, 2006). The extent to which one can move (and
where and how one gets there) both inside and outside the context of
motorsports is not a socially neutral matter, but historically shaped by
one’s place within a series of intersecting hierarchies based on race,
nationality, gender, and other axes of identity (Itaoui et al., 2021;
Kochanek et al., 2021). Importantly, the production of motorsports as a
place of and for Whites is made possible, in part, because of the racializa-
tion of movement. This racialization of mobility relies upon formal and
informal practices enforcing the idea that Whites have some greater right
and ability than Blacks to move freely around the sport and its spaces and
thus should benefit more from the sport’s resources and opportunities.
Undergirding our argument is that auto racing demonstrates the high
bodily and social stakes of race and mobility. Being allowed to gain access
to and move through and around the racetrack is not simply about engag-
ing in a pastime; rather, restricting and controlling of the movements of
Black drivers directly impact their material reproduction, safety, and the
political negotiation of their lives and futures. In sum, the racetrack is
made a racialized place by virtue of the production of Black (im)mobility,
recognizing that mobility is a civil right, and the right to move is “funda-
mentally intertwined with the construction of racial identities” (Hague,
2010, 331).
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 337

Motorsports involves multiple mobilities on the part of many parties,

from spectators, sponsors, and broadcast crews to pit crews, mechanics,
and engineers and participating drivers. For the racecar driver, the focus
of our discussion here, their mobilities include the journey to and from
different racetracks over a season along with what the competitive move-
ments that occur on the track itself. Moreover, there are the uneven spa-
tial flows of sponsorship money, advanced car technology, labour, and
publicity to drivers and their teams, which then shape their competitive
mobility and sustainability in the sport. Engaging in these mobilities is
daunting for any driver but especially so for drivers of colour who histori-
cally were not even allowed to compete against White drivers; and when
allowed to race, their movements faced considerable social and economic
obstacles, on and off the track, as they challenged racist attitudes, prac-
tices, and structures. While the mobilities in NASCAR and other motor-
sports may seem very different from people’s ordinary modes of travel
and transportation, and they certainly are in some important ways, they
are actually an extension of a wider history and geography of racialized
movement and antiracist mobility resistance in America.
The unfettered movement of White America has long relied upon,
whether consciously recognized or not, on the immobilization of Black
communities and tight control over their right to move. This process
began with enslavement and continued through the vagrancy laws and
lynching of the Jim Crow era and remains evident today in patterns of
mass incarceration. As Lipsitz (2011, 66) aptly says, “The strong desire to
move freely across space formed an important part of the Black spatial
imaginary, but it has rarely been easy to translate those hopes of moving
freely with the ability to actually do so for African Americans.” Important
to discussions of racial inequality in motorsports is a recognition that the
automobile has been a key political technology in the White-controlled
mobility regime. This mobility regime included the razing of Black neigh-
bourhoods in the mid-twentieth century because of US federal highway
development, cuts in public transit to subsidize car travel and White sub-
urbanization, and the array of hostilities awaiting early Black motorists
on the road and those still faced today by drivers racially profiled by
police (Alderman et al., 2019; Alderman & Inwood, 2016). NASCAR
may seem to some to be a world away from these everyday political
338 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

struggles over transportation, but stock car racing has been key to valoriz-
ing the culture and economy of American automobility. That automobil-
ity, while often framed as a democracy open to anyone with a car, actually
reproduces if not deepens hierarchies of race, class, and power within the
United States (Gilroy, 2001; Seiler, 2008). NASCAR is embedded within
rather than immune from these inequalities.
A Black geographies perspective recognizes that African American
communities are engaged in complex relationships with oppression and
they have a capacity to transform their geographic immobility (or con-
trolled mobility) into movement that subverts the logics and effects of
racism. We argue for conceptualizing these resistant movements in
motorsports and in the larger arena of social life as “counter-mobility
work” (Alderman & Inwood, 2016). “Counter-mobility work captures
the bodily, technological, social, and…emotional practices that not only
facilitated physical movement [by Black drivers], but which also consti-
tuted the racialized labor and resourcefulness of resisting and surviving
White supremacy” (Alderman et al., 2019, 8). Seeing Black freedom
struggles as counter-mobility work gives direct credit to those performing
this labour as well as the broad array of creative and savvy practices
required to move in transgressive and resistant ways.
The story of Wendell Scott and so many other Black racecar drivers is
part of a broader narrative of African Americans fashioning resistant
mobilities as part of their fight for self-determination. There are numer-
ous instances of the Black fight to move and belong on one’s own terms—
from escaping the bonds of slavery to the Great Migration out of the
Southeast, from the freedom rides and stall-ins of the Civil Rights
Movement to the development of alternative travel tools, destinations,
and networks (Alderman et al., 2019; Dillette, 2021; Inwood, 2014).
Within this framework of antiracist mobility making, the automobile
and hence auto-racing undergoes an important re-interpretation. At the
same time as the automobile sector has participated in perpetuating in
various forms racial oppression, Black communities have developed posi-
tive identifications with the car, seeing it as a symbol of freedom and
uplift, while also engaging in driving as a creative practice of resilience
and resistance against inequality. Indeed, African American motorists
who were on the road during the same era as Wendell Scott (1940s to
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 339

1970s) deployed a range of driving strategies to circumvent and challenge

institutionalized discrimination and segregation while travelling by car,
including the use segregation era travel guides such as the Green Book to
locate safe accommodations. Armed with these guides, Black motorists
used their cars and driving to find and participate in the major Black
urban cultural and political spaces of the day (Harlem, Atlanta’s Sweet
Auburn Avenue, Chattanooga’s 9th Street), and in doing so, challenge
and gain some refuge from the control of White supremacy. These same
spaces proved to be important incubators for formal political protest dur-
ing the Civil Rights Movement since they were away from the prying eyes
and ears of the White establishment. Because these gathering spaces were
at the crossroads of so much car travel, they helped establish critical lines
of communication and solidarity across Black communities (Alderman
et al., 2019; Bottone, 2020). Turning from the generic Black automobile
user, in the remainder of the chapter, we will focus on the specific prac-
tices and tactics deployed by Wendell Scott (and conceivably many other
semi-professional/professional Black racers) in appropriating and rework-
ing the act of NASAR driving as an antiracist counter-mobility practice.

“ The only way I can help…is to just be a…

good race driver”
A brief review of Wendell Scott’s biography within NASCAR provides
insight into the historical construction of a White racial spatiality within
motorsports, the kinds of obstacles he faced, and the resistant nature of
his presence and movement in racing. Driving first in competitive cir-
cuits in his local Danville, Virginia, Scott obtained a NASCAR racing
licence and broke the colour barrier in 1953 with no fanfare and with no
significant White help. A notable exception was regional official, Mike
Poston, who granted him a NASCAR licence—much to the irritation of
NASCAR President Bill France, Sr., and other executives. Scott won
numerous minor league NASCAR races and two Virginia state champi-
onships before joining its elite Grand National Series in 1961. During
Scott’s racing career, he was never able to secure corporate sponsorship,
leaving him to compete using pit crews of family and friends, scavenging
340 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

for car parts, and mortgaging his home to race. NASCAR officials,
including France, had promised help, but did little to assist with badly
needed sponsorship or to control racial discrimination at tracks
(Donovan, 2008).
Yet, NASCAR’s treatment of Wendell Scott was not just a matter of
inaction or neglect; it often took the form of active hostility as it enforced
stock car racing’s White racial spatiality. When the Black driver made his
first top series debut in Spartanburg, South Carolina, race officials never
mentioned him in pre-race publicity and simply introduced him on race
day as W.D. Scott to conceal his identity from potentially angered White
stock car fans who would have known a “Wendell Scott.” Racing officials
unfairly disqualified Scott at pre-race inspections, abused him verbally,
denied him compensation and a rookie of the year award, and banned
him outright from certain tracks. Bob Colvin, president of the Darlington
Raceway and an unapologetic segregationist, blocked Scott from racing
on his South Carolina track until 1965, when forced by the passage of the
Civil Rights Act. Colvin promoted Darlington’s Southern 500 as a “defi-
ant tribute to the Old South,” and he used the Confederate flag, instead
of a green flag, to start its races. Colvin allegedly said that if a Black man
ever won the Southern 500, the driver would “never make it to victory
lane” (Donovan, 2008, 100).
If there were one encounter with racism that left the most lasting and
bitter impression upon Wendell Scott, it was his lone Grand National
Series victory in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1963, just a few months after the
March on Washington, which saw 250,000 people gather in front of the
Lincoln Memorial to demand economic and political equality for Black
America. Scott beat his nearest competitor, Buck Baker, by two laps, but
track officials initially declared Baker the winner and he received the tro-
phy and the crowd’s adulation. Officials eventually recognized Scott as
the winner two hours after the end of the race—long after race fans had
left and Baker’s departure with the trophy. Scott received the first-place
money but a shoddy, wooden trophy with little if any decoration or
inscription. While some characterize the sleight as simply the result of a
lap counting error (Coble, 2010), others suggest that race promoters
delayed the victory because of apprehension about the reaction of specta-
tors to learning of Scott’s win and watching him kiss the White beauty
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 341

queen in the victory circle, a tradition at NASCAR races (Karpf, 2008).

It would take 20 years after Scott’s death and 47 years after the Jacksonville
race before NASCAR would award a suitable trophy to his family.
Even in the face of rampant racism and other obstacles, Wendell Scott
proved to be tough competition and regularly finished the racing seasons
in the latter half of the 1960s among the top ten in the point standings.
Yet, with the 1970s, the African American driver experienced a down-
turn. His relationship with NASCAR management grew even tenser in
the wake of his decision to participate in a boycott of the inaugural race
of the new Talladega, Alabama, Speedway because of concerns over unsafe
driving conditions. Talladega’s construction ushered in a change from the
sport’s dirt tracks to paved speedways, which often benefited the kind of
highly engineered cars that Scott could not afford. In the push to have a
more competitive car, Scott went into deep debt to purchase a Mercury
with a state-of-the-art engine. He drove that Mercury for the first and last
time at a 1973 race at Talladega, completely wrecking the vehicle, causing
him serious injuries, and forcing him into retirement that same year
(Donovan, 2008).
As we seek to understand the kind of antiracist resistance that Wendell
Scott deployed, it is important to note that he would have been the first
to admit that he did not identify himself as a civil rights activist. He was
reluctant to engage in formal political protest and seldom, if ever, brought
up civil rights with other drivers or went public about racism in motors-
ports—believing that it would lead to his ban from NASCAR. The fol-
lowing comment by Scott to a reporter illustrates the extent to which he
distanced himself, at least publicly, from the Movement: “The only way I
can help these [civil] rights people and their cause is to just be a…good
race driver” (Donovan, 2008, 121, emphasis added). Scott’s actions and
words might not fall within conventional understandings of activism, but
for us they prompt a consideration of the full range of practices that count
for resistance, which include the protests of Bubba Wallace but also
include Wendell Scott’s daily, Black working-class struggle for survivabil-
ity and material reproduction as much as confrontation. As the lone
African American driver operating in a region, time, and sport all of which
were hostile to his presence and movements, Scott fashioned a savvy mix
of resistance and accommodation, to create a place within a racialized
342 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

spatiality even as he tried to defy it. According to Litwack (1998), for

African Americans in the Jim Crow South, accommodation and survival
were political strategies for navigating racism rather than simply the
acceptance of oppression, a way of resisting without appearing to do so.
We take to heart Wendell Scott’s suggestion that he could help civil
rights through his driving. While some critics might dismiss the com-
ment as Scott merely rationalizing his non-involvement in the Civil
Rights Movement, we suggest that he, perhaps intuitively, understood
the political value of driving a racecar. His very presence and mobility on
tracks over several years exposed the racialized dimensions of NASCAR,
calling into question the taken-for-granted Whiteness of the sport and
representing, in his own way, an articulation of the right of African
Americans to bodily occupy, move around, and claim places traditionally
devoted to their exclusion and disenfranchisement. But Scott did not
exercise this resistance by simply showing up at the track; rather, he did
so by “exert[ing] agency over his own geographic mobility and how he
used his movement to counter and negotiate the racist ways in which the
race track was constructed and realized as a White place” (Alderman &
Inwood, 2016, 605). In the following sections, we point to some of the
bodily, social, and technological work that Scott deployed to survive and
subvert racism and hence carve a Black geography within NASCAR. This
work seems to be a matter of mere practicality, but it was always situated
within an antiracism politics of survivability and the struggle to make a
Black counter-mobility possible and, at times, competitive within a
White-controlled motorsports composed of faster, technologically
advanced racecars, and well-heeled teams.

Scott’s Counter-mobility Work

Bodily Practices

Producing a Black counter-mobility within NASCAR required a range of

bodily practices performed by Wendell Scott in navigating the track, con-
trolling his racecar, and negotiating his own body and the bodies of peo-
ple around him. An important facet of Scott’s bodily interaction with the
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 343

automobile and the track was his power slide technique, which he used
effectively on dirt tracks. Throughout much of Scott’s career, NASCAR
ran races on dirt tracks. In executing the power slide, he would make
violent jerks with the steering wheel to make tight, difficult turns on the
track, thus allowing him to out manoeuvre and be more agile than the
quicker cars driven by White competitors. While other drivers employed
a power slide, it played an especially important role in Scott’s mobility
work since his marginalized position within stock car racing necessitated
strategies that would in effect level the playing field between unevenly
equipped and financed cars. Scott’s driving required reflexes, strength,
and endurance—even as he suffered from stress-induced debilitating,
stomach ulcers. This along with a tactile understanding of how cars
behaved on dirt tracks was important in helping him, as a Black driver,
remain resilient and relevant in a sport largely opposed to his existence
(Donovan, 2008).
The bodily strategies required for Wendell Scott to keep moving and
racing within NASCAR were not restricted to the track. He recognized
early in his career that he could not afford to engage in bodily confronta-
tion with angry competitors or fans. Those kinds of confrontations would
compromise Scott’s credibility in the eyes of the public, and racing offi-
cials could use the spectre of White mob violence to justify his exclusion
from the sport and legitimize major league stock racing remaining all
White. Scott had a uniquely Black knowledge of the social and political
realities of White supremacy in the South and how his own bodily actions
and Black subjectivity would be interpreted within this racialized hierar-
chy. When confrontation was necessary, two of Scott’s White friends,
Buck Drummond and Earl Brooks, would protect him from fights and
engage in violence on his behalf. Drummond and Brooks speak to the
strategic coalitions Scott established in order to ensure his spatial mobil-
ity, which also demonstrated the importance of White allies to civil rights
and how White supremacy—even in NASCAR—was never complete or
without fractures, which Scott exposed (Chappell, 1996).
On some occasions, Scott exploited the perceived racial ambiguity of
his own bodily characteristics—specifically his lighter skin—to navigate
and even circumvent the effects of White supremacy, although he never
denied that he was an African American to a racing official or track owner.
344 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

In doing so, he used the controversial practice of “passing” to gain

resources necessary for him to keep moving amid harsh conditions.
Biographer Donovan (2008) recounted a situation in which Scott was in
desperate need of repairs when travelling home from a race. Like many
Black motorists at the time, he found service stations only willing to serve
Whites and knew that the longer he remained on the road and not mov-
ing, the more vulnerable that he and his family and friends were to harass-
ment or even violence. Covering his curly hair under a cap and posing as
the White boss of a Black race crew, he gained access to a garage and
made it home safely. To convince the garage owner of his supposed iden-
tity, Scott not only looked the part but also sounded like a White suprem-
acist. In what Scott later described as heartbreaking, he referred to his
crew, included his own sons, using the n-word, illustrating “how many
African Americans in the U.S. South were often placed in a position of
having to engage in practices that compromised their racialized position
in society” in order to survive White supremacy. Yet, in manipulating
how his body and identity were interpreted publicly, Scott “creatively
turned Jim Crow’s racial politics of the body against itself while also
unmasking the illegitimacy of Whiteness as an objective racial identity
and thus exposing it as a socially constructed point of superiority and
privilege” (Alderman & Inwood, 2016, 606).

Technological Practices

Also important to Scott’s creation of a resilient Black counter-mobility in

NASCAR was the technological work he performed before and during
the race. When hostile pre-race inspection invariably tried to disqualify
him, Scott quickly rebuilt engines and made other repairs wherever he
could find space, sometimes in alleys and parking lots. The owner of a
garage in his hometown of Danville, Scott was known as an innovative,
self-taught mechanic, and his contemporaries remember instances in
which he would jump out of his car at pit stops during the middle of a
race and perform repairs in order to keep the racecar moving (Donovan,
2008). However, these mechanical feats were never just about staying on
the track. They were also about how remaining competitive and mobile
directly impacted the politics of Scott’s own material reproduction in a
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 345

sport providing little support beyond receiving used parts from sympa-
thetic drivers and crew chiefs or Scott and his sons’ foraging for equip-
ment, tyres, and food abandoned by teams after races. When once asked
by a reporter why he had worked so hard to mend a car in the middle of
a race, Scott responded: “One more position [at the finish line] might be
the difference next week in whether I sleep in a motel or in my truck”
(quoted in DanvilleVAGov, 2015, np). Importantly, given the inhospital-
ity, police harassment, and possibly even violence awaiting Black motor-
ists on Jim Crow highways during Scott’s heyday, finishing races higher
in the order (and thus earning money to stay in a hotel) directly affected
his safety and wellbeing as he moved from race to race and challenged the
White racial spatiality of motorsports.
It is common for any racer to be in tune with their car, and this was
especially the case in early stock car racing when so many drivers doubled
as mechanics, but Wendell Scott proved to be especially in touch with his
racecars and produced an alternative knowledge of his cars without the
aid of expensive, sophisticated equipment. Friends recounted to his biog-
rapher (Donovan, 2008) that Scott would taste hot motor oil and test
spark plugs by hand to detect mechanical problems on a track.
Improvisation was key to his antiracist survival and counter-mobility, as
illustrated so well in the sole Jacksonville win in 1963. The severe bumps
and ruts on the Florida track caused many top racers to bounce, break
axles and wheels, and lose traction. In a desperate but fortuitous attempt
to improve his car’s suspension, Scott removed a shock absorber at each
corner of the automobile. The decision allowed him to run faster and
outmanoeuvre factory-backed racecars driven by White competitors. In
doing so, he was transforming the track from a place that was largely
about money and sheer horsepower into a different kind of mobility
space in which a Black man with limited means and mechanical prowess
and handling skills could belong, matter, and perhaps even win. Squeezing
performance and power from inferior cars and making difficult decisions
about when and how much to push his car were key to Scott’s counter-­
mobility work and inseparable from the economic inequalities he faced as
lone, African American driver refused sponsorship. Because of this racial-
ized necessity, he stressed finishing in the top ten over racing “full out” for
a win and hence risking the expense of a blown engine or wrecked car.
346 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

Scott’s son, Wendell, Jr., captures this resistant survivability and how it
informed his father’s approach to racing: “Top ten meant the light bill got
paid or my third or fourth sister was going to get new shoes. That’s the
Wendell Scott story” (interviewed in Karpf, 2008). For Scott to be so
consistently competitive in so many races in his career is indeed remark-
able when one considers that on average sponsored cars ran 10–15 miles
per hour faster than his racecars (Donovan, 2008).

Social Practices

While Scott’s counter-mobility depended upon certain bodily and tech-

nological work, it was also decidedly social in nature, meaning that the
driver had to manage the tense social relations that existed on and around
the track as a Black driver crossed a highly protected colour line. Scott
deployed different strategies in responding to racism in NASCAR and to
White opponents; his life experience in the Jim Crow South taught him
that certain oppositional actions were possible (and some were not) given
the specific racial order of stock car racing. To maintain his counter-­
mobility and antiracism within NASCAR, Scott deployed a creative mix-
ture of self-defence and tactical avoidance that reminds us that resistance
and accommodation are engaged in a dialectical relationship rather than
being oppositional binaries.
While Scott recognized the dangers to himself and his position in a
White supremacist sport if he engaged in violence, there were instances
in which he engaged in self-defence as part of his resistant survivability.
As we have noted previously in this chapter, Black motorists on the road
during segregation often met with White intimidation and threats of
bodily harm. Consequently, Scott never travelled to races alone, and he
drove to tracks with a pistol under his seat, not an uncommon practice
among African American travellers at the time. Scott tended to avoid
overt confrontations with Whites, but he was adamant about defending
his family when they faced racialized violence at a track. On two occa-
sions in the 1965 season, Scott confronted groups of White men who
threatened his teenage sons: angry spectators at one North Carolina track
threatened to castrate them. Scott responded to both tense scenes by
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 347

promising without hesitation to kill the offenders, which remarkably

worked to defuse the situation (Donovan, 2008). The efficacy of Scott’s
strategy of self-defence was also evident when dealing with fellow driver
Jack Smith, who was strongly opposed to Black participation in NASCAR:

In the 1962 season, Smith repeatedly wrecked, spun out, and crowded
Scott on the track. Finally, at raceway in Valdosta, Georgia, Scott pointed
a loaded gun at Smith while they were running pace laps on the track.
Later, in Hickory, North Carolina, Scott threatened to kill Smith if he ever
intentionally hit his car again. No more trouble was had from Smith.
(Alderman & Inwood, 2016, 607)

Important to maintaining Scott’s mobility around the racetrack was an

understanding of how to navigate the wider landscape of American rac-
ism. He knew fully well that his ability to drive and compete in NASCAR
was deeply embedded in the social practices of racial oppression and anti-
racism, and he at times called upon a long tradition of Black self-defence
that is sometimes forgotten in popularized narrations of civil rights resis-
tance. Just as the Black driver was calculating about how far he could
push his racecar in terms of mechanical performance in order to remain
resilient and mobile over the long haul, he also had a keen awareness of
how far he could push socially and physically against White supremacy.
Wendell Scott most often approached stressed social relations with fel-
low drivers by employing a strategy of tactical avoidance. The term “tacti-
cal avoidance” is meant to recognize that non-confrontation, or even
accommodation, is not necessarily the same as accepting racism. This
non-confrontation, while not inherently oppositional, has the potential
to become a form of resistance when used strategically. Knowing that
NASCAR would relish any chance to ban Scott from the Grand National
Series and end his racing career, Scott knew that the self-defence shown
against Jack Smith could not be a regular occurrence. He most often
focused on striking a delicate balance between driving hard and moving
against efforts to sideline him with practising non-aggression on the
track. Scott would not hesitate to outdrive and beat White drivers, often
to their angry embarrassment, but he would refuse to wreck them and
would not retaliate against a White driver who had wrecked him. By
348 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

making a place on the track for tactical avoidance, Scott would avoid
being penalized or disenfranchised by racing officials, while also building
sympathy and support among some White fans and drivers witnessing
Scott’s mistreatment in NASCAR. “In effect, Scott socially fashioned his
brand of racing in non-violent ways, which made it possible to create a
counter-mobility that exposed the brutality and immorality of racism,
the potential fissures in the hegemony of White supremacy, as well as
ensuring his own physical and survival on the track” (Alderman &
Inwood, 2016, 607).
Unfortunately, although Scott believed that tactical avoidance was
necessary for keeping him on the track and moving against White
supremacy, the approach may have actually worked against his limited
opportunities for sponsorship. Early in Scott’s NASCAR career, before
reaching the top racing series, he established a relationship with a White
trucking executive named Monroe Shook with the hopes it would lead to
sponsorship in the top Grand National circuit. But before that invest-
ment could happen, Scott needed to show a victory at Virginia’s South
Boston Speedway. At the South Boston race, Scott was running a close
second to White race leader, Gip Gibson. However, when Scott com-
peted, he was not only racing against fellow drivers and teams but also
responding to the White public reaction that his movements at the track
may evoke—illustrating the added labour of being in and moving through
racialized places that are fundamentally opposed to one’s existence.
Anxious about race fans at the Virginia track getting ugly and turning on
him, something he had experienced earlier at other tracks, Scott refused
to abandon his established practice of avoiding deliberate contact and
nudge Gibson’s car out of the way, even though such contact was com-
mon among White drivers. Because Scott was not willing to overtake his
opponent in this manner, he finished the race in second place
(Donovan, 2008).
According to Scott’s biographer, “The incident [at South Boston] cost
Scott the confidence of Monroe Shook,” who angrily removed any pos-
sibility that he would sponsor him in Grand National car (Donovan,
2008, 83). This event is indicative of what Du Bois ([1903] 1994) described
as the “double consciousness” that Scott and other African Americans live
with and socially negotiate as they look at themselves and make life
 On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports… 349

decisions through the eyes of others, namely a White-dominated society.

Maurice Shook and arguably other sponsors, although it is unclear how
many would have really given Scott a chance in 1950s and 1960s,
expected him to follow the same aggressive mobility practices as White
drivers. But Scott saw himself in a conundrum, a catch-22: he was not a
White competitor and driving as if he were White would most assuredly
cause a public backlash and further increase his vulnerability to being
wrecked and make him unable to compete for top finishes and financially
backing. In this complex racialized world of motorsports, creating an
alternative Black geography required Scott to make social manoeuvres
that while facilitating his immediate survivability and freedom of move-
ment may have compromised his long-term competitiveness and mobil-
ity in the sport. The power of White supremacy is not just in how it
directly controls or oppresses people of colour, but also in how it frames
or places limits on what may appear as geographically and socially possi-
ble within a specific racial order. This was especially the case for someone
like Wendell Scott who was trying to use his driving to manage the affect
he would have on a track full of White people whose attitudes and actions
were frighteningly uncertain to him.

Concluding Remarks
While motorsports in the United States is obviously about racing, it has
also always been about race and racism. Recognizing this fundamental
fact is critical to understanding and taking on the White racialized spati-
ality that the sport has long perpetuated and continues to do so today.
Important is recovering the often-forgotten Black geographies of com-
petitive driving that have existed in opposition to White supremacy in
motorsports and centring these resistant practices, contributions, and
movements. Our chapter has sought to begin this process by re-situating
the story of Wendell Scott—often heralded as a trailblazer in NASCAR
but rarely fully understood—within a broader understanding of a racial-
ized motorsports and an antiracism mobility politics. His counter-­
mobility work, in addition to sensitizing us to varied ways that African
Americans have resisted and survived marginalization in motorsports,
350 D. H. Alderman and J. Inwood

can help us re-evaluate what counts as antiracist political praxis. Scott

and other Black drivers actively transformed the meaning and material
dimensions of their competitive movements to fashion what contested
places they could in motorsports. Their struggles remind us that any seri-
ous effort to address racism in motorsports now cannot merely be about
paying lip service to diversity or simply challenging White supremacist
symbols such as the Confederate flag, although that is important. Rather
there must be uncomfortable reparative work of coming to terms with
the historical foundations, expressions, and continuing structural legacies
of racism in racing.

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 Can the Formula One Driver Speak?
Lewis Hamilton, Race
and the Resurrection of the Black
Athlete
Ben Carrington

As the years pass, you realise that success is a wonderful thing. But it feels
relatively short-lived. And I don’t just want to be remembered as a driver,
because I care about so many more different things.
—Lewis Hamilton

Introduction
This chapter uses the career and life of Formula One (F1) motor racing
driver Lewis Hamilton to assess the recent reemergence of political con-
sciousness among athletes across the globe. In particular I examine the
extent to which sport offers a modality for popular forms of anti-racism,
and the limits of sports activism. Hamilton’s remarkable professional
career, that by most metrics has established him as one of the best drivers
in the history of F1, has paralleled an astonishing personal

B. Carrington (*)
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 355
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_15
356 B. Carrington

transformation, from a once quietly spoken, almost shy, driver, who for
the first half of his career cautiously avoided topics beyond the track, into
one of the world’s most politically conscious and outspoken athletes.
Today Hamilton readily and regularly addresses issues ranging from envi-
ronmental concerns and climate change to women’s rights, to showing
solidarity for gay and lesbian communities, to explicitly supporting global
social movements for racial justice. Hamilton is finally finding his voice,
a voice less restricted, limited and policed by the gatekeepers of his sport.
This chapter maps this change and coming to voice by tracing
Hamilton’s professional career alongside the wider societal shifts that
have taken place during this period. I revisit earlier arguments (see
Carrington, 2010)1 wherein I read Hamilton as embodying some of the
contradictions of black sporting celebrity engagement with politics. This
is a form of cultural politics that has certainly challenged ethno-­nationalist
accounts of English identity that would otherwise exclude Britain’s black
and brown communities from the national imaginary, but a politics that,
nonetheless, has too often been easily commodified by the dominant cul-
tures of consumer capitalism and the allied industries of public relations,
marketing and advertising (see Carrington, 2001). In this context I argue
that Hamilton’s emergent critical black consciousness is genuine and sig-
nificant, illustrating the expanded role of athletes within the broader
public sphere (Farred, 2022). This moment has resulted in a change
within the cultures of not just F1 motor racing but a shift in the wider
debates in England too when it comes to discussing race, racism, inequal-
ity and identity. The “case study” of Lewis Hamilton demonstrates that
sport remains an important and contradictory site of popular hegemonic
struggle, a contested terrain of politics.

The Black Athlete (Re)Discovers Their Voice

In the closing pages of Race, Sport and Politics (2010), I noted that it was
an open question as to whether or not black athletes in the twenty-first
century would be able to develop a critical consciousness that would rec-
ognize their power as agents of social change and the importance of sports
as a modality of cultural contestation. Even if athletes came into such
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 357

critical consciousness, I argued, it was unclear whether the corporatiza-

tion and hyper-commercialization of neo-liberal sporting cultures would
allow for the types of oppositional voices—voices that in previous histori-
cal periods within the sporting black Atlantic world had dared to chal-
lenge dominant structures—to be heard (Carrington, 2010, pp. 176–177).
I concluded the book with the following sociological observation
grounded in a historical reading of future potentialities:

Black athletes have re-made sports, but not under conditions and rules of
their own choosing. The extent to which sport as a racial project can once
again, be used for progressive purposes will rest, in large part, on the ability
of those invested in sports cultures to hold on to, develop, and articulate a
critical consciousness that goes beyond the sports boundary. If that can be
done, and if the black athlete can once again find the means to speak, then
the ‘useless’ play of sport may turn out to be an important space for the
realization of black dreams of freedom in the long struggle to be accorded
the right to occupy the status of the human. (Carrington, 2010, p. 177)

Revisiting those words nearly a decade and a half later, it is striking

how the call for black athletes to recognize the political import of sports
has been answered. Briefly, a number of factors help to explain the evolv-
ing conjuncture of what might be termed a new poetics of sporting poli-
tics (Carrington, 2017). These would include the shift towards more
public and explicit forms of sports anti-racism driven by various social
movements, like Black Lives Matter, alongside the pervasiveness of new
social media platforms (sometimes directly controlled by athletes them-
selves)—and of course a medium that also offers immediate forms of soli-
darity and support (and criticism) for athletes who do speak out through
an expanded public sphere—that has enabled discussion, dissent and dis-
semination of ideas beyond the restricted spaces of the traditional
corporate-­controlled legacy sports media, together with a global media
culture that elevates sports and amplifies the voices of celebrity athletes
when they do decide to speak out. The conservative idea that sports and
politics do not mix, and the related charge that athletes should just shut
up and play, is increasingly undermined by an emerging consensus that
358 B. Carrington

athletes both have the right to speak out on social issues and, even fur-
ther, that they should do so (Boykoff & Carrington, 2018).
This emerging new centre ground of sporting politics and the coming
to voice of athletes in general and black athletes in particular needs to be
contextualized. This relatively recent formation requires revisiting the
pivotal moments of this shift in collective consciousness among black
athletes, against and through which we can better understand both
Hamilton’s political maturation and his own, singular contributions to
this reawakening of the black athlete. Although locating a conjunctural
shift is fraught with the danger of overdetermining and misidentifying
the socio-political significance of a particular event, and weighing it down
with too much agentic and symbolic weight, we can, perhaps, cautiously
identify the fatal shooting of the African American teenager Trayvon
Martin on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman
as being such a moment. Zimmerman was controversially acquitted of
murder the following year, which sparked the Black Lives Matter social
movement. As Jackson et al. (2020) argue in #HashtagActivism: Networks
of Race and Gender Justice, it was the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, the
trial and acquittal of Zimmerman and the broader public reaction to
these events that helped to solidify Twitter hashtags as a crucial organiz-
ing tool for racial justice activists, directly linking public figures such as
politicians and celebrities to the broader public and community activists.
As Jackson et al. (2020) note, Zimmerman was not initially charged
with Martin’s killing. An online petition at Change.org demanding
Zimmerman’s indictment, that was supported by celebrities such as direc-
tor Spike Lee, actress Mia Farrow and the singer Janelle Monáe, as well as
the Million Hoodie March organized by activists, helped to raise aware-
ness of the killing, and pressure the Sanford authorities to press criminal
charges. During this time “donning a hoodie” became a symbolic marker
of solidarity with the Martin family.2 Significant for this chapter’s argu-
ments, on the morning of March 23, 2012, Dwayne Wade of the Miami
Heat National Basketball Association (NBA) team posted a photo of
himself wearing a hooded sweatshirt (“a hoodie”) to his Twitter and
Facebook pages. A few hours later LeBron James posted another powerful
photo of the entire Heat squad, taken at the team hotel before their game
against the Detroit Pistons. The photo showed the players in their NBA
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 359

gear, wearing their hoodies, heads bowed. James, perhaps the biggest star
in the NBA at the time and therefore one of the highest profile black
athletes in America, shared the photo on his twitter page along with the
hashtags #WeAreTrayvonMartin #Hoodies #Stereotyped
#WeWantJustice. ESPN later reported Wade as saying, “This situation hit
home for me because last Christmas, all my oldest son wanted as a gift
was hoodies … So when I heard about this a week ago, I thought of my
sons. I’m speaking up because I feel it’s necessary that we get past the
stereotype of young, black men and especially with our youth” (ESPN,
2012). ESPN noted that numerous Heat players wrote “RIP Trayvon
Martin” and “We want justice” on their sneakers when they played the
Pistons later that evening. A few weeks later, on April 11, the Sanford
authorities finally charged George Zimmerman with second-degree mur-
der in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The following year, on July
13, 2013, and after 16 hours of deliberations over two days, a jury acquit-
ted Zimmerman of all charges.
It would be overclaiming to suggest that the current period of black
athletic revolt started with this particular intervention. Such absolute
beginnings are rare. Black athletes throughout the diaspora had of course
engaged in forms of cultural politics before this moment, even during the
“Michael Jordan era,” often seen as a period of athlete subservience to the
logics of the corporate sports industries and a time of apolitical sports
celebrity endorsement of products but not politics (see Andrews, 2001).
However, the bold and unequivocal public intervention of high profile
players like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, and their
NBA teammates, into such a highly charged situation helped to establish
a new template for other athletes to speak up and out and began to shift
and expand the cultural expectations of athlete engagement with issues
beyond the boundary, field and court. Crucially, this project was not just
confined to the borders of American sport but took on global dimensions
too. In short, this coming to voice of black athletes marked a cultural
rupture in the fabric of sports and challenged the dominant white culture
that expected and required political silence on the part of (black) athletes
up until then, a silence too many had willingly followed.
As the journalist Dave Zirin (2012) noted at the time, highlighting
how significantly different the expectations of black athlete were a decade
360 B. Carrington

ago, including James’s own truncated political consciousness, the connec-

tion between Trayvon Martin and the Miami-based NBA players was
particularly meaningful. Zirin suggested that “LeBron’s actions might
surprise fans given that he’s never publicly displayed a social conscience,”
before adding that LeBron had in fact signalled his desire to be the richest
athlete in history and to become “a global icon like Muhammad Ali.”
Zirin pointed out:

Of all teams in the league, the Heat had the greatest responsibility to step
up and be heard. They were Trayvon’s favorite and he was killed that late
afternoon after leaving his house for a snack during half-time of the NBA
All-Star game, which featured the Heat’s Big Three of LeBron James,
Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh … The fact that LeBron James has used his
exalted platform to speakout for Trayvon and his family even at the risk of
his own bottom line, should be in these dark days, a great source of hope.
Trayvon’s killing has motivated millions to wake up and give a damn about
what rots beneath the mini-malls, gated communities and ‘security culture’
that shades great swaths of our country. We all have a role to play in not
only making sure there is justice for Trayvon but also in ensuring no other
family or community has to suffer such a loss. If and when there is another
killing rooted in fear and ignorance, we now have every right to ask LeBron,
‘What are you going to say now?’ That’s the scary thing about choosing to
give a damn. People will expect you to mean it.3

And mean it James and others clearly did.

In the years following this moment, an emboldened sports culture
emerged in which black athletes and others, across sports, used their
“exalted platforms” and engaged in forms of symbolic protest that radi-
cally altered the American sporting terrain (Carrington, 2017). To high-
light just a few key cultural moments, in November 2014, members of
the St Louis Rams National Football League (NFL) team entered the
field before the start of the game, and dramatically paused live on national
television, raising their hands in the air. This was a “hands up, don’t
shoot” gesture that had become a symbol for protesters following the fatal
shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson,
Missouri, earlier in the year. In December 2014, players throughout the
NBA wore warm-up T-shirts proclaiming “I Can’t Breathe.” This was
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 361

after the killing of Eric Garner by police in Staten Island, New York City,
earlier in the summer. Garner died after a chokehold around his neck was
used during his arrest. As Garner was taken to the ground, a recording
caught his last words, “I can’t breathe.” The officers continued to restrain
him and he died shortly after. In 2016, a number of Women National
Basketball Association (WNBA) players from multiple teams in the
league, wore “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts before their games and after-
wards during their press conferences, using social media and the national
press to highlight the need to address racial discrimination and injustice
in U.S. society. In the same year, NFL player Colin Kaepernick protested
continuing forms of police brutality and anti-black State violence by
silently kneeling and raising his fist before the start of games. This power-
ful gesture, known as “taking a knee,” came to symbolize the demand for
racial justice in sports.
Significantly, the gesture of taking a knee was taken up by athletes of
all ethnicities, in various sports, across the globe. Much like the raised fist
and bowed head of Tommie Smith and John Carlos from the 1968
Mexico Olympics, this gesture became the iconic way to protest against
social injustice through sport. In subsequent years, and especially from
the summer of 2020 onwards following the murder by police officers of
George Floyd, the gesture was enacted by cricket players in the Caribbean,
by professional footballers, coaches and officials in England before the
start of every game, and even, eventually, and, as improbable as it would
have seemed in back in 2012, by Formula One racing drivers—an out-
come due almost single-handedly to the actions and voice of Lewis
Hamilton himself.

 amilton, Creating the Star: A (Single)

H
Point to Win
Lewis Hamilton entered Formula One in 2007 at the young age of 22.
When he joined the McLaren team many motor racing experts doubted
whether the young driver would be able to cope with the pressures of
competing at the highest level of motor sport. The initial assessment was
362 B. Carrington

that Hamilton might achieve the odd podium finish at best, would not
win any races and would use his first year gaining experience driving
alongside his celebrated teammate, the Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who
had just won two back-to-back world championships in 2005 and 2006.
As Frank Worrall, sports journalist and author of Lewis Hamilton: The
definitive biography of the greatest racing driver of all time, notes, he and
others thought McLaren had taken a gamble and that the inexperienced
Hamilton “would probably get half a season to prove himself.” Worrall
adds, “I also thought maybe he’d find it all too much and be shunted
quietly aside, shell-shocked, perhaps back to GP2 until he was ready for
the big-time with a more experienced driver stepping up to bolster
Fernando Alonso’s assault on a surely inevitable third World Drivers’
title” (Worrall, 2021, p. 1). Establishing a narrative that for much of his
career he would have to fight against, Hamilton would prove his detrac-
tors wrong as they underestimated his abilities and determination, whilst
overestimating the strengths of his opponents. Exceeding others’ expecta-
tions would become a defining motif for Hamilton. In the end, Alonso,
the much-admired and talented Spaniard, would not win another F1
World title,4 whilst his rookie teammate would eventually rewrite the
record books of F1 and transform the sport as a result.
Given his early success in his very first season (in the first race, Hamilton
finished on the podium in third place at the Australian Grand Prix) and
the media attention he generated, Hamilton was immediately compared
not just to highly regarded drivers such as John Surtees, Stirling Moss,
James Hunt, Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill but, remarkably, to the all-­
time British F1 greats like Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark and Graham Hill.
Profiles and commentators marvelled at Hamilton’s steadfast concentra-
tion and focus and his willingness not just to learn but to excel. As Damon
Hill enthused, “He’s come into F1 and dealt with everything that has
been thrown at him with no problem at all. He seems to be completely at
home. It’s as if F1 is simply the next stage in his career, a logical progres-
sion—but he’s acting like there’s another stage beyond F1. I’ve never seen
anything like it” (Hamilton, 2008). British racing driver David Coulthard
who retired in 2008, when asked how good Hamilton was and could be
said, “Undoubtedly, the guy is very special. I’d say he is a combination of
Senna and Prost. We had Senna and Prost, Mansell and Piquet, then
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 363

Michael Schumacher. We have now entered the Lewis Hamilton era”

(Worrall, 2021, p. 11). The BBC commentator Murray Walker was simi-
larly effusive stating midway through the 2007 season, “It’s my consid-
ered opinion that Lewis Hamilton will go on to be one of the greatest
drivers of all time … There aren’t enough superlatives for what Lewis
Hamilton is doing, race after race … It is unprecedented in the history of
Formula One. I’ve been watching Formula One since it began and I have
never seen anything like this in my life; it is quite incredible. It’s more
than feasible that he could win the Championship this year, which would
be incredible” (Worrall, 2021, p. 12).
Remarkably, Hamilton started the final race in Brazil of the 2007 sea-
son leading the driver’s championship, just ahead of his teammate Alonso
and Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen. Hamilton qualified in second place, mak-
ing him favourite to win the title but during the race his car suffered a
gearbox problem, dropping him to the back of the field. Hamilton man-
aged to recover a number of positions, eventually finishing seventh but it
was not enough. Räikkönen won the Brazil Grand Prix and in so doing
amassed enough points to win his first driver’s championship. Hamilton
lost the tile, in his first year in F1, in the last race, by a single point.
Although he had lost the drivers’ championship to Räikkönen, Hamilton
broke a number of records that year for a debut driver, including achiev-
ing the most consecutive podium finishes, he equalled the most wins in a
debut season and he scored the most points in a season for a rookie driver.
As impressive as those feats were, Hamilton also consistently equalled
and occasionally outdrove his McLaren teammate, a double-world
champion.5
Hamilton’s arrival into F1 in 2007 coincided with the retirement, the
year before, of Michael Schumacher, widely regarded as one of the great-
est drivers to have ever competed in F1, with what seemed, at the time,
an unassailable seven world championship wins. Schumacher dominated
the sport from the mid-1990s all the way through until his retirement.6
Some had even suggested that F1 had become boring with Schumacher’s
red Ferrari winning so often and that the sport lacked few other interest-
ing characters that were known outside the confines of motor racing.
With F1’s biggest star retiring (the equivalent, perhaps, of Michael Jordan
stepping away from basketball), even more attention was focused on
364 B. Carrington

Hamilton. The fear among those associated with the sport was that with-
out a celebrity sports star to compete in the global sports mediascape, F1
would fade from public interest, lose its cultural relevance and with it, the
sport would struggle to attract the much needed sponsorship money and
lucrative global television rights that funds the F1 travelling circus.
Hamilton, then, was given the extra burden of representation that
included saving the sport itself. As The Guardian’s Richard Williams
(2007) put it at the time, “Single-handedly he [Hamilton] has restored
public interest in a sport that had sunk up to the axles in its own cyni-
cism.” Similarly, Worrall suggests that Hamilton was seen as “the very
saviour of a Formula One that had lost its way and no longer had the
ingredients to thrill” (Worrall, 2021, p. 4). Writing in The Times, journal-
ist Kevin Eason added, “Schumacher was a serial winner, but outside
Germany and Italy, home of the retired former champion’s Ferrari team,
he was a turn-off for millions. Hamilton is pure box office … and the
interest is coming from all over the world, with camera crews from places
as far afield as Colombia, and Russia queuing for interviews” (Worrall,
2021, p. 8).
Hamilton ended his rookie year as a national sporting figure. He was
runner up in the 2007 BBC Sports Personality of the Year (losing to the
boxer Joe Calzaghe), awarded GQ magazine’s Sportsman of the Year, F1
Racing magazine’s Man of the Year and the British Sports Journalists’
Association’s Sportsman of the Year and Best International Newcomer,
among many other accolades. He had silenced the figures within the
sport who claimed he did not deserve to be there, and somehow had
managed to keep his composure and optimism despite the devastation of
coming so close to winning the drivers’ championship in his first year, an
achievement that was never guaranteed to occur again.7 There are many
great drivers who came close to but never actually won the drivers’ cham-
pionship, like Sir Sterling Moss.
The following year Hamilton continued his form, improved his racing
knowledge and tyre management skills, made less mistakes and honed his
craft. He ended the 2008 season with five victories and ten podium fin-
ishes. Again, as with the year before, the championship came down to the
last race in São Paulo, Brazil, with Hamilton leading the championship
but this time just head of Ferrari’s Brazilian driver Felipe Massa. Massa
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 365

needed to win the race to become champion, Hamilton needed to finish

fifth or higher to be champion. Massa qualified on pole for the race,
Hamilton in fourth. But a rain-affected last few laps produced what was
at the time regarded as the most dramatic finish to an F1 season ever.
Massa crossed the line first, giving him enough points to overtake
Hamilton in the championship, with Hamilton still in sixth place on his
final lap (Massa’s team and family could be seen celebrating on television,
along with the Brazilian fans at the race track). Yet Hamilton somehow
managed to catch and pass Toyota’s Timo Glock on the last corner of the
last lap, thus beating Massa to the title by a single point. Massa would
retire from F1 in 2017, without a drivers’ championship.
Hamilton thus, in the most dramatic fashion, became the youngest
ever Formula One champion. If his profile was rising in 2007, winning
in 2008 established Hamilton as Britain’s new sports star and set the stage
for his emergence as a public figure and a celebrity known beyond the
racing circuits.8 He again finished second in the BBC’s Sports Personality
of the Year award, this time behind cyclist Chris Hoy. F1 had found its
new star, and it was one who did not look like or come from the usual
background of most other drivers. Hamilton was not the son of a wealthy
billionaire, nor the son of a former driver. Instead, the working class,
“mixed race boy from Stevenage” had become the new face of Formula
One, and over time, Hamilton would in turn change the face of F1 itself.

Caribbean Roots, British Hero

The very fact that Hamilton was an F1 driver and not, say, a footballer,
track athlete or boxer, meant that the earlier coverage of his career strug-
gled to locate him within the predictable and often stereotyped narratives
that tend to structure the white sports media complex’s depiction of black
athletes (Carrington, 2011). Hamilton came from the London satellite
town of Stevenage and not the inner cities, the usual originatory birth
place for so many tabloid “rags-to-riches,” out of the sporting ghetto, nar-
ratives. Because of his understated demeanour and his professional respect
for his rivals (think Joe Louis more than Jack Johnson), during his early
career Hamilton was often described as likeable and humble. Hamilton
366 B. Carrington

consciously eschewing the type of “in-your-face” masculine bravado

often associated with boxers and track athletes. Hamilton, the first black
Formula One driver to consistently compete at the very highest level,
could also be read as establishing a new model for what it meant to be
black English. Put simply, there were no preexisting scripts when
Hamilton first emerged for understanding the symbolic significance of a
black English Formula One driver.
Undoubtedly, part of the fascination with “young Lewis” as he was
often referred to in overly familial tones, derived from the sheer novelty
of a black man in Formula One, one of the most exclusive and wealthy
sports in the world. Despite the efforts of McLaren and its team principal
Ron Dennis in particular in restricting Hamilton’s media exposure and
discouraging journalists from directly asking him questions about the
racial significance of his achievements, “race” remained a constitutive
part of the many narratives about Hamilton. Profiles of the driver often
talked in metonymic terms about him being a “breath of fresh air,” “irre-
sistibly different” and “new and exciting.” “Race” was both ever present
and absent in the early media framings of Hamilton. As the journalist
Gary Younge (2007) noted, one response underneath a YouTube posting
of Hamilton’s driving exploits “suggested his driving proficiency came
from ‘all that practice he’s had nicking cars’. At other times the references
are more oblique. He has been compared to Tiger Woods, Theo Walcott
and Amir Khan—but rarely Nigel Mansell, James Hunt or David
Beckham.” Frank Worrall’s biography of Hamilton includes a section
where just such a comparison is made, showing both the problematic
tropes of how black public figures are often framed when seen through a
white gaze—clean, articulate, grateful etc.—and also Hamilton’s early
awareness and perhaps even discomfort with how he was being posi-
tioned in reference to others, rather than in relation to his own identity.
In a chapter titled “The Real Special One,” Worrall (2021, p. 8) states,
discussing Hamilton:

His impact on Formula One was both instant and remarkable, drawing
comparisons to Tiger Woods and his success in the world of golf. Like
Woods, Lewis was articulate, good-looking and possessed a similar talent.
He had this to say on the Tiger comparisons: “It’s obviously nice to be
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 367

compared to somebody like Tiger Woods but you have to remember I’m
not Tiger Woods, I’m Lewis Hamilton and this is Formula One—it is not
golf. Whether or not it can have a similar impact, I’m not sure. It will be
good for the sport if it can. I hope my purpose here serves it place.”

Earlier in his career, Hamilton stated that his role models were his
father, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, and his musical tastes
ranging from Bob Marley and Marvin Gaye to Nas. He appeared on
MTV and hung out with black artists like Pharell Williams. Hamilton,
from the start, was clearly aware of his race, and the significance of
becoming the first black F1 champion. As he noted, “Being black is not
a negative. It’s a positive, if anything, because I’m different. In the future
it can open doors to different cultures and that is what motor sport is
trying to do anyway. It will show that not only white people can do it, but
also black people, Indians, Japanese and Chinese. It will be good to mean
something” (Jacques, 2007). In his first autobiography, quickly published
in 2007 to capitalize on his sudden public fame, Hamilton makes great
play of the importance of his father’s and therefore his own Grenadian
roots, even calling it at one point his “real home” (Hamilton, 2008,
p. 19). Hamilton says9:

I am very close to my roots—to my father’s family in Grenada, West Indies,

where my real home is, and to the Grenadian people. My grandad lives in
Grenada and drives a private minibus … I feel close to all of that. I love
Grenada: it is a beautiful country and a place where I have learned a lot …
We visited Grenada every year, sometimes twice a year, and during our
visits I get a real perspective on things, a better understanding of life alto-
gether—and I realize how blessed I am. My family, my roots and our values
are primarily Grenadian although we are British, having been born in the
UK. My grandad came to England in the 1950s and then returned to
Grenada in the seventies following the death of my grandmother. My dad
has always expressed a wish to return and I plan to do the same at some
stage in my life but not now. To see the kids in Grenada with smiles on
their faces—even if they’ve got very, very little in comparison with European
kids—helps me to understand and manage my way in life. So my princi-
ples are always to listen to my dad, cherish my family, compete hard and
368 B. Carrington

never give up. Most of all, I try to keep a smile on my face. (Hamilton,
2008, pp. 19–20)

From his entry into public life, Hamilton has clearly been proud of his
Caribbean heritage and roots, embracing the values of his black paternal
Caribbean lineage that he defines as grounded in values of decency, hard
work and positivity. This is a well-worn narrative of migrant communi-
ties who seek to show their willingness to work hard and succeed whilst
maintaining cultural bonds of attachment to the places they have come
from. This is a diasporic reconfiguring and reimagining of “home.” Home
thus becomes a polyvocal signifier. Sometimes home is a physical place of
actual return, as it was for Hamilton’s grandfather, or a signifier of cul-
tural connection and identification especially for the children of migrants
(second, third etc.) for whom a return to “home” is largely symbolic
(though of course still powerful) and projected into some future moment
(rarely ever reached) rather than the return to the native lands of the fore-
bears being a literal invocation and actively planned for in the present. In
these moments, especially when returns are arranged around vacations, a
certain nostalgic and even stereotyped narrative can emerge when depict-
ing the simple, happy-go-lucky, poor-but-positive lives of the people and
environments that are visited each year as much in the imagination as
they are in actuality. In other words, Hamilton, early in his career, defined
his Britishness (and therefore his black Englishness) in very open ways.
Hamilton challenges ethno-nationalist (“Tebbit test”)10 conservatism
that disallows the right of black and brown migrants to have such flexible,
fluid and contingent identifications to their countries of origin alongside
their affiliation to Britishness. It is not so much that Hamilton has to
choose between being British or being Grenadian but that his very black
Englishness is produced, in hybrid formation, from that very dialectic or
claiming both identities—even as such a positionality can result in
outsider-­within positionalities. Never being full one thing or the other,
but some new identity in formation, a process of becoming that can pro-
duce a sense of dislocation, loneliness and uncertainty.
Yet, when it comes to discussing racism (or anything much beyond his
sport) the younger Hamilton displays a profound naivety that eschews
any consideration of structural factors in shaping social life, and embraces
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 369

a deeply conservative idea(l) of post-racial harmony reached by ignoring

race, working hard and faith in our collective better humanity. For exam-
ple, in his 2007 autobiography, Hamilton claims that “race” is not an
issue for him and that he wishes people would simply behave better and
be more polite to one another (Hamilton, 2008, pp. 21–22). He hints at
“some very bad, really challenging times” (p. 20) but these experiences he
says “have made me stronger” (ibid.). Religious bigotry, prejudice and
anti-black racism (my terms, not his) become merely a challenge or hur-
dle to be learned from and stoically overcome. The sections where he (or
more likely his ghost writer) obliquely discusses religion and race (race is
used, rarely racism) are couched in the language of generalized, almost
pious pronouncements: “Some people think race, or skin colour, is an
issue; some think religion is. Putting it simply, I do not like to see anyone
treated badly. I do not like people who do not behave well, who are not
polite or who do not show respect when they should” (p. 22). Hamilton
refers to the bullying he received at school and responds by learning
karate so that he can defend himself but concludes that ultimately rising
above the situation is what is required when confronted with intolerance,
violence or racism: “I believe in doing things right and doing them prop-
erly” (p. 22). The chapter where these issues are discussed is called
“Inspirations.”
Lewis Hamilton: My story is instructive as much for what it tells us
about the younger Hamilton’s world views, views he held in his early to
mid-twenties at the start of his career, as it is as a marker for how much
Hamilton has grown and matured as a public figure today, into the politi-
cally conscious black athlete approaching his forties and his retirement
from racing. Hamilton’s 2007 uncontroversial autobiography is full of
the predictable motor racing incidents and stories from his junior career
and (at that moment) his short senior career. The younger Hamilton is
remarkably, if unsurprisingly, apolitical. He stresses over and again that
his values are rooted in “honesty, loyalty and trust” (p. 25) and contrasts
this to the “politics” he and his family found in Formula One. He avoids
too many details11 and simply concludes that “politics sucks” (p. 25).
Hamilton relays meeting the then Conservative leader for the first time
when both appeared on the Michael Parkinson TV show: “Before I met
David Cameron I was not sure what I would make of him. Normally, I
370 B. Carrington

don’t particularly like politics but he was a really nice guy and I was
incredibly impressed. He was a very interesting and genuine person and,
as I found out, a great family man” (Hamilton, 2008, p. 272).

Finding His Voice, the Black Athlete Speaks

In some ways the transformation of Hamilton from an athlete who, by
his own admission, did not particularly like politics, to the figure we
know today is remarkable. The cautious, conservative and largely non-­
controversial version of the younger Hamilton should not be that surpris-
ing. Many athletes come into political consciousness as they mature, gain
more control over their lives and management and develop a better
understanding of the world beyond their own sporting universe. As the
example of LeBron James mentioned earlier in this chapter suggests, cer-
tain events can be a catalyst for understanding and introspection on the
part of athletes. Similarly, the dedicated focus, hours of practice and
single-­minded pursuit of success in elite sports requires a personal sacri-
fice few sports fans are truly aware of. Structurally speaking this tends to
result in very conservative sports cultures, wherein the wider pursuit of
ideas, political discussions and intellectual interests in non-sporting mat-
ters are actively discouraged by managers, coaches and agents. It is not a
coincidence that elite athletes tend, for the most part, to become aware of
power dynamics when either those structures of dominance force their
way into the athlete’s sporting lives—thus disrupting their ideological
beliefs in the fairness of sports—or when an athlete is coming to the end
of their career. This awareness often occurs for the very best athletes who
achieve truly historic success, and therefore no longer need to validate
their identities purely through the lens of sporting success because they
have already achieved and exceeded their sporting goals and become
more aware of wanting to shape their legacy beyond the boundary.
In a profile piece in The Guardian, Gary Younge observed the political
and personal transformation of Hamilton that has taken place in recent
years, and especially since 2020. Younge (2021) noted that Hamilton:
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 371

has started to find a voice about his racial identity. He has been taking a
knee; raising a clenched fist. Long dormant concerns about racism and
discrimination have been rudely awakened following the Black Lives
Matter uprisings. In the process, Hamilton has transformed the way he sees
himself: from a compliant go-with-the-flow character to a change agent
who is determined to make waves. He has shaped the way others see him
too, going from an inoffensive, if gaffe-prone, socialite focused only on his
sport, to a politically aware role model conscious of his wider cultural sig-
nificance. Now, he is about to take on the sport that brought him fortune
and fame, with a commission demanding racial diversity and meaningful
outreach to underrepresented groups—as well as more racial equality
in general.

In the interview, Hamilton revealed that part of his reticence in speak-

ing out more, was an insecurity about how his words would be received
and a lack of confidence in knowing the issues well enough to speak in an
informed way. In 2011, after a series of penalty decisions had gone against
him by the race stewards, Hamilton was asked if he was being targeted.
He awkwardly joked, “Maybe it’s because I’m Black. That’s what Ali G
says, I don’t know” and immediately got pushback for bringing “race”
into the sport. Hamilton told Younge, “It often felt that maybe I didn’t
speak about [race] in the right way, or wasn’t great at explaining it, or
maybe educated enough to talk about it … Either way, I got a lot of
pushback and it seemed like more hassle than it was worth. So I reverted
to just doing my talking on the track.” Hamilton notes the lack of assis-
tance he was given earlier in his career: “I was never media trained. I was
just thrown into a room with people.” Hamilton acknowledges the pro-
tective but insular world that his father and Ron Dennis created, that
shielded him from the worst excesses of discrimination. Rarely directly
confronting racism and instead turning the other cheek or using it as
motivation to drive better was a strategy that worked, at least in the short
term. But it came at a cost, namely a lack of self-awareness and personal
growth and an internalization of racial trauma that could not find expres-
sion or be dealt with. As with many elite athletes who dedicate their
pivotal teenage years to elite sport, there can also be a certain stunted
maturation into adulthood, given the enclosed environment of
372 B. Carrington

professional sports. Hamilton admits as much when he says, “I’m prob-

ably a later bloomer, growing into my adulthood, because I’d been this
kid protected by my dad for a long time. And suddenly I’m really in a
man’s world and I’m being asked all these questions. Everything I say is
taken literally, all the mistakes are in plain sight.”
That decision to just let his talking take place on the track changed
after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Shortly after Floyd’s death
under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, and as Black Lives Matter
protests grew across America into the largest social protests in American
history, inspiring similar demonstrations across the globe, Hamilton
decided to act and to call out the wider F1 community. A week after
Floyd’s death a clearly frustrated Hamilton wrote on Instagram, “I see
those of you who are staying silent, some of you [are] the biggest of stars
yet you stay silent in the midst of injustice. Not a sign from anybody in
my industry, which of course is a white-dominated sport. I’m one of the
only people of colour there yet I stand alone. I would have thought by
now you would see why this happens and say something about it but you
can’t stand alongside us. Just know I know who you are and I see you.”
The same athlete who years before had said he didn’t like politics, and for
much of his career had avoided any overtly political stances, wore a Black
Lives Matter T-shirt and took a knee before the Austrian Grand Prix in
July. The following week he did the same, only this time he raised a fist.
In what Younge describes as a heartfelt, genuine and almost confessionary
statement, Hamilton revealed the impact Floyd’s death and the subse-
quent global racial reckoning had on him:

This wrath of emotions came up and I couldn’t contain myself. I was in

tears. And this stuff came up that I’d suppressed over all these years. And it
was so powerful and sad and also releasing. And I thought, “I can’t stay
quiet. I need to speak out because there are people experiencing what I’m
experiencing, or 10 times worse. Or 100 times worse. And they need me
right now.” And so when I did speak out, that was me letting the Black
community know: “I hear you and I stand with you.” (Younge, 2021)

Younge adds, correctly in my view, that while “the outrage and activ-
ism that followed Floyd’s murder gave Hamilton the confidence to speak
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 373

up, Black Lives Matter did not create his racial consciousness: it embold-
ened it” (Younge, 2021). In 2019 Hamilton had already initiated research
with the Royal Academy of Engineering to better understand the under-
representation of ethnic minorities and black people in motor sport and
to come up with ways to increase representation. The Hamilton
Commission as it became known was published in July 2020 with a series
of specific recommendations ranging from trying to reduce school exclu-
sions, to anti-racist curriculum design, to promoting science, technology,
engineering and mathematics to students of colour. The Commission
hopes to increase interest in these science topics in order to expand the
pipeline of qualified candidates into the motor racing industry as a whole.
It seems it was in 2019, when Hamilton won his sixth world champi-
onship title, that he fully realized that further wins would not suffice as
the measure of his personal achievements. With each world title,
Hamilton grew more committed to changing F1 as a sport and society
more generally. As he put it, “Over time, I’ve been trying to figure out my
purpose. There’s got to be a reason that I’m not only the only Black driver
but the one at the front. And it’s not just about winning. I won the world
championship last year and in that year everything became visible—and
I felt that my purpose was shown to me and now I’m on that journey”
(Younge, 2021).
That journey has, in many ways, been a long time in coming. In 2012,
when LeBron James and other African American athletes began to articu-
late their concerns for social justice and rediscovered the radical voice of
the black athlete—a voice that seemed to have disappeared during the
1980s and 1990s—Hamilton was not among them. The significance of
2012 for Hamilton was marked not by his engagement with black poli-
tics and his growing political consciousness but by his career aspirations
as he left McLaren for Mercedes that year, replacing recently retired
Schumacher. The move would prove to be the pivotal one in Hamilton’s
career. Although his first year with Mercedes in 2013 proved difficult,
with only one win in the entire season, and a fourth place finish in the
drivers’ championship, in the following year Hamilton would win his
second world title and then an incredible five championships thereafter.12
But as Hamilton’s global profile grew and his sporting legacy became
374 B. Carrington

more assured with each championship, it still took a while for Hamilton
to emerge as the cultural icon he is today.
The year 2017 was a transitional year for Hamilton. The year before he
had lost the title to his colleague Rosberg. Hamilton clearly refocused to
avoid being beaten again by his new colleague, Valtteri Botas, or anyone
else for that matter. When F1 arrived in Austin in October 2017 for the
U.S. Grand Prix, the world of sports was highly charged. Athletes in the
U.S. and elsewhere were “taking the knee” in increasing numbers to pro-
test racial injustice, often at great personal and professional risk. There
was widespread support for quarterback Colin Kaepernick who had
effectively been denied employment for his political speech by the NFL
owners. Just a month before the U.S. Grand Prix, President Trump had
attacked black athletes and others who protested as “sons of bitches” who
deserved to be fired. Inevitably Hamilton was asked about his views and
if he too would show support for Kaepernick and solidarity with the
Black Lives Matter social movements. In an article for the BBC, head-
lined “Hamilton focused on his priority to win race amid protests,” which
implied an either/or approach to winning versus supporting Black Lives
Matter, Hamilton was quoted as saying, “I don’t plan on allowing all the
BS that’s surrounding the topic pull me down in my striving to win the
title. While I have opinions and feelings on the situation, I have no plans
to do anything” (Benson, 2017). He elaborated further, adding,

I know a lot of people in America. I get quite a good view of what is hap-
pening here in the States and opinions about the movement, which is
pretty huge. I have posted about it and I respect it highly; the movement
Kaepernick started I think is awesome. I am here to win, that is my priority
at the moment, so I am not really focused on anything else at the moment …
It is great to see people standing up for their beliefs. Particularly with
Kaepernick sacrificing his career for the greater good. Just that alone is
admirable and I have huge admiration for him. It kind of puts me on the
spot, what do I do? To be continued. (Benson, 2017)

This was a confused and contradictory message of support. Hamilton

is clearly wrestling with the desire and urge to “do more,” to take a bolder
stand and to show solidarity with Kaepernick. Yet Hamilton believes that
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 375

spending too much time thinking and talking about these issues will
detract from his primary goal, which was to win his fourth world title. He
frames Kaepernick almost as having willingly sacrificed his own career for
racial justice when it had been the actions of the NFL that had taken his
job away from him. Hamilton’s admiration for Kaepernick’s situation
does not seem to extend beyond words of support. Hamilton cannot
resolve the contradictions of his position. He speaks obliquely about “the
situation” avoiding the language of racism and talks as if these matters are
external to him, something just happening “here in the States,” not, in
short, his issues. He ends by noting, in generalized terms, that more is
needed to be done and that he will step up, at some future point.
It is worth mentioning of course, that a burden of representation and
action was being placed on Hamilton in this period. None of the white
drivers were asked similar questions, as though taking anti-racist action
was the preserve and responsibility of black athletes alone. We should also
remember that in the years between Kaepernick’s symbolic political ges-
tures in 2016, up until the summer of 2020, most athletes did not feel
supported or emboldened enough to take public action beyond a few
more prominent athletes like Megan Rapinoe and LeBron James. Athletes
that did take a stand by taking a knee were often subject to abuse, retali-
ation and suspensions (see Zirin, 2021). Yet by the start of the 2018
season, and ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, Hamilton began to find
his voice, in part shaped and influenced by the growing, if sporadic sup-
port for Black Lives Matter and, no doubt, a continuing frustration on
Hamilton’s part around the lack of diversity within F1. It was, as he’d say
later, a billionaire’s boys club that needed to change. An emboldened
Hamilton was finally beginning to call out his own sport (and even his
own team Mercedes) more publicly and directly than he had done before.
In a 15-second video recorded from the Mercedes hospitality suite,
Hamilton showed a number of people in the paddock, with a message:
“There is barely any diversity in F1, still nothing’s changed in 11 years
I’ve been here. Kids, people, there are so many jobs in this sport of which
anybody, no matter their ethnicity or background, can make it and fit in.
#diversity #ucandoit.”
To his earlier response to the reporters in Austin, Texas in 2017, “It
kind of puts me on the spot, what do I do? To be continued,” Hamilton
376 B. Carrington

was now using his platform to put the sport of F1 and the rest of society
on the spot instead. And with each victory and each championship
Hamilton seemed to gather more confidence to speak more directly and
loudly without the cautious and conciliatory tone that he had been told,
up until this period, was the only way for him to be accepted and heard.
Now Hamilton had found his voice, and was demanding to be heard.

Conclusion: Keep on Movin’

I’ve been winning these championships, being so single minded with that,
winning them and thinking, ‘What does it actually really mean?’ We now
live in a time when, who would have thought the whole movement with
Black Lives Matter would happen? It brought up a lot of emotions for me
that I experienced as a kid and even as an adult, the racial abuse I experi-
enced, it brought up a lot of that. (Lewis Hamilton)

The British newspaper coverage on Monday 13, 2021, was near unani-
mous in its verdict on what had transpired the day before in Abu Dhabi.
The Daily Mail carried a front page colour photo of Hamilton, looking
tired but contemplative as he wiped sweat from his head, next to the
headline “Robbery at 200mph,” whilst its back page headline read “Grand
Theft Auto! Fury as Lewis robbed of eighth world title—now Mercedes
set to go to court to overturn result.” Inside the Mail’s chief sports writer
Martin Samuel added “It was a stolen title—by the stewards, by the race
director, by the need for drama … in Abu Dhabi, Formula One crossed
the divide between competition and the reality shows” (Samuel, 2021,
pp. 64–65). The headline of The Daily Telegraph’s sports section read:
“Hamilton ‘robbed’.” The Daily Telegraph’s chief sports writer similarly
echoed the same sentiments the next day with an article titled “No escap-
ing injustice of last-lap head-to-head,” with Wilson adding, “Good tele-
vision? Maybe. But fair? Just? Not in the slightest.” Owen Slot of The
Times suggested that whilst Hamilton may have lost on the track, the
perceived unfairness of the result by many may turn out to be a victory
for Hamilton in the court of public opinion, helping him to be more
appreciated than he had been up until that moment: “Whichever corner
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 377

you are in, though, whether you are Lewis or Max, establishment or revo-
lution, there is one result that cannot be changed by any lawyers or hast-
ily arranged appeals courts, and that is that the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
was a kind of win for Hamilton. For sure, it was not the victory he
wanted, but did the court of public opinion ever decide so heavily in his
favour?” (Slot, 2021, p. 65).
A range of right wing newspapers, normally critical if not outright
dismissive of the types of social justice issues Hamilton has promoted,
were reflecting a widely held sentiment that Hamilton had been unfairly
denied his record-breaking eighth world title and that he acted with grace
and dignity in congratulating Verstappen and his father after the race.
The Sun, noted that Hamilton had failed to be included in the BBC’s
shortlist for Sportsperson of the Year. This, they suggested was an out-
rage. Not only had Hamilton confirmed his status as the best F1 driver of
all time, even with this defeat, he was now being talked about as Britain’s
greatest ever athlete.
In an extraordinary week for Hamilton on Wednesday, 15 December,
and as Sunday’s controversial race continued to be discussed, Hamilton
was made a Knight Bachelor by (then) Prince Charles. All the major
English newspapers carried colour photos of Hamilton, kneeling in front
of Prince Charles. Hamilton attended the ceremony with his mother.
Sir Lewis Hamilton occupies a unique position in British cultural life.
He is, by any reasonable metric of comparison, one of the best F1 drivers
in the history of the sport and arguably the greatest British athlete of all
time. He has talked with passion about growing up in a working-class
family, and the forms of exclusion for those not a part of the “billionaire’s
boys club.” Yet there is also a lingering exclusion from the (white) imag-
ined community of British sports stars that continues to refuse to fully
embrace Hamilton, despite his accomplishments. Joseph Harker (2014)
has previously argued,

I suspect the racing great Stirling Moss touched the underlying issue when
he was quoted in the Telegraph saying of Hamilton: ‘He was one of the rac-
ing crowd before, and now he’s whatever you call those superstars. And
that’s not really the way we English go. We’re more reserved.’ Can someone
like Hamilton ever be accepted as doing things the way ‘we English’ do? …
378 B. Carrington

For all the huge achievements of black sportsmen and women, it seems the
public still struggle to accept them.

Harker adds, “Ultimately, Lewis deserves recognition because his suc-

cess goes far beyond sport itself. But if he never gains national acceptance
through the sports personality vote, it will say more about Britain than
about him.” That was written in 2014, before Hamilton’s coming of age
as an athlete-activist but also before the controversial final lap of the 2021
season. Whether the (white) public perception and opinion of Hamilton
has changed remains to be seen and a mute point if it implies Hamilton
having to accommodate to the views of him rather than the other way
around. Regardless, Hamilton has changed, and for the better. He is pub-
licly committed to changing motor sports, even if the key actors within
the sport try to resist meaningful change beyond issuing tokenistic
hashtag campaigns, and sharing short promotional videos on eradicating
racism, “racing as one,” and embracing diversity and sustainability, that
are not connected to meaningful action items.
As I argued earlier in the chapter, black athletes have re-made sports,
but not under conditions and rules of their own choosing. Sports can
operate as racial projects for social change, affecting and shifting racial
formations in progressive directions once athletes are able to articulate a
critical consciousness that goes beyond the sports boundary. The “useless”
play of sport has proven to be an important space for the realization of
black dreams of freedom in the long struggle to be accorded the right to
occupy the status of the human. As improbable as it may have sounded a
decade or more ago, Hamilton has become a change agent himself, using
his platform to raise awareness of various social issues, calling for justice
for people killed by anti-black violence, and encouraging his social media
followers, as he did in 2020, to read texts by authors and writers such as
Afua Hirsch, Malcolm X, Paul Gilroy, Maya Angelou and David Olusoga,
among others.
If Hamilton is able to engage with the conversations currently taking
place between political activists and black intellectuals, then he will con-
tinue to be a figure regarded in the same company of not just the best
motor racing drivers of all time, nor even as one of Britain’s greatest
sportsmen, but as a truly historic figure of the black Atlantic world. “I
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 379

remember not being able to be myself ” Hamilton reflected in his inter-

view with Gary Younge:

Of not being able to speak the way I want to speak. That’s the point of all
this inclusivity: including people and not asking them to change in order
to fit. I remember feeling that I had to be a different shape. The entry point
to my sport was a square and I was like a hexagon, and I thought, ‘I’m
never going to fit through that bloody thing.’ So I had to morph my way
in in order to fit into that world, and then try to get back into the shape I
was before. (Younge, 2021)

Hamilton is finally reaching a point where he is comfortable with his

own shape, his own skin, without having to contort himself to fit into the
all-white, class-exclusive worlds where he has developed his professional
trade. Having taken these significant steps over the past few years, it will
be interesting to see if he is able to keep walking in this forward, progres-
sive direction, to truly find his own voice and develop a more holistic
understanding of the issues he has committed to addressing. That last
step would require that he is able to make connections between the struc-
turing effects of racism, gender exclusion and discrimination, and envi-
ronmental degradation, all issues he has spoken powerfully about, with a
critique of the global economic system and the related, interconnected,
class inequalities that capitalism produces. This would be a move beyond
the necessary but limited liberal tropes of inclusion and diversity towards
a deeper and more radical understanding of exploitation and transforma-
tive justice. A question he may want to return to then is the one he posed
to himself back in 2017: “It kind of puts me on the spot, what do I do?
To be continued.”

Notes
1. This chapter draws upon and updates an earlier argument on Lewis
Hamilton, see Carrington (2010, Chapter 4) Sporting Multiculturalism:
Nationalism, Belonging and Identity.
380 B. Carrington

2. Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie when he was killed, leading a

number of conservative and far right commentators to suggest that this
item of clothing (the hoodie) was a menacing sign of (black) deviancy.
The right claimed that Martin’s decision to put his hoodie on had con-
tributed to Zimmerman wrongly but understandably believing that
Martin was engaged in potential criminal activity and was thus a threat-
ening body out of place in that particular neighbourhood, despite this
being the area in which Martin actually lived.
3. In 2018, in an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, when asked about his
political consciousness and desire to use his platform to engage in social
issues beyond the court, James himself remarked, “I think it starts with
the Trayvon Martin situation and the reason it starts with that, I believe
is because having kids of my own—having boys of my own—it hit home
for me to see and to learn the story and to think that if my boy left home
and he never returned. That kinda hit a switch. From that point on, I
knew that my voice and my platform had to be used for more than just
sports.”
4. At the time of writing (March 2023), Alonso is still driving competi-
tively in F1 having signed a new contract with Aston Martin, likely his
last contract, that runs from 2023 until 2025. Despite a promising start
to the 2023 season where Alsono outperformed his Mercedes and Ferrari
rivals, most F1 commentators believe it is unlikely that Aston Martin
will compete for either the drivers’ or constructors’ championships dur-
ing this time.
5. Alonso would leave McLaren in 2009 and join Ferrari in 2010, replacing
Räikkönen.
6. Three years later in 2010, Schumacher would return to F1, joining
Mercedes for two seasons, before finally retiring in 2012, aged 43. His
brief comeback was relatively unsuccessful, securing just one podium
finish and no victories. He finished his career with 91 race wins, across
19 seasons, another benchmark that few thought would ever be matched
and which Hamilton has now surpassed. Interestingly, 2012 was when
Hamilton decided to leave McLaren and join Mercedes, effectively
replacing Schumacher, a decision many thought was a mistake given
how Mercedes, up until then, had struggled to be competitive with the
top teams. If Schumacher (albeit an aging Schumacher) had been unable
to extract the best from Mercedes, how could Hamilton? At the time
Schumacher philosophically reminisced on the end of his career and the
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 381

continuation of Hamilton’s, when he said, “We did not achieve our goals
to develop a world championship-fighting car, but it is also very clear
that I can still be very happy about my overall achievements in the whole
time of my career … In the past six years, I have learned a lot about
myself. For example, that you can open yourself without losing focus,
that losing can be both more difficult and more instructive than win-
ning … Sometimes in life your destiny will develop by itself, without
any hard feelings and without any regrets. … We all know Lewis is one
of the best drivers we have around and I cross fingers that we will have a
successful future” (BBC, 2012). A year later, on December 29, 2013,
Schumacher suffered a severe head injury following a skiing accident. He
was placed in a medically induced coma for 250 days and brought out of
the coma in June 2014. Schumacher remains alive but his family have
kept his health condition secret. Schumacher has not been seen in public
since 2013. His son Mick, who was with his father at the time of the
skiing accident, is now an F1 driver too.
7. In his 2007 autobiography Lewis Hamilton: My story, Hamilton writes,
“To finish second at the end of my first season, as a rookie, in Formula
One was certainly no failure, but I could not deny I felt a sense of disap-
pointment to have gone so close to taking the title. I was four points
ahead at the start of the day and suffered mechanical problems and bad
luck at the wrong time. It was not a sweet moment! But I had to take the
positives from it and look ahead to 2008” (pp. 265–266).
8. By chance, Hamilton won the championship on Sunday, November 2,
2008. Thus, on the Monday, many writers in the British press made
direct connections to the U.S. Presidential election, taking place in the
next day. For example, The Daily Mirror wondered if it was a “good
omen” that “a young, charismatic black man has shown resilience, skill
and determination to win against the odds. Now roll on Barack Obama”
(Daily Mirror, November 3rd, 2008, p. 10), while Aida Edemariam
(2008) in The Guardian somewhat hyperbolically mused whether the
week would be the greatest ever in black history. Even the right-wing
newspaper The Sun extolled the significance of the “first black world
motor racing champion” in its leader, praising Hamilton, who earlier in
the season had to deal with racist Spanish fans, donning black face and
mocking his family. Yet, the Sun noted, in paternalistic fashion, Hamilton
had shown great humility throughout his ordeals and was a true role
model and national hero: “It’s hard to believe he’s done all this at 23. He
382 B. Carrington

has years yet to achieve so much more. Lewis Hamilton is a true super-
star on the world stage. We’re proud he’s ours.”
9. As with most autobiographies written by athletes, especially when they
are still competing, it is unlikely that Hamilton actually wrote much, if
any, of the Lewis Hamilton: My story. Nearly all biographies of celebrities
are “ghost written,” sometimes with the real writer’s actual name on the
front of the book, normally in much smaller font, or acknowledged
inside the text. Hamilton’s 2007 “autobiography”—which, as he states,
is really “an account of my career to date than an autobiography of my
life—I’m too young for that!”—includes the following final sentence in
the acknowledgements: “I am grateful to Timothy Collins and his team
for assisting me with the writing of My Story.” That said, for the purposes
of this chapter, I will refer to and quote from his text as if he had written
the words himself. No doubt Hamilton would have agreed to the word-
ing and perhaps even copyedited the final manuscript before
publication.
10. In 1990 the conservative politician Norman Tebbit suggested that a
“test” of the loyalty to the nation of Britain’s South Asian and Caribbean
communities was whether or not they cheered for the England men’s
cricket team in Test matches against their respective countries of origin.
If they supported England they had successfully assimilated, if they sup-
ported, say, the West Indies, India or Pakistan, then they were being
disloyal British subjects. Tebbit made no such demand of white
Australians, New Zealanders or South Africans who had migrated back
to the U.K. This requirement of black and brown migrants to prove their
loyalty (remembering of course that nearly all of these “migrants” were
already British subjects and that Britain is by definition itself a multi-
national state) subsequently became known as “the Tebbit test.”
11. At the time McLaren had been accused of stealing secrets from their
main rival Ferrari (so-called spy gate) and McLaren and Ron Dennis
were later found guilty of doing so and fined $100 million by the
Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).
12. Hamilton lost to his teammate Nico Rosberg in 2016. Rosberg retired
immediately after. Hamilton controversially lost again to Red Bull’s Max
Verstappen in 2021, after a contentious decision by the race director,
Michael Massi, who altered the rules at the very end of the race to ensure
that Verstappen, on fresher tyres, would be directly behind Hamilton at
the restart. Hamilton was inevitably overtaken at turn five on the very
last lap of the season’s final race and lost the championship and with it
the chance to surpass Schumacher’s seven titles.
 Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race… 383

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 Part VI
Motor Racing, the Media, and
Postmodernity
 Formula One as Television
Damion Sturm

Introduction
Essentially repackaged for the medium, Formula One has had a close and
enduring history with television. This chapter explores and unpacks the
relationship Formula One forged with television, particularly with regard
to the prominence Bernie Ecclestone placed on producing a compelling
global media product that could be monetised in the form of lucrative
broadcasting rights. A history of ad hoc and sporadic television coverage
is traced via developments in the United Kingdom, wherein only occa-
sional races were broadcast live. Our attention then turns to Ecclestone’s
efforts to both streamline the sport and make Formula One more globally
and commercially appealing, particularly through a television broadcast
that was consistently high in production values, as well as profitable for
the sport. To further interrogate the fundamental role and significance of
television for Formula One, key notions of Formula One as a media event

D. Sturm (*)
School of Management, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 387
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_16
388 D. Sturm

and as a media spectacle are then developed. Pertinently, there is an

exploration of the specific technologies, techniques and transformations
deployed to construct and disseminate Formula One as an engaging con-
temporary media representation.
Reflective of contemporary developments, consideration is then given
to the tensions that have accompanied Formula One’s broader shift to
forms of pay television during the 2010s. These have occurred both at the
expense of free-to-air television and its larger audiences, as well as within
a broader context that seems to foreshadow the demise of television and
traditional media forms. Finally, a dramatic reorientation towards digital
and social media has emerged since Liberty Media acquired Formula One
in 2017. This takeover has had significant implications for the future of
the sport, with Liberty Media both consolidating the pay television
model and diversifying and growing the sport across new media plat-
forms, which include eSports, live streaming, social media and Netflix.
First, however, an introduction to Formula One is provided to better
understand its global and commercial prominence, as well as to trace its
impact and significance as a contemporary media sport.

Introducing Formula One

Formula One is viewed as the pinnacle of auto racing (if not all motors-
port), with expensive, sophisticated and hi-tech machines raced at global
locations (23 races are planned for 2023). This generates widespread
media and audience interest, as well as substantial funding from large
transnational corporations who adorn the cars and drivers with their
sponsors’ logos (Sturm, 2014). Thus, Formula One is clearly a major
sporting event while thematically being underpinned by varying elements
of commercialisation, corporatisation, innovative mediation, prestige
and popular status that, collectively, make it a significant contemporary
global sporting competition. Predominantly, the sport makes its money
via television (and other media) rights, via hosting rights, as well as track
and title sponsors, and through live attendance, while the teams rely on
transnational corporate sponsors (Sturm, 2014).
 Formula One as Television 389

Currently Formula One is disseminated to approximately 500 million

television viewers across 185 countries (Sylt, 2020a), with broadcast
rights for television (and streaming services) worth approximately $600
million annually (Saward, 2013). Moreover, the sport cost over US$2
billion per season to stage in the 2000s (Sturm, 2014), with more recent
budget caps being enforced. For 2022, the budget cap per team is set at
$140 million, although Anderson (2022) argues that, due to a range of
exclusions, “for a top team you could easily still be talking about an over-
all budget of $350m+ just to put two cars on the grid on a Sunday after-
noon” (para. 4). Additionally, with localities paying over US$400 million
annually to obtain host-nation status (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011), the sport
has also expanded beyond its European origins to Asia and the Middle
East (Bromber & Krawietz, 2013; Silk & Manley, 2012), progressively
rising from approximately 16 races in the 1990s to between 19 and 23
races in recent times.
Arguably these orientations are ‘grobal’ (i.e., imperialistic) rather than
global, in that they reflect the ambition of Formula One to realise eco-
nomic and media interests in non-traditional locales (Andrews & Ritzer,
2007). The localities also harvest the global prestige and reach of Formula
One, using the sport’s media and marketing platform as symbols of prog-
ress and pride and to boost tourism (John & McDonald, 2020; Lowes,
2018; Silk & Manley, 2012). For the 2020 and 2021 seasons, Formula
One had to postpone, cancel and/or reschedule a range of races (often
without crowds) due to the disruptions caused by the global COVID-19
pandemic. As a result, Baldwin (2021) estimates that Formula One expe-
rienced a 43% drop and lost approximately (US)$877 million due to the
pandemic.
Nevertheless, new races were staged in the Netherlands (predomi-
nantly due to the star power of Dutch driver Max Verstappen) as well as
the non-traditional sites of Saudi Arabi and Qatar for the first time in
2021. However, these new events were not without controversy. While
clearly financially lucrative for Formula One given the global pandemic
(Baldwin, 2021), the money paid to stage the two new Middle Eastern
races (both signing ten-year contracts) was criticised, with Saudi Arabia
allegedly paying £500 million to be a host nation (McEvoy, 2020).
Additionally, both nations were accused of using Formula One as a form
390 D. Sturm

of sportswashing in light of perceived issues around human rights and

gender equality (McManus & Amara, 2021; 2023). More broadly, a
renewed scrutiny surrounding the environmental impact of global motor-
sport has also been to the fore (Miller, 2017; see chapter “Motor Sport in
the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business and Politics in the Arabian
Gulf”), with notable concerns raised for the Dutch Grand Prix’s impact
on its surrounding coastal sand-dunes (Crebolder, 2022).

Formula One: Media Origins and Evolution

As Frandsen (2014) reminds us, many sports were developed in unison
with modern mass media, particularly as “newspapers would organise
sports events in order to both build up interest in the sports and con-
sumption of the papers” (p. 531). With motorsport dating back to France
in the 1890s—historians dispute whether the 1894 Paris to Rouen event
was a race or mere reliability trial for the 1895 Paris to Bordeaux race
(Rendall, 2000)—newspapers were quick to capitalise on the appeal of
this new sport. For example, owner of the New York Herald, American
James Gordon Bennett, sponsored the annual Gordon Bennett Cup for
motor-races staged in Europe between 1900 and 1905, a forerunner of
the first ‘Grand Prix’ of 1906 (Rendall, 2000). Additional and irregular
races were staged at various venues throughout Europe during the early
twentieth century, including the Monaco Grand Prix from 1929 which,
by offering a prize money of 100,000 francs for the winning driver, gave
the event prestige, glamour and status (Sturm, 2017). Based upon the
European Grand Prix series of the 1920s and 1930s, the first fully sanc-
tioned and official Formula One World Championship was established in
1950, commencing in Silverstone, England, with seven ‘official’ races
that also included the Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500
(Sturm, 2017).
Over time, the history of Formula One would be shaped by media and
commercial influences that became more pronounced in later coverage.
During Formula One’s formative years the grid consisted primarily of
individuals, known as privateers and enthusiasts, who raced in their
national colours and manufactured their own cars (Rendell, 2000).
 Formula One as Television 391

However, the complexion of the sport would change in the late 1960s
with the advent of tobacco and other sponsor liveries (e.g., corporate
colours and logos) adorning the cars, as well as the increased involvement
of car manufacturers. Since the 1990s, the sport has become explicitly
corporate in its make-up, design and operation (Sturm, 2014; see also
chapters “Formula One as Television”: Motor Racing on Film” and “The
Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1”).
In addition, Formula One had been run haphazardly from 1950 until
the early 1980s due to the fluctuating numbers of teams and cars per
race, as well as the races themselves being independently run (Hotten,
1999). This inconsistency was also reflected in the media coverage at the
time with, for example, either the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC) or Independent Television (ITV) covering only a handful of races
in the United Kingdom—notably the British or Monaco Grands Prix.
Indeed, despite the BBC broadcasting the 1953 British Grand Prix as the
first live race in Britain (Haynes & Robeers, 2020), coverage remained
sporadic at best until the mid-1970s.
Additionally, most often broadcasts were highlight packages or pro-
vided as delayed or even relayed coverage, with commentators comment-
ing on global trackside coverage from the BBC’s London studios (Walker,
2002). Haynes and Robeers (2020) note that Formula One only gained
consistent interest and coverage on the BBC from approximately 1974
due to the star power of James Hunt (the 1976 World Champion and
later commentator for the BBC) and commercial sponsorship of the cars,
while the BBC secured exclusive broadcasting rights from 1979.
Surprisingly, it would not be until 1996 that the BBC first provided live,
comprehensive televised coverage of a complete Formula One season for
its British and global audiences (Hotten, 1999).
Bernie Ecclestone would become a significant figure in the mediatisa-
tion of Formula One, specifically by negotiating the global television
rights to the sport. Initially a used car salesman and part-time racer,
Bernie Ecclestone turned his interests to Formula One, managing drivers
before purchasing the Brabham team in 1971. Ecclestone sensed the
commercial possibilities for the sport and, through his position as head of
the Formula One Constructors’ Association (FOCA), took on the role of
organising and negotiating for all the British teams in order to streamline
the sport into a single world championship series. Hotten (1999)
392 D. Sturm

suggests “Ecclestone’s masterstroke was to promise circuit owners a full

grid of teams; teams had to commit themselves to a full season of racing.
This pleased the crowds, it pleased the sponsors, and it pleased the televi-
sion stations” (p. 29). However, infighting still dogged Formula One,
with the British teams (FOCA) and the Federation Internationale du
Sport Automobile (FISA, the sports arm of the governing body, the
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile [FIA]) squabbling over con-
trol of the sport.
Ecclestone’s decisive moment was at the 1981 South African Grand
Prix when he obtained television coverage and several million viewers for
the race in which only FOCA teams competed. This prompted many of
the FISA-aligned teams to side with Ecclestone, and he was made vice-­
president of the FIA that year. Most importantly, however, Ecclestone
was made responsible for negotiating worldwide television rights. Years
later, in an interview with Henry (1998), Ecclestone commented:

It was only when I began to get fully involved in the whole scene that I
appreciated just how fragmented the television coverage had been. Some
people covered a few races, some none at all. My initial motivation was to
get the whole business together in an effort to get some decent overall cov-
erage. (p. 16)

By the end of the 1980s, now no longer a team owner, Ecclestone had
taken on the role of Formula One’s commercial rights holder (leasing
these rights for 100 years) through his company Formula One
Management (FOM), while his long-time associate, Max Mosley, became
FIA president in 1991.
Ecclestone and FOM continued to develop Formula One as a com-
mercial and global brand through a variety of ventures which enticed
large companies to finance the sport, such as trackside or title sponsor-
ships for races, or by paying lavish sums to host an event (with many host
nations also obtaining government funding to do so). Arguably more
significant for the sport’s commercial and global success was Ecclestone’s
handling of broadcasting rights for Formula One, with Ecclestone ensur-
ing a television feed that was strong on production values and highly
sought after by an array of global networks. Broadcasting rights were
profitable for FOM, as is evident in Ecclestone’s transference of the
 Formula One as Television 393

exclusive television rights in Britain from the BBC to ITV in 1997 which,
allegedly, increased from £7 million in value to an estimated £60 million
(Hotten, 1999; Walker, 2002).
Ecclestone (and FOM) also exerted a major influence across Formula
One at all levels, safeguarding the sport through licences and other
arrangements to ensure a positive image and global brand (Hotten,
1999). For example, Ecclestone also bought Formula 1 Magazine late in
2002, although this would cease publishing in 2004 with Turner (2004)
suggesting that the magazine “began to resemble an in-flight brochure in
which many articles contained a barely concealed business agenda”
(pp. 204-205). Similar criticisms could also be raised for the launch of
formula1.com in 2003, which was also too focused on self-promotional
and sponsor-intensive content (Sturm, 2014). Conversely, early itera-
tions of the ‘live timing’ function on the website were an invaluable data
source for race fans, providing a numeric ‘real-time’ representation of
driver’s lap and sector times from all Grand Prix sessions to complement
the television broadcast.
Nevertheless, FOM remained blind, if not doggedly resistant, to other
digital media possibilities. With a myopic focus solely on television
broadcasting rights, FOM rigorously policed and forcibly removed copy-
righted Formula One-related clips online (e.g., YouTube) while attempt-
ing to control other forms of social media during the 2010s (Sturm,
2014). The takeover of Formula One by Liberty Media in 2017 for $4.6
billion would be significant for revamping Formula One’s media profile,
as well as for future-proofing the sport (Sylt, 2020b; see also chapter
“Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game” on Formula
ownership and Liberty Media). Through Liberty Media, Formula One
began to realise and embrace aspects of digital media, as well as to diver-
sify its ‘traditional’ media offerings—points we will return to in due course.

Formula One as Media Event

As noted above, Formula One was repackaged “as an event for the media”
(Sturm, 2014, p. 69) in the 1980s to help streamline what had largely
been a haphazard and disjointed series with fluctuating numbers of teams
394 D. Sturm

and cars per race. The notion of media events was first traced by Dayan
and Katz (1992) as a recurrent series of ritual-like events that comprised
‘contests, conquests and coronations’ (inclusive of sport). The overtly
mediatised nature of most contemporary events, inclusive of sport, means
that often they are re-conceptualised as a set of mediatised experiences for
attendees and for spectators. Therefore, repackaged via collective and
individualistic forms of connectivity, co-creation and personalisation,
many sport events are potentially reduced to an ‘app’, digital experience
or as shareable media content (Andrews & Ritzer, 2018; Hutchins, 2019;
Lawrence & Crawford, 2019; Majumdar & Naha, 2020).

Formula One as Media Spectacle

Kellner (2003) posits that there has been a significant temporal and cul-
tural shift from media events to media spectacles, noting how events,
while laden with myths and rituals, are often usurped by and reshaped
through the media as spectacles. Kellner (2010) suggests, media specta-
cles “involve an aesthetic dimension and are often dramatic...They are
highly public social events, often taking a ritualistic form to celebrate
society’s highest values...media spectacles are increasingly commercial-
ized, vulgar, glitz, and...important arenas of political contestation”
(p. 76). Collectively, sport events are often drawing upon a rich tradition
of history, myth and ritual that are also embedded and infused in this
projection of sport as spectacle. Kellner is also cognisant of the conver-
gence of media, technologies, entertainment and commercialisation
required to continually reproduce the event as spectacle. Therefore, these
media transformations predominantly comprise the spectacular, seduc-
tive and sensationalised when representing events, using dazzling repre-
sentations and excessive displays to amplify the projection and circulation
of images (Kellner, 2003).
In this way, many sport and non-sport events construct image-based
realities (Baudrillard, 2002) whereby the media are not only influential in
terms of re-presenting or re-shaping the sport but, potentially, replace or
become the sport. According to Baudrillard (1983), the endless circula-
tion of an abundance of images distorts reality to the point where
 Formula One as Television 395

everything has become simulation or the simulacra: “the generation by

models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal” (p. 2). Hence, most
contemporary sport is re-created and reconfigured via an assemblage of
simulated and seductive image-based media representations that are
transposed onto hyperreal screens of excess for consumption (Andrews &
Ritzer, 2018; Lawrence & Crawford, 2019; Wenner & Billings, 2017).
Relating Baudrillard’s and Kellner’s arguments to Formula One, Sturm
(2014) asserts that its media spectacle comprises a glamorous and hi-tech
global spectacle of speed. Such a media focus merges and repackages
Formula One’s global, commercial and mediatised dynamics around
technology and ‘glamour’ through media representations that are daz-
zling, seductive and alluring. Using the Monaco Grand Prix as a striking
exemplar, Sturm (2017) suggests that the race projects “an assemblage of
iconic global images that are suggestive of wealth, prestige, elitism and
symbols of excess (for example, celebrities, yachts, fashion, jewellery and
stereotypically beautiful females)” (177). Such depictions also playfully
evoke Formula One’s allegedly ‘glamorous’ elements, albeit, while prob-
lematically referencing the largely outdated gender dynamics still under-
pinning the sport (Sturm, 2021). We will now probe Formula One as
both media event and media spectacle by unpacking its televised repre-
sentation which, via specific techniques and technologies, constructs this
glamorous and hi-tech global spectacle of speed as a seductive, hyperreal and
dazzling display of excess.

F ormula One as Televised

Media Representation
As media spectacles, Formula One events are carefully crafted to furnish
forms of sensory engagement with media representations of speed, risk,
drivers and hi-tech machines that are often beyond our real-world experi-
ences or opportunities (such as driving at over 200mph in hybrid rocket
cars). For example, Sturm (2017) analyses how the Monaco Grand Prix
and Indianapolis 500, both iconic events on the global motor-racing cal-
endar, are transformed through re-presentations of immediacy, liveness
396 D. Sturm

and close proximity to the racing action in what, at times, can otherwise
become processional or monotonous motorsport events.
Fundamentally, Formula One as media spectacle strives to inform,
entertain and retain its large global media audience. Thus, projections of
the speed and drama of the racing spectacle are transformed via an enter-
taining assemblage of television technologies, techniques and production
practices. Formula One’s speed and danger are re-presented through
20–30 diverse camera placements and perspectives (e.g., trackside, heli-
copters, cranes, wall mounted), with rapid transitions and frequent inter-
cutting between dramatic angles, long shots and close proximity framing
(Sturm, 2017). Since 2007, FOM has controlled race telecasts through a
‘world feed’ that both maintains its consistently high production values
and removes the previous especial focus given to local drivers by local
directors (Sturm, 2014). Representationally, the coverage addresses
Whannel’s (1992) “highly mobile ideal spectator” (p. 98), affording a
‘perfect view’ for television viewers via continuous trackside transitions
and perspectives not available to live attendees. Additionally, the telecast
is anchored in ‘realism’, with the actuality of a race unfolding at a distinct
location encoded via the aura of immediacy and liveness to inform the
global television audience (Whannel, 1992).
Specifically, a range of techniques and technologies provide mobile,
fluid and immersive representations of the racing spectacle. These oscil-
lating techniques render experiential elements of the ‘live’ first-hand
event as witnessed by in-situ spectators (Billings, 2010), furnish all-seeing
perspectives of the broader Grand Prix unfolding (including promo-
tional, tourism-inspired and commercially aligned footage) while poten-
tially enticing and enthralling through pseudo-participatory driver
perspectives (Sturm, 2014). The use of ‘high-fluidity’ representational
techniques, such as frequent cuts, transitions and the juxtaposition of
camera angles and perspectives, contributes to the overall ‘infotainment’
orientation designed to maintain viewer interest and attention. Moreover,
this combination of camera work and editing produces a highly mobil-
ised fluidity to a sport notoriously difficult to frame given the high speeds
and geographically diverse terrain, albeit with such techniques often viti-
ating against rendering the ‘real’ speed experienced trackside by live event
attendees (Whannel, 1992). To combat this, regular transitions from
 Formula One as Television 397

stationary wall-mounted cameras to driver perspectives are used to show-

case close proximity racing, how close the cars are running to the barriers
and to convey the immense speed at which drivers must operate.
There is often also a video game aesthetic to the televised coverage
(Sturm, 2019) with all cars carrying two to three on-board cameras which
provide a ‘dazzling’ array of visual information and pseudo-participatory
perspectives. Sturm (2014) asserts that:

With all cars carrying on-board cameras and footage continually framed
and intercut from this point-of-view, viewers are restricted to an illusory
shared racer’s perspective. Therefore, in a visual, temporal and spatial sense,
viewers share the racer’s experience and see only what he sees, getting a
visceral, spatial and technologically-embodied racing spectacle. (p. 72)

Such perspectives are enhanced by graphic and animated renderings of

car dynamics and data (e.g., lap times, tyre wear, fuel usage), overlaid
with driver inputs and forces (e.g., application of brakes or throttle, gear
changes, g-forces experienced) during the on-board perspectives which
potentially further immerse viewers in the televised driving experience.
Additionally, helicopter-, crane- and tower-mounted cameras render
the size and scale of various facilities or locations, often foreshortened
through the use of telephoto lenses with zoom techniques to easily follow
the racing action or to return viewers to close views of the race. Such
techniques also reveal, on the one hand, an inherently promotional func-
tion linked to placemaking and city-branding, with television cameras
locating, transforming and enhancing the host cities and nations through
these associated media spectacles (Cairns, 2016; John & McDonald,
2020; Lowes, 2018). Sturm (2017) notes for the Monaco Grand Prix:

Racing fast cars through affluent city streets provides an idyllic setting;
further furnished with the stunning background of historic buildings and
an expensive array of yachts in the harbour. Moreover, the rich and cele-
brated are also shown in attendance, facilitating a mediatised cocktail that
mixes celebrities, fashion, corporate sponsors, luxury yachts and beauty in
a way that complements and often supersedes screened images of fast cars
racing. (p. 178)
398 D. Sturm

On the other hand, a sense of occasion can be heightened by using

frequent long shots and dramatic angles from elevated cranes or helicop-
ters. Overall, such techniques afford oscillating ‘pleasure points’ to attract
and retain a wide-ranging viewership (Whannel, 1992).
In summary, Formula One’s televisual representation is noteworthy for
seeking ways to augment and enhance the traditionally passive role of
viewing televised sport, while pushing the envelope of innovations that
cater to audience fascination, pseudo-participatory perspectives and all-­
seeing forms of framing. Hence, a racing action focus allows viewers to
take in dramatic moments and provides intimacy with star drivers, while
races are often also framed as corporate and promotional spaces, afford-
ing marketable televisual commodity-spectacles with attributes attractive
to delivering large audiences (Kellner, 2003, 2010). Sturm (2014) asserts:

By combining sophisticated technologies with innovative camera place-

ments, a continual flow of on-screen textual information, and expert com-
mentary from ex-drivers, the slickly produced Formula One televisual
broadcast (often in high definition) transforms the sometimes predictable
sport into a glamorous and high-tech global spectacle of speed. (p. 72)

With uncertainty surrounding the future of television, Formula One

has retained (pay) television as its prime media outlet while actively diver-
sifying its media platforms and content to attract new markets and demo-
graphics to the sport long after television is obsolete.

Formula One and the ‘Death of Television’

Despite potentially bleak assumptions surrounding the future of televi-
sion, the medium remains an experimental site for embedding innovative
technologies into sports content. As we have seen, Formula One offers a
range of innovative televisual technologies and techniques that aim to
appeal to and retain televisual viewers via its close proximity framing and
oscillating perspectives. For Formula One, television has also held pri-
macy as a key revenue stream via lucrative broadcasting rights, while
ostensibly operating for decades as the prime ‘screen of speed’ for
 Formula One as Television 399

audiences (Baudrillard, 2002). Additionally, the ‘liveness’ of televised

sport and Formula One’s representation as a ‘glamorous and hi-tech spec-
tacle of speed’ (Sturm, 2014) serves to engage audiences, to shape fan
rituals and to forge collective social experiences (Frandsen, 2020; Wenner
& Billings, 2017; Whannel, 1992).
Satellite and pay television have been fundamental to Formula One’s
global strategies, which have steadily moved away from free-to-air con-
tent to paid subscriptions, seemingly matched by a long-held ambiva-
lence towards digital media possibilities and transformations. As was
noted earlier, in Britain, Formula One had historically operated via free-­
to-­air coverage for nearly 60 years. From inception through until the
1970s, Formula One was available on either the BBC or ITV, albeit
largely in an ad hoc fashion as highlight packages or via delayed and
relayed coverage. From 1979 to 1996 the BBC held the exclusive broad-
casting rights to Formula One, while ITV secured the rights from 1997
until 2008 (Tobin, 2021). Formula One then returned to the BBC in
2009; however, a disruption to free-to-air coverage would occur, with the
television rights being ‘shared’ between satellite provider Sky Sports and
the BBC from 2012. Under this arrangement Sky Sports produced live
coverage of all sessions while the BBC broadcast only half of the races live
(Gallop, 2011).
In many respects, this relationship augured the significant shift to pay
television that became the norm in Britain and on a global scale. For
example, due to financial pressures, the BBC’s rights were transferred to
Channel 4 from 2015 to 2018 while, since 2019, Channel 4 has only
offered race highlights alongside the British Grand Prix live (Nelson,
2021). Alternatively, operating behind a paywall that is predominantly
subscription based, Sky Sports became the exclusive provider of all live
Formula One content in an estimated £1 billion deal from 2019 to 2024
(Nelson, 2021). Similar satellite television arrangements are discernible
for many other nations. These include France’s Canal+ since 2013, as well
as Sky Italia and Sky Sports (UK), who both commenced in 2012 but
signed exclusive pay-TV-only deals in 2018 (Sylt, 2020a).
For the 2013 season, Mann (2013) noted that Formula One’s media
coverage was firmly interlocked with, and legally restricted to, FOM’s 63
global televisual broadcasts and broadcast partners who were annually
400 D. Sturm

spending £30–60 million for the broadcasting rights. Liberty Media has
maintained an emphasis on pay television since taking ownership in
2017, including signing new partnerships in Australia in 2019 and
Germany in 2021, albeit with the viewing figures dropping by a stagger-
ing 70% in Germany as a result (Wilde, 2021).
The reliance on pay television remains a vexed approach. As Noble
(2021) observes:

It is widely accepted that F1’s TV audience figures reached their peak in

2008 when there was a tally of 600 million unique viewers that year. A
gradual shift to pay TV channels has seen numbers steadily fall away, with
it drifting down from 490 million in 2018, to 471 million in 2019 and 433
million in 2020—but last year was impacted by COVID-19 and a shorter
calendar. (para. 1-2)

Such points are supported by Sylt (2020a), who reports that in 2019,
“Formula One has revealed that it lost 19.2 million viewers worldwide”
(para. 1), while also noting that “F1’s audience reversed by 3.9% to 471
million last year meaning that it has lost a staggering 129 million viewers
since 2008 driven by a move towards Pay TV” (para. 2).
Overall, the Formula One global television audience seems to be in a
state of steady decline due to the sport largely being behind a paywall
which, Wilde (2021) argues, limits its appeal to motorsport fans rather
than having mass circulation via free-to-air coverage. Of course, aside
from 2021 and 2022, recent seasons have also, in many respects, been
‘non-events’ (Sturm, 2014) in terms of the lack of competition and com-
plete dominance of Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes. Conversely, Noble
(2021) suggests that while the potential television audience would be
bigger on free-to-air television, the pay television partners are perceived
to be more beneficial to Formula One due to the infrastructure they put
around the sport in terms of media content, marketing, analysis, celebrity
coverage and an investment in producing and packaging the sport as
spectacle. Moreover, pay television remains lucrative financially for the
time being as, accompanying a shift to more pay TV providers, Sylt
(2020b) notes that “F1’s broadcasting revenue has accelerated by 69.5%
to $762.8 million since 2008” (para. 10). Thus, for the short term at
 Formula One as Television 401

least, Formula One seems destined to largely operate behind paywalls

globally as Liberty Media looks to grow the broadcasting rights revenue
streams.
Nevertheless, we have potentially reached the tipping point for televi-
sion’s relationship with the sport. Many of the Formula One nations offer
platforms that can live stream or redistribute the satellite television cover-
age onto other platforms for paying customers, inclusive of web-based
content or digital apps such as Sky Go in the United Kingdom or Kayo
in Australia. Unsurprisingly, tight restrictions remain in place around the
availability of such online content, with Formula One’s national broad-
cast partners “responsible for ensuring that the action cannot be accessed
outside their home territory for fear of impacting viewing figures” (Mann,
2013, para. 2). Moreover, the future of Formula One television broad-
casting remains murky given the potential uptake of different paid-­
streaming options, direct subscriptions or content supplied via media
corporations. Indeed, rumours circulated in 2021 that both Netflix and
Amazon had an interest in streaming the series (Day, 2021; Tobin, 2021).
Finally, various online and televisual paywalls may also threaten the reten-
tion of (traditional) Formula One audiences long term, although Liberty
Media is seemingly reorientating its focus to a future emphasis on youth
and digital media.

Formula One’s Digital Future

Formula One, alongside contemporary sport more broadly, has witnessed
a shift from traditional broadcast platforms to accelerated digital prac-
tices which Hutchins et al. (2019) describes as the ‘mobile media sport
moment’. Collectively, a myriad of sophisticated digital tools, techniques
and devices capture, supplement, shape and disseminate sports content
premised on connectivity, networking and mobility (Hutchins, 2019;
Hutchins et al., 2019). Reflective of these developments, digital and
social media are expanding upon, embellishing and enriching the tradi-
tional ‘legacy’ forms of media (e.g., print and broadcasting), while shift-
ing such content to online and mobile platforms. These permutations, as
well as attempts to retain and reinvigorate contemporary Formula One as
402 D. Sturm

a televised spectacle via regular technological innovations, afford ‘new’

interactive capacities for the representation and consumption of sport
(Frandsen, 2020; Sturm, 2014).
Focusing on Formula One specifically, Liberty Media has significantly
recalibrated the sport and its target market by harnessing the power of
digital and social media. Interviewed in 2020 on the ‘Beyond the Grid’
Formula One podcast (itself an example of the new digital media offer-
ings), Formula One CEO and Executive Chairman Chase Carey noted
that part of Liberty Media’s strategy was to energise the television broad-
cast, the live event and the live event experience (Clarkson, 2020). More
explicitly, Sylt (2020b) asserts that Liberty Media future-proofed the
sport, noting:

Over the past three years Formula One has transformed the way it interacts
with its fans. It has driven up its social media content, introduced an
eSports league, developed a Netflix documentary series and launched the
F1 TV Pro online streaming platform. These steps have boosted its appeal
to a younger audience. (para. 1)

Acutely aware of the generational shift occurring both around tradi-

tional versus digital media and the largely untapped under-30s market
increasingly tuned out of television, Formula One placed a greater
emphasis on non-traditional content that would appeal to and poten-
tially grow a new audience (Clarkson, 2020; Hutchins et al., 2019;
Lawrence & Crawford, 2019).
In terms of these developments, the turn to both eSports and digital
media is arguably the least surprising. Historically, Formula One video
gaming emerged in the 1980s, continuing to evolve towards high levels
of photorealism by the late 1990s, with many contemporary drivers also
active gamers (Sturm, 2019). Recognising that eSports often has online
viewing figures beyond major sports events, as well as the growing phe-
nomenon of (motor)sports turning to forms of eSports to grow their
audience and revenue streams, the first official Formula 1 Esports Series
was launched in 2017 as an annual series (Sturm, 2019). A ‘Virtual
Grand Prix’ eSports series, comprising Formula One drivers, celebrities
and other sport stars also ran in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-related
 Formula One as Television 403

calendar disruptions, allegedly achieving 30 million views across TV and

digital platforms, as well as 695 million impressions across social media
in 2020 (Dixon, 2020).
Alongside eSports, the F1 TV Pro platform was also made available in
2018, albeit with restrictions that are predominantly geo-blocked within
nations that already have existing television broadcasting rights—for
example, to ensure that the pay television deals remain ‘live’ and exclu-
sive. Hence, while live or full replays may be available in different regions
with different restrictions, F1 TV Pro (and F1 TV) affords an array of
digital content that runs the gamut of live coverage and timings, archival
footage, documentaries and historical races through to shows, interviews
and podcasts that ideally appeal to a variety of Formula One fans and
viewers. Chase Carey suggests that F1 TV Pro is designed to complement
the global race feed disseminated by broadcast partners rather than
become the sole direct subscription service (Clarkson, 2020), particularly
as F1 TV Pro users can switch to pitlane cameras, timing screens as well
as the on-board camera on each car to provide a more personalised and
user-centric experience alongside the main live race feed.
Intriguingly, alongside the assumption that many contemporary fans
demonstrate interactive, consumptive and often (digital) media-savvy
orientations and practices, Brown et al. (2018) found that many eSports
fans often have little interest in traditional sports and teams. Thus, while
potentially appealing to some Formula One fans and gamers, the Formula
One eSports series is generally attracting a more youthful and less ‘tradi-
tional’ fanbase, while continuing to grow in popularity, reach and impres-
sions (Sturm, 2019). Arguably, Formula One’s digital and social media
spaces are creating and underscoring similar trends. For example, F1 TV
Pro is envisaged by Chase Carey as offering a rich fan experience through
an array of content, data and technology that will appeal to a broad cross
section of Formula One fans (Clarkson, 2020), while social media plat-
forms deploy content designed to pique the interest of traditional and
non-traditional Formula One fans, audiences and media users.
Arguably, this strategy has been working, with Tobin (2021) reporting
that Formula One “recorded 4.9bn video views on its app, website and
social media channels in 2020—up by 46% on the previous year, and
had 35m followers by the end of last year” (para. 12). For a sport
404 D. Sturm

notoriously reluctant to even consider social media prior to the Liberty

Media takeover in 2017—notably with Ecclestone in 2014 reportedly
dismissing social media as “‘short-lived’ and not a remedy to falling view-
ership figures for the sport” (Southwell, 2021a, para. 2), the transforma-
tions have been significant. With large growth reported in the 16–25 age
bracket, as well as greater reach and impressions across official social
media sites, driver social media sites and broader platforms such as Twitch
and YouTube (Southwell, 2021a), the sport is expanding its content. Most
significantly, Formula One is also expanding its fans, audiences, followers
and users.
The partnership with Netflix for the Formula One Drive to Survive
series (2018–present) has arguably also been one of the most ground-­
breaking and successful transformations introduced by Liberty Media.
Specifically, the series has been credited with allowing Formula One to
penetrate regions such as the United States and China, as well as increas-
ing the sport’s youth audience (Tobin, 2021). For example, Lawrence
(2021) notes American audiences are up for both attendance and the
televised coverage of races by approximately 40%, while also signposting
the growth of female and youth audiences globally, all of which he attri-
butes to the series.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, there have been critiques centred on some of
the editorial decisions and forms of misrepresentation. For example, there
have been suggestions that Netflix was seemingly constructing or embel-
lishing rivalries, notably the close friendship between then McLaren
team-mates Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz that was, conversely, pre-
sented as an intense rivalry (Season 3, Episode 8). As Southwell (2021b)
observes:

For whatever reason, the episode was spliced together with radio messages
taken out of context and dialogue hastily chopped with the apparent goal
of making it a bitter, jealous rivalry where Sainz was forced from the team
by McLaren's favoritism of Norris. It's an outright bizarre narrative to put
on a team whose big story last season was going from near-financial-­
collapse to its best result in years by coming in third in the constructors'
title fight. (para. 5)
 Formula One as Television 405

At times, the contextual specifics that Southwell (2021b) is alluding to

remain slippery, if not elusive, in Drive to Survive. For example, often
each series lacks a connection to broader world championship develop-
ments with, remarkably, Season One not even featuring the two title pro-
tagonist teams, Mercedes and Ferrari, who refused access for Netflix
(Lawrence, 2021). Moreover, the frequent misuse of in-car radio mes-
sages has also been critiqued, with Lawrence (2021) noting that “fans
have decried the artistic license show creators have taken while stitching
in-car radio snippets out of context” (para. 14).
Nevertheless, despite these critiques, the series has been lauded for
making the sport more accessible and compelling (Day, 2021; Southwell,
2021a). Thus, rather than replicating the global broadcast of on-track
sessions, Drive to Survive affords a ‘behind the scenes’ focus centred on
personalities, drama and an explicit blurring of sport and entertainment.
For example, Lawrence (2021) sums up the series as “a high-stakes clash
of big egos, tense power struggles and stunning betrayals” (para. 8), while
noting that “the tension unravels against an ever shifting backdrop of
private planes, paddock suits and supercars” (para. 10).
Unlike the live televisual broadcasts, Drive to Survive is less concerned
with reproducing the results or realities of racing, often focusing on
lesser-known drivers and teams through storytelling and dramatic con-
ventions that make them appear more personable and affable for audi-
ences. Thus, Drive to Survive not only topped global Netflix viewership in
March 2021 but, allegedly, significantly contributed to Formula One
gaining 73 million fans in 10 key global locations, most of whom were in
the 16–25-year age bracket (Southwell, 2021a).

Concluding Remarks
As we have seen, Formula One has forged a close and significant relation-
ship with television across its history. Although televised coverage existed
from its inception, the sport suffered from a disrupted and inconsistent
media treatment that, to a large degree, also reflected the disjointed oper-
ational practices informing the sport. It would not be until the 1980s
where Ecclestone’s global vision for Formula One recognised the
406 D. Sturm

fundamental role that television could play in encapsulating the elements

of speed, glamour and technology as a compelling spectacle. Indeed, by
and large, it was Ecclestone’s vision and model that underpinned the
sport for approximately 35 years, a model premised predominantly on
monetising the television broadcasting rights, generally to the exclusion
(and, thus, detriment) of other media possibilities. Hence, social media
platforms, digital media affordances and streaming options were shunned,
if not castigated, within his myopic focus that sought to elevate and retain
the pre-eminence of a broadcast model that, over time, became increas-
ingly at odds with other contemporary sports, trends and technologies.
While admittedly Formula One has benefited from the additional
(short term) revenue of subscription-based paywalls, as well as the
enhanced tie-ins that accompany some of these pay television partners,
Formula One’s global audience has been significantly impacted upon.
Thus, placing the sport behind a paywall in nations that, historically, have
resonated with the sport (e.g., the United Kingdom, France, Italy and
Germany) bore witness to disruptions, if not a disastrous downturn in
viewership, in significant locations such as Germany (Wilde, 2021).
Moreover, charging for the telecasts has clearly seen the large viewing
audiences that had been accumulated across the decades of free-to-air
coverage diminish on a global scale (Sylt, 2020a; Tobin, 2021).
Nevertheless, while pay television may be a short-term (and short-­
sighted) mechanism for preserving the primacy of television broadcasts
for the sport, Ecclestone’s emphasis on the televised spectacle, as well as
Liberty Media’s reorientation to diversifying Formula One’s media con-
tent, platforms and users, seemingly proffer longer-term benefits and a
strategic model of success. Through Ecclestone’s vision and endeavours,
the sport was transformed via its television coverage, simultaneously
operating as a compelling media event and media spectacle. Given the
constant innovations, technological refinements and televisual techniques
deployed on and across the Formula One telecast, the races afford an
alluring assemblage of infotainment, fluidity and sensory engagement
with these media representations of speed, risk, drivers and hi-tech
machines. Hence, while the future of the sport may not lie in television
directly, by having such high production values the shift to live streaming
and other modes of delivery that “perpetuate the logics of television cov-
erage and practices” (Hutchins et al., 2019, p. 977) seems potentially less
 Formula One as Television 407

problematic as these telecasts get subsumed by and moved onto new

screens and digital devices.
Finally, the acquisition by and subsequent digital media orientation of
Liberty Media was a necessary shift to allow Formula One to keep pace
with other contemporary sport-media developments. Indeed, for a sport
steeped in hi-technology, its resistance to, and repudiation of, digital and
social media platforms was surprising given the growth and significance
of these across most aspects of socio-cultural life. Sturm (2021) suggests
that Formula One may struggle for future relevance if it “cannot find
ways to be more economically, environmentally and socially sustainable”
(p. 125), which includes addressing its “blinkered vision of progressive
gender politics” (p. 125) given that the sport often remains mired in tra-
ditional gendered dynamics and practices. Thus, the diversification of its
media content and media platforms seems like a necessary transitional
component to also diversify its audiences, notably along the more obvi-
ous lines of age, gender and race. More broadly, by utilising diverse media
content and platforms, the sport is also furnishing different affective
access points that percolate around elements of interest, attention and
intrigue—whether it be live-streamed races (and/or accessible archival
content), viewing or competing in eSports leagues, or following the dra-
matic insights afforded by series, such as Drive to Survive on Netflix,
which present the sport in non-traditional ways for non-traditional
audiences.

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 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship
Within Formula 1
Timothy Dewhirst and Wonkyong Beth Lee

The current sponsorship landscape of Formula 1 is busy and dense. The

cars and drivers serve as mobile billboards, being saturated with the
branding of multinational sponsors. The overt commercialisation of
Formula 1 was established some time ago even though advertisements
have not appeared on team uniforms in many professional sports leagues
until very recently (see Dewhirst, 2016, 2021a). The race car and uni-
form of seven-time Formula 1 world champion, Lewis Hamilton, for
example, includes branding from Petronas, Mercedes, The Ritz-Carlton,
Puma, Tommy Hilfiger, Epson, Pirelli, UBS, Hewlett Packard, Bose, and

T. Dewhirst (*)
Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies, Gordon S. Lang School of
Business and Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
W. B. Lee
DAN Department of Management and Organizational Studies, University of
Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 413
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_17
414 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

Monster. Still, some sponsorships have prompted ethical and moral ques-
tions. During the 2021 season, Kingspan—a building materials and
envelope company—was named as an additional sponsor. The Kingspan
sponsorship, however, proved to be short-lived—visible for one race—
after notable backlash, as Kingspan produced insulated panels that fea-
tured in the Grenfell Tower building in London, England, that caught
fire and resulted in 72 deaths (Booth, 2021). The (brief ) naming of
Kingspan as a sponsorship partner was coordinated by the Mercedes-­
AMG Petronas racing team, but Lewis Hamilton—the team’s star
driver—made it known that he was uncomfortable with the brand
association.
In this chapter, we provide an overview of sponsorship-linked market-
ing in Formula 1 and discuss how it has evolved over time. Formula 1
started in 1950, and initially the visibility of sponsorship was highly lim-
ited with understated automobile branding apparent on the nose of the
race cars. Originally, a key purpose of Formula 1 was to provide automo-
bile manufacturers—such as Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Mercedes—a
showcase for their products and technologies. The inaugural season was
effectively a European racing series, with seven races held, and six of those
races were in Europe (the exception was one race in the USA at the famed
Indianapolis speedway). During the 1950s and 1960s, Formula 1 race
teams were largely funded by automobile manufacturers or by affluent
individuals such as Rob Walker, whose amassed wealth reflected the sales
of Johnny Walker whisky (Jenkins et al., 2016). Prominent Formula 1
team sponsorship liveries emerged during the late 1960s and early 1970s,
which marked an important transitional period as tobacco companies
increasingly turned to sponsorship as a promotional strategy. Outside of
tobacco, additional sponsors appeared during this era that were question-
able, especially with Formula 1 having appeal as “family viewing” (Jewell,
2016). Condom manufacturer, Durex, for example, was a prominent
sponsor of the Surtees race team, prompting the BBC to not broadcast
Formula 1 races, including the 1976 British Grand Prix. More recently,
the technology industry has emerged as prominent sponsors while
tobacco sponsorship diminished in visibility due to regulatory stipula-
tions. Early examples of Formula 1 sponsorship included engine, fuel,
and tyre suppliers, which were typically function-based. Over time,
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 415

however, sponsors have increasingly leveraged symbolic or image-based

attributes that are associated with Formula 1. Moreover, as the pervasive-
ness of sponsorship has increased, there have been further opportunities
for co-branding among the sponsorship partners, which focus on com-
pounding the associated image dimensions (Dewhirst & Hunter, 2002).

Sponsorship-Linked Marketing
To clarify the scope of our discussion pertaining to the “sponsorship
landscape,” we begin this chapter by providing definitions of “sponsor-
ship” and “sponsorship-linked marketing.” Sponsorship is defined as “an
investment, in cash or in kind, in an activity, in return for access to the
exploitable commercial potential associated with that activity” (cited in
Larson & Park, 1993, p. 97). An important point from this definition is
that sponsorship should not be confused with patronage. A patron
donates and such generosity is usually based on personal satisfaction and
belief in the worthiness of a cause, whereas a sponsor makes an invest-
ment wherein motives are commercially based rather than altruistic.
Sponsors are involved in a business activity to gain benefits and meet
specified and measurable objectives (Townley & Grayson, 1984; Sleight,
1989). Although sponsorship serves a multitude of functions, including
hospitality opportunities, primary objectives often encompass the
enhancement of brand awareness as well as brand image (Otker, 1988;
Irwin & Asimakopoulos, 1992; Irwin & Sutton, 1994).
Corresponding to this definition of sponsorship, Cornwell (1995,
p. 15) defines sponsorship-linked marketing as “the orchestration and
implementation of marketing activities for the purpose of building and
communicating an association (link) to a sponsorship.” These marketing
activities serve to build associations between sports properties and brands
in which sponsors strategically identify and promote functional and/or
symbolic links. As a sponsor of Formula 1, watch-maker brands such as
Tag Heuer can feature on a time clock to demonstrate functional links
(i.e., precise timekeeping of the competing race cars). Here, functional
properties of the sports become leveraged where the product is visibly
used in the operations of the sports property. Additionally, as a sponsor of
416 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

Formula 1, Tag Heuer can further build brand image (symbolism) by

being associated with the upscale, high quality, and technological attri-
butes of the sports property. Here, symbolic links are highlighted with
the aim that the sport property’s image associations are credibly transfer-
able towards the sponsoring brand (e.g., see Gwinner, 1997; Gwinner &
Eaton, 1999; McDaniel, 1999; Cornwell, 2008; Prendergast et al., 2010).
Historically, tobacco brands have been among the more prominent spon-
sors of Formula 1 wherein congruent image and lifestyle dimensions were
strategically highlighted.

Enter the Tobacco Industry as Key Sponsors

Tobacco sponsorship first became apparent in Formula 1 during the late
1960s. In 1968, branding for Imperial Tobacco’s Gold Leaf became visi-
ble on the championship-winning Lotus race cars (Bartunek, 2007). An
important motivating factor behind tobacco companies, such as the
UK-based Imperial Tobacco, shifting their promotional spending towards
sponsorship was they began to face regulatory restrictions that no longer
allowed traditional advertising among media such as television (Philips &
Whannel, 2013). Broadcasts of Formula 1 races facilitated continued
brand exposure among sponsoring tobacco brands, despite the imple-
mentation of cigarette advertising bans applicable to the broadcast media
in various jurisdictions, including the UK in 1965 and the USA in 1971.
An important and yet unintended outcome of prohibitions on cigarette
broadcast advertising was tobacco companies notably shifting and re-­
directing their promotional spending towards broadcasted sports proper-
ties (Wichmann & Martin, 1991; Marshall & Cook, 1992). Consequently,
sponsoring cigarette brands ably circumvented policy stipulations and
effectively compensated for lost broadcast advertising exposure (Warner,
1979; Ledwith, 1984; Stoner, 1992; Cornwell, 1997). Several studies
have demonstrated that tobacco companies continued receiving televi-
sion exposure—with considerable estimated worth—by sponsoring auto
racing (Blum, 1991; Siegel, 2001; Morrison et al., 2006). A videotape
recording of the Marlboro Grand Prix during 1989, for example, revealed
that Marlboro was seen or mentioned 5933 times during the broadcast
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 417

(Blum, 1991). While this example pertains to a Championship Auto

Racing Teams (CART) race, rather than specific to Formula 1, it points
to the tobacco industry quickly understanding that cigarette brand expo-
sure could persist on television if broadcast sports properties such as
Formula 1 included cigarette brand sponsorship. Moreover, Formula 1—
relative to other auto racing properties—offered broader reach by appeal-
ing to a more international audience.
Coinciding with the tobacco industry’s entry into sponsorship,
Formula 1 would quickly transform into big business during the 1970s
with the oversight of its commercial rights by Bernie Ecclestone.
Following the lead of the tobacco industry, other companies previously
involved with Formula 1, such as engine suppliers, also began to further
leverage their sponsorships and add pronounced branding to the liveries
of race cars (Bartunek, 2007). The tobacco industry’s shifting investment
towards sports properties during the 1970s was observed as a prominent
contributor towards the general development of sponsorship as a market-
ing discipline (Meenaghan, 1983; Otker & Hayes, 1987; Meenaghan,
1991; Cornwell, 1995; Sparks, 1997). One notable turning point of
Formula 1, becoming a particularly high-profile television event, was
during the 1977 season when Ecclestone leveraged the acclaimed interest
generated from the previous season between competing race car drivers,
Niki Lauda and James Hunt (Philip Morris, 1983). The 1976 season was
particularly compelling as the world champion was undetermined going
into the season’s final race, which was also marked by hazardous weather
conditions. The final race showdown between Lauda and Hunt was
remarkable because Lauda had suffered horrific burns earlier in the sea-
son when his car crashed during the German Grand Prix—he was given
last rites at the time—but he returned to the track six weeks later to con-
tinue competing (Jewell, 2016). Marlboro was a prominent sponsor of
both Lauda and Hunt.
Marketing planning documents from the tobacco industry, made pub-
lic from litigation, reveal that primary objectives for sponsoring sports
properties include increasing brand awareness—through continued
brand exposure and visibility—and enhancing or reinforcing brand
image (Lavack, 2003; Carlyle et al., 2004; Dewhirst, 2004). This revela-
tion from the tobacco industry is consistent with the common marketing
418 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

objectives from other product sectors that invest as sport sponsors

(Cornwell et al., 2001). According to tobacco industry documentation,
“Sponsorship is one of the most effective and durable means of brand
communication to consumers because it can significantly enhance brand
awareness and brand image among the target consumer group through
the media of television” (Brown & Williamson, 1999,
pp. 323011268–323011269). While the in-person attendance for a
Formula 1 race might be roughly 100,000, the number of television
viewers for each race was purportedly 300 million at the turn of the cen-
tury (Hawaleshka, 2001; “Race report”, 2002). For sponsors, Formula 1
is recognised as a leading international sport with considerable reach in
terms of media coverage. According to British American Tobacco (BAT)
documentation:

In 1997 Formula One attracted a global audience of 51 billion cumulative

television viewers making it by far the world’s largest annual media interest
activity. Only the Olympics and the World Cup, held only every 4 years,
are bigger.
Across 193 countries, satellite and terrestrial networks broadcast 1.1
million minutes of coverage over 53,000 transmissions.
Covering 5 continents with 16 races over 8 months of the year, Formula
One provides its sponsors and partners with the greatest marketing oppor-
tunities of all leading sporting events. (1997, p. 321463562)

It is acknowledged that some of these audience figures today appear

“inflated.” Still, regardless of how television audiences are measured,
Formula 1 undoubtedly represents a highly attractive property to sponsor
due to its considerable and global television audience (see Sturm [2014]
for insightful discussion about the various claimed viewing figures that
have circulated for Formula 1, with 500 million being the estimated
audience in 2012). The 2022 race calendar features a record number of
races—23—which serves to enhance the media reach from previous
seasons.
Over time, Formula 1 has become ever more international. Initially,
Formula 1 races were largely limited to Europe, but races eventually
became added to the season calendar in further locations. According to
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 419

Philip Morris documentation in 2000, “Formula One racing is consid-

ered to be the ‘highest’ level of racing in the world, and is fast becoming
popular in the United States” (AutoWeek, 2000, p. 2084445761).
Eventually, races would be held and broadcast from Europe and the USA
as well as a broader range of countries, including noted expansion of the
racing calendar to Asia and the Middle East (Sturm, 2014). Reflecting
the now global reach of Formula 1 and the high sponsorship fees to sup-
plement the exorbitant race team budgets, sponsors tend to be highly
established multinational brands.
Formula 1 sponsorship facilitates desirable images associated with the
sports property being transferable to the sponsoring brands. For BAT,
Formula 1 sponsorship enables being strategically positioned as “a suc-
cessful innovative World Class company, which is willing to compete at
the highest level” (Brown & Williamson, 1999, p. 323011267). According
to BAT marketing documentation, “Formula One is perceived as very
glamorous and very exclusive” (Cleverly, 2001, p. 325003468). Moreover,
Formula 1 is characterised by the company as exciting, lively, vibrant,
sexy, and celebrity-laden (BAT, 1999, p. 321449855). Further to being
associated with such attributes, Formula 1 sponsorship aims to have the
sponsoring brand “stand out from competitive set. To be seen as a leader,
innovator,” while providing an “opportunity to build consumer emotion”
(Brown & Williamson, 1999, p. 323011270).
Philip Morris International (PMI)—a direct competitor to BAT—
entered Formula 1 sponsorship in 1972 through its Marlboro cigarette
brand (Philip Morris, 1983). Initially, their sponsorship commitment
largely consisted of prominent signage alongside the racetracks, which
facilitated brand exposure among audiences on-site as well as those view-
ing on television. At the race team level, PMI’s Marlboro was first a spon-
sor of McLaren before becoming a partner of the Ferrari team. While
McLaren has its own illustrious history, Ferrari is regarded as “the F1
brand among brands” (Fleming & Sturm, 2011, p. 170). For PMI, one
further advantage of Marlboro becoming a sponsor of the Ferrari motor
racing team included both brands sharing a common colour—red—
which consequently was considered to enhance Marlboro’s brand aware-
ness as a sponsor (Philip Morris, 1982). Although McLaren did run red
and white imagery with Marlboro for several years, the strength of
420 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

associating red with McLaren does not match Ferrari’s association with
the colour (for the 2022 season, the McLaren team is predominantly
associated with orange). The findings of PMI’s internal market research
are supported by scholarly research wherein sponsorship partnerships are
regarded as more effective when there is visual congruence among the
pairings based on colour (Henderson et al., 2019). Beyond both brands
sharing similar red colour schemes, the Marlboro/Ferrari brand alliance is
highly complementary for promotional purposes given horses represent
key elements of their respective brand identity.
Marlboro is promoted as an expression of masculinity, ruggedness,
independence, and power or leadership (Aaker, 1997; Hafez & Ling,
2005). Strategically, Marlboro and motor racing are regarded as congru-
ent symbolically; according to Philip Morris documentation, “overlaps
core imagery of confidence, determination, masculinity, independence
and control” (1998, p. 2070683679). Ellen Merlo, as Vice-President of
Marketing Services at Philip Morris, stated that, “We perceive Formula
One and Indy car racing as adding, if you will, a modern-day dimension
to the Marlboro Man. The image of Marlboro is very rugged, individual-
istic, heroic. And so is this style of auto racing. From an image stand-
point, the fit is good” (cited in “The Business of Racing”, 1989).
As a sponsorship-linked marketing objective, Philip Morris sought to
ascribe the positive brand associations of Ferrari, which include sophisti-
cation, innovation, premium quality, and speed (power and excitement),
to their cigarette brand (Philip Morris, 1991, 1992; Lindstrom, 2005).
During the 1980s, in pursuing a possible licensing agreement for the
launch of a Ferrari-branded cigarette, interoffice correspondence from
Philip Morris identified the prospective target market as young adult
males (18 to 34 years of age) who were seeking a brand with macho con-
notations and high-technology imagery (Dangoor, 1987; Tso, 1987).1
By the late 1990s, tobacco companies accounted for more than 70%
of sponsorship earnings among race team budgets, which reflected ciga-
rette brands such as Marlboro, Mild Seven, West, Benson & Hedges,
Rothmans, Gauloises, and Camel adorning Formula 1 race cars (Brown
& Williamson, 1999, p. 323011269). In 2000, tobacco companies
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 421

collectively spent an estimated $250 million per year towards Formula 1

teams (Grange, 2001). Among American tobacco companies, more than
90% of their sport sponsorship budgets were estimated to be towards
motor sports (Turco, 1999). Clearly, sponsorship-linked marketing
investments by tobacco companies into Formula 1 and motor sports were
significant and noteworthy at the turn of the century. Still, tobacco adver-
tising and sponsorship bans would soon become more commonplace
among different jurisdictions hosting Formula 1 races, so race teams ini-
tially used alternate and crafty livery that still suggested cigarette brands.
For example, the Jordan race car substituted Benson & Hedges with
“Buzzin Hornets” while maintaining much of the branding elements,
such as the colour scheme, associated with the cigarette brand; similarly,
the British American Racing team alternated Lucky Strike with “Look
Alike” (e.g., see Carlyle et al., 2004). During the 1999 season, BAT iden-
tified three races on the calendar—those held in France, Germany, and
the UK—where alternate branding would need to be used (Verlinden,
1999). Accordingly, Formula 1 began shifting the locations of races,
which appeared driven in part by seeking sites where tobacco promotion
remained permissible. New races were established, for example, in
Bahrain, China, and Turkey (Simpson, 2004). Notably, however, legisla-
tion became implemented in the UK, where most Formula 1 teams are
based, that effectively banned tobacco advertising at sports events in
2005 (Vital Strategies, 2020). Also, in 2005, the World Health
Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO
FCTC) took effect. Article 13 of this global public health treaty, which
now includes 182 Parties and covers more than 90% of the world’s popu-
lation, calls for a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising, promotion,
and sponsorship (WHO, 2021a). Facing such a reality and public pres-
sure, Formula 1’s governing body, Fédération Internationale de
l’Automobile, prohibited tobacco sponsorship from the end of 2006
(Vital Strategies, 2020). Still, as we later discuss, this policy measure did
not effectively ban tobacco sponsorship, as tobacco companies have per-
sisted in their Formula 1 sponsorship investments and found ways to
circumvent policy.
422 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

 he Sponsorship Landscape
T
in the Twenty-First Century
Crypto.com, DHL, Emirates, Pirelli, and Rolex were identified among
Formula 1’s global partners for the 2021 season. Many of these global
partners can highlight their functional links with Formula 1 while under-
scoring the high performance and quality of their products and services.
For example, Pirelli is the exclusive tyre supplier, while DHL oversees the
complex shipping and transport of equipment, including the race cars
and replacement parts, from race to race. Emirates is positioned as the
preferred airline for Formula 1 participants as well as for passengers seek-
ing to attend races as a part of destination travel. Emirates, as an airline
global partner, also speaks to the shifting sites and regions of where
Formula 1 races are held. Symbolically, prestige, prosperity, and technol-
ogy are highlighted attributes of Formula 1 that are transferable to spon-
sorship partners. Rolex, the watchmaker brand, is recognised as a sponsor
of major tennis, golf, equestrian, and yachting events—in addition to
motor sports—wherein each of these sports properties are associated with
prestige and being upscale. According to its website, Rolex “makes a
unique and lasting contribution to global culture, science and explora-
tion.” Moreover, Crypto.com, which is a Singapore-based cryptocurrency
company, made headlines in replacing Staples as the venue sponsor of the
LA Lakers’ home arena in a 20-year $700 million naming rights deal
(Associated Press, 2021). Crypto.com is seen as representing “an innova-
tive, forward-thinking company” (cited in Dean, 2021). The combina-
tion of high-end, luxury items—especially pertaining to cars, clothing,
watches, and technology—as sponsorship partners in Formula 1 charac-
terises conspicuous consumption (Sturm, 2014). Cultural anthropolo-
gist, Grant McCracken explains that:

The meaning of a good is best (and sometimes only) communicated when

this good is surrounded by a complement of goods that carry the same
significance. Within this complement, there is sufficient redundancy to
allow the observer to identify the meaning of the good. (1988, p. 121)
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 423

When presented as sponsorship partners, particular brands are seen as

“going together” wherein complementary cultural identities and statuses
are put on display and their meaning compounded. Borrowing from
Sahlins (1976), McCracken identifies these meaning systems of goods as
“object codes.”
High-tech companies have emerged as big players of Formula 1 spon-
sorship. Among many examples, Oracle is a partner of the Red Bull race
team, Cognizant for Aston Martin, and TeamViewer for Mercedes. Since
Formula 1’s move to turbo hybrid rules in 2014, major technology firms
can showcase their ability to combine technology with sustainability as
they activate their sponsorship strategies (Noble, 2021a). Red Bull and
Oracle’s recent partnership also reflects Formula 1’s growing appeal
among a USA fan base (Baldwin, 2021). Continuing its expansion into
the USA market, the Red Bull team struck a one-year sponsorship deal
with Walmart in early 2021. The Walmart logo adorned Red Bull’s race
car during the 2021 season and Red Bull Racing merchandise is available
on Walmart’s website (Yeomans, 2021). Netflix has apparently played an
important role in the recent entry by notable American sponsors and
observed audience spikes in the USA (Noble, 2021a). ESPN’s Formula 1
ratings are up since Formula 1: Drive to Survive debuted on Netflix in
2019 (Abbruzzese, 2021).
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the cancellation of many sport-
ing events during 2020, including Formula 1 races. While traditional
sporting events suffered, the popularity of competitive video gaming,
known as esports, has sharply increased. Formula 1, like other sports
leagues, has turned their attention to esports (Sturm, 2019; Stubbs,
2020). F1 eSports was launched in 2017 and this initiative proved to be
opportune for Formula 1 during the pandemic as sponsors engage with a
technologically attuned younger fan base (Indaimo, 2020). For example,
the French automotive manufacturer, Renault, which has been involved
with Formula 1 since 1977, signed a sponsorship deal in 2018 with Team
Vitality, which is France’s biggest esports team. This deal showcases
Renault’s strategic move to interact with new and younger audiences via
esports internationally. When the partnership was announced in 2018,
the founder of Vitality indicated that, “Our partnership with Renault is
a natural match, not only because we share the same values and colours
424 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

but also because we all want to make it to the very top of the European
and international scenes” (cited in Fitch, 2018).
Formula 1’s target audiences are becoming younger and thus more
tech-savvy. According to a global survey—commissioned by Motorsport
Network with Formula 1 and Nielsen—32 was the average age of Formula
1 fans in 2021, which is four years younger than what was observed in
2017 (Bradley, 2021). Coinciding with Liberty Media assuming control-
ling interest in Formula 1 during 2017, the sports property has become
actively involved with social media marketing and reaching out to social
media influencers. Tobacco companies, such as BAT and PMI, continue
to serve as important partners in Formula 1. BAT sponsors Formula 1
eSports events and the events are streamed live on YouTube. The com-
pany sponsored Rudimental—the drum and bass band—for a series of
livestreams on their Vuse (an e-cigarette brand produced by BAT)
YouTube channel in 2020 (Chapman, 2021). Additionally, McLaren
Racing launched a celebrity esports series with BAT’s nicotine pouch
brand, Velo. The Velo Eseries ran between January and April in 2021,
and featured celebrities such as UK musician, Craig David, and social
media star, Alex Hirschi, who has more than 34 million Facebook follow-
ers and 8.3 million on Instagram racing at McLaren with Velo nicotine
pouch title-branding (Dixon, 2021).

Social and Ethical Considerations

The magnitude of financial investment from Formula 1 sponsors is astro-
nomical, yet ethical questions emerge with many of the sponsors operat-
ing in controversial product sectors such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling,
and oil. Several longstanding and existing Formula 1 sponsorships are
controversial based on the contradictory pairing of unhealthy or harmful
products with sports and athleticism (Cornwell, 2008). The harmfulness
of smoking is especially noteworthy, prompting Wenner (1993, p. 146),
for example, to term the association of cigarettes and sports—facilitated
by sponsorship—as “patently oxymoronic” when pointing out that,
“Athleticism and smoking clearly do not go together.” Tobacco use is the
leading cause of preventable illness and premature death in the USA,
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 425

being attributable to nine of ten lung cancer deaths, eight of ten chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease deaths, one in three cancer deaths, and
countless other preventable conditions (U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services [USDHHS], 2014). An approximated 443,000
Americans die prematurely each year from smoking, and one of every five
deaths in the USA is attributable to smoking (USDHHS, 2012). Tobacco
use is responsible for a greater number of deaths among Americans than
the total caused by AIDS, motor-vehicle crashes, suicides, murders, and
illicit drug use combined (USDHHS, 2004). Globally, tobacco use is
forecasted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be attributable
to more than eight million deaths annually by 2030 (WHO, 2008). An
additionally important element in the harm caused by tobacco is the
addictiveness of its use (USDHHS, 1988).
Despite cigarette brands such as Marlboro, Camel, and West no longer
being depicted on the livery of drivers and racing cars, Formula 1 has
notably not entered a post-tobacco sponsorship era. PMI, for example,
has sponsored the Ferrari team through an alibi brand known as “Mission
Winnow.” Additionally, BAT has created an alibi brand, “A Better
Tomorrow,” for sponsoring the McLaren team. During the 2019 season,
the Ferrari and McLaren race teams received an estimated $95 million
from PMI and BAT through sponsorship (Vital Strategies, 2020).
The tobacco industry’s continued sponsorship of Formula 1 appears
motivated by drawing attention to their “next generation” products that
are touted as harm reduced. Mission Winnow is registered as a trademark
by PMI for “use with respect to tobacco products” (WHO, 2019) with
an aim of “developing and testing less harmful alternatives to smoking”
(Mission Winnow, 2021). PMI has transitioned such that Mission
Winnow is now the branded sponsor (replacing Marlboro). The Mission
Winnow brand is about promoting transformation, progress, and inno-
vation—aligning PMI with technology and science—which complement
the symbolic qualities associated with Formula 1. Meanwhile, BAT’s
partnership with McLaren facilitates the promotion of the company’s
“New Category” products, including branding for Vuse e-cigarettes and
Velo nicotine pouches appearing on the drivers’ uniforms and the
McLaren race cars. During the 2019 Formula 1 season—at 13 races—
BAT’s taglines “A Better Tomorrow” and “Accelerating Transformation”
426 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

were also featured (Gratz, 2020). BAT presentations to investors empha-

sise interrelated strategies for “A Better Tomorrow” and “Accelerating
New Category Growth and Profitability” by pointing to products that
also include natural remedy cannabidiol (CBD) and others classified as
“beyond nicotine” (Dewhirst, in press). Further, for the 2020 season,
BAT had “significantly increased branding positions on the Formula 1
car—including highly visible new sidepod branding, inside halo and
front wing branding positions,” and co-created marketing content to
increase awareness about their partnership with McLaren (BAT, 2021,
para. 5.). According to BAT’s website, “BAT and McLaren share a pas-
sion for technology, innovation and design” (BAT, 2021, para. 6.).
Indeed, like other e-cigarette and vaping manufacturers (e.g., JUUL is
produced by JUUL Labs), BAT engages in marketing communication
that associates their “next generation” products with science as well as
innovation and high technology. The corporate website of a BAT subsid-
iary in Canada, for example, has a dedicated “harm reduction” page
where a direct link is provided to “BAT Science” (Imperial Tobacco
Canada, 2022). While BAT—and other tobacco companies—have
adopted harm reduction in their public relations initiatives, harm reduc-
tion is unlikely to be realised because the marketing of “next generation
products” such as Vuse is not limited to only those consumers who might
genuinely benefit from use (see Dewhirst, 2021b). Instead, reflecting the
profit motive of tobacco companies, the marketing of their “next genera-
tion products” also attracts new users, dual users (e.g., those continuing
to smoke combustible cigarettes while adopting e-cigarettes), and gener-
ally discourages outright quit attempts. Given the broad impact of the
tobacco industry’s marketing on consumer demand (National Cancer
Institute, 2008; USDHHS, 2012)—including demand for vaping prod-
ucts (USDHHS, 2016)—the marketing and promotion of “next genera-
tion products” is generally inconsistent with the guiding principles of
harm reduction. The continued Formula 1 sponsorships by tobacco com-
panies appear motivated by expanding the consumer pool for their nico-
tine-delivery products.
Alcohol brands also have a prominent sponsorship presence in Formula
1. Heineken—a popular beer brand from the Netherlands—and Ferrari
Trento—an Italy-based sparkling wine producer—were identified as
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 427

Formula 1 partners for the 2021 season. Heineken became the champi-
onship’s official global beer in 2016 through a $150 million multi-year
sponsorship deal (Reuters, 2016). Champagne still has traditionally fea-
tured during the podium ceremonies of Formula 1 races when the win-
ning drivers and teams are recognised and celebrated. Champagne brands
such as Moet and Mumm previously had long-time associations with
Formula 1 (Noble, 2021b). Additionally, Diageo’s Johnnie Walker—a
brand of Scottish whisky—began a partnership with the McLaren team
in 2005 and became the official whisky of Formula 1 in 2014 (Johnnie
Walker, 2021). American brewer, Anheuser-Busch was a notable sponsor
of the BMW Williams race team, during the early and mid-2000s, as part
of marketing efforts to promote their Budweiser brand globally and
broaden the brand’s appeal beyond the USA market (Autosport, 2003;
BMW Group, 2003). Alcohol companies gain widespread exposure for
their respective brands through these partnerships. During the 2017
Formula 1 season, for example, brand exposure was particularly promi-
nent for Heineken and Johnnie Walker, and public health scholars raised
concern about the reach of such marketing efforts including a youthful
audience (Barker et al., 2018).
Like tobacco, alcohol sponsorship of sports properties has generally
undergone scrutiny due to the notable health consequences resulting
from alcohol consumption (Sparks et al., 2005; Wenner & Jackson,
2009; Ireland et al., 2019). Alcohol sponsorship of motor racing, in par-
ticular, represents a curious combination with impaired driving being a
leading cause of death, especially among young adults (MADD, 2021).
The sponsorship link between alcohol brands and motor racing events
has been identified as problematic with calls for banning alcohol sponsor-
ship (Reuters, 2016). Despite such calls, alcohol sponsorship has per-
sisted, but alcohol sponsors have responded by launching “responsible
drinking” media campaigns. Heineken, for example, has created a “If You
Drive, Never Drink” campaign to complement its Formula 1 partnership
(Reuters, 2016). The brewer’s non-alcoholic beer, Heineken 0.0, has also
been promoted, which can be interpreted as a pre-emptive attempt to
circumvent any future bans of alcohol sponsorship in sport (i.e., brewers
would predictably argue that their non-alcoholic products fall outside of
the scope of such restrictions and thus should be retained). Meanwhile,
428 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

Johnnie Walker has launched a “Join the Pact” campaign—featuring past

and current Formula 1 drivers—to demonstrate the brand’s commitment
to “responsible drinking” (Johnnie Walker, 2021). Consumers are invited
to make a pledge online—at Johnnie Walker’s website—to never drink
and drive. Such “responsible drinking” initiatives suggest it is the misuse
of alcohol that is problematic, which strategically distinguishes the prod-
uct category from tobacco when considering the appropriateness of being
a sport sponsorship partner (Crompton, 1993).
188BET—a provider of gambling services—was another Formula 1
partner for the 2021 season. Like tobacco and alcohol, gambling has
addictive potential, being classified as an addictive disorder according to
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition
(DSM-5) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Research, including
brain imaging and neurochemical tests, shows that the effect of gambling
on a consumer’s reward system resembles the effect of using substances or
drugs like tobacco and alcohol (Reilly & Smith, 2013). Those with gam-
bling disorder are more at-risk for poor general health, suicide, decreased
psychosocial and mental health functioning, as well as strained family
and employment relationships (Morasco et al., 2006; American
Psychiatric Association, 2013). Harm is likely when regular gamblers
have instances where they gamble more than initially intended or for
those experiencing a loss of control over money or time when they gam-
ble (Blaszczynski et al., 2004). Concerns have been raised that gambling
sponsorships, which facilitate brand exposure on television during broad-
cast sports properties, serve as marketing cues that drive additional sports
betting consumption, markedly among those classified as “problem gam-
blers” (Hing et al., 2013; Hing et al., 2015; Lamont et al., 2016).
Aramco, which is a Saudi Arabia-based (and state-owned) energy and
chemicals company that proclaims to produce one in eight barrels of the
global oil supply, was an additional Formula 1 partner for the 2021 sea-
son. Moreover, Shell is a long-time partner of the Ferrari race team.
ExxonMobil—through its Mobil 1 brand of lubricants—was a long-­
lasting partner of the McLaren team and now serves as a partner for Red
Bull Racing (Barretto, 2016). French oil company, Total and BP’s Castrol
brand have additionally been sponsorship partners for various Formula 1
teams (Reuters Staff, 2017). While the fuel and lubricant brands
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 429

associated among the racing teams have changed hands regularly over
time, the reliance and presence of Big Oil, generally, is long-standing. It
is unsurprising that the leading oil companies would serve as prominent
sponsors of Formula 1, taking into account the functional links of their
products to the sports property as fuel and lubricant suppliers. Still,
sponsorship by major oil companies is controversial when consideration
is given to the burning of fossil fuels producing carbon dioxide and being
a main cause of climate change. Formula 1 faces “greenwashing” accusa-
tions by providing sponsorship partners a social licence to operate, and
being able to leverage promotional opportunities (e.g., the development
of more fuel-­efficient engines), despite the events being environmentally
destructive (Miller, 2016). The WHO (2021b, para. 1.), has identified
climate change as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity”; thus
sponsorship by Big Oil serves as a further example of a contradictory
pairing of unhealthy or harmful products with sports and athleticism.
The Formula 1 season calendar increasingly includes races in regions
known for oil production, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where the
hosting of high-profile sports events has also prompted accusations of
“sportswashing” (Richards, 2021a). Countries with documented human
rights abuses are seen as hosting high-profile sports and entertainment
events for the purposes of improving their image and reputation. The
inaugural race in Saudi Arabia during the 2021 season generated height-
ened scrutiny. Canadian musician, Justin Bieber was urged to reconsider
and cancel his performance scheduled at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Among those calls for cancelling his concert was a plea from Hatice
Cengiz: the fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi—the Washington Post journal-
ist—who was murdered by agents with an apparent connection to Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Rachini, 2021).
Seven-time Formula 1 champion, Lewis Hamilton has been outspo-
ken about human rights issues where races are being held. He wore a
rainbow-adorned helmet for races in Qatar and Saudi Arabia to show
support for the LGBTQ+ community while also directing attention to
the repressive laws in these countries that make same-sex relations illegal
(Richards, 2021b). Undoubtedly, Formula 1—as a high-profile sports
property with global reach—is strategically attractive to companies for
fulfilling important marketing objectives and justifying investment as
430 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

sponsorship partners. Still, companies entering Formula 1 sponsorship

must be mindful about which brands—and product sectors—they
become aligned with as fellow sponsorship partners from a reputation
management standpoint.

Conclusion
Early examples of Formula 1 sponsorship were typically function-based,
such as engine, fuel, and tyre suppliers. Sponsorship of Formula 1 served
to showcase the performance attributes of brand sponsors or partners.
Prominent Formula 1 team sponsorship liveries, however, did not emerge
until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when tobacco companies notably
turned to sponsoring broadcast sports events to compensate for tradi-
tional broadcast advertising exposure no longer allowable. Cigarette
advertising became banned from the broadcast media in various jurisdic-
tions—including the UK in 1965 and the USA in 1971—and tobacco
companies reallocated significant promotional spending to sponsorship-­
linked marketing. As tobacco sponsorship became prominent, brand
associations leveraged through sponsorship-linked marketing became
increasingly symbolic or image-based. Sponsorship spending by tobacco
companies in Formula 1 peaked around the turn of the century when
they contributed most of the sponsorship revenue among racing team
budgets. Since that time, regulations have prompted the removal of ciga-
rette brands from driver and race car liveries, although tobacco compa-
nies such as BAT and PMI persist as notable partners in Formula 1.
Today, engine manufacturers such as Ferrari, Honda, Mercedes, and
Renault—as well as oil companies being fuel and lubricant suppliers—
remain as visible and prominent sponsors. Telecom and technology com-
panies have become known as central Formula 1 partners. Formula 1 is
seen as glamorous and exclusive—and linked with elitism and excess in
some circles (Nichols & Savage, 2017)—so upscale and high-status
brands are drawn to strategically building their associations with the
sports property. Despite Formula 1’s recent attempts to attract more
diverse fan bases, men historically dominate as the actors of Formula 1.
 The Shifting Landscape of Sponsorship Within Formula 1 431

Consequently, some partners have sought to underscore masculine attri-

butes. In their marketing communication, brands such as Marlboro have
previously leveraged the rugged and heroic associations of Formula 1.
And recently, Red Bull and Monster, which possess mostly masculine
attributes in their branding, predictably highlight the adrenaline-filled
and exciting associations of motor sports that suitably link with the
energy drink sector. Innovation and technology are obviously central
attributes of Formula 1 that companies now look to further link with
their brands as sponsors.
Over its approximate 70-year history, Formula 1’s sponsorship land-
scape has shifted in several respects. Formula 1 has become increasingly
commercialised over time, with the sponsorship landscape visibly denser
and more cluttered today. Formula 1 was once largely European in scope,
but now represents a global entity. Consequently, brands that serve as
sponsors and partners of Formula 1 are notable multinational ones,
which are predictably global in ambition and those looking to expand
internationally into new and emerging markets. Sponsors may seek links
with Formula 1 broadly (e.g., as a global partner) or instead build associa-
tions at a racing team level. The global reach of Formula 1 is remarkable
with a racing season that typically runs over an eight- or nine-month
period. Formula 1 is regarded as an attractive sports property for brands
to sponsor as there are opportunities to activate the partnerships nearly
year-round. Still, Formula 1 sponsorships have commonly included those
from harmful and unhealthy product sectors, which raises several impor-
tant ethical and social considerations (e.g., the morality of sponsorships
that pair products such as tobacco and alcohol with sports and
athleticism).

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Damion Sturm for his
detailed and helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Disclosures Timothy Dewhirst served as an invited consultant for the

World Health Organization (WHO), in which he was named as an expert
for the elaboration of a template for a protocol on cross-border advertis-
ing, promotion, and sponsorship regarding Article 13 guidelines of the
432 T. Dewhirst and W. B. Lee

Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). He has also served

as an expert witness in litigation for governments whose policies regard-
ing the marketing and promotion of tobacco and vaping products were
challenged on constitutional grounds.

Note
1. More generally, tobacco companies have commonly associated cigarettes
with premium, fast, and powerful motor vehicles in their marketing com-
munication through advertising creative, sponsorship, and licensing
agreements. Rothmans—a cigarette brand strategically positioned as rep-
resenting premium quality, upward status, and internationalism—serves
as one example: the brand depicted flashy, extravagant automobiles such
as Porsche in earlier advertising (Dewhirst & Sparks, 2011). Additionally,
Rothmans served as a predominant sponsor of the Williams racing team
from 1994 to 1997. This period of sponsorship included having the leg-
endary Ayrton Senna in the car in 1994, while Damon Hill and Jacques
Villeneuve had championship-winning Formula 1 seasons in 1996 and
1997, respectively (Dewhirst & Sparks, 2003). More recently, tobacco
producer, Korean Tomorrow and Global (KT & G) launched a
Lamborghini-branded cigarette, under licence, for both domestic and
international markets (Dewhirst & Lee, 2018).

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 “Men Love Women, But Even More
Than That, Men Love Cars”: Motor
Racing on Film
Seán Crosson

The nomination at the 2019 Academy Awards ceremony of Ford v Ferrari

(2019) for the Best Film Oscar provided us with a high-profile reminder
of the prominence of motor racing in contemporary film. In total the
film received four nominations, winning for Best Film Editing and Best
Sound Editing; Ford v Ferrari also received both critical and commercial
acclaim, taking US$225.5 million at the international box-office alone
before its release on DVD and via streaming platforms.1 However the
critical response to the film was also revealing with regard to the depic-
tion of motor racing on film, as well as the sports film genre more broadly
to which it belongs (Crosson, 2013). Indeed, the sporting context fea-
tured was often not the principal concern of reviewers, despite the fact
that its lead protagonists are motor racing drivers and its most dynamic
sequences feature motor racing. Furthermore, the film’s original title de-­
emphasises its sporting connection—though this was highlighted more
clearly in some European territories where the production was retitled Le

S. Crosson (*)
University of Galway, Galway, Ireland
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 443
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_18
444 S. Crosson

Mans ‘66, referring to the French endurance motor race featured promi-
nently within the production. A recurring focus of commentary was on
the relationship between the two principal male characters in the film, car
designer Carroll Shelby (Mat Damon) and British driver Ken Miles
(Christian Bale), described in terms of “bromance” by several reviewers.
As noted by Jinal Bhatt, “After Bale and Damon’s bromance, my second
favourite thing about the film has to be the racing scenes” (Bhatt, 2020).
A New Yorker review also responded to this aspect, noting that, “the big
romance in the movie is bromance, and Mangold conjures it with a touch
that’s reminiscent of the rowdy friendships found in films by Howard
Hawks and John Ford” (Brody, 2019). What both reviewers are respond-
ing to are central concerns found throughout the depiction of motor
racing on film, particularly when found in fiction. These films may con-
tain drivers and sequences of motor racing; however, what they are more
concerned with are the various relationships, challenges and tensions that
attend men and masculinity (with women occupying at best supporting
roles), in a sport long renowned for its danger. This chapter will map the
development of the depiction of motor racing on film with a particular
focus (given the limitations of what a single chapter can address) on live-­
action fiction film emerging from the United States, the country that has
by far produced the largest number of relevant depictions. In doing so,
major recurring themes evident will be highlighted, as well as the progres-
sion of technical advances in the filming of motor racing.2

Masculinity and the Sports Film

The focus on men and masculinity within depictions of motor racing
reflects a broader theme found across the sport cinema genre where the
performance of gender roles has been a defining feature throughout its
history (Crosson, 2013, pp. 103–124). Judith Butler has criticised the
restriction of “the meaning of gender to received notions of masculinity
and femininity” (Butler, 1999, p. viii), viewing it as primarily performa-
tive (rather than being an internal essence) and manufactured through a
“sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the
body” (pp. xv–xvi). This is particularly so for masculine identities; as
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 445

David Scott has posited, drawing on the work of Elisabeth Badinter and
Monique Schneider, “[w]ithin the western tradition from the Greeks
onward, masculine identity seems, much more so than feminine identity,
something that had to be constructed” (Scott, 2010, p. 143). Sport is one
of the most revealing sites where this construction is apparent and can be
examined. As I have noted previously (Crosson, 2013, pp. 103–104),
“sport has historically been concerned above all with the glorification of
masculinity and the male body. By masculinity, I refer to qualities such as
power, strength, height and wealth which men in the United States and
elsewhere in the Western World have been encouraged to aspire to.” It is
true that women may in more recent years feature more prominently in
professional sports and within the sports film genre. However, sport as an
institution continues to be a principal site for the “inculcation, expres-
sion, and perpetuation of masculine habits, identities, behavior, and ide-
als, including a belief in patriarchal supremacy over women” (Smith,
2009, p. 160; Dunning, 1986). Indeed, the areas in which sport takes
place and is engaged with are spaces that have historically been primarily
associated with men from sports fields, to locker rooms, golf clubs, box-
ing clubs, gambling establishments, bars and motor racing tracks, areas in
which women were permitted (at best) restricted access (Smith, 2009,
p. 163). Equally, despite the increasing prominence of female athletes,
elite sport and its representation is overwhelmingly associated with men
who provide the standard for performance. It is not surprising therefore
that the sports film is overwhelming focused on male athletes and pro-
tagonists, and the broader theme of masculinity, including the sub-genre
dedicated to motor racing. Here, women occupy primarily supporting
roles as either inspirational muse or femme fatale (Crosson, 2013,
pp. 107–110; Mulvey, 1975, pp. 6–18). They can sometimes feature as
the focus of conflict, a key requirement in fiction film, between male
protagonists (exemplified by the familiar love triangle scenario found
repeatedly in mainstream drama) or as foils to highlight salient aspects of
male characters, including their vulnerabilities and insecurities. In this
respect, female sexuality can be presented as a threatening force in need
of both discipline and control. The precarious nature of motor racing
446 S. Crosson

itself, where drivers face the real possibility of serious injury or death, has
also provided directors with a dramatic arena to focus on masculinity and
its vulnerabilities.

The Arrival of Fiction Cinema

As cinema evolved in the 1910s and fiction film increasingly came to the
fore, motor racing featured occasionally, particularly as filmmaking tech-
nology and the practice of motor racing advanced. The first fiction pro-
duction featuring motor racing was the eight-minute Keystone Film
Company release The Speed Kings (1913). Mack Sennet, the founder of
Keystone, had developed a personal interest in motor racing to the extent
that he purchased his own race car and entered it in the 1913 Santa
Monica Road Race. Though he lost the race, the experience gave him the
opportunity to film the event (including from a camera mounted on his
car) which he subsequently integrated into a fiction film he wrote, hang-
ing a flimsy and unconvincing love triangle scenario on the racing
sequences (Kalat, 2015). Despite the weakness of the story and overall
narrative, the film has important historical interest as it features major
figures in American motor racing at the time. In addition, The Speed
Kings provides a still fascinating depiction of both the vehicles used and
how races were run, including the two-man teams that collaborated in
each car, and the huge crowds in attendance. Furthermore, the film antic-
ipated what would continue to be central features of subsequent motor
racing productions: the integration of actual race footage into a fictional
scenario, and the prominent concern with men and masculinity, and the
various challenges they encounter, accentuated by the precarious nature
of the sport they participate in. In this context, women occupy primarily
supporting roles, often as the love interest or the focus of a love contest,
as evident in The Speed Kings as the two racers—actual contemporary rac-
ers Teddy Tetzlaft and Earl Cooper (her “papa”’s (Ford Sterling) preferred
suitor)—compete for Mabel’s (Mabel Normand) affections.
The Santa Monica Road Race is also featured in the first feature-length
production to depict motor racing prominently,3 the Famous Players-­
Lasky release The Roaring Road (1919). Described by one online com-
mentator as the film that “started the public’s love affair” with motor
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 447

racing movies (Anonymous, n.d.), the film stars Wallace Reid, who (like
Sennet) had a personal interest in the subject. The opening of The Roaring
Road tells us that the “Grand Prize”4 road race has never been won three
times in a row by a single car manufacturer, though the Darco Motor
Company has succeeded twice, and the company’s president, J.D. “The
Bear” Ward (Theodore Roberts), is determined to ensure a third victory
as he awaits the delivery of three new Darco racecars. The depiction of an
ambitious automobile manufacturer reflected broader developments in
this period where car manufacturing became increasingly important to
the US economy and a growing source of employment (Nye, 2015, p. 21).
Motor sales are also a focus of The Roaring Road in the profession of the
central protagonist “The Bear”’s leading salesman and would-be race
driver, Walter Thomas Walden, aka “Toodles” (Reid). Like The Speed
Kings, a love story is also prominently featured as Toodles seeks to marry
J.D.’s “motherless cub,” Dorothy (Ann Little). Without J.D.’s knowledge
or permission, Toodles enters in the “Grand Prize” driving a car he had
built from Darco Motor Company wrecks and duly wins, earning a new
more lucrative contract from “the Bear,” and eventually (after further
twists in the narrative) his permission to marry Dorothy. While The
Roaring Road made limited technical strides in advancing the filming of
motor racing, themes and tropes central to the sub-genre—including the
danger of the sport, focus on men and masculinity, and the undermining,
marginalisation and infantilisation of women—were already evident.5

Motor Racing in Early Sound Cinema

The success of motor racing films featuring Wallace Reid inspired the
production of the first English language sound feature to include motor
racing, the 1930 pre-code Paramount Pictures production Burning Up.
According to Fleming (2013), Paramount’s Jesse L. Lasky emulated
“Wally’s films almost exactly,” with cinematographer Allen G. Siegler
filming “the racing scenes exactly as Wally’s had been done” (p. 235). The
film received lukewarm reviews, however, on release and was described by
the New York Times as
448 S. Crosson

A light and breezy story of the speedways, not calculated to disturb any
gray matter … ‘Suicide’ Larrigan, a racing driver, enters into a conspiracy
to defraud citizens of Carfax of their money by being the party to a ‘framed’
race. But he discovers that the father of the girl he loves has placed $25,000
on the outcome of the race, so instead of losing it, he wins.
(Anonymous, 1930)

The review does acknowledge the presence of “excellent ‘shots’ of rac-

ing cars,” and there are moments of impressive on-track cinematography,
in particular in the final climactic motor race between lead protagonist
Lou Larrigan (Richard Arlen) and “Bullet” McGhan (Francis McDonald).
While back-projection (the standard for the time) does feature for close-­
ups, this race includes a sophisticated range of on-track camera angles
and positions—including following shots, shots from a car racing ahead
of the drivers and from cameras attached to the cars themselves. A further
feature evident is the use of the on-track commentator to provide narra-
tive information on the race depicted, a familiar feature of subsequent
motor racing films.
The New York Times also described Mary Brian (Larrigan’s main love
interest, Ruth Morgan) as playing “one of those stupid roles in which the
girl takes the word of the villain rather than the explanations of the man
she loves” (Anonymous, 1930). Some of the dialogue featured in this
respect does not date well; when Ruth discovers Lou has been involved
with other women in the past, he describes them as “practice … like a
fellow goes out and tunes up for a race,” a remark that Ruth appears to
ultimately accept as they end up together by the end. The world of motor
racing, and those who invest or bet on it, is also presented as an essen-
tially male and privileged domain, including shots of well-dressed card
players in the “stag club” who discuss bets on the upcoming (fixed)
motor race.
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 449

Motor Racing on Film in the 1930s

Young and Young (2007) in their discussion of popular culture during
the Great Depression describe Burning Up as “one of the spate of race-
track movies” that emerged as Hollywood “reacted to automobiles and
speed” (p. 319). Many of these films were either B movies (including The
Racing Strain, High Speed (1932), The Big Thrill (1933), Speed (1936),
Speed Devils (1935) and Burn ’Em Up O’Connor (1939)) or low budget
independent films (Ten Laps to Go (1936)), or (in the British context)
“quota quickies,”6 as in Death Drives Through (1935). This is reflected in
a reliance in these films on poorly integrated stock racing footage, unim-
pressive cinematography or unoriginality in approach. Inevitably, the
recurring format of a male protagonist and his romantic difficulties set
against the precarity of motor racing feature, with an (equally predict-
able) final big race encounter providing the climax. However, occasion-
ally a major (often emerging) star of Hollywood did feature, including a
young James Stewart (Speed (1936)) and Pat O’Brien (Indianapolis
Speedway (1939)).
Many of Hollywood’s 1930s motor racing films were building on the
success at the start of the decade of The Crowd Roars (1932), which fea-
tured one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, James Cagney. Directed by semi-
nal director and motor racing enthusiast Howard Hawks, The Crowd
Roars (remade in 1939 as Indianapolis Speedway) is one of the more unset-
tling depictions of motor racing to emerge—it also engages directly with
the sport by including actual motor racing drivers, including Billy Arnold,
winner of the 1930 Indianapolis 500, a race featured prominently
(McCarthy, 1997). Further authenticity was added with the inclusion of
actual crowd and track footage and the collaboration of the Duesenberg
brothers, designers of some of the most successful motor racing cars in
the period (McBride, 2013). Original releases of the film also included
innovative tinted sequences for the final climactic race (Milner, 1932).
Despite this, the racing sequences are less impressive than some earlier
productions with back projection used liberally. However, as a pre-Code
film, The Crowd Roars engages more frankly with sexual politics and vio-
lence in a manner that would largely disappear from Hollywood films
450 S. Crosson

with the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship

guidelines in 1934.
Moreover, the dangers of motor racing are foregrounded in The Crowd
Roars with the film beginning with shots of a car race, a car tumbling and
crashing in a likely deadly event and the crowd roaring in shock. It is this
appeal of motor racing that is both emphasised and critiqued within the
film. Cagney plays Joe Greer, a successful motor racing driver who tries
to convince his brother Eddie not to enter his profession, describing the
crowd as “watching for wrecks and roaring for blood.” Despite his protes-
tations, Joe eventually agrees to bring Eddie with him to his races.
However, when he finds Eddie drinking with Joe’s girlfriend Lee (Ann
Dvorak) and her friend Anne (Joan Blondell), he breaks up with Lee
leading Anne to seduce Eddie out of anger with the treatment of her
friend. The perceived threat of female sexuality is evident in this sequence
in the film: “fine couple of tramps you two” Joe remarks to Lee and Anne.
Anne is filmed initially with her largely naked legs propped up on the
table before her, which Joe knocks angrily to the ground before physically
throwing her out of the room. Lee’s reaction to the breakup is also reveal-
ing as she cries hysterically to her friend Anne: “I can’t let him go”; while
the woman scorned is depicted as in desperate need of her man, the man
feels threatened by her sexuality.
Anne and Eddie fall in love precipitating a fight between the brothers,
which leads Joe to rely increasingly on alcohol while bringing his family
squabbles onto the race track. When Joe’s backup driver “Spud” Connors
(Frank McHugh) tries to separate the brothers during a race, he is forced
off by Joe, leading to Spud crashing out of the race and his horrific death
in his burning car. This is a particularly disturbing scene in the film as we
hear Spud’s screams and other drivers continue to race around the track
despite the smoke, flames and smell of burning flesh which they try to
alleviate by covering their faces. Eventually several pull out of the race
and Joe crashes out himself. The horrific memory of Spud’s crash leads to
Joe’s rapid decline in racing and dropping out of the sport, before return-
ing at the film’s close for a final on-track reconciliation between the
brothers. The focus on masculinity, danger and suspicions of female sexu-
ality evident in The Crowd Roars would continue in the decades that fol-
lowed, including in the rare film text that featured a female driver.
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 451

 he Impact of World War II on Motor Racing

T
on Film: A Female Race Driver?
The advent of World War II contributed to what Mary Ann Abate has
described as “a paradigm shift” in American society with regard to the
role of women (Abate, 2008, p. 145; see also Chafe, 1991). The impact
of women’s increasing involvement in positions outside the home during
the War also had an influence on depictions of motor racing, though the
tensions and fears such changes brought were equally evident in the first
English language film to feature a female racing driver, Blonde Comet
(1941). Directed by William Beaudine, the film stars Virginia Vale as the
“Blonde Comet,” Beverly Blake who establishes her reputation as a lead-
ing driver on the European circuit before returning to the States to race.
On her return her main rival is Jim Flynn (Robert Kent) with whom she
eventually develops a romantic relationship.
It is noteworthy that this low-budget film (reliant on poorly integrated
stock footage) was made by the “Poverty Row,”7 Hollywood studio
Producers Releasing Corporation; no major studio would take on the
topic of a norm-breaking female motor racing driver, a role that ostensi-
bly (as the film indicates) breaks the prevailing patriarchal order. As Flynn
remarks in an early scene on first hearing of the “Blonde Comet”: “what
right has she to be in this racket anyway. It’s no game for a woman, it’s
tough enough for a man. If I was her old man I’d spank her good.” His
subsequent remark “she better not get in my way” also reveals the per-
ceived threat she presents to him (as to all men) as she takes on a role
conventionally held by men. However, there is a clear attempt to both
assuage such fears and restore the “natural” order, particularly in the cli-
mactic race (at the Indianapolis 500) when Blake gives up her opportu-
nity to win (seemingly (as a woman!) exhausted and unable to finish) by
asking Flynn to race in her car and ultimately take victory. Following
Flynn’s victory, we see an intimate moment between the two where he
remarks: “I’m not going to let you leave here until you promise that
today’s race was your last.” When Blake protests, Flynn continues “It’s a
man’s job. From now on the man of the family will take care of it.” Blake
interprets these words as a proposal and the film ends with their kiss, and
452 S. Crosson

her seeming acceptance of the return to the “natural order.” While there
is a real (if incomplete) attempt here to put the genie back in the bottle,
returning women to the domestic sphere, the tension regarding the
increasing independence and empowerment of women and its threat to
prevailing constructions of masculinity and patriarchy is nonetheless clear.

Motor Racing on Film in the Post-War Era

Motor racing appeared increasingly in Hollywood (and world) cinema in
the post-war era. This included British (Mask of Dust (1954), which
included Sterling Moss and further major figures in motor racing in the
period, and Checkpoint (1956)), East German (Rivalen am Steuer (1957))
and French (Un homme et une femme (1966)) productions. However,
Hollywood continued to dominate the sub-genre with some of its biggest
stars appearing behind the wheel including James Caan (Red Line 7000
(1965)), James Garner (Grand Prix (1966)), Paul Newman (Winning
(1969)), Steve McQueen (Le Mans (1971)) and Al Pacino (Bobby Deerfield
(1977)). Music legend Elvis Presley also played a race car driver in no less
than three musicals between 1964 and 1968, including Viva Las Vegas
(1964), Spinout (1966) and the NASCAR8-themed Speedway (1968).
However, as with most Elvis films, the productions contribute little to the
depiction of motor racing and are primarily promotional opportunities
to foreground Elvis’ musical rather than driving (or indeed acting!)
abilities.
The first colour Hollywood production to feature motor racing was
Henry Hathaway’s The Racers (1955), starring Kirk Douglas, one of the
top box-office draws of the 1950s and 1960s. The film was shot using the
still new widescreen Cinemascope process introduced two years previ-
ously and this contributes considerably to the cinematic spectacle in
which sequences of motor racing, shot by cinematographer Joe
MacDonald, dominate proceedings, and are of considerably more inter-
est than the overly familiar, unconvincing and unengaging accompany-
ing narrative. As the New York Times reviewer noted on the film’s release
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 453

This film about auto road racing is made for those youthful car fans who
take pleasure in scorching the highways and wrapping their souped-up
jalopies around poles … For the constant reiteration in this big
CinemaScope color film, which offers Kirk Douglas as a racing driver who
is torn between his bright red Ferrari and a dame, is one of fast cars coming
at you, sweeping by you, shooting loudly over your head and whizzing with
terrifying velocity along crowd-lined streets and roads. (Crowther, 1955)

The danger of the sport featured is also emphasised with serious crashes
occurring in most races depicted, and also in the film’s retitling in some
territories as Such Men Are Dangerous. The stress on “men” here is deliber-
ate as yet again it is the physical and emotional trials and achievements of
masculinity that are at the centre of the narrative; lead protagonist Italian
driver Gino Borgesa (Douglas) almost loses his leg as a result of a serious
crash and the second half of the film chronicles his recovery and return
to racing.
The “dame” is beautiful ballerina Nicole (Bella Darvi)) and there is
some gentle acknowledgement of the changing place of women within
Western culture in her depiction. When Gino (playing hard to get)
advises Nicole at one point to “stay where you belong and with the peo-
ple you belong to,” Nicole responds that “I belong to myself.” This is a
rather weak gesture towards independence, however, as Nicole appears
largely dependent on male providers throughout the film.
Similar themes and emphases are also evident in the film that is still
regarded by many followers of motor racing—and Formula 1 in particu-
lar—as providing the most impressive depiction of the sport (See, e.g.
Roberts, 2016). American director John Frankenheimer was a motor rac-
ing enthusiast and was keen to provide the most detailed and authentic
depiction of motor racing to that point. To do so, Frankenheimer and his
crew shadowed the 1966 Formula 1 season, following the races and teams
participating and compiling the footage that would provide a key com-
ponent of Grand Prix (1966). The film therefore features many of the
leading drivers of the era. While American British Racing Motors (BRM)
driver Bob Bondurant prepared the lead actors-James Garner, Yves
Montand, Brian Bedford and Antonio Sabato Jr.-Bondurant also identi-
fied the actor best suited to the lead role (eventually given to Garner),
454 S. Crosson

following test laps with each. Garner received additional training as a

result and developed into a very competent racing driver (Crowe, 2017).
Bondurant had agreed to his role in the production at the request of the
film’s technical advisor Carroll Shelby, the legendary American car
designer and central protagonist in Ford v Ferrari. The film’s producers
also struck a deal with the McLaren racing team who agreed to use an
identical livery to that featured on the car driven by Garner’s character
(American driver Pete Aron), allowing for more convincing integration of
actual race footage into the production (Crowe, 2017).
Grand Prix is one of the most successful motor racing films released to
date; it was among the top ten films released at the box office in the
United States9 and the film won three Academy awards for Best Sound,
Best Film Editing and Best Effects. However, its failure to receive nomi-
nations in any of the major categories are suggestive of the film’s weak-
nesses in terms of non-racing narrative, characterisation and plot. It is the
visual achievement of Grand Prix that is particularly impressive; cinema-
tographer Lionel Lindon photographed the film in Super Panavision 70,
employing a range of innovative camera lenses (with long lenses used for
a slow-motion effect), angles and operating techniques to realise the stun-
ning race footage. The final film was also screened in 70 mm Cinerama
where possible adding to the overall visual impact on contemporary audi-
ences in 1966.
Linton’s work was greatly assisted by a team of innovative camera oper-
ators, in particular John M. Stephens. Stephens developed a range of
innovations that would transform action cinematography in subsequent
decades, including a system to allow the large Panavision cameras to be
mounted and balanced on F1 cars and remotely controlled from either
helicopter or camera car (Stone, 2014). The film also pioneered the use of
in-car cameras to give audiences a more authentic and visceral sense of
the driver’s perspective; 1961 World Champion Phil Hill drove a modi-
fied car in sessions of the Monaco and Belgian Grands Prix to capture
these sequences (Roberts, 2016).10
As identified with regard to previous motor racing films, masculinity
and the various crises that attend it—for which the risks involved in the
motor racing is a key metaphor—are central to the non-racing sequences.
These consist primarily of each driver dealing with various challenges and
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 455

traumas with regard to women in their lives highlighting the tensions

between developing and maintaining a relationship and trying to sustain
a career in the precarious world of motor racing. Though women con-
tinue to occupy supporting roles to the central male protagonists, there is
evidence of the changing expectations of women. This is particularly evi-
dent in the scenes between French driver Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand)
and his (eventual) mistress, journalist Louise Frederickson (Eva Marie
Saint). When Sarti asks her, shortly after they first meet, why she is not
married, saying it is “very bad for a woman to be too independent,” she
responds: “very bad for whom?” “I like making my own decisions,” she
continues, “I like travelling, meeting new people, working, I like to be
free.” However, ultimately she ends up in a relationship with Sarti (a mar-
ried man) and appears to accept the limited nature of the commitment
he can make with her, particularly as it is clearly indicated he cannot
divorce his wife.
The success of Grand Prix transformed Hollywood’s approach to motor
racing on film, in particular the increased focus on the more impressive
and authentic visual depiction of races featured. Three years later major
Hollywood star Paul Newman played the lead in Winning, which was
also shot in Panavision, though focused on the American stock-car racing
circuit rather than European, or Formula 1, context. The film concerns
driver Frank Capua (Newman) and his attempts to reach and win the
Indianapolis 500, a race already (as we have seen) the subject of Hollywood
motor racing productions. Directed by James Goldstone, the film also
featured leading American drivers of the era including Bobby Unser,
Bobby Grim, Dan Gurney, Roger McCluskey and Bruce Walkup, as well
as the then owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Tony Hulman.
Winning also includes actual footage shot at Indianapolis during the
1966 and 1968 races (and at least one actual crash), intercut with further
sequences of Newman racing. As with Garner previously, Newman
underwent considerable preparation for his role, including training ses-
sions with professional drivers Bob Sharp and Lake Underwood—this
experience and his role in the film would lead to a life-long enthusiasm
for motor racing, including racing professionally and establishing the
very successful IndyCar Newman/Haas Racing team (Mitchell, 2018).
456 S. Crosson

As with previous films featuring motor racing, out of his car, the nar-
rative’s principal concern is Frank’s love life and the traumas he must
come to terms with here as he negotiates between his dedication to motor
racing and relationship and (very shortly thereafter) marriage with Elora
(Joanne Woodward), a divorcee and mother of a teenage son Charley
(Richard Thomas). While Charley develops a close relationship with
Frank, working with him to prepare his car for races, his relationship with
Elora is greatly damaged when Frank discovers Elora in bed with his main
racing rival Luther (Robert Wagner). Winning was praised on release for
bringing more depth and development to its central characters and their
relationship than typically found in motor racing-themed films, largely
due to the acting acumen, charisma and chemistry between Newman and
Woodward (Thompson, 1969). This focus reflected a movement more
broadly in Hollywood towards a grittier and more realistic depiction of
relationships and more naturalistic approaches to acting informed by act-
ing schools such as Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio which Newman attended
and the growing impact of the New Hollywood movement (King, 2002).
However, Winning did not depart to any significant extent from the
recurring concerns of the sub-genre and added little to the development
of the depiction of motor racing as a sport on film.
A further major star for whom motor racing would feature promi-
nently in their non-Hollywood life was Steve McQueen. Though poorly
received on its initial release, Le Mans (1971), in which McQueen plays
race driver Michael Delaney, has garnered increasing respect subsequently
as a chronicle of one of the world’s most famous endurance motor races.
Continuing the concern to depict motor racing as authentically as pos-
sible, the film was made on location at the Le Mans circuit in France in
the summer of 1970 and featured sequences from the actual race in June
that year. McQueen had even planned to participate in the race itself, but
the film’s insurers forbid it. Nonetheless, a car he had previously driven
was entered—McQueen’s own Porsche 908/2, #29—equipped with film
cameras to capture much of the in-race footage featured.11
The most impressive aspect of Le Mans is undoubtedly the in-race
footage; there is also an almost documentary like quality to the produc-
tion in certain sequences, particularly in the opening scenes that capture
the actual build-up to the race, with crowds gathering outside the race
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 457

track and drivers preparing to depart. The meticulous chronicling in

these scenes of the event continues to have historical importance as a
record of the race in the period concerned. Like Grand Prix, there is also
an almost fetishistic foregrounding of the cars competing and various
components of particular vehicles. Indeed, it is 38 minutes into the film
before the first dialogue scenes take place. In these non-race sequences
the narrative relies on the familiar tropes of a male race car driver dealing
with personal crises, the danger of the sport itself and unresolved issues
with a member of the opposite sex.

 hanging Class and Race Portrayals

C
in the 1970s
The 1970s were an important decade for changing class and race portray-
als within American films, including in depictions of motor racing. While
characters from working-class backgrounds had featured previously in
the sub-genre, films had rarely been interested in engaging with this
background in any detail until the release of the Lamont Johnson directed
The Last American Hero (1973). Based on the true story of NASCAR
driver Junior Johnson (played by Jeff Bridges), as Chuck Kleinhans
(1974) has observed, this film reflected a larger turn in the 1970s where
Hollywood presented “heroes whose working class origins are central to
the narrative” (Para. 2). For Kleinhans, these films feature

working class heroes both in the sense that their class origins are not
ignored or hidden, and that they are heroes to the working class. For their
intended audience these films are “closer to real life” than films depicting
middle class protagonists with middle class problems. (Kleinhans,
1974, para. 2)

In its focus on Johnson’s North Carolina working-class origins, devel-

oping his driving ability running moonshine for his father, the film con-
tinued the more character-driven focus already evident in motor racing
films of the early 1970s in a work less concerned regarding the impres-
siveness of its familiar (if competently realised) racing sequences.
458 S. Crosson

However, the non-racing narrative returned to familiar tropes, including

the challenges Johnson encounters in his love life. Here racing groupie
Marge (Valerie Perrine) provides both a point of inspiration and trauma
for Johnson, as she (as Pauline Kael observed) “floats along with the win-
ners” (Kael, 1973, para. 5).
The Last American Hero was likely influential for the production of
Greased Lightning (1977); both films focus on the working-class origins
of their lead protagonists, including initial driving skills acquired by each
through the running of moonshine. However, Greased Lightning is dis-
tinctive as the first depiction of motor racing to feature an African
American driver. As I have previously discussed (Crosson, 2013,
pp. 66–85), African Americans and minorities in general have been prob-
lematically depicted within the sport cinema genre including regressive
stereotypes of African Americans as “infantile, lazy, and subservient” as
well as threatening sexual predators, stereotypes Ed Guerrero has identi-
fied from the earliest American films (1993, p. 12). This problematic
historical legacy partly inspired the establishment of independent pro-
duction house Third World Cinema Corporation (producer of Greased
Lightning), founded by African American activist Ossie Davis in 1971 to
promote film roles for actors of colour and produce more positive por-
trayals of African American culture and society (Castillo, 2019).
Directed by African American director Michael Schultz, Greased
Lightning is based on the true story of Wendell Scott, the first African
American to win a race at NASCAR’s highest level, the Grand National
Series. Comedian Richard Pryor plays the lead role of Scott and while the
film follows loosely Scott’s life and career in NASCAR, it adopts a largely
comedic approach to the subject, perhaps to make the explicit racism
evident in the film more palatable to a broader audience. Nonetheless,
the liberal use of the “N” word and “boy” when Whites address African
Americans, as well as other disturbing scenes of racist language and
behaviour makes the film an unsettling watch today.
While Greased Lightning undoubtedly provides a more detailed, sym-
pathetic and in-depth depiction of African American society and culture
(particularly of the community within which Scott grew up) than previ-
ously found in depictions of motor racing, the choice of a comic actor,
and comedic approach to the topic arguably unbalances (and at times
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 459

trivialises) the very serious issues being addressed. There is also a clear
attempt to position a White working-class character as a key support and
facilitator of Scott’s career in the form of fellow driver and friend Hutch
(played by Jeff Bridges’ brother Beau), a trope I have identified previously
as a frequent feature of sport cinema (see, e.g. Crosson, 2013, pp. 78–85).
This is most explicitly depicted in a scene in which Hutch brings Scott to
a Whites-only restaurant and defends him from attack by a drunken
White racist with the aid of a confederate flag. Furthermore, the film
recounts the seeming transformation of initially racist and antagonistic
White characters into supporters of Scott’s, including the local Sheriff
(Sheriff Cotton (Vincent Gardenia)). Scott is initially the main target of
Sheriff Cotton’s attempts to stop the running of moonshine in the
Danville area he polices in scenes where his racist attitudes are clearly
evident. However, after Scott’s success in racing, he visits him in a scene
which acknowledges changing race relations and rights in the United
States, as Cotton describes Scott as, “the biggest thing that ever hit
Danville. I’m proud of you. Everybody’s proud of you. Times sure have
changed, huh? You folks getting to vote and everything.” The final remark
here provides insight into the real motivation for Cotton’s visit; his
attempt to win the Mayorship in the town, which he achieves with Scott’s
endorsement. The film subsequently includes a scene of Mayor Cotton
seeking sponsorship over the phone for Scott’s racing team, remarking to
those who are hesitant to support an African American driver: “you’ve got
to be colour-blind,” a questionable remark given the ongoing challenge
of racism in the United States (Smith, 2013).
While innovative in its featuring of an African American lead, and
foregrounding of the African American community more broadly,
Greased Lightning adds little to the depiction of motor racing relying
heavily on both back projection and poorly integrated stock footage,
both indicators of its low budget origins. The film also features tropes
already familiar from the sub-genre, including the romantic life and rela-
tionship difficulties of the lead, and the dangers of motor racing, evident
in several serious crashes featured, including in a central sequence where
we witness Scott almost killed and in hospital with serious injuries.
460 S. Crosson

 he 1980s and 1990s and Another (Rare)

T
Female Driver
The changing roles of women continued to impact on the depiction of
motor racing in the latter decades of the twentieth century, evident in the
1983 production Heart like a Wheel, a biopic of National Hot Rod
Association (NHRA) Top Fuel three-time world champion, Shirley
Muldowney. The film explicitly addresses in the narrative the challenging
proposition for many men of a female driver, evident in the difficulty
Muldowney has in getting permission initially to race, and subsequently
being accepted by other drivers (and her family) in her profession. The
film chronicles the breakup of her marriage due to her husband’s (Jack
Muldowney (Leo Rossi)) objection to her unconventional profession and
Shirley’s refusal to adapt to his expectations of a housewife’s role, primar-
ily (for him) concerned with child rearing and domestic responsibilities.
The film charts changing perceptions of gender as it moves from the
1950s into the 1970s and we witness Muldowney gain recognition and
admiration as a leading driver in her chosen sport. While conventional
and limited in its approach to the technical filming of motor racing—and
in particular drag racing—Heart like a Wheel is ultimately less concerned
with the sport featured and more with using motor racing as a signifier of
changing gender norms. However, the film remains an outlier in depic-
tions of motor racing, notably as the depiction of gender roles (and par-
ticularly female representations) would regress in subsequent decades.
The rise of motor racing, and particularly the NASCAR variant thereof,
was evident at the beginning of the 1990s when the biggest box office star
of the period, Tom Cruise took the lead role of NASCAR driver Cole
Trickle in Days of Thunder (1990). Directed by Tony Scott, the film did
not enjoy the same popular success as Scott’s previous collaboration with
Cruise (Top Gun (1986)), a film that was clearly influential for Days of
Thunder in the similar choice of music, overall aesthetic and the charac-
terisation of the lead protagonist. This includes Trickle’s introduction by
arriving to a racetrack on a motorbike, Cruise’s signature vehicle (apart
from the combat jets he flew) in Top Gun.
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 461

Days of Thunder has been described as ushering in an era of fiscal

restraint in Hollywood due to its production excesses (its budget doubled
from $35–70million). The film also went to considerable lengths to bring
authenticity to its depiction of the sport, including featuring leading
NASCAR drivers, while ESPN reporters also appeared in on-track scenes.
The cars featured are also based on actual cars used in NASCAR while the
cars driven by the main characters in the film, including Trickle, were
entered into actual NASCAR races where additional authentic footage
was captured. Indeed, apart from the characters, cars and race tracks,
many scenes featured are reputedly based on actual events and this was
part of the film’s promotional lore (and legacy) (The Associated
Press, 2010).
Days of Thunder draws on similar concerns and themes discussed
already, including the recurring trope of masculinity in crisis, highlighted
by Trickle’s involvement with a woman and the danger of the sport con-
cerned. This woman is his doctor, Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman), who
he subjects to a sexual assault when they first meet, mistaking her for a
stripper, after encountering one (disguised as a police officer) earlier in
the film. The scene, which is played for humour, is nonetheless unsettling
and reflects dated gender politics. However, such problematic depictions
of women and gender relations also reflect an attempt to reassert mascu-
linity in a societal context where women’s roles and influence have funda-
mentally changed. There is, nonetheless clearly a tension evident in the
film reflected most obviously in the role Kidman plays (as a powerful
doctor who will decide ultimately whether Trickle can drive again after a
major accident) and also the manner in which she identifies and chal-
lenges his own insecurities as a man following a major accident with fel-
low driver Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker) accusing him of selfishness in
his approach to a sport in which he shares “a racetrack with 40 other
infantile egomaniacs.” Despite this criticism (which could well be made
of the depiction of masculinity throughout the sub-genre), Trickle none-
theless returns to motor racing and Lewicki turns up in support for his
final victorious race that closes the film.
462 S. Crosson

Twenty-First-Century Drivers, Plus

Ca Change…
Motor racing has continued to feature prominently in mainstream cin-
ema in the twenty-first century. It would appear that contemporary direc-
tors are very aware (perhaps at times excessively so) of the predominant
foci and clichés within the sub-genre, which has contributed to an array
of productions of varying quality. Indeed, the recurring themes we have
already identified are very evident in contemporary films, including in
one of the first major motor racing-themed productions to emerge in the
noughties. Sylvester Stallone has been among the most influential figures
within the sport cinema genre, particularly as a result of the commercial
and critical success of boxing-themed drama Rocky (1976). As I have
detailed previously (Crosson, 2013, pp. 93–98), Rocky was one of the
most commercially successful sports films of all time, inspiring a fran-
chise that has produced five subsequent films (and two spin-off-sequels
Creed (2015) and Creed II (2018)) to date and chosen at number two on
the American Film Institute’s (AFI) list of best sports films (AFI, 2008).
At the centre of Rocky’s narrative is an engagement with various crises that
attend White working-class masculinity—as worked through the epony-
mous central protagonist—while affirming the American Dream trajec-
tory (Crosson, 2013, pp. 93–98), a theme that also chimes with depictions
of motor racing on film. It was, nonetheless, surprising when Stallone
turned to motor racing as the subject of his 2001 production Driven, a
work he developed over several years, produced, wrote the screenplay for
and acted in as washed up motor racing driver Joe Tanto (a role that again
connected with his previous (and subsequent) roles within the Rocky
franchise). Stallone had initially hoped to focus on Formula 1 in the film,
but the challenges of gaining access to Formula 1 teams and developing a
production in relation to the sport convinced him ultimately to focus
instead on the much lesser known (and no longer existing) CART FedEx
Championship Series (Thorn, 2019).
Driven was directed by Finnish director Renny Harlin who makes gen-
erous use of both actual race footage recorded during production as well
as Computer-generated imagery (CGI) in his depiction of motor racing.
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 463

The production was shot over eight months at nine actual races in five
countries and employed what was then cutting-edge film technology,
including periscope lenses which Harlin described as allowing the camera
to “be mounted out of the way, but the lens comes out in front of the
driver’s eyes so you can get the exact point of view of the driver all the way
down the track and all the way up to include his own hands on the steer-
ing wheel” (Driven: Production Notes).
Driven was both a critical and commercial failure, generally panned by
critics for both its unconvincing characterisations and narrative, and at
times preposterous depiction of motor racing. As the New York Times
critic A.O. Scott remarked at the time of its release

Though Mr. Harlin blends stunt driving and computer-generated daredev-

ilry with film he shot at actual races, his technique is too jumpy and self-­
conscious to convey either the meticulous skill the sport demands or the
visceral thrill it can produce. (Scott, 2001)

As Scott correctly surmises, Driven collapses under the “dead weight of

a half-dozen utterly predictable, often indistinguishable plots and sub-
plots [and] the horrifying spectacle of actors crashing and burning as they
bellow their way through stupefying speeches about faith, will and pure
victory” (Scott, 2001).
Particularly unconvincing are the crashes featured. Here Harlin
employs CGI to accentuate each major crash, emphasising the extraordi-
nary danger involved and also providing close-ups of the various pieces of
wreckage as cars are destroyed. This is particularly apparent in a central
sequence—the second to last race featured—when race driver Memo
(Cristián de la Fuente) is involved in a horrific crash in which his car is
thrown into the air, broken into pieces, with the badly damaged cockpit
(with driver attached) landing upside-down in a nearby river. The scene
is unintentionally funny, so preposterous it is in its execution and so
removed from any actual possible experience in motor racing, including
the depiction of the two leading drivers in the race—Jimmy Bly (Kip
Pardue) and Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger)—leaving their cars and
running to rescue Memo from the remains of his car in the river.
Ultimately, of course, the purpose of this scene is not primarily about
464 S. Crosson

motor racing but rather about emphasising the relationships and mascu-
line bonding between the lead male characters.
While ostensibly concerned with the attempt of rookie racing driver
Bly to win the Cart Championship, much of Driven’s narrative is taken
up with various personal and emotional crises that attend the central
male characters, including the familiar love-triangle scenario between Bly
and his main race rival, German driver Brandenburg, over Brandenburg’s
fiancée Sophia (Estella Warren). Tanto (Stallone) is brought back into
motor racing by Bly’s team manager, paraplegic Carl Henry (Burt
Reynolds) to be Bly’s support driver, and Tanto’s own racing traumas
(where he failed to realise his potential) are also recalled by Henry in the
film in a speech that explicitly articulates masculinity in crisis:

I watched you kill yourself! You had everything, and you threw it all away!
And I had to sit there and watch! The slowest man in the fastest sport. I
wake up every morning, my legs are on fire. I know I'm gonna have to sit
in this chair for the rest of the day. But if they gave me one more chance,
I'd do it all over again. It ain't gonna happen. We are all damaged.

However, as we have identified elsewhere in the sub-genre, while the

central focus is on the male leads, women are portrayed in Driven as
peripheral, sexualised, if occasionally disruptive figures in men’s lives. As
the New York Times reviewer also noted, “To complete the atmosphere of
genial frat-house male bonding, each race day begins with a montage of
trackside babes in short-shorts and halter tops” (Scott, 2001), while
David Duprey noted that “women here are only window dressing …
Treating the whole thing like an MTV beach party, [Harlin] points his
camera at every scantily-clad girl (from every angle) whenever he can,
giving superficial video game quality attention to the cars themselves”
(Duprey, 2018). The poorly developed role of journalist Lucretia (Stacy
Edwards) is indicative of the film’s engagement with and depiction of
gender. Ostensibly following motor racing to write “an expose on male
dominance in the sport,” no development is given whatsoever to this
topic, a further nod to established tropes in the depiction of motor racing
though with no interest in interrogating this subject in any depth.
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 465

While Driven attempted to provide a serious (if melodramatic) depic-

tion of open-wheel racing, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
(2006) returned to the world of NASCAR to mine the comic potential of
the sport, and the culture that surrounds it. Featuring Hollywood comic
star Will Ferrell in the lead role of NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby, Ferrell
has starred to date in no fewer than four sports films, with Talladega
Nights the biggest box office draw reaching number one at the US box
office.12 As with Days of Thunder, the film also features prominent figures
associated with NASCAR, including both drivers and broadcasters.
However, the authentic depiction of motor racing is not the principal
concern of this production but rather the opportunities these sporting
sequences provide for humour.
The recurring themes of masculinity in crisis and the dangers of motor
racing also feature in Talladega Nights. However, while containing some
humorous sequences, the appeal of the film cannot be easily separated
from the more problematic race and gender depictions featured. All the
drivers featured are White men and the few individuals of colour that
appear do so in supporting roles to their White drivers, including Michael
Clarke Duncan as Ricky Bobby’s crew chief Lucius Washington.
Depictions of gender are even more problematic with women in Talledega
Nights occupying stereotypically marginal roles, there to support and tit-
illate the male characters and viewers. Ricky’s eventual wife introduces
herself to him after a race victory by lifting her shirt to reveal her breasts
remarking: “hey driver, drive these,” apparently sufficient basis on which
to make a marriage proposal, the following wedding photos suggest. This
scene is echoed at the close of the film when Bobby’s subsequent partner
Susan (Amy Adams) impresses his by then ex-wife (who attempts to win
Bobby back) by lifting her shirt to reveal her (apparently equally) impres-
sive breasts, provoking the awestruck remark: “Well, girl, you got
some game.”
The presence of homosexual driver Jean Girard as Bobby’s main rival
may appear to challenge conventional conceptions of masculinity, as is
evident in the shocked and appalled responses by Bobby and other fol-
lowers of NASCAR when they first encounter Girard. However, as por-
trayed in an extraordinarily over-the-top and exaggerated performance by
Sasha Baron Cohen, it is hard to take the depiction seriously or view it as
466 S. Crosson

more than a further reaffirmation of the peculiarity and inappropriate-

ness of a driver who challenges the prevailing norms of the sport. It is not
insignificant that the supposedly ironic inspirational slogan that Bobby
adopts from his father—“If you’re not first, you’re last”—was employed
by supporters of Donald Trump during the riots at the Capitol Building
on 6 January 2021.13 This slogan speaks to deep anxieties among Trump
supporters (effectively manipulated and exploited by the former presi-
dent) regarding the increasing empowerment and influence of both peo-
ple of colour and women in the United States, evident in the backlash on
the right to the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements (Anderson,
2016; Ross, 2021). Talladega Nights provides an ultimately reassuring
(and reactionary) depiction of race and gender relations, reasserting mas-
culine values of an earlier era—White, heterosexual and patriarchal—
under the guise of ironic comedy.
Masculine values are also at the centre of the 2013 production Rush
which focused on the rivalry between Formula 1 drivers Niki Lauda and
James Hunt, and in particular the events surrounding the 1976 Formula
1 season. However, unlike previous productions discussed above, Rush
did not include footage of actual races, nor (as with Grand Prix and Bobby
Deerfield) did it shadow a Formula 1 season. The racing scenes were shot
in the UK and Germany, with Oscar-winning cinematographer Anthony
Dod Mantle ensuring sophisticated cinematography throughout, with
heavy emphasis on rapid cutting and dynamic on track and in-car foot-
age, including unusual on-board perspectives, to emphasise the speed,
exhilaration and dangers of Formula 1 racing. This footage was combined
with judiciously chosen, graded, de-grained and digitally enhanced
archive footage (to reduce significant inconsistencies with new material)
from relevant races and race tracks. While archive footage has featured
before in depictions of motor racing in fiction film, advances in technol-
ogy allowed for a much more seamless matching with original footage
(which was also shot on older lenses for effect, including Baltars and
Cooke S2s) in Rush, such that these archive sequences provided the skel-
etal structure around which racing sequences were constructed (Hope-­
Jones, 2013).
Dod Mantle has spoken of trying to capture the dangers of motor rac-
ing effectively (Anthony Dod Mantle, Quoted in Hope-Jones, 2013).
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 467

This concern is also evident in the film’s dialogue, including remarks by

Hunt’s eventual wife Suzy (Olivia Wilde) who describes a Formula 1 car
as “just a little coffin, really … a bomb on wheels.” However, the second-
ary position of women like Suzy (eventually divorced by Hunt) to the
cars (and men) featured in the sub-genre is also stressed in the words of
Lord Hesketh—the British aristocrat who bankrolls Hunt’s initial efforts
in motor racing—in remarks that underline again the close association
between motor racing and masculinity:

They could never have imagined it, those pioneers who invented the auto-
mobile, that it would possess us like this, in our imaginations, in our
dreams. Nursie, men love women, but even more than that, men love cars.

Indeed, sex and racing are repeatedly interconnected and related

throughout the film. While several scenes of sexual activity and motor
racing are intercut, following his victory at the British Grand Prix, Hunt
replies to motor racing legend Stirling Moss’ question as to how he has
achieved “a terrific edge over the rest of the field” with the remark: “Big
balls” clearly connecting his performance on the track with his masculine
virility. In this context and throughout the film, female characters occupy
supporting and highly sexualised roles, with little depth or development
provided.

Conclusion
Motor racing has featured from the very earliest decades of film produc-
tion, with filmmakers attracted to a sport that emphasised and exempli-
fied a defining feature of film: movement. With the emergence of fiction
film in the United States (the source of the vast majority of relevant pro-
ductions), a number of predominant and recurring themes emerged,
above all a focus on White men and masculinity, even in the very rare
productions that featured women or individuals of colour as drivers. The
second half of the twentieth century witnessed a gradual acknowledge-
ment of female independence and agency (reflecting broader social
changes), though primarily to accentuate the challenges presented to the
468 S. Crosson

leading male protagonists. While the filming of racing sequences has

advanced considerably over the past century, assisted by advances in cin-
ematography and digital postproduction technologies and informed by
the increasing sophistication of televisual depictions of the sport, the risks
associated with motor racing continue to provide an engaging and exhila-
rating context and metaphor for masculinity and its vulnerabilities.
However, in recent decades, there has been a problematic return to some-
times regressive depictions of women, who have at best been marginal
figures across the sub-genre, while drivers of colour continue to be largely
absent. These traits are evident in the 2019 Oscar winning production
Ford v Ferrari to which we now return to conclude.
Directed by James Mangold, Ford v Ferrari was filmed by cinematog-
rapher Phedon Papamichael who received his fourth Oscar nomination
for his work on the film. While the majority of the film was shot in the
United States, including sequences set in Le Mans, it was possible none-
theless to create a convincing rendering of motor racing in the era con-
cerned (which was heavily influenced by previous productions Grand
Prix (1966) and Le Mans (1971)) due to advances in digital cinematogra-
phy and post production (Fang Tham, 2019).
The dangers of motor racing are evident from the beginning of Ford v
Ferrari where we witness both driver and car go on fire during refuelling,
followed by the revelation of a serious heart defect for the driver con-
cerned, Carrol Shelby that ends his career behind the wheel. The death of
co-lead Ken Mills while testing a race car at the end of the film further
underlines the precarity of motor racing. Featuring the combative and
competitive relationship between the Ford and Ferrari motor companies
in the 1960s, the film focuses on the efforts of a group of American and
British engineers, brought together by Shelby (who moved into motorcar
design after retirement from racing) in collaboration with British driver
Mills and financed by the Ford motor company, to build a car capable of
challenging Ferrari in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
As evident across most depictions of motor racing on film, the central
focus throughout Ford v Ferrari is the relationship between the male
leads, here Shelby and Mills, which was described repeatedly—as noted
in our introduction—in reviews of the production as a “bromance.” This
relationship is marked by mutual respect but also reveals tensions that
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 469

erupt as physical violence at one point in the film where both fight out-
side Mills’ house after Shelby arrives to apologise for not taking him with
the team to the first attempt to win at Le Mans. With this overriding
focus on men and masculinity, women feature little in the diegesis, apart
from the occasional (and almost exclusively domestic) scenes with Mill’s
wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe). It is here that perhaps the most problem-
atic aspect of motor racing on film continues to be evident: its continuing
focus on White masculinity and its challenges to the exclusion of con-
vincing and in-depth portrayals of women and people of colour.

Notes
1. Further information on the box office returns of the film is available
here: https://web.archive.org/web/20191118055744/; https://www.
boxofficemojo.com/release/rl990348801/
2. While this chapter focuses primarily on American fiction productions, I
want to acknowledge a number of significant omissions that deserve fur-
ther research (beyond the scope of a single chapter); motor racing in
non-­fiction film (a huge area that comprises a much larger number of
productions than found in fiction film), motor racing in animated pro-
ductions, and motor racing in cinema in films produced outside of the
United States. Motor racing-themed films have been made in a wide
variety of national contexts and languages, including French, German,
Portuguese, Spanish, both Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, Telugu,
Hindi, Italian, Swedish, Russian, Korean, and Malay. Unfortunately
most of these films have had limited distribution outside of their national
contexts (and are often not available with English-language subtitles) so
are difficult to access. To briefly note a number of significant features of
non-­English speaking motor-racing films: the first (partially) sound film
to feature motor racing was the German film Die Nacht gehört uns (The
Night Belongs to Us, 1929), also the first production to feature a female
racing driver. Important animated productions have also featured motor
racing prominently, including the very popular 2006 Pixar computer-
animated comedy Cars which launched a multimedia franchise includ-
ing two sequels and two spin-offs produced by Disneytoon Studios, and
the anime and manga inspired Speed Racer (2008). Outside of the United
470 S. Crosson

States, the most popular film ever released at the Norwegian box office is
the indigenously produced stop motion-animated feature Flåklypa
Grand Prix (The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, 1975), concerning a motor race
and how “local forces win over the international elite” (Iverson, 1998,
p. 134). In its successful evocation of the Norwegian landscape and ren-
dering of a range of idiosyncratic characters created by popular
Norwegian cartoonist Kjell Aukrust, Flåklypa Grand Prix struck a chord
with Norwegian people in particular, though it also attracted large audi-
ences across Scandinavia (Crosson, 2021, pp.).
3. While the Charlie Chaplin vehicle Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914)
doesn’t feature motor cars, but rather a children’s “baby-cart” race, it is a
fascinating depiction of this practice in these years and also notable as
the first film exhibited to the public to feature the “Little Tramp” that is
most associated with the comic genius of early cinema. Incidentally, the
Venice referred to is the Venice neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California,
rather than the better known Italian city.
4. This was an actual race started in 1908 (and held on the Santa Monica
course in 1914) and originally known as the American Grand Prize, but
which is today the United States Grand Prix, part of Formula 1 racing
calendar race (Nye, 1978, p. 12)
5. The box-office success of The Roaring Road also led not just to a sequel
(Excuse My Dust (1920)) but to Reid becoming typecast as the motor
racing star of silent cinema featuring in a string of relevant films, includ-
ing Double Speed (1920), What’s Your Hurry? (1920), Too Much Speed
(1921), and Across the Continent (1922). Such was Reid’s association
with race-­car-­themed film that his son (Wallace Reid Jr.) also featured in
several, including Excuse my Dust (playing Toodles Walden Jr., the son of
the character played by his father) and The Racing Strain (1932).
6. “Quota Quickies” were low-cost, and often low-quality film productions
commissioned by companies to satisfy the quota requirements (for
British cinemas to show a certain percentage of British films) of the
Cinematograph Films Act 1927. For further information see Chibnall
(2019)).
7. This was a slang term used between the 1920s and1950s to refer to a
number of small (and often short-lived) Hollywood B movie studios.
For further information see Fernett (1973)).
8. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an
American auto racing sanctioning and operating company
 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 471

9. These figures are available at the following link: https://www.the-­

numbers.com/market/1966/top-­grossing-­movies
10. The documentary, Pushing the Limit: The Making of “Grand Prix,”
included in the 2006 40th anniversary Warner Home Video DVD
release of the film includes these details also and further information on
the innovations the film brought to motor racing.
11. These details are featured and developed in the documentary McQueen:
The Man & Le Mans (2015) directed by Gabriel Clarke and John
McKenna (Content Media).
12. Box office figures for the film are available from Box Office Mojo at
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2422507009/
13. In recordings of the riots, shortly after the barrier to the capitol was
breached a protestor can be heard to exclaim through a loudhailer “If
you’re not first, you’re last.” The scene can be watched at approximately
53 minutes 43 seconds at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?reload=9&v=GNQRGohdW9Y&feature=youtu.be

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Fleming, E. J. (2013). Wallace Reid: The Life and Death of a Hollywood Idol.
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(Eds.), Nordic National Cinemas (pp. 97–134). Routledge.
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Classic Movies. Retrieved February 10, 2021, from www.tcm.com/tcmdb/
title/896317/the-­speed-­kings/
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Knieval and The Last American Hero. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary
Media, 2. Retrieved November 3, 2020, from https://www.ejumpcut.org/
archive/onlinessays/JC02folder/lasthero.html
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Milner, V. (1932). Tinted Stock for Better Pictures. American Cinematographer,
13(2), 11.
Mitchell, D. (2018). ‘Winning’ Starred Paul Newman and a Cast of Hoosiers.
IndyStar, 4 May. Retrieved November 17, 2020, from https://eu.indystar.
com/story/news/history/retroindy/2018/05/04/winning-­starred-­paul-­newman-
and-cast-hoosiers/580124002/
474 S. Crosson

Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18.
Nye, D. E. (1978). The United States Grand Prix and Grand Prize Races,
1908–1977. Doubleday.
Nye, D. E. (2015). America’s Assembly Line. The MIT Press.
Roberts, A. (2016). Grand Prix: 50 Years since the Greatest Racing Film of All
Time. The Telegraph, 21 December. Retrieved January 14, 2021, from https://
www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/grand-­p rix-­5 0-­y ears-­s ince-­g reatest-
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Long Time Coming. NBC News, January 16. https://www.nbcnews.com/
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long-­time-­n1254465
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https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/27/movies/film-­review-­crashes-­women-­
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(Eds.), Sport, Representation and Evolving Identities in Europe (pp. 143–165).
Peter Lang.
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 “Men Love Women, But Even More Than That, Men Love Cars”… 475

Filmography

Big Thrill, The. (1933). Directed by Leigh Jason. USA: Goldsmith Productions.
Blonde Comet. (1941). Directed by William Beaudine. USA: Producers
Releasing Corporation (PRC).
Bobby Deerfield. (1977). Directed by Sydney Pollack USA: Columbia Pictures.
Burn ’Em Up O’Connor. (1939). Directed by Edward Sedgwick. USA: Metro-­
Goldwyn-­Mayer (MGM).
Burning Up. (1930). Directed by A. Edward Sutherland. USA: Paramount
Pictures.
Checkpoint. (1956). Directed by Ralph Thomas. UK: The Rank Organisation.
Crowd Roars, The. (1932). Directed by Howard Hawks. USA: Warner Bros.
Days of Thunder. (1990). Directed by Tony Scott. USA: Paramount Pictures.
Death Drives Through. (1935). Directed by Edward L. Cahn. UK: Associated
Talking Pictures (ATP).
Driven. (2001). Directed by Renny Harlin. USA: Franchise Pictures.
Flåklypa Grand Prix (The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix). (1975). Directed by I. Caprino.
Norway: Caprino Studios.
Ford v Ferrari. (2019). Directed by J. Mangold. USA: 20th Century Studios.
Grand Prix. (1966). Directed by John Frankenheimer USA: Metro-Goldwyn-­
Mayer (MGM).
Greased Lightning. (1977). Directed by Michael Schultz. USA: Third
World Cinema.
Heart Like a Wheel. (1983). Directed by Jonathan Kaplan. USA: Twentieth
Century Fox.
High Speed. (1932). Directed by D. Ross Lederman. USA: Columbia Pictures.
Indianapolis Speedway. (1939). Directed by Lloyd Bacon. USA: Warner Bros.
Last American Hero, The. (1973). Directed by Lamont Johnson. USA: Twentieth
Century Fox.
Le Mans. (1971). Directed by Lee H. Katzin. USA: Cinema Center Films.
Mask of Dust. (1954). Directed by Terence Fisher. UK: Hammer Films.
Racers, The. (1955). Directed by Henry Hathaway. USA: Twentieth Century Fox.
Racing Strain, The. (1932). Directed by Jerome Storm. USA: Willis Kent
Productions.
Red Line 7000. (1965). Directed by Howard Hawks. USA: Paramount Pictures.
Rivalen am Steuer. (1957). Directed by E.W. Fiedler. East Germany: DEFA-­
Studio für Spielfilme.
476 S. Crosson

Roaring Road, The. (1919). Directed by James Cruze. USA: Famous Players-­
Lasky release.
Rush. (2013). Directed by R. Howard. USA/UK/Germany: Cross Creek
Pictures; Exclusive Media; Working Title Films; Imagine Entertainment;
Revolution Films.
Speed. (1936). Directed by Edwin L. Marin. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-­
Mayer (MGM).
Speed Devils. (1935). Directed by Joseph Henabery. USA: Melbert Productions.
Speed Kings, The. (1913). Directed by Wilfred Lucas. USA: Keystone Film
Company.
Speedway. (1968). Directed by Norman Taurog. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-­
Mayer (MGM).
Spinout. (1966). Directed by Norman Taurog. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-­
Mayer (MGM).
Ten Laps to Go. (1936). Directed by Elmer Clifton. USA: Fanchon Royer
Features.
The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. (2006). Directed by Adam McKay. USA: Columbia
Pictures.
Un homme et une femme. (1966). Directed by Claude Lelouche. France: Les
Films 13.
Viva Las Vegas. (1964). Directed by George Sidney. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-­
Mayer (MGM).
Winning. (1969). Directed by James Goldstone. USA: Universal Pictures.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling
Moss?’ British Racing Drivers
and the Politics of Celebrity: 1896
to 1992
Stephen Wagg

Introduction
In 2018, the polling company Yougov conducted a survey to determine
‘The most popular all-time sports personalities in the UK’. Eight of the
resulting top ten were, arguably, unsurprising: Muhammad Ali, perhaps
the most charismatic sportsperson in history, came in at No. 1, followed
by widely feted Jamaican champion runner Usain Bolt at 2; recent British
Olympic gold medal winners Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Kelly Holmes
were then joined by Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton of England’s
World Cup winning football team of 1966 and Scottish 2013 Wimbledon
tennis champion Andy Murray. Perhaps less predictably, German racing
driver and seven times Formula 1 World Champion Michael Schumacher,
not seen in public since a serious skiing accident in 2013, came fourth
and, placed tenth was British driver Stirling Moss, who had retired from
elite motor racing as long ago as 1962.1 Schumacher’s high vote seemed

S. Wagg (*)
International Centre for Sport History and Culture, De Montfort University,
Leicester, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 477
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_19
478 S. Wagg

to suggest that motor racing had a major significance for sport-minded

Britons—in all, ten racing drivers featured in the top one hundred, seven
of them Britons. Within that, Moss, who had long since departed the
public stage, appeared to have retained a special niche. And the phrase
‘Who d’you think you are? Stirling Moss’, said often to have been uttered
by policemen to motorists caught exceeding the speed limit in the
1950s—and once reputedly uttered to the man himself in such a circum-
stance—endures: it was the title of a BBC retrospective in 2010, when
Moss had turned 802 and T shirts bearing the slogan are currently adver-
tised on the internet.3
This essay explores the nature of that niche that Moss occupies in the
British popular imagination as part of a broader examination of the
nature of British racing drivers as celebrities (and otherwise) over a one-­
hundred-­year period. In doing so it pays particular attention to the ways
in which, in the history of British motor racing, social class and gender
have combined with a particular politics of celebrity. British motor racing
has its origins largely in the upper reaches of the British class structure
and this, along with a specific form of patriotic and predatory masculin-
ity, has for the most part defined the celebrity conferred on the British
racing driver. The chapter concludes with four case studies of British rac-
ing driver: Moss, Graham Hill, James Hunt and Nigel Mansell. These
case studies are aimed to show variations on the theme of British racing
driver celebrity and on its construction. Less is said of another, Sir Jackie
Stewart, arguably the most influential of post-Second World War British
racing drivers than might otherwise have been the case because his career
is discussed at some length in my chapter on the politics of safety in
motor racing. And there is scarcely a mention here of Englishman Sir
Lewis Hamilton, simply because another chapter in this book (by Ben
Carrington) addresses him specifically. Women from wealthy British
families have had access to motor cars and have driven them as fast as
men and they will also be discussed; however, women have invariably
been excluded from the elite racing scene, except as adornments, as anx-
ious wives/partners or as seekers of sexual adventure in the hotels and
paddocks of the international racing circuit.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 479

 acing Drivers and the ‘Motor Ascot’: Speed,

R
Technology and the British Elite
Driving motor cars has been a sanctioned part of British life since the
Locomotives on Highways Act, introduced by Lord Salisbury’s
Conservative government in 1896.4 This eased restrictions on the use of
cars and allowed them to go faster—between 12 and 14 mph (depending
on the local authority). The motor car had a growing public—as mani-
fested, for instance, in the founding of Autocar magazine the previous
year—and this legislation had been lobbied for by the rising numbers of
wealthy motor enthusiasts and by leaders of the emergent British car
industry—the Daimler Motor Company, for example, formed the same
year.5 The subsequent Motor Car Act (1903), introduced by the admin-
istration of Salisbury’s successor Arthur Balfour, increased the speed limit
to 20 mph.
For those engaged in exploring the technological—and, thus, the com-
mercial—possibilities of the motor car, this limit was unduly constrict-
ing. By this time cars had already been produced which were capable of
around 70 mph—the German Mercedes-Simplex 60HP, for example6—
and support grew for a racetrack to be built which would both permit the
public enjoyment of automotive speed and provide a testing ground for
the nascent British car industry and its drivers.7 This resulted in
Brooklands, near London, the world’s first purpose-built motor racing
venue, opened in 1907. From the outset, as would be the case for much
of its early history, British motor racing drew, for its sponsorship, its driv-
ers and quite often for its engineering expertise, on the upper and upper
middle classes.
Brooklands was built on the estate of Hugh Fortescue Locke King in
Surrey, drawing on his personal fortune as the owner of swathes of land
in the south of England, and was immediately styled by the British press
as the ‘Motor Ascot’, in parallel to Royal Ascot, the elite horseracing
event held every June.8 At Brooklands the link between race drivers and
car sales was forged immediately, the first man to drive the circuit being
the Australian-born Selwyn Edge, who had worked for the Dunlop tyre
480 S. Wagg

company and subsequently promoted Napier cars, largely and simply by

writing to the newspapers about them; he averaged 66 mph.9
Most of the early British racing drivers were ascribed celebrities even
before they got behind the wheel, in that they had been born into aristo-
cratic or conspicuously rich families, giving them substantial quantities
of what Chris Rojek has called inherited ‘attention capital’.10 In general,
they variously combined: great (almost always inherited) wealth; a flair
for engineering; a masculine daring; a commercial interest in the car busi-
ness, or sponsorship from motor-related industries; and a right-wing
patriotism, often times manifested in the pursuit of world speed records
(in some cases on the sea and in the air, as well as on land) on behalf of
the British Empire—a number had been fighter pilots in the Royal Flying
Corps (RFC) during the First World War. All these traits were routinely
folded into the appellation of ‘gentleman racer’11—the epitome of the
early modern sporting hero. Their trumpeted amateurism and devil-may-­
care demeanour often belied their integration into the burgeoning nexus
of motor car development, sales and promotion.
Leading examples included American-born, naturalised Englishman
Sir Henry Segrave (b.1896), educated at Eton and Sandhurst, who was
one of the gentleman racer archetypes. A First World War veteran, he
drove a British car (a Sunbeam) at Brooklands and in European Grand
Prix and was the first racing driver to wear a crash helmet and the first to
drive at over 200 mph. He held the world land speed record several times
and attempted the world water speed record in craft driven by Rolls
Royce engines and financed by Lord Wakefield, whose company mar-
keted Castrol lubricating oil.12 He died on Lake Windermere, attempting
the world water speed record, in 1930. ‘With his racing goggles and
determined expression’, wrote Helen Carter in 2016, ‘Sir Henry Segrave
epitomised a derring-do British hero from another age’. However, Ben
Cussons, a member of the committee awarding the annual Segrave tro-
phy (awarded to a British national who demonstrates ‘Outstanding Skill,
Courage and Initiative on Land, Water and in the Air’ and inaugurated
immediately after Segrave’s death) emphasised the achieved nature of
Segrave’s celebrity, stressing his attraction to sponsors and his interest in
technological innovation. Segrave, he said, ‘did not rely on family money.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 481

[…] He was always looking for the next new technology, which is what
inspired him’.13
Another driver, John Parry-Thomas (b. 1884), was chief engineer at
Leyland Motors and thus centrally involved in the promotion of motor
travel—given the costs, to an expectably privileged market. He helped
develop the Leyland Eight luxury motor car, which he raced at Brooklands;
only 14 were built, each costing £2700 (the equivalent of £194,000 in
2021). He later became a rival to Segrave and his attempts at the world
land speed record were sponsored by Shell Mex and Dunlop; his death,
in such an attempt in 1927, was reported on the front page of the daily
newspapers.14 Parry-Thomas could claim to be one of the first profes-
sional racing drivers.
Similarly, John Cobb (1899–1952), the son of a wealthy fur broker
and educated at Eton and Cambridge, was a regular driver at Brooklands
in the late 1920s and several times sought the world land speed record. In
doing so he enjoyed the support of, and thus promoted, Napier luxury
cars and the Mobil oil company. Cobb, too, died in pursuit of a water
speed record. He was awarded the Segrave Trophy in 1947 and, like
Segrave, although his exploits made him a de facto celebrity, Cobb’s main
interest appears to have been in technological innovation. According to
his widow, ‘John was nothing flash, like you might think a racing driver
was going to be’ and it is said of him that he ‘enjoyed speed but he told
the Associated Press that his key interest in motor racing and speed test-
ing was in discovering technical improvements such as how tyres and oil
react to high speeds that could then be used by the motor industry to
finesse cars bought by ordinary motorists’.15
The same priorities animated the career of Louis Zborowski
(1895–1924). Zborowski was known as ‘Count’, his father, a New Jersey
businessman, having apparently assumed the title after marrying an heir-
ess of the wealthy Astor family. Zborowski was both an inventor and an
early works driver. He built a car called Chitty 1 (later the inspiration for
Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) in which he completed a circuit
of Brooklands at over 113 mph in 1922. He drove for Aston Martin
(founded in London in 1913) and his death prevented him accepting an
invitation to drive for the German firm Mercedes. He died at the wheel
as his father, also a racing driver, had done in 1903.
482 S. Wagg

Sponsorship of drivers was not confined to the motor trade. Brooklands

and RFC veteran Malcolm Campbell, the son of a wealthy Hatton
Garden diamond dealer and holder at one time or another of both the
world land and water speed records, drove machinery devised by both the
Sunbeam and Napier motor companies,16 but also drew support from the
Rolex watch brand. In 1935, Punch magazine carried an advertisement
by Campbell for the water and dust resistant Rolex Oyster, although it
was stressed that he had accepted no payment for this17; if he had done
so, Campbell, knighted in 1931 and three years later the fourth recipient
of the Segrave Trophy, would have undermined his high public profile as
a gentleman racer, ‘gentlemen’ placing themselves above the vulgarity of
accepting payment for advertising. Campbell also used his celebrity to
promote right wing politics—historically, as several chapters in this book
make clear, motor racing and the political right have often converged—
standing as a Conservative in the General Election of 1935. Campbell is
also known to have been sympathetic to the British Union of Fascists
(active 1932–1940), who in turn presented themselves as modernists,
supportive of the flight and motor industries.18
These men are now often recalled in motoring literature as household
names. To the extent that this was so, it would likely have been through
the media attention drawn to their feats of speed, on the track and at the
venues selected for attempts to break the world record. This media atten-
tion came in the form of reports in the national press and on BBC radio,
coverage in the motoring journals (Autocar, e.g., had begun publishing in
1895 and The Motor in 190319) or via newsreels such as Pathe News,
shown in British cinemas from 1910: Pathe covered the record attempts
of Segrave, Parry-Thomas, Cobb and Campbell, along with events at
Brooklands.20 But these men were only incidentally media celebrities:
media publicity was an essential element in their pursuit of speed, techni-
cal knowledge, car sales and an enhanced reputation for British engineer-
ing. These ingredients were mixed together to form a media spectacle in
the form of the ‘Bentley Boys’ of the 1920s. And to these ingredients was
added an upper-class hedonism and a ravening heterosexual masculinity,
some version of the latter of which has attended elite motor racing, in
Britain and elsewhere, for much of its history.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 483

W.O. Bentley (b.1888) was the son of a wealthy silk and woollens
merchant. He and his brother had begun importing French cars to Britain
in 1912; they redesigned the cars and raced them at Brooklands.21 After
the First World War, they formed a company to make their own cars, one
of which won the Le Mans 24-hour race of 1924. Bentley cars proved a
racing success but a commercial failure—Bentley cars then cost around
£1000 in 1925, the equivalent of over £60,000 in 2021, and were there-
fore too expensive for most prospective car buyers. The company’s prin-
cipal financial rescuer, Cambridge-educated racing driver Woolf Barnato,
was still another heir to a large fortune, his father having been a key rival
of Cecil Rhodes in the South African diamond mining industry.22 Barnato
funded the ‘Bentley Boys’, a team of men with a similar social profile to
the other high-born adventurers currently exploring the possibilities of
motorised speed. These included, among others: RFC veteran Sir Henry
Birkin (not a natural celebrity, given his shyness and stammer, but nota-
ble for his spotted silk neckerchief ) whose family had become rich in the
Nottingham lace industry23; prosperous bacteriologist and bon viveur
Dudley Benjafield24; Jack and Clive Dunfee, whose family were wines
and spirits merchants and their father, Colonel Vickers Dunfee
Commander of the City of London police25; naval veteran and aviator
Glen Kidston, heir to metal fortune derived from Clydeside shipbuild-
ing; Bernard Rubin, a wealthy Australian and son of a pearl dealer; and
Sydney ‘Sammy’ Davis, who, as editor of Autocar magazine, ensured the
Bentley Boys of regular publicity in the automobile world—the magazine
hosted a reception for the Bentley team at the Savoy hotel in London,
following their (second) victory in the Le Mans 24 hour race of 1927,
with Davis himself and Benjafield at the wheel.26
The significance of the Bentley men appears to have been manifold.
They married the notion of patriotic endeavour cultivated by the seekers
of speed records to the matter of motor racing—of Birkin, for example,
it has been said that he ‘betrayed all the characteristics of a male obsessive
spiced by an angry patriotism. He elevated his hobby into a great national
cause capable of solving Britain’s ills, using his autobiography27 for a long
rant about the lethargy of the British motor industry, the failure to
develop British racing cars and to build adequate racing tracks, the igno-
rance and apathy of the public.’28 Second, it assimilated racing drivers to
484 S. Wagg

the sentimental mythology of the British upper-class amateur sports-

man29 that already surrounded all-round sportsman C.B. Fry, cricketer
W.G. Grace and others: they were portrayed as patriotic daredevils despite
also being works drivers and, in effect, car salesmen. (The Bentley Boys
included one professional driver: Frank Clement, the son of a Hertfordshire
watchmaker.) Third, it lent British motor racing some of the same dash-
ing male glamour then currently associated with Hollywood leading men
such as Douglas Fairbanks and Ronald Colman—an association strength-
ened by the Bentley drivers’ ostentatiously heterosexual lifestyle. Nick
Foulkes, a biographer of the Bentley Boys, suggests, albeit with some
hyperbole, that Ardenrun Hall, Barnato’s Surrey mansion, operated as
‘the de-facto home for the Bentley Boys—the hard-driving, hard-­partying
playboys who epitomised the cocktail-fuelled, decade-long party that was
the Roaring Twenties’. He adds:

Mothers of ‘nice’ girls were very careful where he was concerned. Nor,
indeed, should any respectable girl accept a lift home with Barnato after an
evening out; one particular limousine of his for nocturnal use had just a
single seat compartment for the driver, while the rest of the car was con-
verted into a large ‘L’-shaped boudoir, equipped with curtains to ensure
total privacy. Typical of the women he entertained in the back of this
sumptuously appointed luxury vehicle was musical star June Tripp, whose
hit songs included the entirely apposite ‘Ladies Are Running Wild’.
Barnato’s life could be followed vicariously through the pages of society
magazines such as Tatler and The Sphere.30

Doubtless, too, the Bentley clan’s adventures featured in the gossip

columns of the upper- and middle-class press (The Times, the Daily
Telegraph) and the lower-middle-class newspapers (the Daily Mail, the
Daily Express). That they were of widespread interest to working-class
people seems unlikely, although the Daily Herald, the popular working-­
class newspaper of the time, did have a motoring correspondent. Between
the world wars the most pervasive mode of transport for Britons—and
certainly, for working-class people—was the chain-driven safety bicycle31
and working-class people would not come to drive cars in any numbers
until after the Second World War. The exploits of fast-driving, hedonistic
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 485

toffs may therefore have been of marginal interest to them. Besides, the
Bentley Boys were hostile to organised labour and formed a ‘Brooklands
Squad’ to assist the police during the General Strike of 1926, earning
them the praise of the right-wing Daily Mail.32
It is important to add that motor racing at this time was not an all-­
male affair and a number of women raced at Brooklands and elsewhere,
although the main organising club at Brooklands did not accept women
until 1920. These women invariably gained access to fast cars through
their (high) social class and/or their well-placed menfolk in the
Brooklands/speed record/luxury car coterie.
An early pioneer and racing celebrity was Dorothy Levitt (1882–1922).
Levitt was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family of jewellers in the
London’s East End. Her access to cars and thus to speed came via Selwyn
Edge at the Napier car company who employed her initially as a typist.
Historian of motor racing females Rachel Harris-Gardiner writes:

Her finest year was 1905, when she won the Daily Mail Sweepstake at the
Brighton Speed Trials [beachfront speed trials were popular in Edwardian
Britain], ahead of several men. At the same event, she set a Land Speed
Record for women of 92mph. This was her second speed record, having
already set a Water Speed Record of 19.3mph in 1903’.[…] ‘She was a real
favourite with the press of the time. Reporters lapped up her racing victo-
ries and her many adventures’ […] Her media fame led to a journalistic
career of her own and becoming something of an expert on motoring for
women. The high point of this was the publication of her 1909 book, The
Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for Women Who Want
To Motor.33

It is possible that in a world wherein women were still denied the right
to vote, the glamorous Levitt, although courageous and formidably
gifted, was exploited for her novelty value. Her Jewishness will likely have
made her an outsider in high society—her surname was an anglicised ver-
sion of her family name ‘Levi’ and for a while a fictitious upper-class
background was concocted for her. She disappeared from public life
in 1912.34
486 S. Wagg

Another protégé of Edge was Mildred Petre, whose husband the Hon.
Victor Austin Bruce worked as a competition driver for AC Cars, which
Edge had taken over in 1922. Petre was the daughter of a wealthy Essex
landowner and a direct descendant of a leading Tudor politician. In an
AC Six car she won the Coupe des Dames at the Monte Carlo rally of
1927, finishing sixth overall. Two years later, she drove a 4.5 litre Bentley
at Montlhéry for 24 hours, thus securing the world record for single-­
handed driving at an average speed of 89 mph, a feat which has never
been surpassed by a woman. Like Levitt she also raced speedboats and
flew planes.35
Other female racers emerged similarly from wealthy, elite families that
could afford motor cars and allow their womenfolk time to develop their
driving skills. The Renfrewshire family of Margaret Allan owned the
Allan Royal Mail Line shipping company, founded in the early nine-
teenth century. She was educated at Bedales, the progressive private
boarding school in Hampshire favoured by more liberal families among
the British elite. Allan drove a variety of cars and was one of only four
women to hold the Brooklands badge for those lapping the circuit at 120
mph. Importantly, she was taken on as a works driver by MG in 1934.
She was married to gentleman racer Christopher Jennings, who became
editor of The Motor and, latterly, High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire. Allan
herself was motoring correspondent of Vogue from 1948 until 1957, a
post which reflected the growing interest in cars among middle-class
women.36 The less well-known, but equally wealthy, Betty Haig was born
(in 1905) into the famous Scottish family of whiskey distillers. Her father
was a colonel and she was the grand-niece of Field Marshall Douglas
Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western
Front during the First World War. She drove principally in rallies and
won the Paris-St. Raphael Rally of 1938.37
Gwenda Hawkes was the daughter of a major general and the sister of
the British imperialist Sir John Bagot Glubb—known as ‘Glubb Pasha’,
commander of the Arab Legion in the 1930s. Another Brooklands regu-
lar between the wars, she became the first female to lap the track there at
more than 130 mph. Her third husband, Douglas Hawkes, was a car
designer, businessman and (gentleman) racing driver and together they
ran an engineering company based at Brooklands.38 Similarly, Jill Scott
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 487

Thomas, born in 1902, the daughter of a coal mine owner, and her first
husband ‘Bummer’ Scott were Brooklands enthusiasts and car collectors.
They were friends of record-seeker J.G. Parry Thomas, whose Leyland
Eight they purchased after his death; John Cobb raced it at Brooklands
with Jill as his passenger. She raced intermittently at Brooklands between
1926 and 1939. Her second husband, Ernest Thomas, was also a gentle-
man racer and, like her, an aviator.39
Violette Cordery was the most accomplished of several sisters, all of
whom raced cars. Her father worked for a tobacco merchant and her
elder half-sister Evelyn was married to Noel Macklin, a racing driver and
founder of Invicta cars, based in the Cordery’s home town of Cobham in
Surrey. She won the first women’s race at Brooklands aged 20 in 1920
and, chiefly driving (and thus testing) Invicta cars, she accomplished
many feats of speed and endurance. In a column in the Daily Express in
1926 (22nd October) she wrote: ‘[T]here will soon be scarcely an able-­
bodied woman or girl who cannot drive and generally manage a motor
car.’ The following year she drove around the world, covering over
10,000 miles, a trip that she described as ‘one long, glorious thrill’. In
1929, she won her second Dewar trophy for the Brooklands time trial.
The following year, however, she embraced domesticity, largely giving up
racing after her marriage to gentleman racer Johnny Hindmarsh, winner
at Le Mans five years later.40
Elsie (always known as ‘Bill’) Wisdom, from the South London district
of Tooting Graveney, seems to have been comparatively low-born among
British female racing drivers of the inter-war period: Her father is
described as a ‘master watchmaker and shopkeeper’.41 Wisdom was
encouraged to race by her husband Tommy, also a racing driver and the
aforementioned motoring correspondent of the Daily Herald; he entered
her for a race at Brooklands only a week after their marriage.42
The history of these women, and their exploits, is now being retrieved
and a number of websites feature sepia photographs of them sitting con-
fidently, sometimes in goggles and overalls, sometimes in cloche hats and
pearls, behind the wheel of an automobile. In the world of customary
male swagger inhabited by Woolf Barnato, who allowed several of them
to race his Bentleys, they were partners rather than prey. They reflected
the growing aspirations of British middle- and upper-middle-class women
488 S. Wagg

in the wake of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, granting the
vote to women over 30 and/or meeting a property qualification, and the
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of the following year, which had
removed certain barriers to women joining the professions. Some of the
female drivers enjoyed a degree of celebrity and, not only did they win
trophies and break records, but they were in several cases (Levitt, Petre,
Allan) employed as test drivers. It is at least arguable that, albeit that most
of the female drivers were drawn from a charmed social circle, women’s
star has never been higher in British elite motor racing than it was then.

 he Road to Stirling Moss: Class,

T
the Automobile and the (Partial)
Democratisation of British Motoring
Before the Second World War, the access of British working-class peo-
ple—or, indeed, most people outside of the very wealthy—to racing cars
was severely restricted: if they had access at all it was most likely as
mechanics or as engineers and they got behind the wheel only on test
drives. Their relationships with the owners and drivers of these cars gen-
erally followed the master-and-servant pattern prevailing at the time, as
two examples illustrate. A story told in praise of gentleman racer Earl
Howe (Eton and Oxford, Conservative MP and ADC to King George V)
has it that, when driving through Europe with his mechanic ‘Tommy’
Thomas in 1930, Howe would stop at hotels and require Thomas to wait
outside; one day, however, he breached protocol and sent a waiter to sum-
mon Thomas with the message: ‘“You are wanted inside, the soup is get-
ting cold”. So they ate together, the Earl saying they could “have a good
talk about cars”’.43 And in 1934 Kaye Don, a wealthy Irish racer, who
drove at Brooklands and competed regularly for world speed records,
ordered his riding mechanic Frank Tayler, to work throughout the day on
the brakes of his MG, in preparation for a race on the Isle of Man. Don
spent the day playing bridge.44 That evening, with Tayler on board, Don
took the car for a test drive when public roads were no longer closed for
race practice. They crashed, killing Tayler, and injuring Don, who served
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 489

four months for manslaughter. The sympathy of the Brooklands frater-

nity, however, seemed to reside with Don rather than his deceased ser-
vant: in Autocar, ‘Bentley Boy’ Sammy Davis defended Don on the
grounds that, as a racing mechanic, Tayler ‘knew the risks’.45
Davis’ remark fed into a wider political debate about cars, in which
considerations of class privilege and individual freedom confronted those
of public safety. Under the Road Traffic Act of 1930, a 30-mph speed
limit had been imposed by the second Labour government of Ramsay
Macdonald (the 20-mph limit having been removed in 1930) along with
a Highway Code and traffic lights. Under the subsequent National
Government, again led by Macdonald, a further Road Traffic Act intro-
duced a driving test in 1934. In that year, 1894 people had been killed
the previous year trying to cross roads.46
This legislation was bitterly opposed in the House of Commons by
Conservative MP Col. John Moore-Brabazon, an aviator and an associate
of Charles Rolls, and by The Motor magazine, which complained of ‘the
folly of which pedestrians are capable’. However, The Times, historically
the mouthpiece of the British Establishment, welcomed the measures,
arguing that ‘the exclusive or preponderating regard for one class of road
users leads nowhere’.47
There are clear implications here for the British motor racing. First,
driving fast cars was ceasing to be the exclusive and carefree domain of
the very rich. Part of the celebrity of public figures like Earl Howe,
Dorothy Levitt and Mildred Petre was that they had rejoiced in the fre-
quent fines for exceeding the speed limit.48 But cars were now an
entrenched part of British life and the Brooklands tendency had to be
shown some discipline in the public interest.
Second, association with motor vehicles was spreading down the class
structure. By 1934, there were over one million private car users in the
UK49 (which would become two million by 193950) and car factories
were long established in Birmingham, Coventry, Luton, Oxford and
Dagenham. By the mid-1930s cars in the more affordable, non-luxury
category—the Austin 7, for example—were widely available at around
£16551 (roughly £12,000 at 2021 prices) and there was a flourishing
motor trade, entailing sales, garage maintenance, filling stations and
motorists’ magazines. Car enthusiasts formed motor clubs: some, as in
490 S. Wagg

Bristol, dated from before the First World War.52 Tinkering with cars and
motorcycles, was, wrote the historian John Stevenson, an introduction to
science and technology for many.53
This trade had already produced one or two top drivers before the
Second World War: for instance, Freddie Dixon (b. Stockton, 1892), a
mechanic who was expert on both cars and motorcycles ran a garage busi-
ness in Middlesbrough and won the British Empire Trophy at Brooklands
in 1935; and Reg Parnell (b. 1911), whose garage business was in Derby,
drove at Brooklands in the late 1930s and in seven Formula 1 races in the
early 1950s. Indeed, the motor trade spawned much of the first genera-
tion of post-Second World War British racing drivers. Future World
Champion Mike Hawthorn (b.1929) was the son of a Yorkshireman who
moved his motor business to Surrey to be close to Brooklands54; and the
families of Stuart Lewis Evans (b.1930, who raced for Connaught and
Vanwall in the 1950s), Peter Collins (b.1931, a Ferrari driver in the
1950s), Cliff Allison (b.1932, who drove for Lotus and Ferrari), John
Surtees (b.1934, Ferrari driver and world champion in 1964), Trevor
Taylor (b. 1936, also a Lotus driver) and three-times World Campion
Jackie Stewart (b.1939) were all variously in the motor trade.
Third, demand was growing for motor racing in the provinces. In
1931, motorcycle racer Fred Craner, another Derby garage owner and
member of the Derby and District Motor Club successfully requested
that the nearby Donington Hall estate be used for motor racing.55 Initially
this was for motor bikes, but in 1935 and for four consecutive years
Donington staged its own unofficial Grand Prix. The winners of these
four races together pointed the way ahead for British racing drivers, and
racing drivers in general. The first winner, Richard Shuttleworth, was one
of the last in the last of archetypal gentleman racers. An Old Etonian and
gifted mechanic from a wealthy, old-established engineering family, he
owned a range of cars, raced at Brooklands, flew planes and held land
speed records.56 The winner in 1936, Richard Seaman, had a similar pro-
file. Another scion of a wealthy distillers family and a Cambridge gradu-
ate, Seaman had defied his wealthy mother (who bought him a plane and
a country house) to become a racing driver. He won Donington in a
borrowed Maserati and this and other successes brought him to the atten-
tion of the German factory team Mercedes Benz, with whom he signed a
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 491

contract that year. His salary would be ‘1000 Reichsmarks a month—just

under £1000 a year in 1937, or about £65,000 today—plus prize money
and bonuses which would quadruple his earnings for the year’, although
currency restrictions meant that he must remain in Germany.57 There he
openly espoused National Socialism, wherein automotive speed and
technology were seen as manifestations of modernism and motor racing
funded by the state—in the words of writer Eberhard Reuss ‘a car-friendly
dictatorship’.58 Seaman, who gave the Hitler salute on the podium after
winning the German Grand Prix of 1938, once wrote to his mother:
‘Hitler stands no nonsense. He won’t have any slackers about. Everybody
has got to work.’59
The Donington races of 1938 and 1939 were won by the German
Bernd Rosemeyer and the Italian Tazio Nuvolari respectively: two stars of
the era, they both drove for Auto Union, the other key automotive com-
pany in the Nazi motor racing project. Motor sport was increasingly a
matter of national pride on the European continent and the best drivers
were in Germany, Italy and France.60 Seaman could hold his own with
them. It was said later that he had ‘brilliant ability and [paid] close atten-
tion to detail’61: the future of British motor racing drivers seemed to call
for a greater professionalism and, with it, greater remuneration. The sum
£65,000 might not have looked like a lot of money to Dick Seaman but
it would certainly appeal to the next generation of British drivers: around
the time that Seaman was dying of his injuries in the German Grand Prix
of 1939, ten-year-old Stirling Moss was already driving his first car, an
old Austin 7, given him by his father.62

Stirling Moss, Memorable Moniker

During the Second World, there was significant agitation—much of it
conducted via the pages of motor magazines—for a democratisation of
motor racing in Britain and the slogan ‘motor racing for all’ became pop-
ular. In July 1941, Motor Sport published a letter from freelance motor
journalist Joe Lowrey suggesting the development of a new racing car
class suited to the special builder and powered by 500 cc motorcycle
engines.63 This idea was taken up by a number of engineers and
492 S. Wagg

animateurs who constituted what became known as the ‘500 cc move-

ment’. A 500 Club was founded in Bristol in 1946, with the Bentley Boy
patronage of Earl Howe and Sammy Davis64 and the firm to respond
most successfully to Lowrey’s suggestion was the Cooper Car Company
of south London. In 1949, nearly half the 40 entrants for the 500 cc race
at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone were Coopers.65 Meanwhile, pub-
lic enthusiasm (and perhaps the need for motorised speed to be per-
formed in controlled circumstances) was inspiring the creation of new
race tracks out of wartime military installations: at Goodwood and
Silverstone (1948), Brands Hatch and Thruxton (1950), Oulton Park
and Snetterton (1953) and Aintree (1954)—former car dealer Roy
Salvadori, who won on many of these tracks, became known as ‘King of
the Airfields’.66 Brooklands had closed in 1939.
Affordable cars and new venues brought forth a post-war cadre of vari-
ously ambitious young drivers. John Cooper, son of the company’s
founder, recalled (of Salvadori and others) in 2001: “This was the proto-
type of today’s drivers, if you like. They were more professional, took life
and their sport more seriously. They came from the 500 cc movement.
Before that, motor racing, in Britain at least, was more of a rich man’s
pastime. Our cars were so cheap that they introduced a whole new gen-
eration of drivers, who took a different approach. Men such as Stirling
[Moss] and Roy Salvadori67 came into it and were quick to realize that
there was money to be made. As a result, they were much more
professional.’
Formula 1 (F1) began in 1950 and the first F1 British Grand Prix (at
Silverstone in Northamptonshire) drew 100,000 people and was attended
by the King and Queen. Some of it was also shown on the grainy, black-­
and-­white screens of BBC television. The BBC broadcast its first Grand
Prix live in 1953 and F1 remained on the channel until 1996.68 Motor
racing as significantly popular culture in Britain dates from this time and
the factors in play provide much of the basis for the mystique that has
surrounded Stirling Moss. He is, arguably, British motor racing’s first
celebrity in the modern idiom: a person of note, whose notability is
commodified.
Moss’ appeal had several dimensions to it. First, as a public figure he
had wide appeal. To a degree he represented a continuation of the
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 493

Brooklands tradition: his parents, both racing drivers themselves, had

met there. He was a public schoolboy from a prosperous family who were
able to support his career financially—his father, for example, met much
of the cost of a Maserati 250F in 1954.69 That said, he was not an aristo-
crat, had not inherited a vast fortune and was earning his own keep. To
the British motor racing—and wider—public of the 1950s, he likely
passed for a classless, everyman figure, equally acceptable to the Bentley
brigade as to the working-class ‘geezer’ car enthusiasts, like Bernie
Ecclestone, who began to convene at the Brands Hatch circuit in Kent
after the war; besides which, for this public, he was the first Briton to
excel on the burgeoning post-war international racing scene, constituted
after 1950 as Formula 1. He also cultivated a foreign audience: in the
absence of much competition in the immediate post-war period in 1950,
he accepted an invitation to race abroad and became well known on the
European continent70; in 1955, he became the only Briton (and one of
the few non-Italians) to win the Mille Miglia. At 21, he won the Richard
Seaman Trophy for the most points gained overseas. Moreover, he drove
for as a wide variety of employers. These included several English racing
companies formed after the war—Coopers and HWM (Hersham and
Walton Motors) (both begun in 1946), Lotus (1952) and Vanwall, who
entered F1 in 1954. But he also drove, on the basis of no more than a
handshake, for Rob Walker, privateer and heir to the Johnny Walker
whiskey fortune. Walker, a Brooklands veteran, was described simply as
‘Gentleman’ on his passport.71 Thus, Moss straddled the old world of the
be-goggled upper-class amateur and the new one of the thriving new
motor workshops of the post-war era. In his presentation of self, he mar-
ried this to a plucky individualism: ‘I like to feel the odds are against me’,
he once said. ‘That is one of the reasons that I do not drive for a factory.
I want to beat the factories in a car that has no right to do so. If I had any
sense I would have been driving a Ferrari all these years. Year after year,
Ferrari has the best car. But I want to fight against the odds and in a
British car’72 (Moss was actually approached, and then shunned, by
Ferrari in 195173).
Second, Moss was a very accomplished and aggressive driver across a
range of models and classifications. ‘Often’, he recalled, ‘it would be five
different formulae in one day: a race of champions, sports cars, Formula
494 S. Wagg

Two, Formula One and touring cars’. Between winning his first race in
1948 and his enforced retirement in 1962, he registered a world record
212 wins from 529 races in 15 seasons.74
Third, Moss never won the World Championship, although between
1955 and 1961 he was runner-up four times and third a further three.
This, in an ironic way, further burnished his credentials. If he had won
the championship, arguments might have raged over his merits as against
other champions; instead that he was ‘the greatest driver never to’ became
a unanimous verdict in the motor racing world and beyond. This reputa-
tion was further cemented by an act of sportsmanship which cost him the
title. In 1958, a marshal at the Portuguese Grand Prix disqualified Mike
Hawthorn for illegally re-joining the track, having spun off it. Moss who
had won the race, intervened on Hawthorn’s behalf and Hawthorn, who
had finished second was reinstated, giving him the title. ‘I had no hesita-
tion in doing it’, Moss said many years later. ‘I can’t see how this is open
to debate. The fact that he was my only rival in the championship didn’t
come into my thinking. Absolutely not’.75 Leading motor journalist
Doug Nye has, however, suggested that, in losing the title, Moss had been
‘deeply disappointed … perhaps bitter’ at the time.76 It’s worth bearing in
mind here that Moss is remembered in a way that Hawthorn, Britain’s
first Formula 1 World Champion, is not.
Fourth, and perhaps most important, Moss desired and understood
celebrity. He came, first of all, from a very entrepreneurial family: his
father had been a dentist who owned a chain of surgeries. The surgeries,
said Moss, were ‘mainly in the poorer areas where the patients did not
expect the dentists to spend much time generally chatting to them, but
rather just do the job. “In quick, yank and out, next please—that’s the
basis of good business”, he might have said’.77 Moss had a similarly
business-­like approach, not only to racing, but to being Stirling Moss.
This set him apart from other drivers. Tony Brooks, his contemporary,
once said ‘I wasn’t trying to be commercial, whereas Stirling was’.78
Similarly, in a memoir first published in 1958, the year before his death,
Hawthorn declared himself uninterested in celebrity.79 Hawthorn and
leading driver Peter Collins were widely seen as playboys in the pre-war
mould.80 While Moss frequently alluded to the drivers’ routine quest for
attractive female company, that did not intrude on his business plan.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 495

When he signed for Mercedes in 1954, he sought to capitalise on his

growing fame. In 2009, Gordon Cruickshank of Motor Sport magazine
interviewed Ken Gregory, Moss’ manager, about this:

[Moss said] “I told you I didn’t want to drive for them”, but I said, “Wait
‘til you hear the money. […]”. “By this time”, [Gregory] goes on, “Stirling
and I had developed complete trust in each other; when he was out of the
country I could pass a quote for him, which is why his name was always in
the papers. He had marvellous press coverage.” By now everyone knew that
face—it was gold dust. “I was looking after publicity and the advertising
was starting to come in; Stirling Moss as a brand name was developing.”
More than developing: at the end of ‘54, when the Mercedes deal was
signed, the trio [Gregory, Moss and Alfred Moss, Stirling’s father] formed
Stirling Moss Ltd., cashing in on what Moss has often said was his biggest
asset—his memorable moniker. Gregory is careful to make the point that
Moss only endorsed things he approved of—which maximised the power
of that memorable visage looking out of a magazine. Sales of Craven A ciga-
rettes soared when The Boy lit up.81

Moss retired from motor racing after a serious crash at Goodwood in

1962 which left him unconscious for some days. Commercially, though,
as Gregory stated, he continued to thrive. While in hospital, Gregory
remembered, Moss ‘received 400 letters a day, and the press were desper-
ate to get to him. I eventually sold the rights to a bedside interview for
£10,000’ (the equivalent of £183,000 in 2021).82 Once recovered, Moss
was invited to become the public face of BP, who flew him round the
country in a helicopter to open new petrol stations.83 Moss also under-
stood the transactional nature of celebrity. As Richard Williams said in an
obituary for Moss:

His public image was enhanced by his willingness to invite feature writers
and TV cameras into his town house in Shepherd Market, the district of
Mayfair in central London where he lived, even when married, in a kind of
bachelor-pad splendour amid a panoply of hi-tech gadgets. The aura con-
tinued to surround him long after an accident on the track truncated his
career at the age of 32, when he was still in his prime. The sight of Moss, in
his later decades, entering the paddock at a race meeting […] never failed
496 S. Wagg

to draw shoals of fans, photographers and journalists keen to hear his opin-
ion on the latest controversy.84

Graham Hill: Performing ‘Graham Hill’

Graham Hill was Formula 1 World Champion in 1962 and again 1968,
while finishing runner-up three years running (1963–1965). He domi-
nated motor racing in the post-Moss period of ‘the Sixties’, the term
being interpreted here as a set of ideas about a less restricted popular
culture than as a literal decade.85 Other leading drivers of this time
shunned celebrity. Neither of the two star British drivers of the early to
mid-1960s—John Surtees (F1 champion, 1964) and Jim Clark (world
champion in 1963 and 1965)—sought to develop a public image. Surtees,
whose father Jack had been a dealer in cars and motor bikes and a racer,
never strayed from the motor world and on retirement in 1970 opened a
Honda dealership in Kent. Jim Clark combined racing with work on the
family sheep farm in the Scottish borders (although when he died in
1968 he was living in tax exile in Paris86). Graham Hill, by contrast,
developed a complex public persona—his son Damon refers to the ‘sev-
eral people that were my father’87—which reflected the complex class and
less complex gender dynamics of motor racing and wider British popular
culture at the time. Whereas Moss simply merchandised his ‘memorable
moniker’, Hill performed ‘Graham Hill’.
Born in 1929, the same year as Moss and Hawthorn, Hill’s class back-
ground can be characterised as lapsed middle class. His father had worked
on the London Stock Exchange and had been captain of Mill Hill Golf
Club in North London, apparent badges of solid, upper-middle-class
respectability but, according to his grandson, Hill Senior had probably
been on the wrong end of a deal.88 This meant that Graham Hill, in con-
trast to the great majority of British racing drivers hitherto, had begun
working life with little money. His wife Bette, an international rower
whom he met in 1951, described him then as ‘just a chap—and a pretty
penniless one’.89 Hill’s route to elite motor racing was via engineering and
the burgeoning post-war scene of workshops and Brands Hatch race
meetings. He attended Hendon technical college (technical colleges were
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 497

well down Britain’s educational hierarchy, specialising often in teaching

craft apprentices) in the late 1940s and did National Service as a Petty
Officer in the Royal Navy 1950–1952. He then had a job with engineer-
ing firm Smiths Industries which he relinquished to go on the dole and
work on cars. When Lotus employed him in 1954 it was, initially, as an
engineer; the same year his quest to become a racing driver began when
he paid £1 to drive four laps of the Brands hatch circuit. He signed to
drive for Lotus in 1957. Meanwhile he earned extra money from a busi-
ness he set up converting cars to go faster, catering to the growing post-­
war demand for speed.90
His driver’s salary, plus retainers from petrol and tyre companies, busi-
ness dealings and personal appearances made him a wealthy man and he
acquired the trappings of achieved celebrity common to top drivers. Like
several other drivers he flew his own plane (to races, for business trips, to
play golf in Spain with Sean Connery) and in 1971 moved his family into
a Hertfordshire mansion in 30 acres. He went shooting with the Queen91
and his biography, called simply Graham and published posthumously in
1977, carried an introduction by the Prince of Wales. He became a mem-
ber of the London’s Clermont Club, opened in 1962 as a meeting place
for rich gamblers and, according to one writer, a ‘bunker’ against egali-
tarianism.92 He was invited to address the Institute of Directors’ annual
convention at the Albert Hall, where he told the assembly how he rel-
ished the ‘stimulus of competition’, and to speak on ‘Courage’ to an audi-
ence in the City of London, temple of British finance capitalism.93 He
was voted After Dinner Speaker of the Year in 1971.94
In the course of this ascent, Hill developed a distinct public persona.
In an acknowledgement of ‘the Sixties’ he grew his hair down below his
collar and acquired a playfully military bearing and an ersatz upper-class
accent. This may have been because Hill, who had turned 21 in 1950,
was of a generation wherein upward special mobility still carried with it
an obligation to modify one’s behaviour accordingly. Alternatively,
Damon Hill, speaking of his father’s ‘ridiculous moustache’ says Graham
grew it to resemble an ‘RAF fighter pilot’. (‘Battle of Britain’ pilots were,
of course, heroes in post-war Britain and drivers often sought to associate
themselves with the courage of these airmen.) In Damon’s view, however,
his father’s image recalled actor Terry-Thomas,95 the ‘definitive post-war
498 S. Wagg

cad or rotter’96 in British comedy films of the late 1950s. A more apt
comparison might be with Leslie Phillips, who portrayed a string of inter-
changeably lecherous characters in the Carry On… films of the same
period, because Hill’s faux military persona was accompanied by a sexu-
ally roving eye. This bordered on caricature, but nevertheless revealed
some of the sexual politics of Formula 1 at the time. The Bentley Boys
had established the notion of the British racing driver as a suave, preda-
tory male heterosexual. This re-emerged as an element in the performance
of the celebrity driver during the 1960s. For example, in 1963 Moss
wrote ‘I always keep a diary and I do it every night, no matter what. […]
If someone’s in bed with me I just say “Excuse me, sweetie, whilst I write
a couple of things in m’book”’97 a mode of writing about women that
seemed to borrow from Ian Fleming’s (demonstrably sexist) James Bond
books. In 1969, Hill, who had been a judge in the Miss World contest the
previous year, broke both legs in a crash during the US Grand Prix at
Watkins Glen and then embarked on a long recovery. A subsequent BBC
sports awards broadcast featured a live link to Hill’s hospital bed. Referring
to the two nurses attending him, Hill told the camera ‘I don’t know what
you chaps will be doing later, but I will be getting a rub-down from a
couple of lovelies. So, if you can beat that, good luck to you’.98 Hill’s wife
Bette, in the audience, could almost certainly have seen beyond this
moment of Carry On… levity and was by then well aware of the attrac-
tive young women now converging on the Grand Prix circuit and making
themselves sexually available to drivers. ‘We disliked the dolly birds’, she
wrote in her own memoir. ‘They were always around and we knew they
were going to be there whether we accepted it, tried to ignore it or threw
tantrums’.99 ‘The Sixties was not a good time for wives’, wrote Damon
Hill later, ‘The world belonged to the male of the species and macho men
like my father had the upper hand’.100 Indeed, when Bette Hill had given
birth to Damon, she had telephoned Graham, then staying in a hotel
prior to a race at Snetterton, with the news. Graham’s gruff response—‘Is
that all you woke me up to tell me?’—is recorded in the memoirs of both
wife and son; each makes clear that Graham was not joking.101
This masculine, heavily heterosexual environment also, needless to say,
was difficult for non-heterosexuals to enter. The only known gay British
Formula 1 driver was a colonel’s son Mike Beuttler, who drove as an
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 499

amateur in F1 between 1971 and 1973. He was funded by stockbroker

friends, some of whom were also gay and whose team was known as
Clarke-Mordaunt-Guthrie Racing and his car the ‘Stockbroker Special’.
He often brought a clutch of ‘dolly birds’ to races to discourage rumours.102
He died in 1988 of AIDS.

James Hunt: Consumed by Celebrity

James Hunt (1947–1993) was World F1 Champion in 1976 and, for a
time, British motor racing’s most lucrative celebrity. Indeed, he is, argu-
ably, a case study of the contradictions of late twentieth-century celebrity.
His life has been well documented, and biographies include books by the
motoring journalist Gerald Donaldson and a copious 600-plus page
tome by Tom Rubython, a writer-publisher specialising in business and
motor sport. This section draws on these two accounts.
While British motor racing in the three decades that followed the
Second World War threw up comparatively few working-class drivers—a
rare example being Roger Williamson (b.1948) whose father Dodge
Williamson, a former speedway rider, had, when Roger was four, built
him a car powered by a lawn mower engine103—growing professionalism
had also thinned out the privately educated ‘gung ho’ tendency. Piers
Courage, Old Etonian heir to a brewing fortune and married to Earl
Howe’s daughter, was a survivor of this tendency, having a fitful F1 career
between 1966 and his death in the Dutch Grand Prix of 1970.104 As an
aspirant racing driver, Hunt certainly fit the profile of the unscholarly,
privately educated, speed-oriented young man of pre-war years. His
father was a stockbroker and his undistinguished schooldays were spent
at Wellington College, a minor public (i.e. private) school in England’s
historic educational hierarchy. In his early employment career he relied
heavily on a skilful presentation of self, first in working for a company
which rented out telephone systems and, latterly, as a nascent racing
driver approaching firms for sponsorship: some upmarket car dealerships
responded favourably.105 He won a prestigious Grovewood award (for
promising drivers) in 1969. Between 1973 and 1975 Hunt drove for
Lord Hesketh, a wealthy self-styled British eccentric and privateer who
500 S. Wagg

maintained the ostentatious Bentley Boy tradition. Hunt, known for his
liking for alcohol and recreational drugs, was promoted as a priapic figure
with overalls bearing the slogan ‘Sex: The Breakfast of Champions’.106
There’s little doubt that the Hesketh team’s attempt to revive the 1920s
playboy ambience (champagne, caviar, limousines, a liveried butler, par-
ties…107) to motor racing was not popular on the circuit. When Hesketh
abandoned F1 in 1975 Hunt moved to McLaren, whose manager recalled:
‘[W]e were a professional racing team and the golden boy-hype business
at Hesketh really meant nothing to us. They were just a bunch of
wankers’.108
The reason that Hesketh withdrew from F1 was the same reason that
Hunt continued to thrive: corporate sponsorship, mainly from tobacco
companies, now dominated the funding of both teams and drivers. Hunt
made a good deal more money out of being James Hunt than he did from
racing. The difference between his and the previous generation was that109
celebrity was now part of the corporate machine that ran in tandem with
Formula 1 after on-car advertising had been permitted in 1968. Whereas,
for example, the administrative burden arising from Graham Hill’s work
as a celebrity had been borne by his family,110 Hunt was signed to the
US-based international sport agency IMG, who handled his affairs and
had immediately counselled him to live abroad to avoid British tax; under
their tutelage he was being paid between $5000 and $10,000 per day for
promotional activities. His good looks and growing racing reputation
gained him a contract to advertise Marlboro cigarettes, (although he con-
tinued to smoke his favourite Rothmans, inserted into Marlboro pack-
ets111). He also held lucrative contracts with Texaco and Vauxhall. In
1977, his retainer at Philip Morris (owners of the Marlboro brand) alone
was worth $250,000 and he rivalled former world champion Jackie
Stewart, now four years into retirement and another client of IMG, for
earnings. Stewart, readily available to global brands—he worked as
ambassador for Rolex (watches), the Ford Motor Company, Moet (win-
ery) and the Royal Bank of Scotland112—professed to have earned more
money since his retirement than when he had been racing.113 Hunt was
now, it was claimed, the biggest celebrity in Britain.114
As a public figure Hunt was notable for doing as he pleased. His pro-
digious appetite for drink, drugs and casual sex, all widely available on
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 501

the motor racing circuit, are well documented and he was said to be
incapable of embarrassment.115 He wore what he wanted (his usual attire
consisted of jeans, a T shirt and bare feet) and baulked at a ‘dress stan-
dards’ clause in his Marlboro contract.116 He frequently got into fights
and once punched a marshal at a race when he was the reigning world
champion.117 Unsurprisingly, therefore, he featured regularly in the tab-
loid press: in 1987, for instance, newspapers reported that he had got
drunk on a British Airways flight to Adelaide for the Australian Grand
Prix and urinated over several passengers.118
In the main this troubled neither the sponsors or the public unduly,
one strong possibility being that his defiance of convention was appeal-
ing, and bringing motor racing, to the rising ‘Generation X’—rather in
the way the ‘bad boys’ John McEnroe and Andre Agassi would later do
for tennis.119
Hunt represented the apotheosis of the racing driver as a symbol of
male heterosexual potency. A whole chapter of Rubython’s biography of
him (and much else of the book) is devoted to Hunt’s sexual conquests.120
His view of women probably differed from that of Moss or Hill only in
the degree of discretion with which they conducted their affairs; like Hill,
he acted as a judge in the Miss World Contest of 1976 and his reaction
to not winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award in 1977 is
instructive. The winner was figure skater John Curry. Figure skating, of
course, was still seen by many as inappropriate for boys (unlike motor
racing) and Curry had been outed as gay the year before. Hunt was indig-
nant at not winning and demanded to know what had happened. BBC
producer Jonathan Martin told him that ‘all the women voted for
Curry—they like him’. Hunt’s reply—‘And they don’t like me?’—sug-
gests a mentality rooted in physical attraction and a failure to compre-
hend the feminine, either in females or in males.121
Hunt’s celebrity entailed a number of telling ironies. First, his relent-
lessly off-the-cuff behaviour very possibly meant that, within motor rac-
ing, he was more popular as a TV commentator than as a racer. ‘I believe
that the contribution he made to our sport, through his television com-
mentating and his writing, was enormous’, wrote Stirling Moss of (the
recently deceased) Hunt—a telling and backhanded tribute to a man
who had been a world champion driver in that same sport. ‘That was the
502 S. Wagg

good side’, added Moss. ‘For one of my generation, James’ behaviour

could also be quite appalling’.122 Hunt had signed to commentate on
motor racing for BBC television, following his retirement from driving in
1979. Here he became popular with audiences for balancing the boyish
enthusiasm of regular commentator former advertising executive Murray
Walker with often scathing professional critique.123
Second, in an indulgent adult life littered with apparent faux pas and
misdemeanour, one of the few rebukes that Hunt received was for a polit-
ically liberal statement, which probably said less about him than it did
about the social and political circles in which he moved. During com-
mentary on the South African Grand Prix of 1991 Hunt launched into a
spontaneous condemnation of the country’s racist apartheid system. The
BBC held to the notion that such matters constituted ‘politics’ and should
not intrude on sport. The producer immediately passed him a note read-
ing: ‘TALK ABOUT THE RACE’. Hunt then compounded the felony
by adding ‘Anyway, thank God we’re not there’—the BBC had not dis-
closed that the commentary was from a live feed and was actually being
transmitted from Shepherds Bush in west London.124
Third, in 1989 when he sought to divorce his second wife, Hunt, who
had already lost a great deal of money as a Lloyds ‘name’ in the City of
London, had to counter claims by his wife’s lawyer that he was a bad
father. His drinking, drugtaking and, specifically, the British Airways uri-
nation incident of 1987 which had taken place when his elder son had
only recently been born, were floated as evidence of this. Fearful of losing
access to his children, Hunt consented to a very expensive legal settle-
ment.125 Hunt had always enjoyed the financial benefits of being a public
figure while trying to live the life of a private one—he complained that
‘the massive invasion of privacy is worse than being at school’.126 But
what might have been relished by Generation X and self-proclaimed
opponents of ‘political correctness’ could scarcely be defended in a legal
transaction wherein Hunt’s ‘good character’ was being contested.
Celebrity cannot do as it pleases; it is always subject to sanction and pun-
ishment, as and when the occasion arises. Hunt was initially known as a
racing driver but in time his known-ness came to be based largely upon
what Chris Rojek calls ‘the charm of notoriety’127; his celebrity came to
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 503

rest in large part on transgression, a gift, depending on time and place,

either to the tabloid press, the legal profession, or both.

 igel Mansell: The Guy You Would Chat

N
to in the Pub
On the face of it, the career of Nigel Mansell, Formula 1 world champion
in 1992 whose career at the top included 12 of the 13 years of Margaret
Thatcher’s premiership, represents the neoliberal dream trajectory, in
which (reasonably) humble beginnings, family support, hard work, sacri-
fice, persistence in adversity and fierce determination lead to success,
wealth and fame, followed by business diversification and charity work,
as a means of ‘giving something back’.128 Like Clark and Surtees before
him, Mansell seems never to have sought celebrity beyond the routine
‘ghosted’ biography, of which in his case there have been several, although
in the most recent of these he readily recognised himself as a ‘brand’.129
The latest one certainly renders his life as a Thatcherite idyll. Other
accounts present a more nuanced picture. Given the theme of this chap-
ter, Mansell’s career suggests an interesting relationship to the social class
history and tradition of British motor racing, to its gender order and,
once again, to the transactional nature of celebrity itself. This final section
examines the narratives of Mansell’s career.
The bare bones of Mansell’s early life are set out in his most recent
memoir, published by prestigious international publishers Simon and
Schuster in 2015; it has no credited co-writer although ‘Mart’, with
whom the book was apparently written, is mentioned in the dedica-
tions.130 As a book, it is a story of dogged struggle but devoid of
recrimination.
Mansell was born in 1953 into the technology-based, lower middle
class and grew up in Birmingham, the heartland of Britain’s motor indus-
try. His father was a senior engineer at Lucas Aerospace and his mother
ran a tea shop. The family lived in a modest, semi-detached house. He
decided at 8 years old that he would be Formula 1 champion. He came
up as a junior on the Midlands karting scene and his father bought him
504 S. Wagg

a kart and maintained it for him, his grandparents paying for any neces-
sary parts. He attended the local technical college and, at his father’s insti-
gation, joined Lucas as an apprentice, where he became a laboratory
technician and then a production manager.131 At college he had met
seemingly his only girlfriend; their first date was at a kart race.132 They
married in 1975.
His route into elite motor racing is marked, first and foremost, by
shared sacrifice. His quest to be a top driver was conceived as a family
enterprise in which Mansell’s wife Rosanne was seen as an equal part-
ner.133 This enterprise entailed many initial sacrifices. For example,
Mansell gave up his Lucas job in 1977 and the couple survived on
Rosanne’s earnings; they sold their flat in 1978 in order to finance
Mansell’s move into Formula 3134 and Mansell worked cleaning windows
while writing to 400 companies for sponsorship, without success.135
Unsurprisingly, therefore, a hallmark of Mansell’s presentation of self
is an appreciation of the value of money. For example, fully four pages of
his autobiography are expended in telling the reader of an incident in
1975 when a mental patient, who had wandered from a nearby hospital,
damaged his car; after a wrangle of several months, he was paid for the
repairs. When he was taken on by Lotus, initially to deal with quality
control, he slept in his car outside Lotus headquarters in Norfolk, because
he couldn’t afford bed and breakfast. In 1981, when he made his F1
debut, he stayed in Brazil for six weeks because of the prohibitive expense
of going home and then returning for the Argentine Grand Prix. In the
Dallas Grand Prix of 1984, his transmission broke so he got out and
began to push the car, partly, he explained, because he was on finishing
money.136
This was allied to considerable physical courage and self-belief. He sur-
vived a number of serious injuries, beginning with a crash at Brands
Hatch in 1977 which broke several bones in his neck. He was told that
he would never race again but records proudly that, backing mind over
matter, he was back doing so within six weeks.137
Here, surely, was derring-do to match that of the Bentley Boys, the
pre-war record seekers and the dashing post-war generations that pre-
ceded him. But Mansell seems to have been denied the acclaim accorded
to those drivers. James Hunt famously claimed in The Times in 1986 that
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 505

‘Formula 1 insiders’ didn’t want Mansell to win the world championship,

adding ‘Above all, they want a worthy winner’138 (Mansell nevertheless
was runner-up and voted BBC Sports Personality for that year.) There
was a belief in the motor racing world that the nature of Mansell’s ascent
had given him a sense of grievance against those drivers who had it less
hard. For a time Mansell was No. 2 driver to Elio de Angelis at Lotus. de
Angelis’ father was the wealthy owner of a construction company in
Rome and de Angelis himself had a flat in Monaco, a stark contrast to
Mansell’s start in life. Peter Warr, team manager at Lotus, said that
Mansell ‘was still at that time in a frame of mind—and I think it was
because of the way he had come up through motor racing—that the
world was against him’.139
Certainly, Mansell was frequently involved in disputes, with officials
and fellow drivers—notably with his Brazilian rival Ayrton Senna, whom
he grabbed by the throat following an incident at the Belgian Grand Prix
at Spa in 1987. Seemingly by way of explanation, Mansell told a friend
later: ‘I’m only an ordinary bloke’.140 Equally, Mansell, who lacked con-
ventional good looks, might have resented the sponsorship that had
accrued to drivers on the basis simply of their public image, James Hunt
having been the archetype. But resentment of Mansell seemed to run
deeper, in at least two ways.
First, Mansell’s quiet monogamy seemed to fly in the face of the still-­
prevailing gender order in Formula 1 motor racing. One of Mansell’s
biographers, the veteran motoring writer Christopher Hilton, refers
pointedly to the fact that de Angelis’ girlfriend was a German model;
Rosanne Mansell, by contrast, ‘would never become like the exotic crea-
tures—and creations—who decorate race meetings and adorn the pit
lane’.141 The Brazilian Nelson Piquet, with whom Mansell had had a frac-
tious relationship as teammates at Williams (1986–7), gave an interview
to Playboy magazine in 1988 in which he described Rosanne as ‘ugly’.142
At race meetings the Mansell family stuck together: usually they would
bring their own motorhome and hang out with relatives, friends and
family.143 Mansell offered no raw material to transgression-hungry tab-
loid reporters.
Second, and related to this, Mansell as an individual seemed to lack
the ingredients from which British motor racing celebrity was
506 S. Wagg

customarily confected. Hilton, again, makes this plain and, in doing so,
demonstrates the negotiated nature of celebrity.
British sportswriters since before the Second World War have nurtured
relationships with performers in their field in the hope of cooperating on
a biography or two—this applies to motor racing, as to a number of other
sports. Some of the resulting books would be simple celebrations, featur-
ing many photographs and aimed at fans. Others would be more serious
interrogations of their subject. In the case of Mansell, an example of the
former would be Alan Henry’s Nigel Mansell: World Champion, in which
Mansell is described, among other things, as ‘a yeoman racer’ and ‘like
the guy you would chat to in the pub’.144
Hilton opted for the latter kind of book, which adopted the same title
as Henry’s and was published first in 1987, with subsequent editions. In
the book Hilton frequently attempts to extol Mansell’s perceived ordi-
nariness but instead simply underlines the fish-out-of-water nature of
Mansell’s relationship to Formula 1 culture. Mansell is depicted variously
a ‘Brummie, brusque, spade-is-a-spade sort of bloke’; ‘moody—perhaps
downcast would be more accurate. He always found difficulty concealing
that and Birmingham is not noted for its joie de vivre’; ‘because of that
moustache, a subaltern…’; and as possessing a ‘firm handshake, those
defensive eyes scanning you, that slightly awkward English way of not
knowing how to leave’.145 Mansell, Hilton made clear, simply could not
perform celebrity. In public, the book argued, he used stilted language,
rather in the manner of a police report (Mansell was a special constable
for a time when living on the Isle of Man) while rivals provided viable
quotes for the reporters’ notebooks. Of the leading drivers of the late
1980s, Hilton wrote: ‘Senna [is] expressive in Portuguese, Spanish,
English and Italian; [Alain] Prost [is] fluent in French, delicious in
English, comfy after his fashion in Italian; Mansell [is] sometimes awk-
ward in English’.146 This, it should be added, is a part of a popular render-
ing of Mansell as a philistine: a recent article refers to his prosaic culinary
tastes—he was a ‘burger-chomping’ sort of guy, it says, and ‘at team din-
ners, would ask for ketchup to put on his meals’.147
Hilton acknowledged Mansell’s plain man appeal—of the crowds who
flocked to see him drive at Silverstone, he said: ‘It was easy to see them-
selves in Mansell: He had married the sort of girl they might have
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 507

married, had the sort of family they might have had, spoke the way they
spoke.’148 But, for media purposes, there was little in Mansell from which
a celebrity myth to rival that of Moss, Clark, Hill, Stewart or Hunt could
be fashioned. ‘Mansell had known nothing but the microphones, tape
recorders, notebooks’, wrote Hilton. ‘Moreover, as sport became more
democratic—in the sense that anybody could play, not just the born-­
rich—people came forward with a talent and prospered on that talent
while remaining inescapably what they were: ordinary people. Why not?
But the extent of their exposure in the media showed, the great talent
aside, how ordinary they were’.149
This was not mere snobbish pining for the days of the gentleman rac-
ers—although it is clearly that. As the leading British F1 contender
Mansell had to be the story—he simply didn’t help writers like Hilton in
the telling of it. Hilton made clear the pragmatic importance of the
celebrity-­making of Mansell to the motor racing journalists of the time
when recalling Mansell’s (temporary, as it turned out) retirement in 1990:
‘[T]hose journalists who didn’t have to file immediately started thinking
and thinking hard. Where did Mansell’s void leave them? Which newspa-
pers would send them round the world at considerable expense to report
races without Mansell? This emphasised the stature to which Mansell had
grown. He was air tickets to a lot of people’.150
In retirement, Mansell maintained a fractious individualism and
remained suspicious of those drivers who might not have faced the diffi-
culties that he had faced. In 2010, he was asked what he thought of
English driver Lewis Hamilton, who had won his first F1 world champi-
onship two years earlier: ‘Well, it’s fantastic what he has achieved, but he’s
been manufactured’, replied Mansell, ‘How many people from seven
years of age have been given £2.5 million to go karting?’151 Mansell also
defiantly retained his identification with ordinary people. In 2020, now
living in Jersey, with his family he opened a Mitsubishi dealership:
Mitsubishi cars, he said (with questionable accuracy), were cars that
‘pretty much anybody could afford’.152
508 S. Wagg

 onclusion: British Motor Racing

C
and Celebrity—What Ordinary People Lack?
Peevish and maladroit as Mansell may often have been, he seems success-
fully to have defied the historically entrenched, privately educated, ele-
vated social class ethos of British motor racing and its hyper-masculine
gender order. Unlike Moss, whose name, in Hilton’s apt phrase, ‘became
deeply embedded in the national sub-conscious as meaning speed and
style with it’153 Mansell made his way, unashamedly, as a white-bread,
ketchup-sloshing everyman, with no glamour to go with his driving
expertise. This may not have been forgiven by the copy-hungry motor
racing press, who pined for another Moss, another Hunt. And the road is
likely to be rockier still for the Nigel Mansells of the future: there is no
motor racing now without corporate sponsorship and, as noted, sponsor-
ship seeks celebrity. As the eternally suave Stirling Moss said in one of his
last interviews ‘Lewis Hamilton races and then straight afterwards he has
to go and talk to Vodafone and their guests. When I finished my races, I
used to go and chat up the ladies!’154 Mansell had neither the wit nor the
inclination to chat up corporate guests or exotic female pit dwellers, but
he communed happily enough with the people, sometimes buying 250
tickets for friends and fans at Silverstone.155 In his thoughtful autobiog-
raphy Damon Hill, a Formula 1 world champion and the son of one,
suggested that the problem with the ‘fame philosophy’ was that it pre-
sumed a ‘normal state of insignificance’; as the singer George Michael
once said, famous people aren’t famous because they have something that
ordinary people lack; it is because they lack something that ordinary peo-
ple have.156 While Moss, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, James Hunt and
many of Mansell’s contemporaries might well have rejected such a
thought, Mansell himself, his racing expertise notwithstanding, seems to
have been its embodiment.

Acknowledgement Thanks to David Andrews and Damion Sturm for helpful

comments on the initial version of this chapter and to Kate Linney for kindly
lending me her late father’s motor racing books.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 509

Notes
1. https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/sport/popularity/all-­t ime-­s ports-­
personalities/all. Access 9th February 2021
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-­a rts-­1 1706345.
Broadcast 7th November 2010; access 2nd April 2021.
3. https://porterpress.co.uk/products/who-­d o-­y ou-­t hink-­y ou-­a re-­
stirling-­moss-­t-­shirt. Access 2nd April 2021.
4. Peter King The Motor Men London: Quiller Press 1989 p. 7.
5. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/1896_Locomotives_on_Highways_
Act. Access 18th March 2021.
6. Kyler Patterson ‘The Fastest Car of Every Decade Since Cars Were
Invented’ https://drivetribe.com/p/the-­fastest-­car-­of-­every-­decade-­
Ct4c_PlxTqWOQ1OCmlPImg?iid=ORSXpnifRgihRYLWhH
Zl5Q. Access 18th March 2021.
7. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Hugh_Fortescue_Locke_King. Access
24th February 2021.
8. https://www.brooklandsmuseum.com/explore/our-­h istory/birth-­
brooklands. Access 18th March 2021.
9. Jim Donnelly ‘Selwyn F. Edge’ https://www.hemmings.com/stories/
article/selwyn-­f-­edge. Posted January 2012; access 24th February 2021.
10. See Chris Rojek Celebrity London: Reaktion Books 2001.
11. See, for example, Nick Scott ‘A History of Gentleman Racers’ https://
therake.com/stories/history-­of-­gentleman-­racers/. Access 19th
March 2021.
12. https://nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/sir-­henry-­segrave-­the-­loss-­of-­a-­
hero/. Access 19th March 2021; https://www.britannica.com/biogra-
phy/Sir-­Henry-­ONeal-­de-­Hane-­Segrave. Access 19th March 2021;
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/february-
­1941/2/lord-­wakefield. Access 2nd February 2021.
13. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-­e ngland-­m erseyside-­3 5758176.
Access 1st February 2021.
14. http://www.parry-­thomas.co.uk/. Access 24th February 2021.
15. https://people.elmbridgehundred.org.uk/biographies/john-­c obb/.
Access 1st February 2021.
16. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Malcolm_Campbell. Access 2nd
February 2021.
510 S. Wagg

17. https://www.0024watchworld.com/the-­first-­rolex-­oyster-­perpetual/.
Access 12th February 2021.
18. See Richard Williams ‘Return of Bluebird K7 brings memories of
golden era speeding back’ The Guardian 13th August 2018 https://
www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/aug/13/donald-­campbell-­jg-­parry-­
thomas-­john-­cobb-­malcolm-­campbell-­adventurers. Access 19th March
2012; see also Julie V. Gottlieb ‘British Union of Fascists’ https://www.
oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/
odnb-­9780198614128-­e-­96364;jsessionid=614FE0BB928485A211C
C5DBC8514DCA1?backToResults=%2Fsearch%2Frefine%2F%3Fd
ocStart%3D1%26themesTabShow%3Dtrue. Access 2nd
February 2021.
19. The magazine had actually been founded a year earlier as Motorcycling
and Motoring.
20. Clips of all these are easily searched on the Internet.
21. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Walter_Owen_Bentley. Access 20th
March 2021.
22. https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/barney-­barnato. Access 21st
March 2021.
23. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-­england-­nottinghamshire-­23574665.
Access 1st February 2021.
24. Bill Boddy ‘Dr J.D. Benjafield—Bacteriologist and Bentley Boy’
MotorSport August 1998 https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/
archive/article/august-­1998/76/dr-­jd-­benjafield-­bacteriologist-­and-­
bentley-­boy. Access 21st March 2021.
25. https://spink.com/lot/20001000650. Access 22nd March 2021.
26. See https://www.bentleymotors.com/en/world-­of-­bentley/the-­bentley-­
story/history-­and-­heritage/historic-­people/original-­bentley-­boys.html.
Access 22nd March 2021.
27. Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin Full Throttle Edinburgh: T.N. Foulis 1932.
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Capitalist Society: A Short History Abingdon: Routledge 2013 p. 64.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 511

30. Nick Foulkes ‘The Leader of the Pack: Woolf Barnato’ The Rake website
https://therake.com/stories/icons/the-­l eader-­o f-­t he-­p ack-­w oolf-­
barnato/. Posted June 2016; access 22nd March 2021.
31. John Stevenson British Society 1914–45 Harmondsworth: Penguin
1984 p. 27.
Posted 11 December 2020; access 23rd March 2021. Dorothy Levitt
The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women Who
Motor Or Who Want to Motor London: John Lane 1909.
32. Foulkes ‘The Leader…’ See also Nick Foulkes The Bentley Era: The Fast
and Furious Story of the Fabulous Bentley Boys London: Quadrille 2006.
33. Rachel Harris-Gardiner ‘Dorothy Levitt: A Pioneer for Female
Motorists’ https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/2020/12/9/
dorothy-­levitt-­a-­pioneer-­of-­motoring.
34. Harris-Gardiner ‘Dorothy Levitt…’
35. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Mildred_Bruce. Access 23rd March
2021. See also Nancy R. Wilson Queen of Speed: The Racy Life of Mary
Petre Bruce Bradford on Avon: ELSP 2012: review by Tom Clarke
https://speedreaders.info/9623-­q ueen-­s peed-­r acy-­l ife-­m ary-­p etre-­
bruce/. Access 23rd March 2021.
36. David Venables ‘Obituary: Margaret Jennings’ The Independent 23rd
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obituary-­margaret-­jennings-­1183007.html. Access 24th March 2021.
37. See Roger Farmer Betty Haig: A Life Behind the Wheel London:
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Access 24th March 2021.
38. See Bill Boddy ‘Gwenda Hawkes’ MotorSport August 1995 https://
www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-­1 995/79/
gwenda-­hawkes. Access 24th March 2021; see also https://www.graces-
guide.co.uk/Gwenda_Stewart. Access 24th March 2021.
39. http://speedqueens.blogspot.com/2015/09/jill-­scott-­thomas.html.
Access 23rd March 2021.
40. Quotations taken from Imogen Lyons ‘Violette Cordery: ‘The Queen
of Motoring’ http://intriguing-­people.com/the-­queen-­of-­
motoring/Posted 15th July 2020; access 23rd March 2021; see also
Florence Walker ‘Legendary Ladies Of Motorsport: Violette Cordery’
https://petrolicious.com/articles/legendary-­l adies-­o f-­m otorsport-­
violette-­cordery. Posted 24th January 2017; access 23rd March 2021.
512 S. Wagg

41. Francesca Wingham ‘Brooklands Women: Elsie ‘Bill’ Wisdom’ https://

www.brooklandsmuseum.com/explore/museum-­f rom-­h ome/
brooklands-­women-­elsie-­bill-­wisdom. Posted April 2017; access 23rd
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42. ibid.
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46. Juliet Gardiner The Thirties: An Intimate History London: HarperPress
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april-­2020/112/englands-­tainted-­hero. Access 26th March 2021.
58. Eberhard Reuss Hitler’s Motor Racing Battles: The Silver Arrpows Under
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 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 513

59. Jonathan Glancey ‘The master race’ Observer Sport Monthly 1st
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David McDonald ‘Dunlop Mac’ and Adrian Ball Fifty Years with the
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60. Susan Watkins Bernie: The Biography of Bernie Ecclestone Yeovil: Haynes
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61. Stirling Moss and Ken W. Purdy All But My Life London: Pan Books
1965 p. 22.
Mike Lawrence ‘A Body is desirable - 500 cc F3’ MotorSport
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may-­1986/42/class-­1-­racing-­cars. Access 25th March 2021.
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class-­1-­racing-­cars. Access 25th March 2021.
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sport/2012/jun/06/roy-­salvadori. Posted 6th June 2012; access 31st
January 2021; Paul Fearnley ‘A tribute to Le Mans winner Roy
Salvadori’ MotorSport https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/
single-­seaters/f1/tribute-­le-­mans-­winner-­roy-­salvadori. Posted 7th June
2012; access 27th March 2021.
67. The son of Italian immigrants, Salvadori (1922–2012) drove for Ferrari
and a variety of British works teams and won Le Mans in 1959. His
wife Susan was the daughter of racing drivers Violette Cordery and
John Hindmarsh.
68. https://motorsportbroadcasting.com/history/. Access 27th March 2021.
514 S. Wagg

69. Richard Williams ‘Sir Stirling Moss obituary’ The Guardian 12th April
2020 https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/12/sir-­stirling-­
moss-­obituary. Access 15th February 2021.
70. Moss interviewed by Darren Turner https://magazine.astonmartin.
com/people/knights-­t ale-­remembering-­r acing-­l egend-­s ir-­s tirling-­
moss. Access 15th February 2021.
71. Paul Fearnley ‘The ultimate gentleman racer? Rob Walker and Motor
Sport’ https://www.goodwood.com/grr/race/historic/2018/8/rob-­
walker-­history/. Access 8th February 2021; See also http://www.grand-
prixhistory.org/walker_bio.htm. Access 29th January 2021
72. Michael Cannel The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most
Dangerous Era London: Atlantic Books 2011 p .222
73. Richard Williams ‘Sir Stirling…’
74. Press Association ‘Sir Stirling Moss: The greatest all-rounder in motor
racing’s most dangerous era’ https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/sport/
national/18375185.sir-­s tirling-­m oss-­g reatest-­a ll-­r ounder-­m otor-­
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76. Doug Nye ‘Introduction in Stirling Moss, with Doug Nye Stirling
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77. Moss and Nye p. 15.
78. Bruce Jones Formula One: The Illustrated History London: Carlton
Books 2015 p. 15.
79. Mike Hawthorn Challenge Me the Race London: Motoraces Book
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80. Doug Nye ‘Doug Nye—inside the world of the incredible Peter Collins’
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doug-­nye-­peter-­collins/. Posted 9th November 2016; access 28th
March 2016.
81. Gordon Cruickshank ‘Ken Gregory and Stirling Moss: a winning part-
nership’ Motor Sport October 2009 https://www.motorsportmagazine.
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22nd February 2021.
82. Cruickshank ‘Ken Gregory…’.
83. Robert Edwards Stirling Moss: The Authorised Biography London
Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2014 p. 204.
84. Richard Williams ‘Sir Stirling…’.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 515

85. See Julie Stephens Anti-Disciplinary Protest: Sixties Radicalism and

Postmodernism Cambridge, at the University Press 1998 p. 10.
86. Doug Nye ‘Remembering Jimmy Clark—50 years since he passed’
https://www.goodwood.com/grr/columnists/doug-­nye/2018/4/doug-­
nye-­remembering-­jimmy-­clark-­50-­years-­since-­he-­passed/ Posted 6th
April 2018; access 30th March 2021.
87. Damon Hill, with Maurice Hamilton Watching the Wheels: My
Autobiography London: Pan Books 2017.
88. Damon Hill ‘Watching… p. 41.
89. Bette Hill, with Neil Ewart The Other Side of the Hill: Life with Graham
London: Hutchinson/Stanley Paul 1978.
90. See Graham Hill, with Neil Ewart Graham London: Arrow Books 1977
pp. 11–21.
91. Damon Hill Watching… p. 19. Sir Jackie Stewart, who followed Hill
into the pantheon of British champion drivers, also became close to the
British royal family: the Queen attended his 80th birthday party in
June 2019; see ‘Scots racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart celebrates 80th
birthday with the Queen’ https://www.scotsman.com/sport/other-­
sport/scots-­racing-­legend-­sir-­jackie-­stewart-­celebrates-­80th-­birthday-­
queen-­1415460. Posted 13th June 2019; access 15th October 2021.
92. Laura Thompson A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan
London: Head of Zeus 2018 p. 105.
93. Bette Hill The Other… pp. 109 and 140.
94. Graham Hill Graham p. 94.
95. Damon Hill Watching… pp. 5 and 9.
96. Andrew Spicer ‘Terry-Thomas (1911–1990’) http://www.screenonline.
org.uk/people/id/461962/ Access 29th March 2021.
97. Moss and Purdy All But… p. 59.
98. Damon Hill Watching… p. 52.
99. Bette Hill The Other… p. 46.
100. Damon Hill Watching… p. 30.
101. Bette Hill The Other… p. 35; Damon Hill Watching…p. 28.
102. Richard Bailey ‘Remembering Mike Beuttler’ https://web.archive.org/
web/20150725065753/http://richardsf1.com/2011/12/29/
remembering-­mike-­beuttler/ Access 29th March 2021.
103. http://www.asag.sk/bio/williamson.htm. Access 11th February 2021.
104. See Adam Cooper Piers Courage: The Last of the Gentleman Racers
Somerset: Haynes Manuals 2003.
516 S. Wagg

105. Tom Rubython Shunt: The Story of James Hunt Northamptonshire: The
Myrtle Press 2013 pp. 44–5, 55–6.
106. See, for example, Rod McPhee ‘Formula 1 ace James Hunt’s son reveals
his dad once had marathon sex session with 35 air stewardesses’ https://
www.mirror.co.uk/spor t/formula-­1 /formula-­1 -­a ce-­j ames-­
hunts-­9133348Posted 26th October 2026; access 30th March 2021.
107. Gerald Donaldson James Hunt: The Autobiography London: Virgin
Books 2003 pp. 91–3.
108. Rubython p. 234.
109. Rubython p. 150.
110. Bette Hill p. 104.
111. Rubython p. 237.
112. Rubython p. 377. See also https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-­
athletes/race-­car-­drivers/jackie-­stewart-­net-­worth/. Access 15th
October 2021; https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/athletes/
motor-­racing/sir-­jackie-­stewart-­net-­worth/. Access 15th October 2021.
113. Rubython p. 377. Stewart also had his own F1 racing team, which he
sold to Red Bull for £50 million in 1997—see https://www.therichest.
com/celebnetworth/athletes/motor-­r acing/sir-­j ackie-­s tewart-­n et-­
worth/ Access 15th October 2021.
114. Rubython p. 297.
115. Rubython pp. 63, 128, 240, 342.
116. Rubython p. 236.
117. Rubython pp. 367–8, 419.
118. Rubython p. 66.
119. See Kyle W. Kusz ‘Andre Agassi and Generation X’ in David L. Andrews
and Steven J. Jackson (eds.) Sport Stars: The Cultural Politics of Sporting
Celebrity’ London: Routledge 2001 pp. 51–69.
120. Chapter 29 pp. 379–95.
121. Rubython p. 369.
122. Stirling Moss ‘Prologue: A Very Complete Sort of Person’ in
Rubython p. xxi.
123. Donaldson James Hunt… p. 13; Rubython pp. 514–23.
124. Murray Walker Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken: My Biography London:
CollinsWillow 2002 p. 210.
125. Rubython pp. 561–5.
126. Rubython p. 371.
127. Chris Rojek Celebrity p. 174.
 ‘Who D’You Think You Are? Stirling Moss?’ British Racing… 517

128. Mansell is president of UK Youth, a charity in support of which he

financed, and rode in, a professional cycling team between 2011
and 2013.
129. Nigel Mansell Staying on Track: The Autobiography London: Simon &
Schuster 2015 p. 221.
130. Mansell Staying… p. v.
131. Mansell Staying… pp. 1–15; Christopher Hilton Nigel Mansell: World
Champion London: Corgi Books 1993 p. 27.
132. Hilton Nigel… p. 27.
133. Alan Henry Nigel Mansell: World Champion Richmond: Hazleton
Publishing 1992 pp. 12–13.
134. Hilton Nigel… p. 30.
135. Mansell Staying… p. 26.
136. See Mansell Staying… pp. 16–19, 57, 61 and 97.
137. Mansell Staying… pp. 24–5.
138. Hilton Nigel… pp. 148–9.
139. Hilton Nigel… p. 52.
140. Hilton Nigel… p. 159.
141. Hilton Nigel… pp. 52 and 27.
142. See Keith Collantine ‘I should have won ‘86, he should have won
‘87″ – Piquet and Mansell on their rivalry’ https://www.racefans.
net/2013/01/26/nigel-­mansell-­nelson-­piquet-­f1-­rivalry/Posted 26th
January 2013; access 1st April 2021.
143. Mansell Staying… pp. 142–3.
144. Henry Nigel… pp. 4 and 10.
145. Hilton Nigel… pp. 33, 102 and 155.
146. Hilton Nigel… pp. 190–1.
147. Mark Scott ‘The good, the bad and the ugly: Nigel Mansell’ https://
www.planetf1.com/features/the-­good-­the-­bad-­and-­the-­ugly-­nigel-­
mansell/. Posted 30th April 2020; access 1st April 2021.
148. Hilton Nigel… p.160.
149. Hilton Nigel… p. 201.
150. Hilton Nigel… p. 195.
151. Chris Power ‘You’ve had it easy! F1 legend Nigel Mansell slams
‘manufactured’ Lewis Hamilton’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/
formulaone/article-­1282561/Youve-­easy-­F1-­legend-­Nigel-­Mansell-­
slams-­manufactured-­Lewis-­Hamilton.html?ito=feeds-­newsxml. Posted
29th May 2010; access 22nd February 2021
518 S. Wagg

152. Mansell Staying… p. 343.

153. Hilton Nigel… p. 97.
154. Interview with Darren Turner.
155. Mansell Staying… p. 142.
156. Damon Hill Watching… p. xxi.
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula
One Stardom, Driver Agency
and Celebrity Culture
Damion Sturm

Introduction
The Formula One driver has a dual status: he is both an automatic terminal
of the most refined technical machinery, a technical operator, and he is the
symbolic operator of crowd passions and the risk of death. (Baudrillard,
2002, p. 169)

As Baudrillard (2002) intimates, much of the focus in Formula One is

crystalised around the drivers’ mastery of their hi-tech machines and their
subsequent achievements. Nevertheless, the duality evoked by Baudrillard
(2002) operates in a circumscribed fashion, as the agential capacity of the
driver is largely determined by the machinery of Formula One. In this
regard, Formula One confronts traditional notions of sport stardom as
the ‘car is the star’ and is fundamental to any understanding of driver

D. Sturm (*)
School of Management, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 519
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_20
520 D. Sturm

performances and achievements. As such, and to re-project the ‘star in

the car’, Formula One drivers need to become machine-like to be seam-
lessly integrated with and within the car to maximise their opportunities
for success.
Further confronting Formula One sport stardom are the corporate
apparatuses that also envelope the sport and impinge on driver agency.
Formula One has become increasingly commercialised, commodified
and corporatised across the past 25 years due to the acceleration of trans-
national companies involved in the sport—as either team owners, manu-
facturers, suppliers or sponsors. In varying ways, these corporations
impact on the drivers who need to navigate expectations and obligations
surrounding their appearance, marketing and mediated personalities. In
concert, this chapter explores the particular conditions for sport stardom
in Formula One, asserting that the traditional sport star criteria of meri-
tocracy, authenticity and sporting performances need to be expressed
through and in spite of the literal machinery and corporate apparatuses
of Formula One.
It should also be noted that, in many respects, this chapter is intended
to offer a continuation to Wagg’s chapter on early forms of celebrity in
Formula One (see chapter “Can the Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis
Hamilton, Race and the Resurrection of the Black Athlete”). As such, this
chapter takes as its starting point Formula One in 1995, with the sport
attempting to recover from the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994. With
Senna’s death, Formula One instantly lost its star driver and responded by
ushering in a greater emphasis on safety, reducing the role of the driver in
the car through technology and by becoming ever more corporate in ori-
entation. The chapter probes theories and nuances of Formula One sport
stardom before providing individual case studies that examine Michael
Schumacher as the robotic corporate man-machine, Kimi Raikkonen’s
minimalistic hyperconformity and Jacques Villeneuve’s brash maverick
stardom as three distinct strategies for contemporary Formula One star-
dom. Each offers a different response to the encroaching deterministic
machinery and corporate apparatuses inherent to Formula One, as well
as the simulated environments that the drivers navigate to retain a sem-
blance of the ‘star in the car’.
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 521

Introducing Sport Stardom

Unlike the often-fictional character or creation portrayed and performed
within most other mass entertainment realms, there is an alleged sense of
realism and an “unrivalled quality of authenticity” (Smart, 2005, p. 194)
that surrounds the sport star. In many respects, with star athletes operat-
ing as “real individuals participating in unpredictable contests” (Andrews
& Jackson, 2001, p. 8), sport stardom can also be viewed as meritocratic;
earned and measured primarily through sporting achievement, excel-
lence, elite competitions and physical capital (Tulle, 2016; Whannel,
2002). Smart (2005) observes, “it is through the exceptional quality of
their sport performances, and media coverage of the same, that individ-
ual athletes and players generally become widely known and acquire star
status” (p. 194).
Of course, like all sporting codes, Formula One has its own subtleties
and nuances that support but also disrupt these generic notions of sport
stardom. As such, Formula One stardom is inextricably linked to the
performance of the car over the individual driver on the racetrack.
Meritocracy is also a contestable assertion given that wealth, whiteness
and masculinity have historically underpinned the majority drivers on
the grid. Additionally, off track, the drivers need to perform as hyperreal
simulations—enacting a mediatised and corporatised version of stardom
that appeals to and appeases sponsors. Thus, rather than being idealised
‘authentic individuals’, drivers are valued for performing narrowly pre-
scribed corporate roles, while meritocracy is further undermined by
sponsors influencing the allocation of some race seats.

Sport Stardom and ‘On-Field’ Performances

Elements of on-field sporting performances remain intrinsic to sport star-

dom. While not infallible, sport offers a robust site for identifying and
articulating the markers upon which sport stardom can be earned and
achieved. With performances often rigorously measured and assessed,
most sports deploy ‘objective’ systems of measurement for assessing and
rewarding sporting performance (Tulle, 2016; Woodward, 2013). As
522 D. Sturm

such and given the ubiquity of sports coverage, both the experts and the
public can judge the athletic performance (e.g., time measurements in
running, cycling, swimming, motorsport), the level of performance in
relation to the sport’s internal hierarchical systems (the difference between
grades, divisions, and leagues within various sporting codes), and the sig-
nificance of the performance and/or achievement in relation to the status
of various competitions globally (a world championship compared to a
national or regional title). Nevertheless, while ‘traditional’ sports com-
bine achievement, excellence, elite competitions and physical capital to
codify sport stardom as authentic and meritocratic (Andrews & Jackson,
2001; Smart, 2005; Tulle, 2016; Whannel, 2002), the ‘on-field’ perfor-
mance’ is less clear-cut in relation to Formula One stardom.

 erforming Formula One Sport Stardom

P
on the Racetrack: Is the Car the Star?
Represented as the pinnacle of motor-racing, there is an assumption that
the drivers are also the best in the world. Of course, many of the drivers
advance from and usually win junior categories to get into Formula One;
for example, various Karting titles (e.g., Fernando Alonso, Max
Verstappen), Formula BMW (e.g., Nico Rosberg), British Formula Three
(e.g., Rubens Barrichello), Formula 3000 (e.g., Nick Heidfeld), GP3 and
Formula 2 (e.g., Charles Leclerc, George Russell) or the rival American
IndyCar series (e.g., Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Pablo Montoya). For oth-
ers, there may be financial avenues to enter Formula One or corporate
impositions that affect performance; points we will return to in due course.
Race, gender and class have also been historical barriers, notably with
Lewis Hamilton the first black driver to compete in 2007. Aside from
twenty-one Japanese drivers, plus Narain Karthikeyan and Karun
Chandhok from India, Malaysian Alex Yoong, Alex Albon of Thai descent
and Chinese driver Guanyu Zhou (for 2022), historically Formula One
drivers have been notable for their ‘whiteness’ (Spracklen, 2013).
Unequivocally, all contemporary Formula One drivers are men, with
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 523

only five women having ever competed in Formula One; the last in 1992,
interspersed with minor female test driver roles (Sturm, 2021).
Additionally, as Wagg’s previous chapter highlighted, motor-racing has
been grounded in upper-class and elite cultures (see chapter “Can the
Formula One Driver Speak? Lewis Hamilton, Race and the Resurrection
of the Black Athlete”). Arguably, these ‘moneyed’ links are not as obvious
as they once were, although most drivers tend to come from either afflu-
ent and privileged backgrounds (e.g., Nico Rosberg and Jacques
Villeneuve being raised in Monaco) or are able to access forms of funding
and/or sponsorship to engage in motorsport regularly from a young age
(Turner, 2004). Thus, despite growing up with financial hardship, Lewis
Hamilton and Michael Schumacher (whose family owned a go-kart track
nevertheless), were financially supported from a young age by McLaren
and Mercedes, respectively, that allowed them to go racing, ironically in
an highly privileged way compared to their peers, in terms of the resources
that were made available to them. Hence, race, gender and class (e.g.,
predominantly affluent or well-resourced white males) have shaped a nar-
row version of stardom that challenges notions of meritocracy. In addi-
tion, technological impositions and commercial imperatives also
significantly impact on Formula One sport stardom.
As a technologically dependent sport, the drivers’ performance is inex-
tricably tied to the performative capabilities of the cars that they drive.
Hilton (2003) suggests that the Formula One driver is “unusual among
sports people because for him technology plays such a decisive role. Good
drivers do not win in bad cars” (p. 25). Baudrillard (2002) reaches similar
conclusions, noting that the “car and driver are merely a living projectile”
(p. 167), while observing that “in McLuhan’s sense: the car becomes a
tactile, tactical extension of the human body” (p. 168). In this vein, tech-
nology and the machine determine, to a large extent, the performance of
drivers based on the quality of the car.
While ripe for explorations of the implosion of flesh and technology
within and through the Formula One car, the body not only melds with
the machine, but literally ‘disappears’ by being cocooned within the
cockpit. Indeed, embodiment operates in a contradictory manner in
Formula One; providing an ‘absent’ sporting body which foregrounds
technology while viewers rely on inanimate objects (e.g., cars, corporate
524 D. Sturm

logos and helmets) as identificatory mechanisms to comprehend the

sport and to follow the star drivers. Kennedy (2000) likens the Formula
One driver to a knight going into battle, asserting that the “symbolic
armour and vehicle for the warrior hero is provided by the helmet, pro-
tective clothing and racing car, which so engulfs the driver as to com-
pletely obscure him” (p. 65). With the drivers cocooned in their cars and
wearing racing garb that conceals their face and body, the car-as-­apparatus
becomes a primary means for viewer identification that links drivers to
the appropriate decals, colour schemes and corporate branding of their
cars and helmet designs. An inevitable, indivisible and ‘anonymous’ man
and machine linkage is seemingly also forged.
Nevertheless, this diverges from ‘cyborg theory’ which argues for a
dehumanising condition through the breaching of technology and
nature, the increasing symbiosis of humans with machines and a literal
reading of the human body as a machine (Haraway, 1991, 1994). Despite
the often ‘robotic’ characteristics of many contemporary drivers (see later
discussion of Michael Schumacher), Formula One’s man-machine inter-
relationship does not operate in the same manner as Haraway’s (1994)
‘machine-organism hybrid’ theorised through the cyborg. Rather, the
driver remains recognisable as a human agent, albeit with limited degrees
of agency, relinquishing much of his performance (and bodily) capabili-
ties to the machine.
Intriguingly, the ever-evolving technological apparatuses are curtailing
the driver’s role within the machinery, with the need for ‘spectacular’
driving displays or demonstrable mastery over the machine blunted.
Somewhat ironically, despite masculine bravado and risk-taking being
entrenched as endemic to Formula One due to wheel-to-wheel racing at
speeds in excess of 200mph, alongside the alleged spectre of death that
looms over the sport (Baudrillard, 2002), Formula One has become rela-
tively sanitised due to a range of safety features trackside and on the cars.
Additionally, Sturm (2021) observes that since 2014, the ‘hybrid’ tech-
nology era “requires drivers to manage, conserve and preserve their cars
in a manner that seemingly is at odds with ‘racing’” (p. 120). On a pri-
mary level, it is fair to assert that driver performance is so intertwined
with Formula One’s technological apparatuses that drivers acquiesce to
the machine, rather than enacting individuated displays.
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 525

In the pursuit of Formula One victory, there is an expectation of the

seamless integration of the driver (himself also prepared like a machine)
within the machine. Formula One teams also employ ‘objective’ appara-
tuses to assess driver performances, with banks of team computers pro-
viding visual systems of measurement, such as sector and lap times,
various simulations and simulators, as well as driver telemetry, which
traces exactly how the driver drives (and should drive) the machine by
recording and mapping the application of throttle, brakes, corner entry
and exit speeds, etcetera (Sturm, 2014). Often highly regarded, race-­
winning and indeed former world champions can struggle to adapt to
their new teams’ cars and systems, with various drivers, including Jacques
Villeneuve (2005), Rubens Barrichello (2006), Michael Schumacher
(2010) and most recently Daniel Riccardo, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando
Alonso (2021) being forced to adapt their own styles to suit the machine.
Teams also measure and map the drivers’ bodies and levels of fitness via
various tests and biometrics, with some drivers noted for their physical
regimes and training exploits, including Michael Schumacher as the
‘benchmark’ from the 1990s, and later Jenson Button and Mark Webber
for participating in competitive endurance events. Collectively, through
these systems of measurement a driver’s performance (and fitness) is com-
pared to his team-mate first and foremost, as there is an assumption that
both drivers are using the same machinery and operating under the same
conditions. Hence, the team-mate comparison is fundamental to Formula
One stardom as strong performances (e.g., points, podiums, race wins or
championships in ascending order) elevate a driver’s perceived monetary
value, his appeal to other teams and the possibility of a top drive.
Simplistically, even if a driver cannot outdrive a poor car, he needs to
showcase his ability to outdrive his team-mate. Conversely, reflective of
Whannel’s (1999, 2002) rise and fall narrative arc, poor performances
quickly affect driver reputation, value and are potentially career-ending as
drivers slide down the grid to the smaller teams or exit the sport.
Salaries, career earnings and contracts with established top teams are
also determinants of Formula One stardom. Most Formula One drivers
are well-paid athletes, earning base salaries ranging from US$1 to 10 mil-
lion a season, while a few have earned closer to (or more than) US$20
million a season—such as Michael Schumacher, Jacques Villeneuve,
526 D. Sturm

Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.

It is assumed that the top drivers will command the highest salaries and
be accorded opportunities with the top teams during their careers. Those
that can maintain longevity with top teams may be permitted an oppor-
tunity to dominate the sport, as the multiple years and championships
for Schumacher and Ferrari (1996–2006; 5), Vettel and Red Bull
(2009–2014; 4), and Hamilton and Mercedes (2013–present; 6) attest to.
Formula One’s star system culminates in the Drivers’ Championship
as the mark of the man (and implied master of the machine), while pro-
jecting and promoting the human dimension to this performance as a
crystalised focal point for global audiences (Baudrillard, 2002). In this
vein, despite being vitiated by Formula One’s technological and machinic
assemblages, the concealed and obscure driver furnishes a faint rendering
of and appreciation for the ‘star in the car’. Rather than an absent or
anonymous figure, the agential driver operates as the focal point of atten-
tion, of aspiration and as worthy of recognition for his ‘human’ skills and
performances that are, nevertheless, often understood via the car and a
series of inanimate identificatory objects. Ranking and evaluating drivers
according to championships, race victories, podiums, salaries, career
earnings and contracts with established top teams affords useful parame-
ters to potentially demonstrate the attributes of meritocracy and achieve-
ment for Formula One stardom, albeit with driver performance very
much aligned to and constrained by the technological possibilities of the
car. Moreover, the practices of sponsors demonstrate the way that com-
merce acts as another apparatus within Formula One, literally turning
these men into corporate-driving-machines.

Sport Stardom and ‘Off-Field’ Performances

Outside of a noteworthy and sustained performance on the sport field (or

the racetrack for Formula One drivers), an array of off-field performances
and expectations also inform contemporary stardom. Hence, how stars
can present and perform for and via the media helps to grow local/global
audiences and endear sport celebrities to fans (Sturm & Kobayashi,
2022). Specifically, those that have an elevated media profile, presence
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 527

and the ability to cultivate and perform a charismatic media personality

imbued with allegedly admirable and alluring qualities around comport-
ment, appearance and articulation, or at least devoid of banalities, bland-
ness and cliches, are often preferred (Dyer, 1979; Weber, 1968; Whannel,
2002). Unfortunately, due to the corporate nature of the sport, Formula
One drivers most often project monolithic media personalities that are
bland, sterile and ostensibly operate as corporate shills. Arguably, minus
the filters of the traditional mass media, it has only been via the increased
use of digital and social media by recent drivers that more engaging
insights, access and content has been produced, albeit in often self-­
promotional and self-branded ways (Andrews & Ritzer, 2018; Fresco,
2020; Sturm, 2019).
Additionally, the potential blurring of on-field stardom and off-field
persona may refocus attention towards a range of other constructed com-
ponents to sport stardom. Hence, an intrigue with celebrity lifestyles and
private lives (Turner, 2014) segues to an interest in forms of salaciousness,
transgressions and scandals (Wenner, 2013; Whannel, 1999). Sport stars
also take on a cultural value and a local/global visibility dependent on the
sports that ‘matter’ in different local and global contexts (Sandvoss,
2012). Sturm and Kobayashi (2022) point to the notable “elevation of
select individuals as national ‘stars’, ambassadors or even evocations as
heroic dependent on the scope and scale of achievements” (p. 121) as well
as the “national significance of the sport” (p.121). Moreover, Andrews
and Jackson (2001) suggest sport stars are often attributed with or as
specific cultural identities, sensibilities or representations that tend to run
along locally contingent understandings of nation, gender, race, class and
so forth. This semiotic and discursive construction and circulation of
sport stars in relation to cultural values and norms requires constant affir-
mation, contestation, negotiation and (re)articulation (Marshall, 2014;
Turner, 2014).
By design Formula One is very ‘European’, with most teams based in
Britain or other European localities (e.g., Ferrari and Alpha Tauri in Italy;
Mercedes in Britain and Germany), as are the drivers—for example, from
Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain. Other
nation states have also been represented in recent years, such as Australia,
Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Russia. While Formula One is not a
528 D. Sturm

‘national’ sport in any specific locale, national sport star status is bestowed
on the notable champions including, for example, Michael Schumacher
and Sebastian Vettel in Germany, Mika Hakkinen and Kimi Raikkonen
in Finland, Lewis Hamilton and Damon Hill in Britain, or the likes of
Fernando Alonso in Spain, Jacques Villeneuve in Canada and Max
Verstappen in the Netherlands. Status may also be imbued upon those
flying the flag for nations not traditionally associated with the sport—for
example, for Colombia and the achievements of Juan Pablo Montoya, as
well as for drivers that were the first national representative in Formula
One despite their relative lack of success, such as Alex Yoong in Malaysia
or Narain Karthikeyan and India.
Finally, the marketability, commercial value and commodified perfor-
mances of sport stars further hints at ascribed or manufactured compo-
nents to sport stardom (Rojek, 2001; Turner, 2014). For example, Kellner
(1996) conceives of a marketable difference shaped around perceived
moral, social and cultural values that is often laced with inherent racial
connotations. Moreover, while charismatic media performances and per-
sonalities can bolster the marketability of stars (Whannel, 2002), there is
the innate expectation that sport stars will predominantly operate as
compliant and malleable commodities for corporations (Sandvoss, 2012;
Wenner, 2013). Manufacturing, projecting and aligning sport stars with
select companies and products becomes salient for their global dissemi-
nation and potential consumption. This is arguably exacerbated in
Formula One as these corporate impositions, commercial expectations
and the perceived appeal and marketability of drivers can potentially
influence which drivers secure contracts.

 erforming Formula One Sport Stardom

P
Off the Racetrack: Corporate Stardom
In relation to the pinnacle and elitist global status of Formula One,
Baudrillard (2002) notes, “only in appearance is the circuit the site of the
competition. The competition takes place elsewhere—on the world car
market, in the drivers’ popularity charts, in advertising and the star
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 529

system” (p. 167). The commercial elements and fundamental role of

transnational corporations especially percolate throughout the star sys-
tem. Formula One increasingly moved to and relied on high-profile cor-
porate sponsors and transnational manufacturers to run many of the
teams during the 2000s, including Toyota, BMW and Honda, before
each had subsequently withdrawn by 2009 due to the global recession.
Additionally, two teams were run as essentially branded corporate enti-
ties; first for British American Tobacco (BAT)—as British American
Racing (BAR) from 1999–2006—and second as Red Bull Racing since
2005, which also runs a junior Torro Rosso team (recently rebranded as
Alpha Tauri). Formula One has continued to attract an array of transna-
tional sponsors, initially heavily reliant on tobacco before shifting to fash-
ion, finance, fragrances, airlines, technologies and alcohol which,
collectively, have predominantly funded Formula One for the past
twenty-five years (Sturm, 2014). Given the millions corporate sponsors
pour into the sport, they often expect to buy some influence within
the teams.
In relation to driver selection and expectations, transnational corpora-
tions and car manufacturers purchase a degree of influence through spon-
sorship (Turner, 2004), often favouring or financially supporting a
particular driver, pending the team’s final approval. Obviously high-­
profile drivers are preferred yet sponsors also consider other global mar-
keting imperatives; for example, seeking drivers from two different
nationalities (and key or untapped markets) to broaden their appeal.
Intriguingly, despite the nationalistic team name, Force India (2008–2018)
was ‘European’ in its outlook; being based in Britain, running predomi-
nantly European drivers and British technical staff, while comprising few
Indian nationals. Some of the major teams also run driver academies,
such as Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, which often lock junior drivers
into lengthy and restrictive contracts. These junior drivers tend to be
strategically placed in developmental roles or unofficial ‘second’ teams in
ways that are often more beneficial to the parent teams rather than the
drivers, as Red Bull’s recent treatment of Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly
suggests (Foster, 2021a).
In addition, the practice of paying for a drive is not uncommon, with
some drivers providing either cash or major sponsors to secure a drive
530 D. Sturm

with one of the lesser teams in Formula One. The presence of these driv-
ers (commonly referred to as ‘pay drivers’) dispels the meritocracy myth
that all Formula One drivers are the best in the world while demonstrat-
ing the corporatised focus of the sport by having sponsors intervening
and/or imposing their will (or pay drivers) on the smaller teams. As
Turner (2004) cautions, “Don’t be fooled into thinking Formula One
showcases the twenty best drivers in the world—it doesn’t. It offers a stage
to those lucky enough to carry the logos of ambitious multinational cor-
porations” (p. 201).
Various ‘pay’ drivers have provided lavish sums to secure Formula One
seats, with such transactions an annual occurrence. In 2006, Honda
spent nearly $200 million to create a second team to keep their Japanese
driver, Takuma Sato, on the grid (Fleming & Sturm, 2011), while reput-
edly the Venezuelan Government paid Williams £46 million annually to
run Pastor Maldonado between 2011 and 2013 (Sturm, 2014). In 2021,
drivers Nikita Mazepin and Lance Stroll received significant financial
backing from their father’s respective companies—including Canadian
billionaire Lawrence Stroll buying the Racing Point team in 2020
(rebadged as Aston Martin in 2021), for whom his son Lance Stroll races.

‘Corporate Puppets’: The Hyperreal Formula One

Star Simulacra

On a larger scale, Formula One itself becomes a site of simulation, of

hyperreality and an implosive ‘non-event’ (Baudrillard, 1983, 1994).
Indeed, Baudrillard’s (2000) often critiqued assertion that the Gulf War
did not take place can easily be reworked to a ‘Grands Prix do not take
place’ analogy. Formula One offers an ‘implosive’ effect, with media cov-
erage converging to reflect Formula One back onto itself through its own
‘modelled, precessionary, semiotic production’ seemingly devoid of an
external reality. Hence television coverage (and a range of contemporary
digital technologies) are the ‘event’ as, according to Baudrillard (2002),
“the race takes place on a screen, the screen of speed” (p. 167). Moreover,
each ‘Grand Prix’ is potentially already a non-event given the extensive
precessionary modelling and sophisticated simulations that have taken
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 531

place before teams arrive for a race weekend (Sturm, 2014). Therefore,
Baudrillard’s (1994) theory of the non-event affords an implosive assem-
blage of meaning and medium, reality and image, and so forth.
This has a flow-on effect for Formula One stardom. The drivers become
a hyperreal projection of a collection of images that are constantly repro-
duced and recycled—the Formula One star simulacra. Hence driver
agency or individuality is pre-coded within Formula One’s corporate and
technological apparatuses, with the hyperreal celebrity simulacra con-
stantly reproduced via implosive and internal models for what constitutes
Formula One stardom in an endless vortex of simulation (Baudrillard,
1983, 1994). These hyperreal driver images are not depthless or lacking
in origin or reality but, rather, offer powerful and impenetrable layers of
symbol-laden evocations engorged with meaning for global audiences
(Baudrillard, 1988) constantly reproduced from a precessionary reality
that is modelled upon and embedded within Formula One’s systems.
Moreover, in the hyperreal, Baudrillard (1990) notes that “the object is
always the fetish, the false, the feiticho, the factitious, the lure” (p. 184,
italics in original) which fascinates but always confounds the subject. In
this vein, the Formula One star simulacra affords an alluring or seductive
object for subjects—both for overt global commodification—as seen in
fan accumulation, practices and displays—and a malleable ‘corporate
puppet’ for the teams and transnational sponsors. By deploying strategies
to captivate and corral Formula One subjects, all seductive ‘power’ resides
with the Formula One star simulacra as a ‘supreme’ media object for, as
Baudrillard (1990) asserts, “the object wants only to seduce ... the object
always wins” (p. 124).
Applying a Baudrillardian interpretation of the Formula One star sim-
ulacra allows us to see that, by being entangled within these corporatised
relationships and contractual obligations, the drivers are effectively pup-
pets for transnational corporate appropriation and predominantly oper-
ate as bland, blank canvasses via their branded displays and manufactured
personas (Fleming & Sturm, 2011). Hence, the Formula One star simu-
lacra furnishes a ready-made or cookie-cutter template for stardom in
relation to appearance, grooming and media representation. For example,
from approximately 1995 to 2010, the majority of the drivers were gen-
erally indistinguishable with short-styled hair, being clean-shaven and
532 D. Sturm

resplendent in their team and sponsor intensive attire. Periodically, driv-

ers displayed a degree of ‘individuality’ to contrast with the otherwise
‘uniform’ attire and appearances (e.g., Eddie Irvine’s dyed blonde hair
with Jaguar in 2000 and 2001, Jarno Trulli’s long hair with Toyota
2005–2007, or drivers sporting facial hair, such as Barrichello, Button or
Alonso). Intriguingly, circa 2010, the Formula One star simulacra seem-
ingly placed a contractual obligation on contemporary drivers brandish-
ing ‘designer stubble’, with coiffured stubble becoming vogue in Formula
One. Hence, what might have been conceived as an ‘individuated’ dis-
play in the 1990s and 2000s became fashionable, marketable and seem-
ingly expected of drivers for the past decade.
Overall, the corporate machinery of Formula One is heavily prescrip-
tive and restrictive for drivers who, through their contractual relation-
ships and obligations, are commodified, constrained and regulated by the
corporations, teams and the governing body, the Fédération Internationale
de l’Automobile (FIA). In this vein, contractually the drivers are obli-
gated to wear the branded garb, attend to an array of media and/or public
relations duties, and to be paraded before various teams’ transnational
sponsors due to associated expectations for publicity, marketing and
appeasing sponsors (Fleming & Sturm, 2011). In this regard, Jacques
Villeneuve’s (1996–2006) lack of corporate grooming and forthright dis-
sent across his career suggests forms of non-conformity and a repudiation
of the Formula One star simulacra, points we will return to later in this
chapter.
Commonplace to many contemporary sports, the uniformity of
appearance can extend to the uniformity of press releases, with drivers
often reluctant to speak openly or directly on topics, while often repro-
ducing and recycling clichéd PR statements. For example, in 2006, Pat
Symonds, executive director of engineering for the Renault team, was
quoted in F1 Racing magazine as bemoaning that “press conferences can
be as dull as ditch water—contrived questions, corporate answers, no real
thought, no antagonism, no fighting, no one saying what they really
mean, no bloody spark. Dreadful” (The future of F1, 2006, p. 94).
Such patterns have persisted in contemporary Formula One although
arguably a ‘softening’ of male driver images and representations has
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 533

emerged in recent years, such as Lewis Hamilton’s ever-changing fashion

and style on social media, or Daniel Riccardo’s often jocular and self-­
deprecating interviews (Sturm, 2021). Additionally, the current genera-
tion of drivers are more active in cultivating their own profiles and
followings on social media to complement traditional media representa-
tions. Hence, drivers such as Daniel Riccardo and Lando Norris tend to
be less formal or formulaic by responding in more engaging, forthright
and comical ways—albeit, with Norris admitting that his PR handlers
were responsible for all of his social media accounts and content in 2021
(Scott, 2021). Additionally, forms of activism are also presented by some
drivers, such as Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel (Galily, 2019; see
also chapter “On Recovering the Black Geographies of Motorsports: The
Counter-mobility Work of NASCAR’s Wendell Scott”) which can be
conceived as both progressive and hypocritical in relation to equality, the
environment and human rights given Formula One’s problematic opera-
tionalisation in these realms (Miller, 2017; Sturm, 2023).
Finally, the Formula One star simulacra affords an assemblage of mul-
tiple overlapping structures: the governing body (the FIA); the team that
employs the driver; the press and media outlets; the driver’s manager and
PR agents; the specific corporate sponsors and their requests, and so forth
are both woven into the simulacra and operate as impositions to be acqui-
esced, negotiated and navigated by the driver. For the past 25 years, the
Formula One star simulacra has reproduced the driver as a bland
corporate-­driving-machine susceptible to the whims of Formula One’s
corporate apparatuses; a human driver who also needs to become robotic
in design as a performative and commercial cog within the machine.
Nevertheless, Baudrillard (2002) also reminds us that “the impact of
Formula One lies, then, in the exceptional and mythic character of the
event of the race and the figure of the driver, and not in the technical or
commercial spin-offs” (p. 169). Despite these commercial trappings and
machinic emphases, bearing witness to the integration and synthesis
between Formula One driver and car retains its appeal to fans. Hence,
there is a quest to recognise the primacy of the ‘star in the car’ which is
now probed through three prominent case studies.
534 D. Sturm

 he Robotic Winning Machine:

T
Michael Schumacher
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, if one driver personified, if not literally
embodied, the corporate racing machine and hyperreal Formula One star
simulacra, it was German Michael Schumacher (1991–2006; 2010–2012).
Post Senna, he was the star driver in Formula One and the generational
yardstick for his fellow drivers to be measured against. Schumacher won
a record seven world championships (1994 and 1995 with Benetton;
2000–2004 with Ferrari), while establishing new levels of fitness, work
ethic and standards of car control. He also set an array of Formula One
records, including ninety-one Grand Prix wins, during his ‘first’ Formula
One racing career (Bishop, 2006) before embarking on a second, less suc-
cessful foray with Mercedes from 2010 to 2012.
Conversely, while Schumacher was revered in this first career for his
driving talent and attributes, his near perfect integration within the
Formula One machinery and its simulated assemblages seemed too pol-
ished, too seamless. While perhaps susceptible to national caricaturing,
such characterisations tended to reduce Schumacher to an uncharismatic
and emotionless figure, with Allen (2000) noting that “Schumacher is
often accused of being more like a robot than a human being” (p. 78).
Thus, Schumacher adhered to attempts to seamlessly integrate the driver
(himself also prepared like a machine) within the machine; with
Schumacher operating as a mere performative cog in Formula One’s
larger simulated, technological and corporate apparatus.
Baudrillard (2002) expounds this point by suggesting that the drivers
become instrumentalised and machine-like in their pursuit of victory,
with any sense of ‘pleasure’ consequently eroded for the drivers them-
selves. Baudrillard (2002) notes,

There is no passion in this—except the passion for winning, of course,

though that is not personal, but an operational passion. It shows up in the
driver’s brain the way the technical data show on the dashboard. It is in-­
built in the technical object itself, which is made to win, and which incor-
porates the driver’s will as one of the technical elements required for victory.
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 535

This seems inhuman, but to be honest about it, it is the mental logic of the
race. (p. 168)

In many respects, the notions of performance, technology, operational

passion and the robotic driver mapped thus far are further moulded and
redirected by the commercial practices of the sport. Therefore, if we pur-
sue the Schumacher-as-robotic-machine analogy, it comes as no surprise
that he has not only won seven world championships (e.g., the performa-
tive man-machine) but, also, amassed phenomenal wealth. Schumacher
was the highest paid driver on the grid, allegedly paid US$25 million to
join Ferrari in 1996 (Freeman, 2021) while being rumoured to earn
between approximately US$70 and 80 million annually post-2004, over
half of which was derived from endorsements (Fleming & Sturm, 2011).
Hence, as both a “streamlined product of sponsors and PR men” (Allen,
2000, p. 84) and a robot in the car, the hyperreal performing man-­
machine has clear commercial value in this corporate sport.
Returning to the realm of driver performance, Baudrillard (2002)
observes that,

Formula One is a rather good example of the era of performance, in which

the heights achieved are the work of man and machine simultaneously,
each propelling the other to extremes without it being really clear which is
the engine of this meteoric advance and which merely the other’s dou-
ble. (p. 166)

While a robotic man-machine caricature emerged for Schumacher,

extraordinary personal skill and physical capital also underpinned his
endeavours. Schumacher was revered for his testing and set-up work, his
driving ability (notably in wet weather) and his adaptability in altering
race tactics during Grands Prix. During his Ferrari team years
(1996–2006), Schumacher took his own personal fitness regimes and
driving abilities to exceptional levels while expecting both team and car
to be moulded around him (the one organisationally, the other physi-
cally). Thus, Schumacher immersed himself in relentless hours of testing
to perfect his set-up, often at the expense of his teammates in terms of
their own car development, access to data, and via preferential strategies
come race weekend.
536 D. Sturm

Indeed, despite repeated denials of the existence of complicit ‘number

2’ drivers, there was no mistaking that all components within Ferrari
were reorientated towards, completely focused on and crystalised around
a version of ‘team Schumacher’ (Freeman, 2021). Collectively, contractu-
ally subservient (but financially renumerated) second drivers and an
influx of his hand-picked personnel were deployed to continually adapt
Michael to the car and vice versa, all in order to perfect the performative
dominance of the Schumacher/Ferrari ‘machine’. In this vein, Baudrillard
(2002) notes that,

If man is haunted by the evil genius of technology, which pushes him to

the limits—and even beyond his capabilities—then technology is haunted
by man, who identifies with it and projects all his passions into it. The alli-
ance between the two, the pact between them, can be brought about only
through an excessive expenditure, a spectacular sacrifice. (p. 166)

Thus, despite the often ‘seamless’ accounts, an uneasy symbiosis between

man and machine also underscores Schumacher’s complete devotion and
projection of passion towards the machine. Indeed, teammates and rela-
tionships are potentially sacrificed and expendable in his relentless quest,
while Schumacher is seemingly also pushed to his limits in terms of what
he is willing to do to achieve Formula One glory.
Schumacher’s dominance, coupled with his ‘ruthless ambition’ to win
at all costs, seems to reflect the robotic, human-machine fulfilling an
‘operational passion’ for winning devoid of ‘human’ emotion and
unmoved by accusations of unsportsmanlike conduct across his career
(Bishop, 2006; Vergeer, 2004). For example, while cleared of any wrong-­
doing by the FIA in 1994, Schumacher appeared to deliberately run into
Damon Hill at Adelaide to claim the title, while there were rumours that
his car may have also been running illegal software that season (Allen,
2000). Furthermore, at the title deciding race at Jerez in 1997, Schumacher
appeared to ram rival Jacques Villeneuve despite initially not being
charged for the incident. The 1997 decision caused a public backlash,
with the off-season dominated by reactions to Schumacher’s tactics, dis-
cussions of a suitable punishment for his move and Schumacher’s attempts
to repair his tarnished reputation (Allen, 2000).
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 537

Ultimately, Schumacher would be stripped of his second-place ranking

in the Drivers’ Championship for 1997 which, as Vergeer (2004) sug-
gests, “the penalty is a joke, of course, but how else can you treat your
main attraction?” (p. 204). Collectively, Schumacher’s successful yet con-
troversial career is punctuated by accusations of deliberately ramming
title rivals (e.g., 1994 and 1997) or ex-teammates (e.g., Rubens Barrichello
in 2012) off the track, alongside punishments for intentionally impeding
other cars, including deliberately blocking the other drivers during quali-
fying at the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix (Bishop, 2006).
There was also increasing frustration at the nature of the Ferrari-­
Schumacher machine dominance between 2000 and 2004, which came
close to being alienating for many Formula One fans given that
Schumacher had little external competition, while teammate Barrichello
was contractually obliged to let Schumacher win (Freeman, 2021). The
2002 season exemplified this dominance. Schumacher finished on the
podium in every race (11 x 1st; 5 x 2nd; 1 x 3rd), scoring 144 total points
and remarkably winning the Drivers’ Championship by Round 11.
Somewhat ironically given this level of Ferrari dominance, Fleming and
Sturm (2011) observe that “the 2002 season was infamous for Ferrari
stage-managing the Austrian Grand Prix result by having Barrichello,
who led for the entire race, pulling over meters from the finish line to gift
Schumacher the race victory” (p. 194). The resounding booing by fans
and within the press gallery post-race hinted at the displeasure felt towards
the inhuman and passionless driver displays evoked by Baudrillard (2002)
and now manifest in Schumacher’s and Ferrari’s actions, which
Schumacher tried to deflect as a team decision.
Throughout this five-year period of dominance and success with Ferrari,
Schumacher would enact and perform the hyperreal elements of his
robotic corporate stardom, ‘revealing’ during press conferences how diffi-
cult his victories were, feigning ignorance to concerns that the races were
becoming ‘boring’ for spectators and, especially, remaining nonplussed at
any criticism of manipulative team tactics. In many ways, an exposition of
Formula One’s technological, simulated and corporatised machinery were
afforded to fans at this time, with Schumacher’s sport stardom operating
as the ‘perfect embodiment’ of a corporate driving machine that, necessar-
ily, is subordinated to the team, sponsors and technology.
538 D. Sturm

Fleming and Sturm (2011) suggest that to effectively embrace, succeed

and performatively deliver upon this robotic corporate role requires for
Schumacher the “total absorption of the human into the machinic dimen-
sion, into a corporately sponsored object world dominated by an imper-
sonal logic” (p. 198) in which Schumacher must “perform as a corporate
and technological marionette” (p. 197). Nevertheless, despite the pub-
licly displayed man–machine interactions, Schumacher still tries to retain
and reveal traces of the human, however fleeting, problematic or strained
such representations may be. In this regard, the 2021 Netflix Schumacher
documentary (Kammertöns et al., 2021) is noteworthy for its purposely
humanising treatment of Schumacher that eschews a complete career tra-
jectory or detailed interrogation of his driving misdeeds. Instead, the
documentary revels in the warmth of a person, a personality and an
intensely private family man that perhaps, in some ways, demythologises
his hyperreal projection as a robotic corporate driver avatar.

Hyperconformity and Minimalism:

Kimi Raikkonen
At first glance, Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen (2001–2009; 2012–2021)
also seemingly fits the robotic Formula One corporate-driver template
seamlessly. Arguably, by adopting such an approach, Raikkonen achieved
longevity in Formula One, driving for a record 349 race starts until the
age of 42 and predominantly for top teams across his career—notably
McLaren (2002–2006) and Ferrari (2007–2009; 2014–2018). Of course,
financially he was well renumerated, including doubling his salary at
Lotus (2012 and 2013) by exceeding expectations based on performance
bonuses per point scored (Clarkson, 2019). His driving performances
were also noteworthy as the 2007 World Champion and having finished
second (twice) and third (three times) in the Championship. However,
much is also made of Formula One only seeing glimpses of the ‘real’
Raikkonen—an allegedly more effervescent, humorous, socially engaged
and hard-partying individual away from the track (Clarkson, 2019;
Hotakainen, 2018). Thus, the archetypical corporate ‘cookie cutter’ per-
sona inherent to the Formula One star simulacra that Raikkonen
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 539

projected seemingly belies and conceals a more enigmatic individual that

remained highly popular with Formula One fans.
Arguably, Raikkonen’s ‘blandness’ is itself intentional and a carefully
cultivated star persona—with Raikkonen’s minimalistic and apathetic
attitude towards the corporately scripted, driver-as-commodity hyperreal
performance strategically deployed to reduce further demands on his
non-driving Formula One commitments. Specifically, it could be argued
that Raikkonen deployed Baudrillard’s (1988, 1990) notion of a ‘fatal
strategy’ for its agential capacity; toying with the media and fans that
sought to know ‘him’, and the corporations and teams that sought to
control him by, rather, simulating his hyperconformity to the corporate
ethos, expectations and projection of the ‘Kimi Raikkonen’ Formula One
star simulacra. This fatal strategy was a ruse and mere artifice as it fulfilled
yet also minimalised his Formula One commitments, obligations and
engagements by simulating his blind obedience to the system. Moreover,
such a fatal strategy freed up a private and agential space for an unfettered
‘Raikkonen’ to flourish away from Formula One stardom, celebrity cul-
ture and its simulated, commodified and mediated constraints.
Collectively, with Raikkonen there is an ambivalence, an indifference
and a minimalistic approach outside of the car whereby his monosyllabic
answers, his phlegmatic projection and his seeming absence of a charis-
matic persona arguably were being strategically deployed to frustrate
those that seek a deeper, more engaging ‘real’ star image. In fact, the lack
of emotion was one of his character traits, where Raikkonen seemed
recalcitrant and indifferent to describing the Formula One driving expe-
rience, to exuding enthusiasm in press statements (with a monotone
response remaining whether he won or retired from a race), and in pro-
viding short, deadpan and closed responses.
Additionally, he frequently seemed nonplussed at inane questions,
requests or obligations—for example, offering only one-word responses
(or no responses) to interviewers, failing to match the excitement of
interviewers or fans at PR events, refusing to ‘perform’ as expected by
those in attendance (e.g., often refusing to take off his sunglasses) and
only providing brief or fleeting forms of engagement with waiting fans.
These non-Formula One driving duties are contractual obligations but,
by default, Raikkonen provided the impression that he did not want to
540 D. Sturm

attend to such duties and, indeed, frequently confirmed this perspective

during interviews (Clarkson, 2019; Hotakainen, 2018).
Nevertheless, seemingly off-script moments during races endeared him
to fans. In 2006, after his car broke down mid-race at the Monaco Grand
Prix, cameras tracked Raikkonen heading to his private yacht rather than
back to the pits for a team debrief. Later footage from the race still in
progress has Raikkonen soaking shirtless in a hot tub while his mates
continue their weekend of partying. In 2009, with heavy rain suspending
the Malaysian Grand Prix mid-race, cameras catch Raikkonen out of his
racing overalls eating an ice cream while the other drivers still prepare to
race. Finally, his at times terse and abrupt radio exchanges with the team
were broadcast. Arguably most famous was his 2012 response to team
instructions when leading the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, retorting “just
leave me alone, I know what to do”, which became an instant catchphrase
and branded slogan when referencing Raikkonen, as did other playful ‘ice
cream’ motifs. Collectively, such moments hint at an apathy, an ambiva-
lence and a disdain for the expected performative roles within
Formula One.
In many ways Raikkonen evokes York’s (2018) notion of reluctant
celebrity, whereby famous individuals navigate and negotiate the struc-
tural impositions surrounding their global fame and media attention,
while finding strategies to deflect and defer their ‘celebrity’ roles.
Poignantly, York (2018) suggests “reluctance marks an ambivalence rather
than a rejection: a condition of simultaneously positive and negative reac-
tions while acting in a way that suggests compliance” (p. 4). Hence,
through her case studies, the celebrities don’t explicitly reject celebrity or
become reclusive per se but, operating primarily from privileged posi-
tions, they brandish strategies that negotiate and evoke their seeming
reluctance. Specifically, York (2018) discusses Robert De Niro’s notoriety
for his silence and taciturnity in effectively ‘saying nothing’ in most non-­
filmic appearances that often frustrates interviewers or those trying to
gain ‘deeper’ insights into or understandings of the method actor (see also
Smith, 2002). York (2018) also explores Daniel Craig’s reluctance at
being a promotional vehicle for his films, despite the fact companies fre-
quently use his star capital (and often eroticised body) in ways that posi-
tion him as the ‘poster boy’ for such films.
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 541

These two case studies elicit remarkable similarities to Raikkonen. For

example, Hotakainen (2018) suggests that Raikkonen is “famous for his
reticence” (p. 34), before noting that elements such as taciturnity, three-­
word sentences and particularly silence were commonly deployed by the
Finn to navigate inane questions and his press-related duties. Raikkonen’s
disinterest and unenthusiastic approach to promotional work has also
been hinted at above—seemingly fulfilling his contractual obligations
but shunning any overt displays of interest, enthusiasm or excesses. As
such, it could be countered that his minimalistic and seemingly disinter-
ested approach was a strategic ruse and lure by Raikkonen; simulating his
own hyperconformity (Baudrillard, 1988, 1990) to the hyperreal Formula
One star simulacra to retain an agential space away from Formula One.
Additionally, this could also be interpreted as an individual politics of
indifference and apathy (and perhaps was at first glance), albeit with his
hyperconformity subsumed by and absorbed into Formula One’s corpo-
rate apparatus as its own simulacra.
Not surprisingly, an overt manufactured image—a ‘personalised’
Formula One star simulacra—was constructed for Raikkonen whereby
he was projected as the ‘Iceman’, an assumed emotionless image/persona
that was given to him by McLaren team boss Ron Dennis in 2002. As
Hotakainen (2018) recounts:

Iceman. Ron Dennis gave this name to Kimi. It…defines his professional
identity accurately: he comes from a cold climate, drives fast and talks lit-
tle, he doesn’t explain anything, does his job to the best of his ability, and
then moves on to the next race. A little later, the role will entail wearing
dark glasses everywhere. (p. 131)

Interrelated and perhaps unsurprisingly (see later section), Jacques

Villeneuve reportedly rebuked Raikkonen for being a manufactured
driver image, allegedly noting that, “It’s sad that you don’t see drivers
being real people. Kimi’s image is so obviously fabricated because he’s not
the Ice Man. It goes back to the corporations. You end up fabricating this
image because that’s what they want” (Villeneuve in McRae, 2005,
para. 5).
542 D. Sturm

Although clearly corporately complicit, arguably this constructed per-

sona was also beneficial for Raikkonen as it seemingly furnished a stable
and readily identifiable Formula One character for him to perform. The
Iceman provided Raikkonen with the corporate driver avatar, the hyper-
real simulacra that permitted his playful politics of apathy and indiffer-
ence—all permissible as Raikkonen performed the expected role with
aplomb. Indeed, perhaps through his ambivalent adherence, his seem-
ingly blind obedience to the role and his apparent subsummation by the
corporately imposed apparatuses, Raikkonen undermined the entire
hyperreal Formula One circus. Because Raikkonen’s hyperconformity
was so overt, so explicitly manufactured and so easily discerned by both
insiders and outsiders, there was no veneer, no pretence nor explanatory
framework offered or needed. Rather, there is a revelling in his hypercon-
formist approach as the ultimate form of resistance. He has been absorbed,
consumed and co-opted by the teams, corporations, media and fans alike
who seemingly ‘have him’ as the Formula One star simulacra (Baudrillard,
1990). Nevertheless, this remains a lure and ruse, as his individual poli-
tics of indifference, minimalisation and apathy suggest otherwise, while
Raikkonen remains the supreme seductive ‘object’ with all interested par-
ties in on the game.
Hotakainen (2018) seems cognisant of some of the possibilities that
embracing the Iceman persona afforded Raikkonen, observing that “it’s
an alias, a shield, a tool. You can drive a car under it; it’s a good name for
that purpose. But it melts outside of the car and evaporates once he
reaches his own doorstep” (p. 34). Unfortunately, Hotakainen (2018)
then opines contradictory claims that the persona was ‘organic’ and
rooted in Raikkonen’s place of origin, despite having previously acknowl-
edged its overt construction and activation as a brand. Nevertheless, what
is intriguing is the performative shield and function this allowed for
Raikkonen. In many respects, he did not need to cultivate a charismatic
persona for—as the Iceman—ambivalence, indifference and a disdain for
press and PR duties were understood, subsumed by and complementary
to, if not expected of, this hyperreal corporate image. Hence, Raikkonen
seemingly only needed to publicly enact this performance to showcase his
apparent reluctance and hint at a recalcitrant individual uneasy with the
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 543

corporate expectations of Formula One. All the while, of course, he was

adhering to and conforming to such expectations in a manner that
appeased the teams and sponsors while appealing to the fans. As such,
Raikkonen could simply don this corporately complicit hyperreal Iceman
mask and/or shield, perform its marionette-esque functions (which
included an implicit reliance on fearless and fast driving, buttressed by
performances on the track), and then remove many of its vestiges in his
private, non-Formula One life.
Indeed, so much of the fascination with Raikkonen was the awareness
that away from Formula One there was a wilder private life, hedonistic
lifestyle and risk-taking thrill seeker who was at odds with the bland per-
sonality performed and projected to Formula One audiences. Hence, his
dangerous pastimes, hijinks, one-time excessive lifestyle and earlier
Finnish celebrity circulation through marriage to former Miss Scandinavia
Jenni Dahlman (2004–2012) garnered large media interest and atten-
tion, although would barely be acknowledged or commented upon by
Raikkonen. Moreover, his hard partying and binge-drinking were seem-
ingly well-known albeit rarely reported, aside from his antics at a London
strip club making the tabloids in 2005 (Henry, 2005). Intriguingly,
Raikkonen recently revealed having a 16-day ‘bender’ between two races
in 2012, while confirming a broader trend of regular binge-drinking ear-
lier in his career (Clarkson, 2019; Hotakainen, 2018).
Conversely, Raikkonen seemed acutely aware of the intense media
scrutiny and corporate expectations that accompanied Formula One star-
dom. Therefore, strategically, he intentionally offered no perceptible indi-
viduated personality outside of the corporately projected Iceman
simulacra that he performed for teams, sponsors and the press. As such,
Raikkonen demonstrated aspects of York’s (2018) reluctant celebrity
through his ambivalence, taciturnity and minimalisation via a contractu-
ally imposed celebrityhood. Raikkonen also seemingly recognised the
agential value and capacity of a ‘fatal strategy’ (Baudrillard, 1988, 1990)
that simulated his hyperconformity to the corporate ethos and projection
as the Iceman—adhering to and appeasing team/sponsor expectations
replete with the apathetic and indifferent traces that endeared him to
fans. Thus, while Raikkonen allegedly remarked to Hotakainen (2018)
544 D. Sturm

that “it would be brilliant to drive in Formula One incognito” (p. 36)
arguably, Raikkonen already had a ready-made solution and strategy that
allowed him to compartmentalise his performances both as a Formula
One star driver and as a promotional ‘vehicle’ for corporate appropriation
as the hyperreal Iceman persona.

 Joker in the Pack? Jacques Villeneuve

A
as Formula One Maverick
With a famous racing father (Gilles Villeneuve) and the accomplishment
of being a Formula One World Champion (1997), IndyCar Champion
(1995) and Indy 500 race winner in the same year, French-Canadian
Jacques Villeneuve demonstrates ascribed and achieved celebrity (Rojek,
2001). However, outside of these lofty achievements, Villeneuve’s
Formula One career (1996–2006) is one of steady decline, arguably best
understood as a rise-and-fall sporting narrative (Whannel, 1999, 2002)
of instant success confounded by failure and disappointing results. Failing
to win a race again post-1997, Villeneuve’s stardom seems in sharp con-
trast to the polished corporate robotic winning machine that Michael
Schumacher embodied. Rather, Villeneuve’s perceived maverick person-
ality becomes more poignant, wherein his risk-taking, scruffy appear-
ance, dissent and reluctant commodification seemingly operated in
contradistinction to the hyperconformist Iceman persona of Kimi
Raikkonen and corporately oiled world of Formula One.
Fleming and Sturm (2011) observe that Formula One websites, books
and magazines tend to discuss Villeneuve in two ways:

The first, taking a career ‘profile’ format, focuses on an early career rich
with successes (often tying in connections to his famous racing father and
Jacques’ own Indy accomplishments in the United States), then attainment
of the F1 championship before relative mid-field obscurity in performance
terms. The second, however, quite clearly embellishes Villeneuve’s ‘person-
ality’, depicting him as free-spirited, his own man, standing apart, a rebel,
eccentric, an individual, opinionated, and so on. (p. 196)
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 545

Primarily focused on the second trend, it is posited that Villeneuve pro-

vided individuated traces of ‘grit’ within the smooth and seamless
Formula One machine. Permeating all aspects of Villeneuve’s engage-
ment with and within Formula One are evocations of the scruffy ‘rebel’,
the reluctant commodity, the anti-corporate dissenter and the macho
risk-taker who apparently operated in a distinctive manner from the
expected Formula One star simulacra.
This notion of the maverick can usefully be explored as a response to
York’s (2013) challenge to reintroduce and to reconceptualise agency in
studies of celebrity. Avoiding the dialectics of production and consump-
tion, York (2013) advocates situating agency “as one of the many forces
operating in celebrity when it is considered as an industry” (p. 1332)
wherein authors understand “celebrity as various sets of industrial rela-
tions, rather than as a purely individual phenomenon” (1340). Thus,
deploying and recasting the notion of the ‘maverick’ furnishes the unpack-
ing and interrogation of York’s (2013) situated agency in terms of
Villeneuve’s integration and determined subject position within the
structures of the sport, counter-posed by his ability to reflexively navigate
this corporately complex terrain. Hence, it is acknowledged from the
outset that Villeneuve is co-opted into a series of practices, processes and
relationships as a hyperreal Formula One star simulacra.
Alternatively, Villeneuve’s own attempts to retain an agential space and
mobilise a sense of individualism within these simulated assemblages also
afford visible sites for contestation. Seemingly an exemplar of Dyer’s
(1979) “Rebel Hero”, such a label problematically implies a binary rela-
tionship of the celebrity rejecting the field or industry which then, in fact,
is revealed to be mere corporate chicanery. Specifically, despite elements
of resistance, most ‘rebel’ sports stars are always already complicit and co-­
opted, being repackaged for and resold via corporate cultures that sub-
sume their posturing and projections of ‘anti-corporate’ sentiments
(Andrews & Jackson, 2001; Fleming & Sturm, 2011).
Whannel’s notion of the maverick seems most appropriate for explain-
ing Villeneuve’s Formula One stardom. In defining the maverick,
Whannel (2002) notes that,
546 D. Sturm

Maverick masculine individualism is something that coaches, and govern-

ing bodies are concerned to root out. In a world that is constrained, mav-
erick sport stars appear to offer the power to live a life of masculine
individualism—defying constraints, rebelling against regulation, whilst
still performing. (p. 262)

As a pointed example, Villeneuve’s appearance was literally and visibly

bereft of the expected corporate grooming practices commonly adopted
by his peers. With messy hair often bleached an assortment of blonde,
pink, red and even blue at different times, baggy rather than tight-fitting
apparel, spectacles and regularly sporting a beard or excessive stubble
Villeneuve, symbolically at least, resisted the expectation of a clean,
cookie-cutter image inherent to the Formula One star simulacra.
For example, during his three years at Williams, Vergeer (2004) sug-
gests that key sponsors had become infuriated by the “eccentric, variable
colour of his hair” (198), while in Brazil in 1998, Donaldson (2001)
notes that FIA officials had told Villeneuve,

Wearing his habitual ‘high grunge’ clothing, sporting a scraggly beard and
with his hair dyed a bizarre shade of blonde, that he should clean up his act
and pay more attention to his appearance because he was bringing the
sport into disrepute. (p. 56)

Villeneuve continued to sport various hair colours and seldom was with-
out stubble across his career, even on occasion growing a full beard. His
scruffy appearance with BAR (1999–2003) led two F1 Racing magazine
writers to proclaim that “JV is motor-racing’s answer to rock‘n’roll”
(Clarkson, 1999, p. 84) and that “Jacques Villeneuve remains a rebel,
remains his own man, and F1 is better for it” (Bishop, 2000, p. 46).
Fleming and Sturm (2011) note, “of course, Villeneuve’s non-conformist
image was also being encouraged and capitalised upon by BAR, BAT and
key sponsors as a marketing ploy to promote their ‘rebel’ star, whose
image might be even more saleable off-track than on” (p. 52).
Pertinently, Whannel (2002) also acknowledges the emergence of cor-
porate influences for sport stardom, arguing that, “maverick masculine
individualism also increasingly conflicts with the new corporate
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 547

paternalism, whereby institutions become the moral guardians of their

employees, supervising the way they live” (p. 262). Villeneuve’s ‘traces of
grit’ further manifest via his assumed reluctant commodification and due
to his forthright dissent. Allegedly protective of his image, Villeneuve’s
relationship with sponsors and corporations was widely represented as
abrasive. For example, despite being a contractual obligation, Villeneuve
refused to perform extensive public relations duties. After leaving
Williams in 1998, Villeneuve redefined his contractual stipulations and
demands with BAR by, in effect, limiting his press commitments and
promotional work while only being obligated to four PR days annually.
Such an approach was exceptional and lauded by Formula One journal-
ists at the time, particularly as most drivers provided thirty (or McLaren
drivers over eighty) PR days in 2000 for example (Clarkson, 1999;
Bishop, 2000). Windsor (2006) surmised that, during Villeneuve’s BAR
years, “never had an F1 driver been paid so much to do so little out of the
car … for the sponsors” (p. 59).
Villeneuve’s reputation as a forthright, brash and, at times, controver-
sial speaker was also valued by some within the press, whereby he was
lauded for being “so fabulously quotable” (Bishop, 2005, p. 85) and for
providing “a welcome bite to the bubbles of cliché which clog the pad-
dock” (McRae, 2005, para. 2). Specifically, Villeneuve was represented as
a regular dissenter on Formula One’s corporate ethos, orientation and
structure. For example, Villeneuve was quoted in Formula 1 Magazine as
stating, “F1 has become a corporate sport and corporations don’t want
human beings driving, they want robots. Nobody sees the difference”
(Other comments, 2003, p. 146). Villeneuve’s dissent was also directed at
the broader complicity of his peers, while deploring the voracious demand
for young and compliantly groomed drivers from many teams. Notably
scathing of the manufacturing of driver images, Villeneuve allegedly
asserted in 2005 that, “all these corporations don’t want their drivers to
ruin their image so you can’t say what you think. You’re basically not
allowed to have a personality. How can you have any heroes if you don’t
allow personalities?” (Villeneuve in McRae, 2005, para. 1). Hence,
Villeneuve affords the materialisation of a more individuated driver per-
sona, one that agitates against the dominant Formula One star simulacra,
despite fluidly circulating within its simulated parameters and assemblages.
548 D. Sturm

Additionally, despite an early-career official FIA reprimand in 1997,

Villeneuve derided various attempts by the governing body to regulate
safety or to ‘improve’ the spectacle. For example, in 1996 Villeneuve was
quoted as saying, “I also need the danger. I need to be in that situation
where I know one mistake could kill me” (Villeneuve in Shirley, 2000,
p. 130), while also observing in 1997 that “the risks drivers take now are
10 times less than they were a few years back and we make 10 times more
money” (Donaldson, 2001, p. 55). In this respect, Villeneuve seems to
encapsulate Baudrillard’s (2002) notion of the driver as a “symbolic oper-
ator of crowd passions and the risk of death” (p. 169), potentially exciting
crowds with his aggressive style and penchant for risk-taking. Through a
combination of his reported bravado, big crashes and later struggles to
adapt to the evolving technological machinery of Formula One (replac-
ing individuality with electronic driver aids), Villeneuve seemed to be a
driver still clinging to his own pursuit of some form of ‘personal pleasure’
in driving, despite Baudrillard (2002) noting that such pleasure, as well
as the personal risk of death, was disappearing from the contemporary
circuits.
Arguably, permitting such endeavours was Villeneuve’s later mid-field
machinery and obscurity that contrast with Raikkonen and Schumacher
often driving front-running cars in championship campaigns. Both driv-
ers are also vocal in their ‘passion’ for driving, although for Raikkonen
this consists of a minimalistic, ‘no fuss’ plug in and drive fast logic
(Hotakainen, 2018), ideally uncomplicated by Formula One assem-
blages. Conversely, Schumacher seems to embody a neoliberal logic of
masculine technological mastery: revelling in the minutiae and technical
details forever perfecting the car, while privileging a strict operational
logic that balances risk, ‘operational pleasure’, skilful execution and mas-
tery of man, machine and performative perfection.
In summary, Villeneuve seemingly operated in contradistinction to
Schumacher and the established pathways to stardom in Formula One
despite both being the title protagonists in 1997. Villeneuve’s reluctance
to acquiesce to Formula One’s simulated assemblages saw his rise, fall and
eventual departure across the same years as Schumacher went on to dom-
inate as the star driver in Formula One. Nevertheless, despite not being
the performative man-machine in terms of race results—scoring only two
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 549

podiums and a mere 55 points post-1998 compared to the 843 points

and five championships Schumacher accumulated at the same time—
there remained traces of the ‘star in the car’.
Whannel (2002) notes that, “the persistent fascination with the errant,
the maverick and the erratic suggests at some broader unwillingness sim-
ply to embrace the routinised professionalism of work-ethic-driven sport
stars” (p. 142). Coupled with his championship and the large salary that
reified his star status, Villeneuve’s seemingly reluctant commodification,
dissenting viewpoints and risk-taking exploits provide the traces of an
enigmatic figure for fans, in varying degrees, to ‘engage’ with. Moreover,
despite being embedded within the very corporate apparatuses that he
was critiquing, Villeneuve’s apparent resistance to the corporate puppetry
of Formula One’s hyperreal stardom became financially lucrative. Indeed,
Fleming and Sturm (2011) note that “there was some irony in Villeneuve’s
projection of that particular personality at a time when BAR exemplified
a high-cost corporate organization focused around him” (p. 52), while
also suggesting that “his supposedly unfettered time with the BAR team
could be seen as a matter of marketing convenience, allowing BAR to
promote their ‘rebel’ star driver in order to position their team’s ‘personal-
ity’” (p. 197). As such, Villeneuve seemingly offers a vestige of maverick
individualism agitating against while operating within Formula One’s
simulated assemblages.

Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, the three case studies bear witness to the structures,
machinery and apparatuses that impinge upon an array of ‘performances’
relating to Formula One stardom. In this vein, drivers need to acquiesce
to hi-tech machines that largely govern their on-track performances,
while most strive to enhance their ‘star power’ potential via race wins,
championships, lavish salaries and/or career earnings by driving for a top
team. However, top drives come at a price, with the corporate orientation
of Formula One requiring drivers to seemingly operate as blank canvasses
and ‘corporate puppets’ via the hyperreal projection of endlessly repro-
duced images derived from implosive and precessionary models of and
550 D. Sturm

for the Formula One star simulacra. Hence, as contractual obligations,

such practices curb the agential possibilities for drivers to exhibit degrees
of individuality although, of course, an established star, such as seven
times World Champion Lewis Hamilton, clearly has more agential poten-
tial to project a personality than a ‘pay driver’ or a corporately groomed
junior development driver seeking to secure his future. Conversely, cur-
rent drivers have access to and are, for the most part, expected to self-­
promote across an array of media spaces—notably via social media,
online gaming and other digital platforms—which potentially affords a
more playful space than the strict corporate orientation and impositions
of the 1990s and 2000s.
As witnessed through Michael Schumacher, his complete acquisition
to all of these components harnessed a dominant winning man-machine.
Schumacher’s seamless integration into the Formula One ‘machine’
catered to record-setting performances that arguably became the tem-
plate for most aspiring drivers to follow and emulate. Schumacher became
an influential figure for the next generation of successful drivers—nota-
bly Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber (by contrast
Hamilton cited Senna as his idol)—while a production line of technically
proficient, physically fit and corporately groomed young drivers would
also emerge to reproduce and reify the hyperreal Formula One star simu-
lacra, particularly via the junior driver academies of established top teams.
However, despite all the plaudits and accolades for an exceptional career
of achievements, wealth and success, there were accompanying percep-
tions that Schumacher was always too seamless, too polished, too corporately
aligned. His tendency to also transgress and exhibit unsporting indiscre-
tions due to his ‘win at all costs’ mentality further polarised his critical
reception. Nevertheless, as the ‘star’ driver post Senna, his influence was
profound, if not problematic, for those navigating their way into
Formula One.
Conversely, a ‘Kimi Raikkonen’ offers another iteration of the seem-
ingly corporately complicit and puppet-like figure that, alternatively, may
well be a more nuanced public performance than it first appears. Precisely
how agential, reflexive or strategic Raikkonen’s approach to the Formula
One star simulacra was remains debatable but, by deploying an ambiva-
lent adherence to the hyperreal and hyperconformist Iceman persona,
 The ‘Star in the Car’: Formula One Stardom, Driver Agency… 551

Raikkonen’s reluctance and minimalism was allowed to manifest. Such

performances also intrigued and endeared him to many fans and Formula
One insiders. Perhaps most telling was the parallel career trajectory for
Fernando Alonso (2001–2018; 2021–present) who seemingly shared
many of Raikkonen’s attributes. Alonso also debuted in 2001, achieving
two world championships (2005 and 2006) and is widely regarded as one
of the best all-time Formula One drivers. Like Raikkonen, Alonso drove
for many of the top teams—Renault (2003–2006; 2008–2009), McLaren
(2007; 2015–2018) and Ferrari (2010–2014)—but, arguably, Alonso’s
temperament, ‘ego’ and public criticism of teams limited his opportuni-
ties for sustained roles or further success (Foster, 2021b). Alternatively,
Raikkonen’s ability to acquiesce to the corporate ethos by simulating his
own hyperconformity meant he retained his place on the grid with top
teams for most of his career.
Finally, the reluctance of top teams to embrace a mercurially quick but
volatile driver like Alonso has links to our other case study. Jacques
Villeneuve was disinterested in simulating the robotic man-machine that
Schumacher embodied nor, seemingly, could stomach performing
Raikkonen’s hyperconformist role, with his maverick individualism argu-
ably proffering ‘traces of grit’ within Formula One’s machinic structure.
Nevertheless, Villeneuve’s approach was always precarious as it also relied
on teams acquiescing to accommodate him, particularly within a context
wherein most sponsors wanted the corporately complicit Formula One
star simulacra. Villeneuve was fortunate to advance his prior American
successes with an early World Championship to safeguard a notable his-
tory and legacy of achievement but, ultimately, failed to maintain perfor-
mative longevity despite spending ten full seasons in Formula One. Thus,
while being financially rewarded to drive poor cars with BAR and poten-
tially being encouraged to agitate as their ‘rebel’ star for five years—
whether conceived as a promotional strategy by BAR or as Villeneuve’s
inherent maverick individualist attributes—these developments quashed
any redemption phase for his rise and fall star narrative (Whannel, 1999).
Despite the numerous apparatuses that percolate around (Formula One)
sport stardom, demonstrable and quantifiable sporting performances
remain paramount. Hence, Raikkonen’s ambivalence and Alonso’s petu-
lance are accepted or at least tolerated as they have consistently evidenced
552 D. Sturm

strong performances for their teams and cars (notably Alonso who seem-
ingly outperforms the limitations of his machinery annually). Similar
points could also be made for Hamilton who is still always performing
amidst a backdrop of high-profile socialising and global jet-­setting, through
to his newfound outspoken political activism (Sturm, 2023). Unlike
Schumacher’s near decade of dominance, Villeneuve progressively slid
down the grid to irrelevance and obscurity, often failing to outperform
poor cars in his later years as he had in 1999 and 2000. Additionally,
Villeneuve opted not to pursue other contractual offers—albeit most likely
for less pay and a stricter corporate ethos in return for potentially ‘better’
cars—to remain as the integral ‘rebel’ star driver for BAR.
Hence, while Villeneuve’s forms of maverick individualism could still
reverberate around the Formula One mid-field, his approach showcases
and underscores the relevance of sport star performances. Intriguingly,
Formula One both challenges and reinforces traditional theories of sport
stardom grounded in meritocracy, authenticity and sporting perfor-
mances. While the top drivers are there on merit, the sport has predomi-
nantly comprised white, affluent men of privilege. Equally, despite any
agential intent, talent or ability on behalf of the individual driver, it is
fundamentally the machinery and technologies that largely define, furnish
and circumscribe the driver’s performance, creating a sense that the ‘car is
the star’ within Formula One. Finally, notions of ‘authenticity’ are also
dubious given the associated commercial apparatuses and simulated
assemblages that manufacture drivers as hyperreal star personas. And yet,
at its very essence, there is an intrigue in locating the performative man in
the machine, and the man behind the corporate mask—in recognising the
‘star in the car’ that engenders much of the global passion for Formula One.

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 Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018
Video Game
Daniel S. Traber

This chapter explores the topic of ideological interpellation via

Codemaster’s F1 2018, the sole officially licensed Formula One Racing
video game. It appears that racing-game fans have tended to sidestep the
online culture war skirmishes of recent years in which some self-­
identifying gamers participated (e.g., Gamergate in 2014), reveling in
misogyny and reactionary politics ranging from anarcho-capitalism to
outright fascism. In this light, I will analyse elements unique to F1 2018
(both the narratological and the ludic) which reveal imbued beliefs and
values that “hail” a player as a neoliberal subject. Driving expensive cars
with engines built by major manufacturers—some of them categorized as
luxury brands—obviously implicates players in the service of naturalizing
competition and commodity desire. F1 2018 has another layer of mean-
ing underneath pretending to drive fast machines in exotic locales. That’s
why it is worth getting our hands dirty by removing the engine cover to

D. S. Traber (*)
Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 557
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_21
558 D. S. Traber

inspect the ideological machinery controlling these devices of metal

and flesh.
F1 2018’s specialty is offering players the experience of participating in
a full race weekend, including three practice sessions to set up the car for
each different track, qualifying to determine your starting position in the
line-up of twenty cars, and finally the race itself. But the game is about
much more than winning races by mastering how to pilot the car around
different tracks, each with its own unique demands and effects upon the
physics of the vehicle. F1 2018 takes it to another level, adds a further
demand in order to become a successful player, an “authentic” partici-
pant, a “good” employee hired to drive a race car. You are expected to
acquire the necessary “human capital” (a neoliberal notion) that makes
you a more desirable occupational commodity. Philip Mirowski assesses
this concept as “reduc[ing] the human being to an arbitrary bundle of
‘investments,’ skill sets, temporary alliances (family, sex, race), and fun-
gible body parts” (59). In the game this includes interacting with the car’s
mechanical technology by making adjustments at a migraine-inducing
granular level—be it tyre pressure, transmission gearing or brake bias—in
order to set up a winning ride, which is not actually part of real racer’s job
requirements, albeit the better drivers do have advanced knowledge about
car handling so they can effectively communicate with a team’s technical
squad. However, to succeed in F1 2018—if you choose to fully enter the
game designers’ universe of the professional racing experience as a job—
not only do you have to win races, you must actually manage your own
career; for example, the way you answer a reporter’s questions about your
track performance can agitate intra-team politics or create rivalries, and
both have a potential effect upon your future career and earning potential.
None of this may seem to be motivated by neoliberal ideology on the
surface, other than being rooted in the value of competition that informs
sport in all its forms. In a sense, it works like an accidental exposé of the
real-world professional racer’s experience on a team and the demands of
the sport outside actual competition. However, the process becomes
more evident if we incorporate Louis Althusser’s theory of interpellation,
of how ideology creates like-minded Subjects through a “hailing”—lik-
ened to calling out, “Hey, you!”—because ideology cannot survive, let
alone succeed, without people who identify themselves as being in accord
 Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game 559

with a particular set of beliefs. So, to achieve this identification through

hailing requires the person recognizing himself or herself as the one
addressed, which is to say correctly addressed: “Yes, that is me, I am like
you, one of you, part of you”; thus, an individual is made into a Subject,
which Althusser says he or she always already was due to ideology.
Paradoxically, for all the structuralist lack of individual choice this con-
cept implies, one actually finds a modicum of agency in this model in
that the subject is not simply saying, “Who, me? Well, sure I’ll join you,
since you hailed me.” The Subjectified still has to consider himself or
herself to be “someone like this” to recognize himself or herself in the
parameters of the ideology. In other words, even if you are being conned
you choose to be the kind of someone swayed by such lies, because you
want the illusion to be true, want it to define your belief system—your
very desires, fears, assumptions—as undeniable Truths. It is more com-
forting when what I want to believe is also what I am required to believe.
You are labeled as free through the system that imprisons you in the
required Subjectivity you comprise. With the caveat, however, that you
are not thinking or acting like a “bad subject,” meaning one whose behav-
iour, or lack of the approved kind more specifically, “provoke the inter-
vention” of the institutional arms of the ruling class (Althusser, 1971,
p. 181). The bad subject possibility answers the criticism of interpellation
theory that it dissolves agency, asking how is one capable of disagreeing
with the ruling ideas, of thinking differently, of adopting an identity that
doesn’t just blindly follow the rules of the ruling class or dominant cul-
ture? That critique mistakenly reads Althusser as saying all hailing is
always successful.
Driving fast on race courses in pricey virtual automobiles may raise
moral questions; it certainly addresses players through the experience of
a specific kind of pleasure. The act of hailing is an essential function of
video games. Alfie Bown makes it political in a 2018 Guardian article:

Games are ideological constructions which push a set of values on the user.
Like television and film, they often support the ideologies of their con-
text … [They] put the user to work on an instinctual level, making the
gamer feel impulsive agreement with these ideologies. Playing Resident Evil
is not equivalent to watching the movie, because the controller-wielding
560 D. S. Traber

gamer experiences the desires of the game as their own desires–not as the
desires of another … [so] the rationale of gaming is to unite pleasurable
impulse with political ideology, a process which renders gamers susceptible
to discourses that urge people to follow their instincts while also prescrib-
ing what those instincts ought to be. (para?)

Interpellation rather than interactivity constitutes the real connection

between game and gamer, the one that continues even after the console
has been turned off and the unreal world of algorithmic play has been set
aside for a world made real by ideology. Bown (2017) expands on his
theory in The Playstation Dreamworld:

[T]he subject is forced to respond to a prompt in a way that constitutes

their subjectivity as the responder in the process. If gaming interpellates
fragmented subjects, giving them a sense of purpose, then it does so in the
service of dominant ideologies. … Of course, games reflect unconscious
dreams, wishes, and desires, but they also play a role in constructing these
unconscious assumptions [by] naturalizing the dreams, desires, and wishes
of a political moment by making us experience those dreams, desires, and
wishes as our own. … The patters of enjoyment found in the video game
dreamworld tend toward the enforcement of traditionalist and conserva-
tive values which support the core values of contemporary capitalism or
move them further to the political right. This is less because the structure
of video games is inherently conservative or reactionary per se and more
because the dreamworld is a reflection and even anticipation of coming
political and social trends. (22, 38, 38)

The ludic aspect conceals how video games offer no escape from real life,
just the opportunity to act it out in a digitized, code-controlled costume.
But what is being offered players on a socio-political level is not so easily
discerned in a racing game like F1 2018, unlike the militarism of war
games or the stereotyping of ethnicity and gender found in the Grand
Theft Auto series. The first tactic of ideology for any text is to convince the
audience it is not ideological, that it instead holds a naturalized, dehisto-
ricized Truth to be accepted as common sense. Likewise, the neoliberal
message of F1 2018 is more indirect.
 Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game 561

The scholarly marketplace shelves are filled with work on “neoliberal-

ism,” yet David Harvey’s (2005) well-quoted summary of the concept is
still a good starting point:

[A] theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-­
being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial free-
doms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong
private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is
to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such
practices. (2)

The social sphere is viewed through economic principles—“like a busi-

ness”—and all decisions are made to accord with that perspective. In
essence, to challenge what it views as the perennial threat of collectivism
(be it socialist, fascist, or just an excessively regulatory liberal state), neo-
liberalism strikes a bitter compromise between the laissez-faire model of
capitalism (classical liberalism) and John M. Keynes’s general theory
allowing for state intervention in the economy (embedded liberalism),
thereby creating a hybrid approach founded upon the “recognition that
the maintenance of a competitive market system required certain state
powers” (Peck, 2010, p. 52). The neoliberal scheme for protecting the
market limits government influence to ensuring capitalism’s survival
through deregulation, deunionization, widespread privatization of public
services, disabling social-welfare programs, reducing or removing the
labor protections that helped spread profits across post-war American
society, and reinforcing the power of an elite class with the goal of disin-
tegrating the threat of democracy negatively affecting the economy.
Milton Friedman, economist and famed cheerleader of neoliberalism,
insisted free markets will inevitably lead to free people. Wendy Brown,
political theorist and famed critic of neoliberalism, addresses how this
notion’s theory of “[economic] rationality, while foregrounding the mar-
ket, is not only or even primarily focused on the economy; rather it
involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and
social action.” (2005, pp. 39–40). Thus, in neoliberalism, human freedom
can only be understood, indeed only thought of, through the logic of a
market. As Brown further argues, “Neo-liberalism does not simply
562 D. S. Traber

assume that all aspects of social, cultural and political life can be reduced
to such a calculus, rather it develops institutional practices and rewards
for enacting this vision” (2005, p. 40). Which means the state is called
upon to instigate a new subjectivity and code of behaviour across society
that benefits this system. This is part of what Michel Foucault calls “gov-
ernmentality,” or the process of “leading” the population by “conducting
the conduct” of subjects to have them adopt, and therefore live out, some
normative regime of truth by coercing their consensus via techniques of
“management” (1994, p. 341). This is the process of normalization
Foucault calls biopolitics.
The driving game genre is subdivided into simulation and arcade.
Arcade racing is less realistic than a simulator which “emphasizes high
accuracy and realism—a devotion to verisimilitude—in the car’s appear-
ance, sound, and, most especially, handling. The simulator’s dedication to
a code of honesty, even purity, marks it as a genre for the more serious
gamer due to its steeper learning curve” (Traber, 2018, p. 479). Gameplay
is split into two styles in most simulator-style driving games. There is
typically some form of “Free Play” that allows the player to choose a track
to drive solo or with AI racers; one engages in this activity just for fun or
to improve one’s skills. But the nucleus of any driving game is its “Career
Mode” in which the player enters competitions to earn cash so as to buy
more cars and upgraded parts, as well as gain some form of skill points in
order to progress by entering higher level races and access to better cars.
A truly innovative career mode, one that depicts neoliberal rationality
deeper than just an act of athletic rivalry, is found in F1 2018. The player
competing in a full Formula One season must not only drive the car and
manage engine components to make the allocated number of “power
units” adhere to the official rules of the race series, also help tune the car
with the same micro-level of adjustability as found in Project CARS 2 and
Forza 7, but now you must also think about managing your career off the
track via the panopticon of self-surveillance.
The most obvious form this takes in F1 2018 is the game’s quite unique
element of having a player be confronted with a reporter’s post-race ques-
tions about their performance and to then choose from the provided
answers. Your answer is then evaluated on how it affects your levels of
“reputation” (with your own team and the competition) and “respect”
 Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game 563

(on a spectrum bookended by “sportsmanship” and “showmanship”),

with both represented as increasing or decreasing along bars. For exam-
ple, there are four choices to the question, “Well, looks like your luck has
changed. Things went a lot better than last weekend didn’t they?” I chose
to answer, “They did! We’ve been working on the engine and it’s paying
off.” My choice was marked as being noticed by the “Power Unit depart-
ment.” In affecting the reputation and respect levels, there is then an
effect on team morale (hence their dedication to helping you win), and
the potential to create rivalries with other teams.
A rivalry adds another degree of pressure upon your performance as
you are “watched” and evaluated by the team, sponsors, reporters and
fans, such that not only do you have to win or have the best lap time but
must also beat your rivals, including your teammate since F1 teams race
two cars. In fact, intra-team competition can be more heated and brutal
than the inter-team battles. If your performance lags behind your team-
mate you want to blame the engineering team assigned to you, then you
can blame the car’s set-up, your squad’s dedication to you, the team’s
limited finances for testing or better parts, anything but your own defi-
ciencies as a professional racer to account for your inability to stand on
the podium and get sprayed with champagne. These tensions are relevant
to the real world of Formula One racing as intra-team rivalries are a very
real and serious part of the sport as evidenced in the first season of the
Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive. In episode 6, Sergio Pérez and
Esteban Ocon battle—literally crashing into each other on track—to
keep a seat at Force India after the team is bought by Lawrence Stroll,
who will put his son Lance in one car. Eventually Pérez got the ride, some
speculating it was a decision based on having sponsorship money more
than his talent. So, after tabulating the numbers through a neoliberal
calculator, it appears Ocon’s human capital was just not as developed.
There are some less realistic benefits of these reputation points in that
they provide more options for improving the car by allocating resources
to research and design or upgrading the mechanical parts—choices the
player must make in addition to driving the car. However, the most sig-
nificant impact of the player’s reputation score, and relevance to imbuing
neoliberal rationality, is the way it affects the player’s ability to negotiate
his contract with the team. Along a bar showing your “Contract Value” is
564 D. S. Traber

a marker designating “Your Value.” You are only valuable as long as you
are meeting the team’s goals, or if other teams show an interest in hiring
you. Then you become a “good” employee, a valuable commodity. Thus,
F1 2018 is a game in which your existence and occupation are so inter-
twined it plays like a digital reproduction of neoliberal rationality: the
normalization of approaching every element of one’s life, every choice
one makes, through the cost–benefit filter of an entrepreneur. Career
mode requires the successful player to think like both a scientist and a
savvy brand manager. As Mirowski states, the neoliberal subject “is all at
once the business, the raw material, the product, the clientele, and the
customer of her own life” (108). If you do not have that capability, then
your loss is your own fault with no regard for systemic explanations.
A less common issue in racing games is that of the actual race of the
drivers, not to mention the other categories of identity, but this topic has
its neoliberal edge as well. Neoliberalism presents and defends itself by
arguing it is interested in making a meritocratic, colour-blind society yet
still engages in activities like gentrified non-white neighborhoods which
create an economic infrastructure that prices out the original residents,
predominantly through higher rental rates—all because it’s just business,
the numbers say it is a good financial decision.

The major neoliberal theorists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman each
willfully co-opted liberalism’s political vocabulary of freedom and individ-
uality to justify their economic visions. Jodi Melamed (2006) provides a
later example of this phenomenon in her study of “neoliberal multicultur-
alism.” She traces how an idea originally used to celebrate diversity outside
the dominant culture was appropriated to yoke anti-racism and capitalism
in the name of expanding global markets “while obscuring the racial antag-
onisms and inequalities on which the neoliberal project depends” (2006,
p. 1). This shows that class and the economy are not so easily cleaved from
other kinds of identity, as well as how a shared vocabulary does not auto-
matically reveal complicity since ideas can be manipulated to suit an unre-
lated purpose:

Concepts previously associated with 1980s and 1990s liberal multicultur-

alism—“openness,” “diversity,” and “freedom”—are recycled such that
“open societies” and “economic freedoms” (shibboleths for neoliberal mea-
 Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game 565

sures) come to signify human rights that the United States has a duty to
secure for the world [by using government military action to secure private
financial expansion]. (2006, p. 16)

Gamers themselves, who may not be consciously neoliberal, have

exhibited their own difficult relationship with a growing multicultural
society. Its roots are typically traced back to the 2014 Gamergate contro-
versy—in which a female critic who analysed the prevalent misogyny of
video games was pilloried—and the gamers’ subsequent parroting of the
growing alt-right political ideology. Their declarations of misogyny bled
over into rejection of social justice positions, blaming feminism and plu-
ralism as sources for their felt loss of social status because the objects of
their fandom, through which they understood their identity, came under
critique. Megan Condis (2018) notes how a pluralist notion of identity
became an explosive issue in gaming culture: “Gamers are self-identified
members of a subcultural group organized around video game fandom.
They do not dabble with video games: they live video games. They think
of gaming as constituting an important part of their identity.” (2). This is
why the gamers took offense to no longer being the primary demographic
catered to by the industry when a wave of others, those who are not white
middle-class straight males, invaded their insular universe as players and
game creators and started voicing demands for more diverse representa-
tion in games, as well as wanting online players to reduce the offensive
banter during matches—in which players insult each other to upset their
opponent’s focus on the game. In effect, these outsiders were depicted as
disrupting an established, protected culture and the attendant sense of
self that feels organically attached to it. Moreover, Condis (2018) histori-
cizes the politics undergirding this growing belligerent attitude among
the gamers:

[The] early 1990s was a time of when the rise of neoliberal politics and
postfeminist discourse had a chilling effect on discussions of social justice
around issues of race and gender. As with other neoliberal systems, the veil
of hoped-for meritocracy promised by … [the] Internet actually resulted in
the privilege of white male middle-class subjects over all others. The sup-
566 D. S. Traber

posedly bodiless dwellers of the utopian Internet came to be read as straight

white men by default. (8)

Can you experience the Other via your avatar in F1 2018? Are they
treated differently, get different questions from the reporter? If they don’t
then one might read the game as not using essentialism, however, then
the game not only fails at realism because it would definitely be a topic of
discussion, but is also actually racist by pretending that race and sexuality
do not make a difference in people’s life options. In effect, a utopian
colour-blindness enacts a policy of colour-disappearance, fueled by indif-
ference to the real social effects of difference, its historical lineage and
systemic inheritance. (To be fair, who wants to be the designer who has
to take on the minefield burden of crafting identity-based personas for a
high-level racing game which then necessitates specific interview ques-
tions and answers based on race and/or sexuality?) The game allows for
creating your driver avatar along quite diverse sexual and racial lines. As
an experiment, I decided to race as a black female driver for the Ferrari
team with the name Danielle, even choosing a game-provided nickname
for the announcers to use: “The Professor.” The game presented abso-
lutely no recognition of my race or gender other than the face and body
during cut scenes on the podium. Even then, when sitting at a computer
workstation to make racing decisions, if I made the avatar look down it
showed the hands of a white male, so the designers didn’t put much extra
effort into creating a multicultural playing field. This hardly means the
game is poised to back voices promoting misogyny and racism, very
much unlike the libertarian leaning pro-capitalism reactionary pundit
types found all over YouTube and the podcasting media-sphere who tend
to drift into that area eventually, seeing the Other of multiculturalism as
a force poised against traditionalism (which all too often amounts to an
unrecognized defense of white, cis, straight privilege feeling duress, find-
ing the growth of equality in Western societies as an unwelcome histori-
cal fact and social process.)
These mixed ludic facets of the game nod to Foucault’s (1994) notion
of governmentality—that process of conducting the conduct of people—
which leads to an important aspect of ideological hegemony which pre-
vents the agency of the individual from being completely shut down.
 Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game 567

There is always the possibility of resistance as society is comprised of

multiple, varied sites for struggle and compromise in an ongoing “war of
position.” A counter-hegemony can conceivably arise, voicing a different
consciousness and set of values to address the needs and problems of the
subordinated. So there are still spaces open for expressing oppositional
values and beliefs. Foucault (2007) creates his own term for this in what
he calls counter-conduct, a conscious resistance to a prevailing governmen-
tality, like that instigated by neoliberalism, by choosing to “struggle
against the processes implemented for conducting others” (201).
Furthermore, it is the impetus “to refuse what we are,” by which Foucault
(1994) means what we have been made into, so we can “promote new
forms of subjectivity through the refusal” (336). Relevant to the gaming
context, Judith Halberstam (2011) writes of the transgressive power of
failure in a culture that emphasizes winning. We should, she claims,
reconceptualize

failure as a way of refusing to acquiesce to dominant logics of power and

discipline and as a form of critique. As a practice, failure recognizes that
alternatives are embedded already in the dominant and that power is never
total or consistent; indeed failure can exploit the unpredictability of ideol-
ogy and its indeterminate qualities. … [Making instead a positive] associa-
tion of failure with nonconformity, anticapitalist practices, nonreproductive
life styles, negativity, and critique. (88, 89)

Ultimately, in F1 2018, like all racing games, one must decide the kind
of citizen you are going to be. Will you risk penalties and car damage by
bashing your way to the front by knocking the artificial intelligence (AI)
cars out your way, which you have to do much of the time because they
will not give up their spot freely, regardless of whether or not they are
maintaining the correct racing line through the corners—besides, the
programmed bastards would do the same to you without a nanosecond
of hesitation in the kill or be killed world of professional racing (and so
many video games), or so you convince yourself if you get too close to
their wheels or rear end. Megan Condis (2018) defines a game’s mechan-
ics as “types of moves available to the player that are discovered over the
course of play” (9), while an “emergent dynamics” are the “accidental,
568 D. S. Traber

unpredicted behaviors that a game allows in addition or even in spite of

the intentions of the designer” (9). This may present a field on which a
bad subject can operate to enact a Foucauldian counter-conduct. With
regard to F1 2018 gameplay, a form of negotiation would be a mode of
play that switches between using the game’s prescribed driving line and
finding your own way through corners, creating an individualized driving
style. That is because:

These games’ science becomes representative of an ideology that informs

gameplay by demanding hegemonic consensus from the players. The phys-
ics programmed into the game create a textbook racing line covering the
proper braking point, corner entry, apex, and exit point to initiate reac-
celeration. … Since the AI seemingly do not know how to realistically react
to the human gamer’s presence, they stay on the line, obey it, because of
their programming. In other words, it is all they know how to do. What the
games do not promote is the fact that a strict adherence to that line is not
always the best option in racing, in part because real drivers must con-
stantly respond to the mayhem of chance. … [C]oincidence and accident
are absolutely fundamental elements of motor racing; nonetheless, it must
still be built into the game, chaos must be made ever more mathematically
organized and predictable. (Traber, 2018, p. 480)

In this manner, the game does allow players a degree of choice, but it
remains restricted, boxed within its own clearly demarcated algorithmic
boundaries. Additionally, and perhaps more subversively, you could
deliberately choose to crash your reputation and respect scores by choos-
ing answers to the reporter’s questions that will turn the team and the
competition against you, so that even though you win races—the sole
purpose of being a professional racer—you openly challenge the contract
value system to lower “your value” according to their system. You will
become a champion, perhaps even rise to still be a desired commodity in
the economy of Formula One racing, yet a “bad” employee; or, to use
Althusser’s terminology, a “bad” subject in this ideological market.
Sometimes when you lose, you actually win.
 Neoliberal Interpellation in the F1 2018 Video Game 569

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fuel-­rise-­far-­right-­violent-­misogynist
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France 1977–1978 (G. Burchell, Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan.
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Melamed, J. (2006). The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Racial Liberalism to
Neoliberal Multiculturalism. Social Text, 24(4), 1–24.
Mirowski, P. (2013). Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism
Survived the Financial Meltdown. Verso.
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Video Games. The Journal of Popular Culture, 51(2), 466–486.
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look
into the Shifting Ownership Structure
of Formula One
Tom Evens, Sam Tickell, and Hans Erik Næss

Introduction
After years of speculation about the future of Formula One (F1), the
iconic global motorsport series changed ownership in 2016. In a US$4.4
billion-worth deal, US media conglomerate Liberty Media Corporation,
hereafter Liberty Media, agreed to buy the controlling interest of private
equity firm CVC Capital Partners (Liberty Media Corporation, 2016).
The deal not only signalled one of the most important moments in the

T. Evens (*)
imec-mict, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Tickell
University Münster, Münster, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
H. E. Næss
Kristiana University College, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 571
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_22
572 T. Evens et al.

commercial history of Formula One, but the landmark deal was also the
beginning of the end of the remarkable reign of Bernie Ecclestone. The
eccentric British business magnate, who was credited with overseeing
Formula One’s transformation and professionalisation, and had run the
sport for nearly forty years, would step down first as chairman and later
as chief executive. Ecclestone was replaced by Chase Carey, a media busi-
nessman who had previously worked for News Corporation, DirecTV,
21st Century Fox and Sky. Obviously, this takeover by Liberty Media
represents the most significant shift in Formula One Group’s manage-
ment since Ecclestone took over in the late 1970s, and is illustrative of
the expanding sport-media relationship that brings new opportunities
around marketing, promotion, digital rights and social media.
Whereas Bernie Ecclestone has, arguably, been globally renowned as
sport business owner, Liberty Media is anything but a household name,
especially not outside the United States. Although it has grown into a
major media conglomerate building significant stakes in the sports
(Formula One, Atlanta Braves), media (Sirius XM, Pandora, Soundcloud)
and entertainment (Live Nation, Ticketmaster) businesses and therefore
acts as a perfect example of how these different businesses interact with
each other, Liberty Media has remarkably received limited attention in
sports and media industries literature (e.g. Evens & Donders, 2018).
Birkinbine et al. (2016) provide a detailed profile of twenty-eight global
media giants including the ‘usual suspects’, such as Disney, Time Warner
and Facebook, discussing their global activities and the extent of political
and cultural power they exert, but did not include Liberty in their over-
view. As such they failed to acknowledge the significant economic and
cultural influence Liberty Media has through many of its subsidiaries in
sports and entertainment. After all, Liberty Media is the number one and
most valuable sports brand in the world, with an enterprise value of US$
13 billion according to business magazine Forbes (Ozanion &
Badenhausen, 2021).
The lack of critical attention for or analysis of Liberty Media is surpris-
ing and regrettable given its corporate footprint. Whereas the transfor-
mative impact broadcasting media conglomerates Fox, ESPN or Disney
have had on the sports industry—commercialisation processes regularly
referred to as ‘Foxification’ and ‘Disneysation’—is widely acknowledged
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 573

(e.g. Andrews, 2004; Vogan, 2015) and a rapidly growing number of

studies have considered the impact of video streaming platforms on the
exploitation of sports rights and fan experience (Hutchins et al., 2019;
Tickell & Evens, 2021), the involvement of media distribution infrastruc-
ture companies in the sports industry, through rights acquisition or team/
league ownership, has remained largely underexplored. Nevertheless,
cable and telecommunications operators have been fueling the market for
sports rights since mid-2000s, mainly with the intention to spur the
launch of digital television and connectivity services, and to enhance
their competitive position (Smith et al., 2016); although only a few of
them are in the business of sports franchising (see Comcast’s ownership
of the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia Wings). The latter also applies
to Liberty Media, which has its roots in cable television and gradually
managed to converge into a sports and entertainment group. Through its
founder and chairman John Malone (cf. infra), Liberty Media continues
to hold significant interests in the media distribution infrastructure mar-
ket (e.g. Charter Communications and Liberty Global).
The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, this chapter focuses on the
shifting ownership structure of Formula One since Ecclestone’s entry and
highlights its purchase by Liberty Media, potentially affording new
insights into motorsport. By providing an exhaustive account of how
control of the commercial and television rights enabled Ecclestone to
build the Formula One empire, it puts the corporate integration between
sports and media activities into a historical perspective. Second, the chap-
ter examines the acquisition of Formula One by Liberty Media enabling
the former cable television company to further develop into a sports and
entertainment conglomerate. By unfolding the untold story of the diver-
sified business activities of Liberty Media, it adds to the literature of
media giants and expands the growing understanding of how sports and
media businesses embrace digital media while protecting broadcast tele-
vision revenues.
574 T. Evens et al.

Ownership and Control in Media Sports

The symbiotic relationship between sport and the media has already been
described and illustrated extensively. In economic terms, sport has been
transformed from a spectator-based model relying on ticket income into
a global business mainly driven by the exploitation of media rights, spon-
sorship and merchandising (Milne, 2016). Corporate interests began
transforming the structure and nature of sports competitions, and format
changes were imposed to maximise audience ratings and commercial rev-
enues. Hence, the mediatisation of motorsport deeply affected the organ-
isation of sport activity by repackaging the product as a mass-mediated
‘spectacle’ that serves the commercial interests of the many stakeholders
involved: race promotors, racing teams, marketing agencies, sponsors and
advertisers, clothing manufacturers, travel agencies and so on (Sturm,
2014). Because of the strategic importance of media rights, and the enor-
mous economic benefits arising from the control of these rights, sport
organisations and media businesses have developed a mutual beneficiary
alliance. Even more, digital technology allows sport organisations to
upgrade their position in the sport-media value chain and to explore digi-
tal services, such as F1 TV streaming platforms, as an untapped source of
revenue. These developments lead to the blurring of boundaries between
sport and media businesses.
The sport-media relationship is most visible through the corporate
integration between sport and media conglomerates like Qatar Sports
Investment controlling the Ligue 1 football club Paris Saint-Germain
(PSG) and the global beIN Media network, News Corp Australia’s own-
ership of NRL teams Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm, or US
cable operator Comcast owning the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. Another
prime example is Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) that built a business
empire in the organisation of grand sport events such as cycling race Tour
de France and the Dakar rally, and that also owns the influential sport
newspaper L’Equipe. In Europe, cases of media groups owning sport
teams have always been fairly limited, not least in part because teams are
significantly less profitable than in the United States. The acquisition of
AC Milan by Berlusconi’s Mediaset (in 1987) and Paris Saint-Germain
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 575

by Canal+ (in 1991) have been the most successful examples of this trend
towards ownership of sport organisations. In the early 2000s, a number
of broadcasters, including BSkyB (Chelsea, Leeds United, Manchester
City, Manchester United, Sunderland); NTL (Aston Villa, Newcastle,
Leicester City); Granada/ITV (Arsenal, Liverpool) and Canal + (Paris
Saint-Germain) sold their stakes in various football teams. For the most
part, these were decisions driven by the commercial reality that owing a
sport organisation was not particularly, if at all, profitable (cf. Hoehn &
Lancefield, 2003).
In the case of some UK broadcasters, however, the decision was also
prompted by regulatory intervention in arguably the most significant
attempted takeover of a sports team by a broadcaster. In September 1998,
pay-television broadcaster BSkyB began negotiations to buy Manchester
United, which was, and still is, by some distance the Premier League’s
most commercially successful club (see Parkinson, 2018). BSkyB’s bid
was motivated by a desire to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the
future collective selling of Premier League rights (Smith, 2007). The
competition authority blocked the proposed merger on the grounds that,
if not through the ‘toehold effect’, then from more privileged access to
information about the rights auction through its ownership of the club,
it would unfairly enhance the pay-television’s operator’s ability to secure
Premier League rights, which would lead to reduced competition in the
UK market for pay-television services (Harbord & Binmore, 2000). Had
BSkyB acquired Manchester United, it would have benefited from an
information asymmetry, or a ‘toehold’, in the bidding process for sports
rights. Whilst the competition authority’s report did not set a formal legal
precedent, it made clear that the public interest would be best served by
keeping the ownership of football teams and broadcasters separate. It was
this decision, as much as the blocking of the merger itself, that led UK
broadcasters to abandon any plans they may have had to own Premier
League football teams (see also Evens et al., 2013).
The aggressive takeover move by BSkyB, at that time part of Murdoch’s
News Corporation empire, is illustrative for a business strategy Cashmore
(2000, pp. 292-293) calls ‘Murdochisation’. This refers to a ‘process by
which corporations primarily involved in mass media of communications
appropriate and integrate into their own organisations sports clubs. In
576 T. Evens et al.

doing so, the media groups gain access to and control of the competitive
activities of the clubs, which they can distribute through their networks’.
According to Horne (2006), media mogul Rupert Murdoch has used
sport as part of a global corporate expansion strategy more than any other
media corporation. News Corporation has used exclusive sports rights as
a strategic resource—or ‘battering ram’—for developing television mar-
kets in the United States (Fox), the United Kingdom (BSkyB), Australia
(Foxtel), Japan (JSkYB), New Zealand (Sky Television) and Southeast
Asia (Star TV); a successful strategy that was widely imitated by almost all
pay-television networks in the world, including ESPN (USA), Globo/
SporTV (Brazil) and MultiChoice/SuperSport (South Africa). This, in
turn, led to a spectacular increase in the commercial value of television
sport rights. Aside from securing exclusive access to sports rights, News
Corporation also purchased the iconic Los Angeles Dodgers baseball
franchise (for a record payment of US$311 million), which was highly
complementary with its ownership of regional sports networks in the
Southeast area of the United States.
Whereas there previously was a clear distinction between the sport
organisation and the media corporation, blurring boundaries between
media and sport holdings have produced tensions ‘between organisations
that hold the sport product’ and ‘those organisations that need it in its
transformation as media product’ (cf. Wenner, 1998, p. 9; our emphasis).
In their ongoing quest for new ways to commodify sports products,
sports teams are benefitting from the opportunities that new media tech-
nology gives them to be transformed into media organisations them-
selves. Many of the world’s largest franchises including FC Barcelona and
the NBA started their branded television networks, mobile applications
and/or streaming platforms to mostly paying fans, extracting additional
commercial value and claiming their own voice in the globally expanding
sports media market. This hybrid multimedia strategy not only allows
franchises to generate more revenue, but also enables sport organisations
to increase negotiation power for future rights discussions (Tickell &
Evens, 2021). In an attempt to bring in the needed expertise in the pro-
duction and marketing of their content, sport organisations are partner-
ing with media corporations. This, in part, explains the involvement of
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 577

Red Bull Media House in the World Rally Championship (WRC) as well
as Liberty Media’s purchase of Formula One.

Formula One Group Ownership Structure

Shifting our focus to Formula One, since its inaugural season in 1950,
the World Drivers’ Championship, which became the FIA Formula One
World Championship in 1981, was anything but a tightly structured
organisation. It was only until Ecclestone took leadership and the notori-
ous FISA-FOCA war was settled with signing the First Concorde
Agreement that Formula One started on its path of becoming a multi-­
billion-­dollar enterprise.

Ecclestone Takes Control

In the late 1960s Formula One was far from the streamlined show it is
today. After the FIA’s had approved direct sponsorship most teams waited
for the Formula 1 Constructors Association (F1CA) to organise a joint
effort to capitalise on the commercial turn. As such a response failed to
materialise, Ecclestone, as owner of the Brabham team, together with
part team owner of March, Max Mosley, suggested a different solution in
1972: they would take care of the commercial deals and logistics, in
return for a fee from the remaining teams. Renamed the Formula One
Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974, it soon served the interests of
the teams without factory backing (all teams except Ferrari, Renault and
Alfa Romeo) and of which Ecclestone would become chief executive in
1978. The goal of this association was to professionalise the organisation
of Formula One and to seize control of the sport’s commercial rights.
Unsurprisingly, FOCA clashed with the motorsport governing body
FISA (Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, part of the FIA)
and threatened to start a rivalling championship. The dispute was settled
in 1981 when FOCA managed to secure the right to negotiate television
contracts for the races and teams were able to secure a greater slice of the
commercial revenues (television, prize money etc.). This First Concorde
578 T. Evens et al.

Agreement ensured that all of the teams guaranteed to participate in all

of the races and provided the necessary stability to the championship
(Bose, 2012).
Collectively, the Concorde Agreement boosted the commercial devel-
opment of Formula One. For example, it enabled Ecclestone to convince
major European broadcasters to show all the races of the championship
instead of negotiating the rights on an ad hoc basis. Whereas previously
most races were being given highlights or not being broadcast at all,
broadcasters started consistent live coverage with commentary after a
three-year deal was signed with the European Broadcasting Union
(EBU)—an alliance of ninety-two mainly public service broadcasters—
in 1982. With guaranteed television exposure and increasing sponsorship
rates, in addition to the fact that the EBU agreement was extended by five
years in 1985, Ecclestone’s influence was on the rise. He not only became
vice-president of promotional affairs for the FISA, but was also appointed
as administrator for the Second Concorde Agreement in 1987. Under
this new contract with the FIA, 47% of the revenues were given to the
teams, 30% to the FIA and 23% to Formula One Promotions and
Administration (FOPA), a company established in 1987, owned and run
by Ecclestone, who also ceased to be team owner that year.
The Third Concorde Agreement commenced in 1992 and was even
more favourable to Ecclestone. In total, FOPA’s revenues rose from
US$12.5 million (in 1990) to US$127.6 million (in 1995). Sources sug-
gest that in reality Ecclestone earned around 73% of the television reve-
nues with the teams dividing the remaining 27%—it was believed that
FIA lost US$65 million as a result of the deal (Bose, 2012). As such,
FOPA’s television income of US$341 million stood in sharp contrast
with the US$37 million the FIA made between 1992 and 1995.
Ecclestone justified his lion’s share of commercial revenues by arguing
that he, not the teams, was taking the financial risk (Bower, 2012). By the
end of 1995, Ecclestone was granted by the FIA—with Max Mosley now
as president—a controversial fifteen-year lease on the commercial rights.
In effect, this allowed Ecclestone to be the sole broker of these rights,
through his own company Formula One Administration Ltd (FOA) and
not FOCA, the organisation representing the teams (Stuart, 2018). Not
only was the new agreement criticised by the teams, who wanted a higher
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 579

share of the revenues, the fifteen-year contract also came under the scru-
tiny of European competition law. Commissioner KarelVan Miert
announced he would investigate whether the contract was a serious
infringement of EU competition rules and to what extent FIA, FOA and
International Sportsworld Communicators (ISC), another company
controlled by Ecclestone that held the television rights to all FIA-governed
motorsports, had abused their dominant position and restricted competi-
tion (for a detailed discussion, see Næss, 2020).
In anticipation of a possible flotation, Ecclestone transferred owner-
ship of his companies to Petara Ltd, a Jersey company owned by his wife
Slavica (Bower, 2012). In March 1997, Petara was renamed Formula One
Management (FOM) and was transferred by Slavica to SLEC Holdings
(presumably Slavica Ecclestone), another jersey company. Then Slavica
transferred the same SLEC shares to Bambino Holdings, a third Jersey
company, that ultimately became the legal owner of Formula One.
Bambino itself was owned by the Bambino Trust, of which Slavica and
her two daughters (but not Bernie) were financial beneficiaries, and
which was based in Liechtenstein (Næss, 2020). Ecclestone had now
completely divested himself of any legal ownership of Formula One,
resulting in the complex ownership structure depicted in Fig. 1.

Ecclestone Sells Shares

In October 1999, Morgan Greenfell Private Equity (MGPE) acquired

12.5% of SLEC for US$275 million. Only a few months later, in
February 2000, Ecclestone reduced his stake in SLEC to 25% after
Hellman and Friedman purchased a 37.5% stake in SLEC for US$725.5
million. Both transactions led to the formation of Speed Investments,
which was sold to German media company EM.TV & Merchandising
for US$1.65 billion in March 2000 (in exchange for shares). EM.TV also
obtained an option to buy another 25% (BBC, 2000). However, EM.TV’s
role in Formula One was only short-lived as its corporate development
was driven by the excessive optimism typical in the months and years
before the dot.com bubble busted—by the time the company took over
Formula One its share price had grown 3000% in three years’ time. A
580 T. Evens et al.

Fig. 1 Formula One ownership structure in 1997

rapidly declining share price (down from €120 to €1.49) and financial
fraud committed by its controversial founder and chairman Thomas
Haffa called for a divestiture in order to lower the company’s huge debts
and save it from bankruptcy.
In the end, German media magnate Leo Kirch paid out US$586 mil-
lion to acquire a minority share of EM.TV and 50% control of Formula
One (through SLEC). In February 2001, Kirch Gruppe also took up the
option to obtain another 25% of Ecclestone’s stakes for US$987.5 mil-
lion—despite his minority share of 25% Ecclestone retained strategic
control of Formula One through Bambino Holdings. To finance the
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 581

transactions, Kirch Gruppe borrowed €1 billion from Bayerische

Landesbank and €600 million both from JP Morgan and from Lehman
Brothers. The teams were sceptical of the Kirch-Ecclestone deal as they
feared that the German media company would broadcast the races via its
pay-television service Premiere, which would lead to a decline in viewing
audiences. Meanwhile, Ecclestone had closed a deal—referred to as the
Umbrella Agreement—with the FIA for the rights to host the FIA
Formula One World Championship for one hundred years after the cur-
rent contract expired in 2011. In return for US$313.6 million, the
‘Hundred Year-deal’ enabled Ecclestone to become the exclusive owner of
the commercial rights enabling him to collect lucrative hosting fees from
circuits and sell television rights to broadcasters (Stuart, 2018).
However, by December 2001, it became clear that Kirch Gruppe was
no longer solvent. Not only did Premiere have difficulties in adding sub-
scribers, the company had been buying expensive FIFA World Cup rights
as a result of which its debts had grown to US$5.5 billion. With Kirch
going into administration, the banks took full control of the 75% share
of SLEC: Bayerische Landesbank held 62.2% and JP Morgan and
Lehman Brothers each 18.9%. Following Kirch’s meltdown, the teams
now had the chance to buy Kirch’s 75% stake in Formula One. Despite
their desire to control Formula One and transfer the revenues to the
teams, they did not want to take the financial risk that came with it
(Bower, 2012). Ecclestone, for his part, saw this as an opportunity to buy
his share back for a bargain price and offered US$600 million. The banks
waived away the bid and set a price tag of US$1.8 billion for SLEC’s 75%
share. Although the banks and Ecclestone became involved in a series of
legal fights, the latter was protected by a complex company structure and
relied on his usual conquer and divide strategy to retain control of
Formula One (Næss, 2020). As it became clear that the banks were ready
to sell, Ecclestone introduced private equity firm CVC Capital Partners
as a possible buyer for Formula One that would also allow him to stay on
as chief executive.
At the end of 2005, CVC Capital Partners announced that it had
acquired a majority share (63.3%) in Delta Topco, a newly formed and
Jersey based company that would be known as Formula One Group
(FOG). While the banks’ 75% stake was valued at $1.2 billion, CVC also
582 T. Evens et al.

purchased Ecclestone’s remaining stake for US$450 million and spent

some US$300 million on buying Formula One’s corporate hospitality
and trackside advertising divisions. The move brought all money-making
divisions under one roof while the teams were offered a 50% share of the
company’s operating profit. In addition to CVC’s majority share, Lehman
Brothers (15.3%), Bambino Holdings (8.5%), Ecclestone himself
(5.3%), JP Morgan (3%) and Churchill Capital (0.7%) stepped into the
capital (see Fig. 2). In 2012, CVC lowered its stake when they sold 21.3%
to financial groups BlackRock, Waddell & Reed and Norges Bank
Investment Management for US$1.23 billion and a further 7.6% to
Waddell & Reed for around US$500 million. With these deals, CVC
managed to repay its initial investment in a company that in the mean-
time was valued at around $9.1 billion.
The anticipated exit of CVC Capital Partners came in September
2016, when Liberty Media agreed to acquire Formula One’s parent com-
pany Delta Topco from a consortium of sellers led by CVC. In the first

Fig. 2 Formula One ownership structure in 2005

 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 583

instance, Liberty Media completed the acquisition of a 19.1% minority

stake for US$746 million. After regulatory clearance, ownership was
increased to 100%. The transaction price valued the company at US$8
billion and represented an equity value of US$4.4 billion. With the
acquisition, Formula One was attributed to corporate division Liberty
Media Group, which were to be renamed the Formula One Group. In
this new Liberty Media division, the consortium of sellers led by CVC
continues to own 64.7% of the Formula One Group’s equity (with board
representation) (Liberty Media Corporation, 2016). Although it was
rumoured that Ecclestone, who remained on board as a shareholder
through Bambino (5.4%) and himself (2.1%), would stay on as chief
executive for three more years, he was replaced by Chase Carey in early
2017. Since January 2021, Stefano Domenicali has taken over as presi-
dent and CEO of Formula One.
The fact that CVC has stayed on board as a controlling shareholder for
about eleven years—the typical investment horizon of private equity
firms is usually three to seven years—is illustrative of the money-making
machine Ecclestone has turned Formula One into. CVC managed the
sport through another round of Concorde Agreement negotiations,
avoiding another threatened breakaway from FOTA and made an above-­
average return on their initial US$2 billion investment, and has, accord-
ing to critics, pursued that ruthlessly in Formula One. It has been accused
of ‘raping the sport’ with the intention ‘to extract as much money from
the sport as possible and put in as little as possible’ (Richards, 2018).
Under CVC’s ownership, hosting fees for race promotors rose exponen-
tially, with state-backed circuits in Abu Dhabi and Baku willing to pay a
fortune (up to $60 million compared to the average of $30 million), and
classic European tracks such as Monza and Silverstone being left with
financial issues (Baldwin, 2018). Furthermore, live coverage moved from
free-to-air broadcasters to pay-television channels in most countries dur-
ing this time. Although this secured higher income from selling television
rights, the worldwide audience fell from about 600 million to 352 million
between 2008 and 2017, which had a negative effect on the sport’s popu-
larity, ticket sales and sponsorship income. Finally, limited use of and
promotion on digital and social media led to difficulties to engage with
younger audiences, while losing opportunities to monetise digital content.
584 T. Evens et al.

Liberty Media Corporation

Whereas Formula One remains one of the most popular and spectacular
sports franchises in the world, its major shareholder Liberty Media is
arguably less well recognised. The conglomerate is owned and controlled
by John Malone, an American businessman who unlike other media
moguls, such as Rupert Murdoch or Michael Bloomberg, tends to shun
the limelight. Together with HBO founder Charles Dolan, Malone is
known as one of the pioneers of cable television. In the early 1970s, the
‘cable cowboy’ saw his chance to strengthen his grip over the US cable
industry, build media distribution infrastructure and establish his name
as a media mogul (Robichaux, 2005). From 1973 to 1996, Malone served
as president and chief executive of cable television provider Tele-­
Communications (TCI), which had grown out of Western Microwave.
Under the leadership of Malone, TCI had grown into the largest cable
company by 1981. In 1987, TCI acquired a 12% stake in the highly
indebted Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), which would be the begin-
ning of a diversified portfolio of cable networks. Perfectly timed acquisi-
tions would become one of the keystones of Malone’s successful strategy.
In 1991, TCI spun off what it considered to be its ‘least valuable’ assets
into a new company called Liberty Media Group. However, Liberty
Media was integrated again a few years later. In 1998, both companies
announced the merger of premium network Encore and STARZ! into a
new company owned by Liberty Media. The growth of digital cable tele-
vision was beneficial to both cable network Encore Media and cable pro-
vider TCI.
Despite its commercial success, TCI continued to carry a high level of
debt. In 1999, AT & T, the largest telephone service provider, bought
TCI, the second largest cable operator, for US$48 billion (US$32 in
stock and US$16 billion in debt). This marked the first major merger
between phone and cable businesses since the 1996 Telecommunications
Act had lifted cross-ownership between broadcasters, phone companies
and cable television providers. A new subsidiary—AT & T Consumer
Services—was created to combine AT & T’s wireless and internet services
with TCI’s cable and high-speed internet activities; Liberty Media
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 585

remained a separate stock. However, it did not take long before conflicts
of interest between AT & T and Malone appeared, which eventually led
to a split in 2001. Whereas AT & T seemed mainly interested in TCI’s
cable infrastructure, Malone believed that the utility of the infrastructure
depended upon the quality of the content it carries (and not the other
way around). Liberated from AT & T, Malone was seeking to advance
Liberty’s interests in other content providers. He sold his shares in FOX,
but was able to purchase, among others, 18% of News Corporation,
which made him the second largest owner within News Corporation
(Davis, 1998).
In the following years, Liberty Media was in a continuous state of
merging and divesting businesses. In 2005, for example, it spun off its
international businesses into a separately traded company, Liberty Media
International, that merged with UnitedGlobalCom to form Liberty
Global. Through an expansionist acquisition strategy, Liberty Global has
grown into the leading cable operator in the world, owning and operat-
ing cable networks in numerous European countries (such as Virgin
Media, UPC and Ziggo) and having a large footprint in Latin America
and the Caribbean. Whereas Liberty Global’s strategy was mainly focused
on fixed infrastructure, it has pursued deals with mobile operators includ-
ing Vodafone, Base and Sunrise to be able to launch multi-play offerings
(bundling pay-television with fixed and mobile services). Moreover,
Liberty Global has invested heavily in content production and television
broadcasting in recent years. It owns, among others, production indepen-
dent All3Media (together with Discovery Communications) and has
stakes in a portfolio of television broadcasters such as ITV (UK), UTV
Ireland and SBS Belgium (Evens & Donders, 2018). Although Liberty
Media has no direct stakes in Liberty Global, it is indirectly linked
through its main shareholder and chairman Malone. Through a complex
maze of ownership and affiliation, Malone is the spider in the web who
has control of Liberty Media and its subsidiaries, but also holds shares in,
among others, Discovery Communications (Discovery Channel, Animal
Planet and Eurosport), Liberty Global and Lionsgate Entertainment. He,
therefore, continues to occupy an influential position in the international
media production and distribution landscape.
586 T. Evens et al.

As it stands today (January 2021), Liberty Media owns interests in a

broad range of sports, media and entertainment businesses structured
around three divisions. The Sirius XM Group consists of Liberty Media’s
interests in radio satellite service Sirius XM, music services Pandora and
Soundcloud, and concert promotor Live Nation Entertainment. Through
the Braves Group, Liberty Media wholly owns the Atlanta Braves Major
Baseball club, the Atlanta Braves’ stadium and its associated real estate
projects (between 1997 and 2000 Liberty Media also owned NBA team
Denver Nuggets and NHL team Colorado Avalanche).The Formula One
Group includes the abovementioned Formula One activities and a few
minority investments. Furthermore, Liberty Media has interests in
Liberty Broadband (Charter Communications, the world’s third-largest
pay-television), Qurate (a leading mobile ecommerce platform) and
TripAdvisor. To conclude this overview, Table 1 shows the relative impor-
tance of each division to Liberty Media’s total revenue and contribution
to profit, while suggesting that Formula One accounts for about one fifth
of the corporation’s total revenue (with a declining share, however).
COVID-19’s dramatic impact on (motor)sport is further reflected in
Formula One’s decreased revenue and operational loss for 2020. Although
renewed pay-television deals brought in extra revenue, income from race
promotion fees, sponsorship and hospitality went down. In addition,
costs went up as team payments increased partially due to one-time fees
paid to teams upon signing the new Concorde Agreement.

Table 1 Liberty Media Financials (in US$ Million) (Liberty Media Corporation, 2020)
2017 2018 2019
Revenue
Sirius XM Group 71.4% 71.8% 75.7%
Braves Group 5.1% 5.5% 4.6%
Formula One Group 23.5% 22.7% 19.6%
Liberty Media Corporation (in US$ million) 7594 8040 10,292
Profit
Sirius XM Group 111% 107% 105%
Braves Group −8.2% 0.01% −2.6%
Formula One Group −2.8% −7% −2.4%
Liberty Media Corporation (in US$ million) 1394 1511 1470
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 587

Conclusions
This chapter provided a historical account of the ownership structure of
Formula One from the entrance of Bernie Ecclestone in the early 1970s
until its most recent acquisition by US media conglomerate Liberty
Media in 2017. It presented Formula One as an illustration of the ‘unholy
alliance’ between sport and the media, while sketching how the owner-
ship of the commercial (and television) rights became a decisive factor for
Ecclestone to establish his reign over the sport and to turn Formula One
into a global success, both in cultural and in economic terms. For its part,
Liberty Media is a prime example of a media distribution infrastructure
company that became involved in the control of sports franchises.
Although media activities, predominantly situated in the music industry,
are still at the heart of the company and account for the lion share of
revenues and profits, the acquisition of Formula One shows how bound-
aries between sport organisations and media businesses are fading. Many
of the world’s largest sports franchises started their branded television
networks, mobile applications and/or streaming platforms to mostly pay-
ing fans, extracting additional commercial value and claiming their own
voice in the globally expanding sports media market.
When Liberty Media bought Formula One in 2017, it made its strat-
egy overtly clear: the goal was, first, to revitalise and grow the popularity
of the championship and, second, to rejuvenate the declining and ageing
fan basis of motorsports. Under Ecclestone’s reign, Formula One had
developed into a global media spectacle but was largely steeped in the
traditional broadcasting model. Despite its commercial success, Formula
One gradually lost connection with the rapidly digitalising media land-
scape and the transforming (sports) media consumption that came with
it. In that respect, Liberty Media has been able to overturn declining
audience figures and managed to improve viewership. In 2019, the global
cumulative television audience went up to 1.9 billion, the highest since
2012, and the number of unique viewers grew to 471 million (from 352
million in 2017). In addition, digital platforms saw significant growth
(+32.9% followers compared to 2018), particularly on Instagram and
Twitter, which confirmed Formula One’s status as the fastest growing of
588 T. Evens et al.

all major sports competitions in the world. Video views and impressions
on Formula One’s core digital platforms—the F1.com website and offi-
cial F1 App—almost doubled (Carp, 2020). The live streaming platform
F1 TV, however, remains problematic as its potential for full coverage is
restricted by a series of existing, more lucrative deals with broadcasters
and pay-television operators (Sylt, 2020).
The strategy of providing more digital content to grow the global fan
basis and engage with younger audiences seems to have paid off. In 2017,
Liberty Media launched the eSports Series to create more touchpoints for
younger fans to engage with motorsports (Sturm, 2019). The 2019 edi-
tion drew an online audience of 5.8 million viewers; 79% of these were
below the age of 35. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, that caused
the cancellation or postponement of several races, Formula One held a
Virtual Grand Prix Series with the participation of current and former
drivers, eSports Series drivers and celebrity guests (including top soccer
players Sergio Aguero, Ciro Immobile and Thibaut Courtois). The eight
races achieved more than 30 million views across television and digital
platforms. 21.8 million views were reached on digital platforms alone
including the official Formula One YouTube, Twitch and Facebook chan-
nels as well as Chinese platforms Weibo and Huya. In total, the virtual
racing series achieved 695 million impressions on social media (Dixon,
2020). The documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive is another
example of Formula One’s efforts to expand the fan basis. This collabora-
tion with Netflix provides an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the
championships and received critical acclaim. Whereas these initiatives
may hardly be profitable in itself, especially not in the short term, they
should be seen as long-term ‘investments’ to attract a new demographic
to Formula One. Liberty Media is reaping the fruits of this digital strat-
egy: 62% of the new fans in the last two years are under the age of 35
(Carp, 2020). The next, and more difficult, challenge is now to extract
any financial value from these digital activities. Eventually, this greater
fan engagement will need to be monetised by new revenue streams
including media subscriptions. For Liberty Media, the strength of
Formula One as a global brand may help to expand into new markets
outside the United States and develop its position in the worldwide media
and entertainment industry. In turn, Liberty Media’s footprint and media
 Ecclestone out, Liberty Media in: A Look into the Shifting… 589

expertise may help grow Formula One in the United States, where the
sport is hardly popular.
Despite Formula One’s history as a money-making machine, the
championship has not been able to make any profit for Liberty Media
since its purchase in 2017. Rumours of a possible sale—either in the
form of a full exit or in the introduction of a new equity partner—have
never been far away, but the looming financial impact of COVID-19 has
certainly removed any short-term deal off the table: continued losses
make any takeover very unattractive to prospective buyers. In the follow-
ing years, when the COVID-19 dust has fallen and the financial damage
is done, Liberty Media will need to continue Formula One’s tradition of
exploring new, potentially lucrative markets, in terms of both territories
and services, without giving in to the rich tradition of the sports. The
conglomerate will need to rely on its longstanding expertise with media
and sports assets to respond to dramatic changes in the media landscape
and create value-added services that enhance (and monetise) the fan
experience. Possibly more importantly, however, will be its balancing act
between chasing innovation and preserving traditions. Liberty Media was
already criticised for its ‘American approach’ when it expressed its inten-
tion to increase exposure in the United States and to make more race
meetings like Super Bowl weekends (see Richards, 2019). According to
former Formula One CEO Carey, however, ‘you have to be careful that
you don’t gimmick-up the sport, that you’re recognising the importance
of history and the importance of what has made this sport special, but
not let that become a straightjacket that doesn’t enable you to consider
changes that may truly enhance the sport for fans’ (Issatt, 2020). It would
be naïve to believe that Liberty Media is not in the business to get a
return on its investment, but it should, and probably will, not borrow
from CVC’s example, who merely considered Formula One a cash cow to
be milked for profit. The main priority for Liberty Media is now to turn
the sport into an attractive and competitive championship while expand-
ing this story along digital platforms to create a compelling fan experi-
ence that transforms Formula One into a future-oriented and profitable
event in the long term.
590 T. Evens et al.

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 Part VII
The Globalisation of Motor Racing
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1,
Globalization, and the Uber-Sport
Spectacle
Jacob J. Bustad and David L. Andrews

Introduction
Involving high-profile drivers, teams, and sponsors, and often times tak-
ing place at heavily mythologized racing circuits, from its inception in
1950 Formula One (F1) has advanced itself—if not always incontrovert-
ibly—as the pinnacle of motorsport. While the origins of F1 are dis-
tinctly British and European (with regard to the preponderance of teams
and tracks located in the UK and Western Europe), from its earliest stages
of development the sport has nonetheless consistently incorporated, and
developed, interconnections with other parts of the world. F1’s long-­
standing international orientation includes the sport’s first dominant
driver—Juan Manuel Fangio, an Argentine who won five World Driver’s

J. J. Bustad (*)
Department of Kinesiology, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
D. L. Andrews
Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 595
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_23
596 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

Championships in the 1950s—as well as the early involvement of non-

European host nations and cities, for example the South American Grand
Prix (first held in Argentina in 1953), and the Moroccan Grand Prix
(held in 1958). However, the global expansion of F1 over the past 60 years
has been anything but a linear process: The globalization of the sport has
encompassed different stages of extensity, intensity, and velocity, and
arguably reached its apotheosis following the reformation of the sport in
the 1970s and 1980s under the guidance of Bernie Ecclestone. In col-
lectively restructuring team’s commercial and media rights, Ecclestone
provided a ‘package’ deal to host circuits, which furthered the develop-
ment of F1 as a coherent, and indeed highly lucrative, corporate and
media entity. As a result of such generative commercial reworkings, and
whether accurate or otherwise, Ecclestone became widely perceived as an
autocratic figure within the sport: he was ‘Mr. Formula One’
(Economist, 1997).
Ecclestone’s commercially driven restructuring of F1 was concomitant
with—indeed, it facilitated—the broadening global reach of the sport,
principally through a concerted expansion in the number and location of
host circuits, including the debut of the Brazilian Grand Prix in 1973,
the Japanese Grand Prix in 1976, and the Australian Grand Prix in 1985.
Latterly, this global expansion focused primarily on the addition of races
in Asia (Malaysian Grand Prix in 1999, Chinese Grand Prix in 2004,
Singapore Grand Prix in 2008, Korean Grand Prix in 2010, Indian Grand
Prix in 2011, and Russian Grand Prix in 2014), as well as the Middle East
(Bahrain Grand Prix in 2004, and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2009). The
sport’s global status would be transformed again in January 2017, when
Formula One announced the completion of an acquisition of F1 as an
“iconic global motorsports business” by US-based Liberty Media
Corporation, with a “transaction price” of $8.0 billion including debt of
the previous owning group (Formula1.com, 2017). With Ecclestone
moved to the largely symbolic position of Chairman Emeritus, this cor-
porate takeover signaled a new phase of F1’s corporate and sporting strat-
egy under the leadership of American media executive Chris Carey as
CEO, former ESPN executive Sean Bratches as managing director for
commercial operations, and former Ferrari and Mercedes director Ross
Brawn as managing director for motorsports (Baldwin, 2017).
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 597

From the outset, the Liberty’s revamped F1 management team has

pursued the goal of growing the popular and commercial appeal of the
sport, through: a focus on the sport as a form of entertainment; finalizing
media rights deals with various global partners for coverage of race week-
ends; and, developing F1 content for streaming providers. In particular,
the streaming docuseries Drive to Survive—featuring “a mix of personal
backstories, inter- and intra-team feuds and 300 km per hour racing”—
has been cited as evidence of the ongoing ‘Netflix-ization’ of the competi-
tion, as F1 seeks out new audiences and markets across the globe (Pender,
2021). However, while social and streaming media have provided an
opportunity for enhanced publicity and popularity, the mediatization of
motorsport in regard to F1 is simultaneously reliant on a specific strategy
regarding the geographic distribution of the races comprising the annual
calendar of F1 championship. Thus, along with further developing the
relationship between F1 and the media, the goals of the Liberty group at
the time of the 2017 takeover also included aspirations to expand the
geographical reach of F1, through staging additional races at previous or
new venues and locations, thereby increasing the internationalization of
the circuit of circuits that collectively make up the competition calendar.
This strategy has been evident in the development of various races that
are now part of the annual calendar, including the Qatar Grand Prix and
Saudi Arabian Grand Prix both of which debuted in 2021, the inaugural
Miami Grand Prix in 2022, and plans for potential future events in Las
Vegas, United States and Panama City, Panama, as well as the return of
the South African Grand Prix (last held in 1993).
In this chapter, we contribute to the study of the sociological signifi-
cance of F1 as a global form of motorsport, through a discussion of the
implications of the competition’s growing international compendium of
circuits, and corresponding host cities and nations. Importantly, rather
than focus on a single circuit and event, we provide an analysis of the
increasingly global reach of the championship’s host venues. This speaks
to Formula 1’s positioning as an exemplar of the uber-sport (Andrews,
2019) model of elite global sport structure, delivery, and experience, the
ubiquity of which should not negate the fact that each stop on the cham-
pionship circus is, to some degree, rooted in the spaces, cultures, and
populations of the hosting local. Our analysis therefore engages with the
598 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

cumulative global experience that constitutes the peripatetic ‘circus’ of an

F1 season, in examining the dimensions of spectacle and sustainability
within contemporary elite motorsport. In particular, our analysis suggests
that these themes are inextricably linked to the present and future of F1:
The sport is predicated on a cosmopolitan variety of settings and interna-
tional locations for its events, yet simultaneously (and increasingly) con-
strained by the unsustainability of F1’s expansive carbon footprint
(derived largely from the international travel/transportation demands
that make the circuit of circuits possible).

F1, Globalization, and Uber-Sport

When analysing the impacts of globalization on sport and the sport
industry, many studies have emphasized the relationship between the
‘global’ and ‘local’ as fundamental to how sport has developed within
specific contexts. This focus on sport as part of a dynamic ‘global–local
nexus’ (Morley & Robins, 1995) enabled scholars to examine how global
actors and forces engaged with local societies and cultures, and to dem-
onstrate how particular forms of sport were transformed through this
global–local articulation. However, other scholars noted the limitations
of this framework, in that such approaches are “too often structured by
an assumed opposition between the local and the global, where the local
is offered as the intellectual and political corrective of the global”
(Grossberg, 1997, p. 8). In order to address these limitations, research on
globalization and sport incorporated a conceptualization of ‘glocaliza-
tion’ (Giulianotti & Robertson, 2004) that was premised on the interac-
tions between the global and local, with these aspects situated on a
continuum rather than placed as polar opposites. Subsequent studies
then sought to further explicate the mutual constitution of the global and
local in specific sporting contexts, providing empirical detail to particular
types of sporting glocalization (see Andrews & Granger, 2007).
Within these discussions of globalization and/as glocalization, there
was also a concern for the broader historical development of sport at the
global level, and how international relations have contributed to the
modern sport system. Following Van Bottenburg (2001), this history
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 599

includes several distinct yet interrelated phases, in which pre-modern

forms of sport were in turn consolidated by economic, social, and mili-
tary elites into a relatively concise economy of rationalized and standard-
ized team and individual sport forms. More importantly for this analysis,
while Van Bottenburg (2001) theorized that Britain (in the nineteenth
century) and the United States (in the twentieth century) had been the
dominant forces of cultural influence on the previous development of
sport around the world, other scholars noted that the twenty-first century
prefigured a more open and undecided era in which other nations might
gain and wield influence within the global sport industry. As Maguire
(2000) explains, the more recent phases of the development of global
sport have therefore been “characterized by the rise of non-Western
nations to sporting prominence, and, sometimes, to pre-eminence”
(p. 366). In analysing this reorientation of sporting importance and
influence away from the previous dominance of Western nations,
Rumford (2007) describes this transformation as the ‘post-­Westernization’
of sport, and specifically the impact of this process on the structure and
governance of cricket. In this analysis, the contemporary form of cricket
can be characterized as post-Western in regard to three developments: (1)
the relocation of the International Cricket Council, as the sport’s govern-
ing body, from London to Dubai; (2) the restructuring of gameplay to
allow for both traditional test match cricket, as well as shortened one-day
(ODI and T20) forms of the game; and (3) cricket’s relationship to the
growing Indian middle-class population, placing cricket’s economic cen-
tre of gravity firmly within the subcontinent (Horne, 2010). Gupta
(2009) contributes to the study of contemporary cricket, while also
broadening the framework of global sport’s post-Westernization by draw-
ing attention to the role of non-Western nations in hosting sport mega-­
events, including the 2008 Beijing Olympics (see also Dowse & Fletcher,
2018), and in regard to foreign ownership, including the 2008 purchase
of Manchester City by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund (Gupta,
2009, p. 1787). Taken collectively, these developments might signal a
larger shift in the locus of control and popularity for major global sports,
as “non-Western nations have gone from being the recipients of sporting
dictates to actual shapers of decision making in various games” (Gupta,
2009, p. 1788).
600 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

When assessing the more recent evolution of Formula 1, it may be pos-

sible to connect to some aspects of the broader post-Westernization of
sport, in particular through the inclusion of an increasing number of host
cities and tracks from Asia and the Middle East (and as discussed in other
chapters of this volume). However, within this chapter we offer an alter-
native framework for understanding the present and future development
of F1, in regard to a revised approach for examining the relationship
between globalization, sport, and spectacles via the concept of ‘uber-sport’.
In our framework, uber-sport encompasses the reformation of elite
sport and physical culture through the late capitalist processes of corpo-
ratization (institutional and management reorganization designed to
realize profit-driven structures and logics); commercialization (sport
brand diversification and non-sport brand promotion across multiple
sectors); spectacularization (entertainment-focused delivery of popular
sport spectacles, realized through a combination of structural reforma-
tion and cross-platform mass mediation); celebritization (sporting con-
tests constructed around, and a site for the embellishment of, specific
public persona); and, digitalization (digital technologies and content
increasingly integrated into sport delivery and experience). Uber-sport
therefore describes a highly rationalized, diversified, yet culturally inte-
grated popular sport phenomenon that is primarily designed to generate
mass audiences and consumer markets, and thereby popularity and profit,
across an array of culturally and economically multiplying streams (prod-
ucts, bodies, services, and spaces). As Andrews (2021) explains, uber-­
sport entails that:

The shape of the ball, the nature of the physical contest, cast of characters
on display, or litany of corporate sponsors differ even if the mode, means,
and relations of uber-sport production remain unerringly similar. …
Although not a word used in common parlance, uber-sport thus represents
a condition of formulated ubiety: a state of being or existence derived from
location in a given time or space, a whereness. (p. 76)

In this analysis, uber-sport affords the possibility of a different approach

to studying the relationship between sport and globalization, and in par-
ticular the type of elite, ultra-commercialized, media-driven sport of
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 601

which Formula 1 serves as an example par excellence. This is in part due

to the ‘rhizomatic’ nature of uber-sport as a “chaosmosis, a chaotic osmo-
sis of varied and variable connections rather than an ordered cosmos”
(Conley, 2009, p. 33), instead of macro-to-micro, top-down hierarchies
of power and influence. As rhizome, uber-sport is a flattened multiplicity
of connections between heterogenous component elements, including
athletes, coaches, animals, teams/franchises, performances events (games/
matches/contests), media broadcasts and content, products, services,
spectators, viewers, consumers, sponsors, retail spaces, natural and/or
built environments, leagues, competitions, tournaments, multi-sport
events organizations, and governing bodies. The rhizomatic relations that
characterize uber-sport formations (such as Formula 1) mean each of
these elements has the possibility of being connected in affecting ways,
yet no connection is guaranteed, nor does any element possess some pre-
ordained affecting ascendancy or descendancy within a hierarchal struc-
ture. Moreover, the rhizomatic approach of uber-sport means that the
‘spectacle’ of the performance event and its hypermediated representa-
tion—in the context of Formula 1, a specific Grand Prix weekend—is
not considered the integrative core of uber-sport, from which ancillary
elements are derived. Instead, the spectacle of a singular Grand Prix
might be analysed as part of the larger assemblage of the sport’s seasonal
structure and experience, in which the collective races, event, and corre-
sponding host cities are all considered as interrelated aspects of a broader
sociological object: the circuit of circuits that comprises the global scale
and scope of contemporary F1.

F1 as Uber-Sport Spectacle

More recent sociological and cultural studies of Formula 1 have often
engaged with the individuated ‘spectacle’ events of the sport, in the form
of Grand Prix races hosted by specific cities and nations. This approach
includes research on the impact of hosting a Formula 1 Grand Prix in
regard to tourism and event management (see Dávid et al., 2018; Choe
et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2017; Liu & Gratton, 2010; Watanabe et al.,
2018), as well as studies focused on the relationship between F1 Grand
602 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

Prix events, urbanization, and the particular social, political, and eco-
nomic forces involved in the development and hosting of a race weekend
(see Fairley et al., 2011; Gezici & Er, 2014; Gogishvili, 2018; Lefebvre &
Roult, 2011; Yu et al., 2018).
In contrast, other scholars have sought to examine the social meanings
and effects that are involved in the development and distribution of
Formula 1 as a more comprehensive mediated, global consumer experi-
ence. Silk and Manley (2012) include the Singapore Grand Prix in their
discussion of the linkages between urban spaces and sport events, assert-
ing that “the event offered unique signifiers for global consumption—
highly visible (or perhaps hyperreal) images of the material landscape”
(p. 465). For Sturm (2014), analysing the sport across the various races
that make up an annual season allows for a recognition of how F1 “proj-
ects a glamorous and high-tech global spectacle of speed that evokes elit-
ism, the exotic and an aura of expensive sophistication, often directly
associated with its technologies, localities or assumed luxurious jet- set
lifestyle” (p. 80). In this analysis, the representation and experience of F1
as an “overarching spectacle” is premised on three elements, including (1)
the dissemination of the sport as an “accessible and engaging” spectacle
via global media, (2) the relationship between the mediated spectacle and
specific locations and their corresponding cultural signs and symbols, in
order to emphasize the localized “scale and grandeur” of each Grand Prix
and (3) the development and deployment of transnational sponsorships,
which “through their prominently displayed logos, brand and commod-
ify Formula 1 cars, drivers and fans as a consumptive corporate spectacle”
(p. 80).
Lowes (2018) then connects this focus on the more general and collec-
tive spectacle of F1 with the ‘place-marketing’ strategies of host cities and
nations, in regard to a “merging of image, spectacle, sport, and capital-
ism” (p. 215). In discussing the interactions between imagery and urban
experience, Lowes’ analysis asserts that the collective spectacle of F1
includes “distinctly promotional performances of local cosmopolitanism
intended for both domestic and global audiences. … F1’s glamorous
global spectacle revolves around corporations, branding, and leveraging
F1’s symbolic cultural capital” (p. 204). In doing so, the representation
and experience of the F1 season draws on the cultural signs and symbols
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 603

of specific host cities and circuits, while always reinterpreting these mean-
ings within the larger framework of the spectacle. As Sturm (2017)
explains in regard to the Monaco Grand Prix, this event provides an
opportunity to communicate “elitist, aspirational motifs of Formula 1 to
its already global audience”:

through an assemblage of iconic images and associated symbols that reiter-

ate its status, privilege, luxury and conspicuous consumption … Monaco’s
illusions of European glamour dovetail seamlessly with Formula One’s
prestigious global image and maintain its ‘megamediasport’ event sta-
tus. (p. 183)

In the uber-sport framework, this analysis of F1’s annual calendar as

global, mediated, consumer-oriented, and involving forms of urban cos-
mopolitanism signal how the individual spectacle of a specific Grand Prix
might be decentered, in order to better understand the more comprehen-
sive experience of the sport and its aggregated cultural meaning and sig-
nificance. More specifically, conceptualizing F1 as the circuit of circuits
can help emphasize how uber-sport exists as ‘deterritorialized’ (Andrews,
2019), in that the broader F1 spectacle is no longer dependent on specific
and local cultural contexts from which it derives significance: F1 has
come to represent a spatial differentiated spectacle in general terms, but
not one anchored or reliant upon specific, unchangeable, sources of spa-
tial difference. The transnational scale and scope of F1 entails an uber-­
sport spectacle that can be produced and presented both effectively and
affectively nearly anywhere around the world. Thus, as Andrews (2021)
explains, such uber-sport formations are “able to exist and operate within
disparate societal setting, be they authoritarian, state socialist, or neolib-
eral capitalist”—this characteristic is definitively evident within the
sport’s annual calendar, as it features Grand Prix races in all of these vari-
ous socio-political contexts. As such, the deterritorialized nature of the
F1 uber-sport spectacle lends itself to the logic and strategy of global
expansion that has served as a primary goal for the sport in its most recent
era, in particular following the Liberty takeover in 2017. While the sea-
sonal number of races had steadily increased during the sport’s develop-
ment into the 2000s, this figure had remained between 18–20 races per
604 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

year during the beginning of the hybrid turbo era of the 2010s. When
Liberty assumed control of the sport, the organization proclaimed the
goal of expanding the schedule to 25 races, with the prospect of locating
new host cities and nations as well as possibly returning to previous race
sites (Sloan, 2021).
Liberty’s expansion strategy has included the aforementioned debut of
the Qatar Grand Prix and Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, as well as the return
to venues in France (Circuit Paul Ricard) in 2018, the Netherlands
(Circuit Zandvoort) for the 2021 season, and the debut of the Miami
Grand Prix in 2022. Additionally, race cancellations due to COVID
restrictions resulted in the championship returning to Portgual (Alagarve
International Circuit) from 2020, Turkey (Intercity Istanbul Park Circuit)
in 2020 and 2021, and Imola, Italy (Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix) 2021
through 2025. In announcing the ten-year deal for the Miami race, F1’s
chief executive Stefano Domenicali emphasized the agreement as indica-
tive of the sport’s mission to continue and increase fans and sponsors in
areas that serve as a “key growth market”, as demonstrated by the addi-
tion of a second race in the USA (Matar, 2021). More broadly, Liberty’s
future planning envisions approximately a third of races in Europe, with
‘heritage’ races (including the Monaco, Silverstone, Spa-Francorchamps,
and Monza circuits) essentially protected within the schedule—the
remainder of the schedule would provide flexibility allowing for potential
expansion to various other cities and nations with FIA Grade 1 approved
circuits, with the very real and potentially lucrative possibility of ‘bidding
wars’ between interested sites (Sloan, 2021).
Beyond the possible expansion to new locations, however, the deterri-
torialized uber-sport spectacle of F1 also entails a particular relationship
between the global vision and strategy of Liberty and the local intermedi-
aries associated with the various race locations. In the uber-sport era, this
relationship is increasingly characterized through an incorporation of the
local host culture, including national and urban signs, symbols, and other
cultural expressions such as music, food, and festivities that correspond
with the host nation and/or city. However, while these aspects of the local
culture may be central to the production of urban cosmopolitanism
(Lowes, 2018) as a defining feature of the contemporary F1 spectacle
experience, the actual interaction or engagement with the local is
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 605

nonetheless limited. Following Dirlik (1996, p. 34), within F1 “[t]he

recognition of the local … does not mean any serious recognition of the
local, but is intended to recognize the features of the local so as to incor-
porate localities into the imperatives of the global”. Within the context of
the contemporary F1 circuit of circuits, the local is a discernible yet largely
superficial and formulaic allusion to the metropolitan, regional, and/or
national context in which the race is taking place (see Sturm, 2014). The
extent of this conjoined spatial and symbolic localization is, to some
degree, determined by the longevity, and thus accumulated F1 prove-
nance, of the circuit within the sport. The heritage circuits (Monaco,
Silverstone, Spa-Francorchamps, and Monza etc.) have—over the course
of their storied histories within the sport—developed a spatial familiarity
associated, and in many cases resonant of their place and culture of loca-
tion. Equally, urban or downtown-located street circuits provide the spa-
tial and symbolic parameters for races, imbuing them with a tangible
sense of the local (see Friedman & Wallace, this volume).
However, our specific interests lie in the proliferation of relatively
recent circuits built as part of F1’s expansion in the 2000s. These facilities
were often built for the express purpose of attracting and hosting F1 races
as the pinnacle of their motorsport offerings, and included: the Bahrain
International Circuit (Bahrain GP, Sakhir GP); Buddh International
Circuit (Indian GP); Circuit of the Americas (United States GP); Jeddah
Corniche Circuit (Saudi Arabia GP); Korea International Circuit (Korean
GP); Intercity Istanbul Park (Turkish GP); Sepang International Circuit
(Malaysian GP); Shanghai International Circuit (Chinese GP), and
Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo (European GP).
Hermann Tilke, a German racing driver turned engineer, was the lead
architect responsible for the design many of these circuits (and the rede-
velopment of numerous established circuits), and is widely acknowledged
to have initiated a new era of motor racing with his designs. However,
Tilke is not without his critiques, with some accusing him of “penning
boring tracks and, even worse, of butchering legendary ones” (Briggs,
2009). Despite the homogenizing constraints imposed by the volumi-
nous FIA track regulations and guidelines, criticisms targeted at Tilke’s
circuits tend to focus on their spatial/design similarity, much of which
derives from his recurrent use of extended run-off areas. Intended
606 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

primarily to improve driver safety purposes, for some these run-off areas
provide drivers more room to mitigate their mistakes, thus leading to less
jeopardy and excitement in races. In broader spatial terms, Tilke’s formu-
laic and widely replicated circuit designs could also be considered boring,
in that he has effectively and efficiently reduced F1 circuits to being, in
Augé’s (2009) terms, spectacular “non-places”. According to Augé (2009),
“non-places” are the spatial expressions of supermodernity—such as hotel
rooms, shopping malls, airports, and motorways—whose generic aes-
thetic and highly replicated constituent elements render them largely dis-
associated from their local surroundings, and little more than transient
points of engagement for largely anonymous populations. Despite Tilke’s
assertion that much of his design effort goes “into conceiving dramatic
architecture that reflects the host country, like Sepang’s lotus-leaf grand-
stands in Malaysia” (Briggs, 2009), recent F1 circuits can be considered
“non-places” (Augé’s, 2009): They possess key constituent elements that
spectators (even if they are not party to them) have come to expect of the
F1 spectacle, such as architecturally striking main grandstands, luxury
spaces and amenities, entertainment zones, and phantasmagorically
branded commercial environments. For instance, each of various tracks is
adorned with hoardings and banners from the same corporate sponsors
(in recent years, including Heineken, Rolex, Liqui-Moly, Aramco, and
DHL), such that while curves, straights, and/or chicanes may be given
unique names, spatially (Tilke’s design orthodoxies) and symbolically
(corporate sponsors’ brand prevalence) the circuits appear to be conform-
ing ever-more closely to some F1 prescribed norm (see Sturm, 2014).
This is equally apparent in the multiple-branded pop-up team garages,
whose component elements are transported from race to race, such that
the “paddock” becomes yet another consistent (if temporary) element of
the F1 race circuit. As such, recently constructed and renovated circuits
tend to exude a somewhat discomforting sameness and familiarity, as if
they occupy some transnational F1-scape linking them more to the orga-
nizational structure and sensibilities of the sport, than to any meaningful
specificities of the local host culture (see Sturm, 2014). In this manner,
F1 circuits are the spatial expressions, and perhaps the epitome, of uber-­
sport’s condition of being ubiquitous and ubietous. The global circuit of
circuits ensures F1 exists spatially and symbolically “in multiple settings
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 607

around the globe”, yet their ubiety, or state of “existence derived from
location in a given time or space”, is conclusively formulated and indeed
formulaic (Andrews, 2019, p. 12).
Within contemporary F1 circuits, any allusion to the local—as in
Sepang’s lotus leaf grandstands—is little more than an aesthetic flourish:
They are superficial constructed expressions of what is a caricatured local-
ness. Devoid of any distinctive localness, or what Ritzer would call some-
thingness, these F1 circuits provide a spatial example of a sporting
nothingness in that they are “centrally conceived and controlled and rela-
tively devoid of distinctive content” (Ritzer & Ryan, 2003, p. 51).
Furthermore, if F1 circuits could be considered a form of spectacular,
locally indistinct nothingness for race attendees, this is even more the
case for global viewing audiences tuning in to the F1 spectacle. Since
2007, races have been broadcast via a standardized world feed, providing
generic coverage for the global television and internet audience, for whom
any allusion to the local is offered by national marketed-oriented “client”
broadcasters who are likely to frame any reference to the host race loca-
tion and/or culture according to the perceived values and expectations of
the “client” viewing market (Silk, 2001). In this manner, and from the
vantage point of the external viewing audience (as opposed to that of the
host city organizers), F1 offers a televised “space of global cosmopolitan
imagery” (Lowes, 2018, p. 204), which distinguishes it from more nar-
rowly place-bound uber-sport expressions, such as the National Basketball
Association, Indian Premier League, or Australian Football League, each
of which derives a sense of its brand identity from its specific (as opposed
to compound) ubiety (sense of whereness). Nonetheless, rather than any
meaningful material or symbolic articulations of specific locals, the F1
brand’s distinguishing transnational cosmopolitanism derives from the
accumulation of superficial representations of its socio-spatially distinct
component parts (or races).
608 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

F1, Spectacle, and Sustainability

Conceptualizing F1 as an example of uber-sport—a corporatized, com-
mercialized, spectacularized, celebritized, and digitalized phenomenon—
enables an analysis of the social, and cultural implications of the sport’s
circuit of circuits. Additionally, the uber-sport model’s economic impera-
tives—particularly its overriding rationally driven efficiencies and expan-
sionist logics—explain how the global cosmopolitanism of the F1 circus
justifies the weighty cumulative ecological footprint of the sport’s annual
race calendar. In this mode, the ‘itinerant circus’ (GPblog.com, 2022) of
F1 can be examined in relation to environmental sustainability and the
current and future development of the competition. In particular, we
focus on the tension between the combined travel and transport involved
in producing multiple events around the globe, and ongoing discussions
and policies aimed toward making the sport more sustainable. Our analy-
sis emphasizes that this tension is the underlying fault line for the pros-
pects of elite motorsport (Dingle, 2009), in that the capacity to provide
a global, deterritorialized spectacle is both a primary factor in the popu-
larity and influence of F1, while also serving as the most probable threat
to the future existence of the sport in its current form.
This does not mean that Liberty and F1 have not sought to address
environmental issues within their governance—on the contrary, the sport
has moved over the last decade to develop and promote different policies
and practices related to the ecological impact of its operations. Indeed,
the recognition of sustainability as a key aspect of motorsport develop-
ment was evident in the 2009 FIA report stating the competition’s inten-
tion to support and promote research including:

information on the best environmental procedures, practices, and tech-

nologies that can be applied to motorsport. … This will cover areas such as
vehicle design and technology, infrastructure management, emissions
monitoring and control, offsetting procedures, energy optimization and
storage, and preservation of the natural environment … [as well as] train-
ing of officials, circuit and race personnel in environmental procedures and
practices … [and] encouraging environmental education and awareness of
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 609

participants, officials and members of the public at international motor

sport events. (as cited in Dingle, 2009)

In the more recent planning for the 2021 season, F1 went further in
announcing specific sustainability goals, including: (1) the development
of future engine power via sustainable fuels, including the aim of a 100%
sustainably fueled hybrid engine by 2025; (2) the implementation of
policies and practices toward becoming zero net carbon as an organiza-
tion by 2030; (3) governance of operations and events toward zero waste
on and off the track, and a reduction of the carbon footprint of all opera-
tions; and (4) efforts to position sport to “leave a lasting positive impact”
(F1, 2021). As part of the zero net carbon goal, F1 has stated particular
‘On the Move’ sustainability initiatives related to the travel and transport
necessary to enable a global tour of speed. The proposed measures include:

• Maximize logistics and travel efficiency through process and volume

optimization, using the least CO2 intensive transport available.
• Accelerated plans to introduce a more sustainable way of broadcasting
our races, known as remote production. This has resulted in a 34%
reduction in technical cargo and a 36% reduction in travelling staff
sent to every race.
• Adopting an innovative honeycomb structure for the walls of our trav-
elling broadcast centre has reduced the total weight and related GHG
emissions for filming our races globally.
• Designing innovative ‘flexible’ ULD shipping containers—allowing
F1 to adopt more fuel-efficient means of transport such as rail and sea
freight. This will also enable a move away from 747 to newer 777
cargo planes (F1, 2021).

As with other commercially impelled manifestations of uber-sport—

and as Miller (2016) explains—the commitment to sustainability with
elite motorsport can be a “complex field” given the competing priorities
involved in the development and performance of F1 cars, as “the sport’s
advanced engineering seeks ever-greater fuel efficiency, which is in turn
passed on to everyday business and domestic motoring, supposedly
diminishing the latter’s carbon footprints” (p. 720). Yet while the
610 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

proposed forms of sustainability that are being incorporated into F1 have

the potential to address the ecological impact of the cars, teams, and indi-
vidual Grand Prix events, there remains an imbalance in regard to the
sport’s larger environmental effects via international travel by administra-
tors, sponsors, media, drivers, and fans. A sustainability report released
by F1 following the 2018 season indicated that 27.7% of the CO2 emis-
sions from that season came from business travel, while another approxi-
mately 45% of the season’s CO2 emissions came from transportation of
teams and equipment, with the resulting 256,551 tons of CO2 emissions
equating 55,795 passenger vehicles being driven for one year (Harding,
2021). In comparison, emissions from the sources that are most directly
addressed by existing F1 sustainability policies—cars and individual
events—are marginal. For example, the same 2018 report indicated that
‘power unit emissions’, including the operation of cars from all ten teams
during testing, practices, and races, totaled just 0.7% of the annual emis-
sions; meanwhile ‘event operations’, including circuit energy use, broad-
casting, and hospitality, totaled 7.3% (O’Shea et al., 2020).
These figures underscore the imbalance between the sport’s proposed
sustainability initiatives and travel and transport as the primary causes of
un-sustainability, leading to questions about how—or whether—F1 will
continue to exist. In this analysis, the transnational scale and scope of the
sport’s circuit of circuits therefore entails a potentially unavoidable conflict
between the logic and strategy of growth and expansion, specifically in
regard to additional races at an ever-growing collection of host cities and
nations, and the stated priorities of making F1 sustainable and possible in
the future. Following Miller (2016), this problem is compounded
through the most direct form of support for teams and drivers, as “spon-
sors like the fact that [F1] events are global and its season eternal…Formula
1 is akin to an Olympics or a World Cup where the key events occur
annually, year round, and across the world, rather than every four years,
for a month, in one region” (p. 721). Moreover, the planned increases to
the race calendar—including a record 23 races scheduled for 2022—
often demonstrate the tensions between corporate and consumer growth
and environmental sustainability in particular cities and markets. As
Harding (2021) notes, climate change has been identified as a primary
factor in the future development of multiple existing host cities, while the
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 611

inclusion of Miami as the most recent addition to the annual calendar

means that the sport has committed to a ten-year deal for a circuit that
will stand just 10 feet above sea level, in a city in which sea levels are
expected to continue to rise over the same period. Within the context of
F1 as uber-sport spectacle, such concerns might lead us to also question
the “somewhat perverse” nature of F1 in effectively contributing to cli-
mate change by traveling to and hosting events in parts of the world that
are at the forefront of those changes (Harding, 2021).

Conclusion
This chapter has analysed Formula 1 as not only a pre-eminent form of
elite motorsport, but also as a mediated and commercialized uber-sport
spectacle centred less on any individual race or event, and more on the
presentation of a truly global/transnational sporting experience consti-
tuted by a season of races spread across the globe. Moreover, this version
of the F1 spectacle is underpinned by a strategy and logic of growth,
specifically regarding the expectation of perpetual increases in particular
metrics (revenues, sponsorships, viewers, etc.): a market growth logic that
necessitates hosting races at the most commercially expeditious host loca-
tions at any given moment. The most recent figures announced by F1
demonstrate the (commercially) positive outcomes of this strategy over
recent seasons, as an announcement in February 2022 stated that “Our
fans reacted to the [2021] season, new formats, and new venues, very
positively and Formula 1 has seen growth in our TV audiences and on
our digital platforms”, (F1.com, 2022) including:

• Followers (across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok,

Snapchat, Twitch and Chinese social platforms) were up 40% to
49.1m, video views increased 50% to 7bn and total engagement up
74% to 1.5bn.
• Total video views across F1.com, the F1 app and social media were up
44% vs 2020 to 7.04bn, unique users were up +63% to 113m and
page views were up +23% to 1.6bn.
612 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

• Digital share of total minutes consumed (across broadcast and digital)

has grown from 10% in 2020 to 16% in 2021.

Digital viewership and social media engagement provide measures of

the relative success of Liberty’s directives for transforming elite motors-
port, described in the organization’s corporate strategy as the “reposition-
ing of F1 into an Entertainment and Media company with our first ever
Marketing, Digital, Strategy and Research divisions, [and] expanded
teams managing our key revenue streams” (F1, 2020). However, our
analysis emphasizes that these forms of growth all depend on the global
scale and scope of the sport’s annual season, and the continued potential
for expansion in terms of host cities and nations, as well as the number of
total races. Again, this is included in the corporate strategy outlined by
Liberty, specifically through the goal of developing a “geographically
diverse race calendar, maintaining heritage circuits and adding new races
in iconic locations and destinations” (F1, 2020).
This approach to global expansion means that while particular host
cities can be discussed as part of the media and social media content sur-
rounding the sport, the more important factor is the constant possibility
of additional races that could accommodate a larger number of host loca-
tions. Indeed, the existence of other potential circuits has also provided
valuable flexibility in regard to the race calendar during periods of disrup-
tion, including during the COVID pandemic (races were rescheduled or
changed to different or new locations), and in response to Russia’s inva-
sion of Ukraine in February 2022 (Russian Grand Prix cancelled and
changed to a different location). The ability to effectively pivot to a dif-
ferent global destination reflects the broader global strategy of the sport,
as F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali explained in January 2022:

It’s true that there is a big interest for new places—or old places!—to be
part of our calendar…I think that with no doubt, without any kind of
limitation that is correct to keep, there could be easily over 30 venues that
we could do [a deal with] tomorrow, but we cannot go in this direction.
(Mitchell, 2022)
 The Circus Comes to Town: Formula 1, Globalization… 613

These comments underscore the global scale and scope of the F1 sea-
son as an uber-sport spectacle, while also highlighting sustainability as
the key issue involved in the current and future development of the sport.
As Sturm (2018) notes, “motorsport rarely offers a model of
sustainability”:

Economically it is expensive, socially it is often exclusive and privileges the

elite, while politically it is most often used as symbolic tool for ambitious
nations and corporations to self-brand and self-promote. Motorsport’s
environmental reputation is also problematic: burning fossil fuels, leaving
large global carbon footprints and the wanton waste of resources including
its impacts on green spaces and locations. (Sturm, 2018, p. 145)

As discussed in this chapter, F1 has been actively seeking to develop

and implement initiatives aimed at addressing issues of sustainability
across the sport, including the operations of teams, events, and the regu-
lation of hybrid technologies in the cars themselves. Yet these measures
do less in engaging with the overwhelming source of the majority of car-
bon emissions—and therefore ecological impact—of an annual season of
racing across countries and continents. F1 as a contemporary sporting
spectacle therefore faces a crossroads involving the future direction of
elite motorsport, in that it can continue to emphasize and potentially
expand the geographic reach and temporal duration of the season, but it
cannot do so while actively acknowledging and addressing the most
unsustainable aspect of the sport in terms of travel and transport to a
variety of locations around the world. Our analysis therefore demon-
strates that conceptualizing F1 as uber-sport provides a means for engag-
ing with the cultural meanings and environmental effects of the seasonal
structure and experience of the sport, and the inescapable tensions
between these elements within motorsport more generally. As a traveling
circus strategically roaming the globe, F1 as a circuit of circuits draws
attention to the shifting compendium of races and host cities as individ-
ual components of what is, ultimately, an unsustainable global uber-sport
assemblage.
614 J. J. Bustad and D. L. Andrews

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 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial
Development of Formula One
Racetracks
Michael Friedman and Brandon Wallace

This chapter explores the spatial development of Formula One racetracks,

which follows the pattern of confinement and artifice observed by Bale
(2003) in other sports. The first Grand Prix (GP) races were generally
held on closed public roads, but tracks dedicated solely to racing began
being built as auto racing matured. Since Formula One started in 1950,
races have been held on such permanent circuits, on street circuits, or a
combination of the two as cities seek to profit from these high-profile
events. Within permanent racetracks, the spectacle of auto racing has
been confined to defined spaces as events require several kilometres of
road, places for spectators, and support facilities. Races on street circuits
are held on public roads, often in downtown areas, and close streets for

M. Friedman (*)
Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Wallace
Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 619
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_24
620 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

several days before competitors arrive in order to set up the track, tempo-
rary stands, and support areas. Civic leaders justify this disruption as
events are intended to showcase cities to global audiences. Such large
investments of capital and space reflect on the increasing prominence of
Formula One racing within the processes of globalization.
Few sporting events garner as much international attention as Formula
One (F1) Grand Prix races. In 2019, the F1 circuit included 21 events,
each in a different country, on five continents. Races had a total atten-
dance of 4,164,948 people and were viewed by global media audiences
exceeding 1.9 billion people (Formula One, 2019; Formula One, 2020).
While much of the research on F1 focuses on the drivers and their
machines, the spatial elements of Grand Prix racing in terms of the cir-
cuits, their development, and position within urban environments have
been subject to much less attention. This chapter seeks to be a starting
point for such examinations.
In becoming the premier global motor sports competition since its
founding in 1950, F1 built upon a legacy of Grand Prix races and other
auto racing events starting in the late nineteenth century (Guzzardi &
Rizzo, 2001). As automakers and car enthusiasts sought to popularize
and promote the new technology of automobiles, the first races were held
on public roads between cities. Following numerous accidents causing
the deaths of drivers, spectators, and bystanders from cars becoming
faster and more dangerous, public outcry led to the enclosure of events
into temporarily closed circuits of public roads and permanent motor
sports venues early in the twentieth century. This mixture of temporary
circuits and permanent venues continues to define the spaces of F1 racing
as event promoters, track operators, and cities balance the spatial require-
ments of motor sports with issues of public safety and the general com-
modification of sport.
To truly appreciate the spatial development of F1 racetracks, it is nec-
essary to understand the relationship between speed and the spatial
requirements of motor sports. In track and field, the fastest athletes can
sprint 100 metres (m) in just under 10 seconds. At top speeds nearing
360 kilometres per hour (about 224 miles per hour), a race car will travel
a full kilometre during those same 10 seconds. This ten-fold increase in
speed requires tracks that are exponentially larger than tracks dedicated
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 621

to running. A standard 400-m running track and the 4-km Indianapolis

Motor Speedway (Indy) may be comparable in the time it takes the fast-
est competitors to complete one lap (approximately 40–45 seconds).
However, the running track fits into a 1.6-hectare space, while Indy
encircles an area that is more than 60 times larger—exceeding 100 hect-
ares. Once spectator, consumption, and performance support spaces are
included, Indy is the world’s largest sports venue at 226 hectares
(O'Kane, 2011).
Although their massive scale differentiates motor sports venues, their
evolution as sporting landscapes follows a pattern similar to venues for
other sports. Sport geographer John Bale (2003) identified a process of
confinement and commodification evident within the modernization of
sport and the development of sporting spaces over the past 150 years.
Along with the codification of rules and practices, informal activities
became sports as they were enclosed within distinct spaces that defined
areas for competition and separated performers from spectators. This
process enabled the commodification of sport as gates and fences limited
spectator access and as internal partitioning enabled sports venues to
become ever more sophisticated generators of revenue.
To aid understanding of the spatial dimensions of F1, this chapter will
first discuss the evolution of sports venues generally. This is followed by a
survey of the early years of Grand Prix racing as events moved from pub-
lic roads into dedicated motor sports venues. With this context in place,
we then examine the development of F1 since the 1950s as circuits have
been increasingly commodified, as F1 has become a globalized sport, and
as cities have competed for global media attention and for tourists.

Confinement and Commercialization

of Sporting Landscapes
Karl Raitz (1995, p. ix) describes sporting venues “as a kind of theater,”
explaining that “sporting events, just as for plays, purposeful, directed
and structured activity is enhanced with props and performed with the
end of providing a gratifying experience for participants and spectators
622 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

alike.” Sporting landscapes have evolved into integral parts of the sport-
ing experience as they have shaped events for performers and provided a
context for spectators to consume the event.
This evolution began with the modernization of sport in the late nine-
teenth century. Bale (2003) outlines a four-stage process for the develop-
ment of sports stadiums, beginning with folk games in which games
lacked standardized rules or defined spaces. Permeable boundaries allowed
participants and spectators to mix, and games were played in spaces that
were used for other purposes (Bale, 2003). As rules were established and
formalized, sports were enclosed into defined spaces to separate partici-
pants from spectators. Although spectators could no longer enter the
playing field, they faced no other limitations on their movement (Bale,
2003). The third stage of partitioning enabled the commodification of
sport. Dedicated venues were separated from surrounding neighbour-
hoods with gates and walls that limited spectatorship to ticket holders
and through internal segregation enabling sport promoters to offer
enhanced experiences to people who were willing to spend more money
(Bale, 2003).
Bale’s (2003) fourth stage—which he termed “surveillance”—suggests
increasing control of spectators through facility design and technology.
In post–World War II stadiums, spectators came to be confined to indi-
vidual seats and subjected to panoptic observation from video cameras,
wealthy spectators receive upgraded experiences within luxury boxes, and
videoboards structure and direct spectator actions. As Bale produced his
typology following the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy and subsequent Taylor
Report that resulted in many football stadiums around the world being
redesigned to increase spectator safety through surveillance and control,
we suggest hypercommodification over the past three decades as a fifth
stage of development. In this most recent stage, sports venues and sur-
rounding spaces have been spectacularized and transformed into highly
sophisticated consumption environments (Friedman, 2023).
This process can be seen in the evolution of baseball spaces from
Hoboken’s Elysian Fields, where the first baseball game occurred in 1845
to the most recent stadiums where teams control development within
ever-growing portions of their surrounding neighbourhoods. Within the
first stage, bat and ball games were played in colonial America as settlers
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 623

continued playing English folk games such as stoolball, one cat, town ball
and rounders. Games were played within various community spaces and
followed traditional customs that neither limited the number of players
nor delineated a dedicated field of play (Seymour, 1989). As the
Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York created a standard set of rules
during the 1840s, one was to enclose the field of play within a 90-degree
arc. Such enclosure not only defined whether batted balls were in or out
of play but separated players from spectators (Goldstein, 1989). The pop-
ularization of baseball through the 1850s and 1860s led to the partition-
ing of baseball spectator spaces. In 1862, William Cammeyer developed
the first commodified baseball venue, the Union Grounds, with a busi-
ness model seeking to profit from renting a first-class field to the leading
clubs and by selling tickets to spectators for admission (Friedman, 2023).
While movement from undefined sport spaces to enclosure and parti-
tion moved fairly rapidly, the process of commodification has continued
for 150 years; Raitz (1995, p. xi) recognized that “as sporting events have
become more popularized and accepted as entertainment, the sports
landscape has been increasingly subject to economic influences.”
Following Cammeyer’s lead, entrepreneurs built baseball grounds
throughout the late nineteenth century to host games for their profes-
sional teams (Riess, 1989). Built from wood, grounds could be con-
structed quickly and economically as team owners purchased or rented
inexpensive land, often in places where they had financial interests in
trolley lines, real estate, or other commercial ventures (Friedman, 2023).
However, these were impermanent structures with severe safety problems
and subject to replacement once landowners found more lucrative uses
for their real estate (Ross, 2016). Baseball’s maturation into a stable busi-
ness at the start of the twentieth century led to the construction of brick-
and-steel ballparks that were built to last.
Ballparks represented a significant upgrade from baseball grounds
(Goldberger, 2019). Still built with private investment in places like
Boston’s Fens, where Red Sox owners had significant real estate interests,
ballparks were increasingly sophisticated consumption environments
with the development of permanent food and merchandise concessions
(Friedman, 2023). As facilities aged and suburbanization changed the
racial composition of cities, stadium development became a public
624 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

activity as governments built sports venues to be spaces of mass recreation

and large public gatherings (Friedman & Beissel, 2020). These new super
stadiums were highly technologically advanced, designed to maximize
public use and accommodate multiple sports with circular designs, artifi-
cial surfaces, and occasional domes, and they offered large parking lots
with convenient access to highways (Bale, 2003). Super stadiums
enhanced consumption environments with expanded food and merchan-
dise concession stands on concourses broader than those in ballparks,
improved restrooms, and a few luxury amenities within luxury suites and
loge levels, albeit spectators still generally had similar experiences
(Lisle, 2017).
Illustrating the principles of hypercommodification that have contrib-
uted to the spatial development of F1 circuits, design trends since the late
1980s have prioritized consumption with “mallparks” following the prin-
ciples of shopping mall and theme park design (hence the portmanteau
“mallparks”). Contemporary stadiums provide a diversity of consump-
tion experiences on gamedays and anchor downtown entertainment dis-
tricts by showcasing cities and drawing millions of potential consumers
(Friedman, 2016). Mallparks offer retail, restaurants, tours, and private
event spaces towards ensuring year-round use and impact. However, by
relying upon private investment to develop surrounding areas, mallparks
have been unreliable producers of economic development (Friedman,
2023; Rosentraub, 2010).
Towards addressing this shortcoming, the most recent Major League
Baseball venues to open, Atlanta’s Truist Park and Globe Life Field in
Arlington, Texas, have been built as part of Integrated Stadium
Development (ISD) projects (Friedman & Beissel, 2020). In general,
ISDs ensure economic development occurs around sports venues by
requiring teams to be lead investors in broader projects incorporating
office, retail, residential, and recreational elements. ISDs are intended
to produce vibrant neighbourhoods that are active and generate eco-
nomic activity throughout the year rather than just on event days.
Other examples of ISDs include District Detroit around Little Caesars
Arena in Detroit, LA Live surrounding Staples Center in Los Angeles,
and Green Bay, Wisconsin’s Titletown development outside Lambeau
Field (Rosentraub, 2010).
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 625

A similar process of spatial development has occurred within auto rac-

ing, which quickly moved from public roads onto increasingly commodi-
fied circuits. Yet, the structure of the auto racing spectacle is very different
from the seasonal nature of baseball and other major sport leagues as
races are week-long events visiting multiple cities within national and
international circuits. As a result of this schedule and the extensive spatial
needs of racetracks, there are relatively few permanent motor sports ven-
ues, and most are located far from downtown areas. However, given the
global competition for media attention and visitor spending, F1 circuits
are significant elements in many urban and national economic develop-
ment and placemaking efforts.

The Enclosure and Partitioning of Auto Racing

Historians of auto racing generally locate the sport’s beginnings in late
nineteenth-century France due to its relatively high-quality roads and
limited legislation regulating travel speeds (Twitchen, 2004). Twitchen
(2004) identifies the first recorded automobile competition as a reliability
trial held between Paris and Rouen in July 1894, in which 5000 francs
were awarded to the vehicle that best combined safety, handling, and
economy. The first race was held the following year as the Auto Club de
France and newspaper sponsors offered a prize money pool of 75,000
francs to the fastest finishers in a race from Paris to Bordeaux and back
(Adair, 1998). Such events were then organized in different countries,
with the first American auto race occurring in fall 1895 and interest
growing in Great Britain, Germany, and Italy before the end of the nine-
teenth century (Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001; Pillsbury, 1995).
Early auto races were intended to popularize and advertise this emerg-
ing technology by proving “vehicles [to be] strong, fast and reliable”
(Pillsbury, 1995, p. 273), to enable manufacturers to demonstrate the
relative capabilities of their machines (Twitchen, 2004), and for elite
groups to display their social position (Adair, 1998). Moreover, auto races
were implicated within nationalistic discourses with victories exemplify-
ing a nation’s technological and manufacturing prowess. James Gordon
Bennett Jr, publisher of the New York Herald and International Herald
626 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

Tribune newspapers, sought to capitalize on this connection by sponsor-

ing the Gordon Bennett Cup, a series of international competitions
between 1900 and 1905 which invited three cars to represent each com-
peting nation (Dick, 2013).
Major early races were between large cities and utilized public roads.
However, as automobiles became faster, races created increasing dangers
for drivers, spectators, and bystanders, and were a nuisance for communi-
ties situated along the routes. Drivers damaged roads and broke rules of
the road, and their races disturbed the peace of countryside towns as cars
skidded and stirred up dust, produced loud noises and noxious odours,
killed animals, and endangered people (Dick, 2013; Twitchen, 2004).
During a 1901 race between Paris and Berlin, a small boy was killed by a
competitor, while eight deaths occurred during the 1901 Paris-Bordeaux
rally. With growing opposition to motor racing events, these tragedies led
the French Prime Minister to announce that no more racing permits
would be granted in the country (Twitchen, 2004).
Pressure from the emerging automobile industry and driving enthusi-
asts led a permit being issued for a Paris-Madrid race in 1903. Starting
with great fanfare, a crowd of 100,000 gathered to watch the beginning
of the race and an estimated 3,000,000 spectators lined the road to
Bordeaux (Adair, 1998). However, as Adair (1998, p. 125) notes, specta-
tors were “largely ignorant about the difficulties faced by drivers trying to
control speeding motor vehicles,” and there were not enough police to
maintain public safety, which resulted in the race “ending in disaster.”
After several accidents led to eight deaths, including five among specta-
tors and soldiers, the French government cancelled the race at Bordeaux
and required the cars be returned to Paris by train (Twitchen, 2004). The
failure of the Paris-Madrid race led many newspapers to report the end of
auto racing (Dick, 2013).
As Hamilton (2017, p. 187) explained, “the inherent danger to specta-
tors brought an awareness of the need for more control in the shape of a
circuit that could be more easily managed and provide some form of
crowd constraint.” With public confidence in the safety of open road rac-
ing waning, Great Britain hosted the Gordon Bennett Cup race of 1903
on a 200-km circuit of closed roads starting at Athy in County Kildare in
Ireland (Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001). This race was not the first to be held
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 627

on a circuit,1 but it may have been the most important for the develop-
ment of auto racing in Europe. To protect the public, race organizers
employed 7000 police officers who enforced orders requiring residents to
remain in their homes. Although the race was viewed by few spectators,
it produced no fatalities or serious injuries. According to Twitchen (2004,
p. 134), the race’s success “did much to allay the criticisms of motor rac-
ing and helped to rebuild the confidence among the public towards
motor racing as an acceptably safe sport.”
Such enclosure of races into closed circuits helped fuel the sport’s
growth through Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. In
1906, Le Mans, France, hosted the first Grand Prix race in which com-
petitors completed 12 laps around a 105-km circuit over two days. The
first French Grand Prix (GP)2 had several safety advances (Adair, 1998).
Rather than racing through the town of St Calais, traffic was diverted
away across a specially built wooden bridge. Forty miles of wooden bar-
ricades helped protect and control spectators, while a tunnel was dug
beneath the track to allow spectators to safely cross (Adair, 1998). The
race also had an important economic advancement with a grandstand
built for thousands of paying spectators (Adair, 1998). Other circuit races
were soon held in Sicily and Germany, but only France and the United
States (U.S.) hosted Grand Prix races before World War I.
While many early circuits ran for 75–150 kilometres, their size became
shorter between the wars. For example, the first Italian GP in 1921 was
held on a 17.2-km circuit at the northern town of Montichiari, the first
24 Hours at Le Mans was held on a 17.26-km circuit in 1923, and the
first Monaco GP in 1929 was held on a 3.145-km circuit through the
city’s narrow streets (Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001; O'Kane, 2011). Such races
were safer for drivers, who developed familiarity with the course, and
were much more accessible for spectators, who were assured of seeing
frequent action.
Several of the Grand Prix races that would later become some of the
most prestigious F1 events developed between the wars. Generally held
on closed road circuits that were shaped by surrounding landscapes, each
course offered unique challenges for drivers. Spa-Francorchamps, where
the first Belgian GP was held in 1925, offers 15 km of “undulating” roads
through the Ardennes Forest (Hamilton, 2017). The narrow streets of the
628 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

Monaco GP emphasize skill, precision, and concentration as they leave

drivers with no margin for error (O'kane, 2011). In France, the Circuit
de Reims-Gueux (Reims) connected the historic city with two small vil-
lages along a 7.8-triangular course distinguished by two long straight-
aways (straight sections of a roads or racetracks) that placed a premium
on speed (Hamilton, 2017). The 7.3-km Bremgarten circuit, described
by Hamilton (2017, p. 187) as a “relentless sequence of curves and high-­
speed corners,” hosted the first Swiss GP in 1934.
Although Hamilton (2017, p. 187) observed that “public highways
and byways continued to provide the easiest, if not the most socially con-
venient form of racetrack” for Grand Prix races, the first half of the twen-
tieth century saw the development of several permanent venues that
“soon became popular and offered more potential for profit.” Although
Brooklands in Surrey, England, opened as the first purposefully built,
paved motor sports venue in 1907, racetracks were more common in the
U.S. than Europe as Americans “demonstrated a clear preference for races
on the fast and compact Indianapolis-style ovals that were equipped with
comfortable grandstands at all points” (Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001, p. 35).
Several early races were held in horse racetracks due to their long straight-
aways and existing grandstands. In 1903, the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds
built a one-mile circular dirt track in Milwaukee, which was paved in
1954 and remains the oldest operating motor sports venue in the world
(Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001). Opened in 1909, the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway is the first paved motor sports venue in the U.S.
As American tracks tended towards speed-maximizing ovals sur-
rounded by grandstands, European tracks sought to reproduce the chal-
lenges of open road racing within controlled settings (Sturm, 2017).
Brooklands, despite its status as the first paved motor sports venue, had
limited utility for the development of racing due to its “more exclusive
code of participation” that was similar to elite British horse racing spaces
and events (Adair, 1998, p. 129). After hosting the first two British GP in
1926 and 1927, Brooklands was surpassed by the opening of Leicestershire’s
Donington Park raceway in 1933 (Adair, 1998). In 1922, the Milan
Automobile Club built Monza in an enclosed park, whose original circuit
covered 10 km over a 340-hectare area. Monza remains the oldest Grand
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 629

Prix circuit in use as it has hosted 86 of 91 Italian GP. Germany built

three major racing circuits: Berlin’s AVUS in 1922, Nürburgring in 1927,
and Hockenheimring in 1932 (Hamilton, 2017). AVUS consisted of two
9-km straights that were connected by banked hairpin corners, which
placed a premium on speed and power (Setright, 1973). Nürburgring’s
original 28-km course, once described by Scottish world champion Jackie
Stewart as “the Green Hell,” snakes through the Eifel Mountains and
includes more than 170 curves, a maximum grade of 17%, and nearly
1000 feet of elevation changes (Gold, 2020; Hamilton, 2017). Though
Hockenheimring lacks the history and reputation of Nürburgring, it has
hosted all but four German GP since 1976. Beyond Europe, developers
in São Paulo, Brazil, built the 7.96-km Interlagos3 circuit in 1940, which
has hosted 40 of the 50 Brazilian GP held since 1972.
For the most part, early Grand Prix circuits were designed to repro-
duce open road conditions to challenge drivers and their automobiles
with relatively little focus on spectators or other concerns. The Monaco
GP stands apart as a notable deviation to this pattern, as the race has been
synonymous with European glamour since its founding in 1929 (O'Kane,
2011). Located on the French Riviera, Monaco’s status as a tax haven and
its world-famous casino in Monte Carlo has given the principality a repu-
tation as a playground for the elite (O'kane, 2011). As described by
Sturm (2017), much of the race’s status comes from the way it symboli-
cally links the event with Monaco’s reputation as the GP provides patrons
with opportunities for ostentatious displays of wealth and status and the
pursuit of business opportunities.

The Development of Formula One Racetracks

As Grand Prix racing resumed after World War II, it became increasingly
organized and commodified through the creation of F1 in 1950. Lefebvre
and Roult (2011) identify four phases of expansion (1950–1961,
1962–1980, 1981–1998, 1999–the present) that follow particular eco-
nomic, urban, and spatial logics. During the first phase, F1 was primarily
held within European cities as they incorporated many pre-war Grand
630 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

Prix races at historic circuits such as Monza, Monaco, Bremgarten, Spa-­

Francorchamps, Nürburgring, and Reims, and the newly built Silverstone
in Great Britain. While counting towards the World Drivers’
Championship between 1950 and 1960, the Indianapolis 500 was gener-
ally ignored by F1 teams as primarily an American race (O'kane, 2011).
Comprising 20% of F1 events during this period, only 11 races were held
outside Europe: the Argentinean GP (seven times), the United States GP
(three), and the 1958 Moroccan GP (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011).
The Silverstone circuit typifies post–World War II race circuit develop-
ment. Built in 1948 in the midland county of Northamptonshire,
Silverstone had operated as a Royal Air Force bomber station during the
war (Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001). Decommissioned during peacetime, its
three runways, taxiways, and perimeter roads offered foundational ele-
ments for a racing circuit. Although Silverstone flourished as a race cir-
cuit and test track for Great Britain’s automobile manufacturers, it only
provided a limited experience to spectators (Sheard, 2001).
Silverstone’s focus on track quality reflected the priorities of F1 execu-
tives in determining race locations. According to Lefebvre and Roult
(2011, p. 334), “the only organisational necessities were the presence of a
well-designed circuit and an existing culture of the sport in the local pop-
ulation.” In their considerations, economic and media concerns were sec-
ondary to the quality of circuit, paddocks, and supporting race
infrastructure (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011). As a result, F1 race circuits
tended not to be highly commodified and were built away from down-
town areas.
European locations continued to be dominant during Lefebvre and
Roult’s (2011) second era, 1962–1980, by hosting 70% of F1 races. Yet,
F1 began seeking international expansion in this period with new events
in South America (Mexico and Brazil) and Commonwealth countries
(Canada and South Africa) as permanent circuits were built in each coun-
try (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011). F1 continued to demonstrate its emphasis
on track qualities over economic concerns and showed a clear preference
for race circuits as, not including Monaco, only 30 Grands Prix were run
on public roads during F1’s first 31 years (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011).
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 631

Transforming the F1 Spectacle (1981–1998)

By the mid-1970s, F1 racing was beginning a significant transformation.

This is partly due to the deaths of drivers and spectators that led to the
recognition that races needed to protect driver safety to the maximum
possible extent (Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001). Also, F1’s expanding global
popularity led to the increasing commodification of races and the annual
competition, especially as British entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone estab-
lished control over the competition through acquiring its international
television rights. As F1 moved into Lefebvre and Roult’s (2011) third
period of development between 1981 and 1998, changes resulted in the
renovation or closure of many older circuits, races being established in
new locations, and the construction of new circuits that emphasized rev-
enue production and the telegenic presentation of races to global media
audiences. As noted earlier in this chapter, these changes were part of
broader trends of commodification and spectacularization that were
reshaping the sports industry and urban spaces more generally.
By the 1970s, safety concerns forced the relocation of Grands Prix
away from Spa-Francorchamps and Nürburgring, which resulted in both
being significantly shortened and renovated during the early 1980s
(Hamilton, 2017). As classic circuits were renovated, several new
European venues opened that offered increased safety for drivers and new
revenues for F1 and race operators. Lefebvre and Roult (2011, p. 335)
described new circuits at Barcelona, Imola, and Budapest as the “first to
get important and touristic amenities in and around circuits,” specifically
identifying luxurious corporate suites, bars and restaurants, and other
commercial and festival activities. Such development was similar to the
trends Bale (2003) described within mid-twentieth-century stadiums and
the changes within American racing venues as superspeedways offering
higher levels of spectacle and services to spectators replaced older tracks
during the 1980s and 1990s (Pillsbury, 1995).
While Silverstone did not have the same safety concerns as Spa-­
Francorchamps and Nürburgring, economic considerations underpinned
its renovation during the early 1990s. Rob Sheard, now a Senior Principal
at global sports architectural firm Populous, was hired by track operators
632 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

in 1988 to produce a masterplan guiding its redevelopment. Sheard

(2001, p. 110) wrote, “it quickly became clear to the design team that the
Silverstone site was not planned efficiently, was underused, and could be
made considerably more efficient and therefore profitable.” Sheard’s
(2001) masterplan created five categories of price-differentiated spectator
areas, each of which would be supported with food and beverage conces-
sions, toilets, and areas for retail sales. To enhance the site’s year-round
profitability, the masterplan included a hotel, office space marketed to
companies related to the motor sports industry, improvements to a busi-
ness park, and potential to create an exhibition space or museum
(Sheard, 2001).
As races were moving into new and renovated permanent circuits in
Europe, F1 began aggressively working to expand its global reach, often
with spectacular street circuits. Towards gaining greater acceptance in the
U.S., five different American cities hosted street races before the United
States GP was run on a circuit constructed within the infield of the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway between 2000 and 2007 (Lefebvre &
Roult, 2011). After being held on a race circuit more than 100 km from
Toronto, the Canadian GP was moved to a street circuit in Montreal in
1978. While not downtown, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was built on
Notre-Dame Island, an important space within Montreal’s tourist econ-
omy which hosted EXPO 1967 and aquatic events during the 1976
Olympics and is the site of the Montreal Casino (Lefebvre & Roult,
2013). Towards becoming established in Australia, F1 held 11 races on a
street circuit in Adelaide before moving to Melbourne in 1996 (as
described below). Beyond these English-speaking nations, in 1973, F1
established the Brazilian GP in Sao Paulo’s historic Interlagos circuit,
though the race was held for most of the 1980s at the Jacarepagua circuit
in Rio de Janeiro. In Japan, F1 racing began at the Mitsubishi-owned Fuji
Speedway in 1976, but the Japanese GP has been largely run at the
Suzuka Circuit, which was originally built in 1962 as a Honda test track
(Guzzardi & Rizzo, 2001).
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 633

 lobalizing the F1 Spectacle

G
in the Twenty-first Century

Lefebvre and Roult (2011) fourth stage of F1 spatial development begins

in 1999 with the intensive globalization and mediatization of the sport.
In this era, F1 has moved away from several traditional European loca-
tions in favour of “dominant-emerging” cities in Asia and the Middle
East, such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Dubai, which could be more
interesting to viewers as novel events in exotic locations. As a result, “the
infrastructure itself (circuit and paddocks) is no longer sufficient to draw
the hosting of a F1 race; the urban surroundings have become a variable
just as important as the financial details of the race” (Lefebvre & Roult,
2011, p. 335).
While many cities have built arenas and stadiums in downtown areas
in hopes of realizing economic development benefits, the spatial require-
ments of motor sports have resulted in the construction of permanent
venues far from urban cores. Although their locations are not ideal in
terms of image promotion, F1 races are mega events that attract global
television audiences and tourists (Gezici & Er, 2014; Lowes, 2018; Silk
& Manley, 2012). This combination has incentivized national and local
governments of dominant-emerging cities to subsidize circuit construc-
tion of facilities that are fitted out with upscale amenities to satisfy F1
executives and sponsors and to pay large rights fees to F1 (Ishak, 2005;
Lefebvre & Roult, 2011). However, as F1 maintains sponsorship and
broadcast revenue and events last for less than one week per year, circuit
operators have difficulty being profitable (Gezici & Er, 2014).
Often the construction of new permanent circuits is central to efforts
to attract F1 to establish races in new countries (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011).
In Turkey, race organizers built a $130 million venue with a capacity of
125,000 in a forested area 45 kilometres outside of Istanbul. Supported
by the Turkish government—which sought to use the race within inter-
national marketing efforts—the Turkish GP was held between 2005 and
2011 (Gezici & Er, 2014). In Malaysia, the Sepang International Circuit
opened in 1999 with an ambitious architectural design to “correspond to
the marketing image of Malaysia as a modern developed state”
634 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

(Stürzebecher & Ulrich, 2002, p. 119). Located nearly 45 km outside of

Kuala Lumpur, Stürzebecher and Ulrich (2002, p. 116) describe the
Malaysian GP, held between 1999 and 2017, as “afford[ing] unbridled
image promotion for the South-East Asian state.” In Shanghai, organizers
of the Chinese GP built a $240 million facility that could hold 200,000
spectators along its 5.45-km circuit. While the race is estimated to lose
$30 million annually, civic leaders admitted that “economic impact is not
the only criterion” as global broadcasts render the Chinese GP as an
important opportunity for promoting Shanghai’s image (Liu & Gratton,
2010, p. 631). Even the U.S. has a new permanent F1 venue, as the
United States GP is now held in Austin, Texas’ $300 million Circuit of
the Americas, which is located outside the city centre in the southeastern
part of Travis County around 15km from the Austin International Airport
(Lefebvre & Roult, 2011).
However, the cost and size of venues, along with the structure of F1
competition, creates substantial challenges for race operators. Because F1
is an international competition in which no country hosts more than a
single race, venues can hope for only one event per year. Moreover, given
significant national and international competition for events, race orga-
nizers, governments, and tourism promoters offer F1 large rights pay-
ments and control over sponsorships (Gezici & Er, 2014). With race
organizers receiving revenue from just ticket and concession sales, new
motor sports venues open with diverse consumption amenities and oper-
ators must attempt to attract other motor sports and non-motor sports
events for circuits to be economically viable.
Faced by these economic challenges, motor sport venues are beginning
to engage in integrated forms of development similar to other sports ven-
ues. As described by Lefebvre and Roult (2011, p. 335), “in some cases,
these new circuits become true team (theme?) parks, mixing sportive,
cultural and touristic structures and activities into commercial, business
residential, or even university spaces.” This can be seen in Abu Dhabi’s
Yas Marina Circuit, which is part of a $5 billion development project
embedding the race circuit, capable of hosting 50,000 spectators, along-
side a 500-room luxury hotel, a marina for yachts, and areas for commer-
cial development, residential units, and public recreation (Lefebvre &
Roult, 2011).
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 635

Given the cost, scope, and limited use of motor sports venues, several
F1 races are held on temporary circuits that can combine public and pri-
vate spaces and roads for a limited duration. Despite their temporary
nature, street circuits often provide spectacles of consumption similar to
those staged in permanent circuits as cities host races within their most
attractive spaces; unlike the permanent circuits that are distant from
downtown areas, global audiences see waterfronts, public parks, govern-
ment areas, and iconic downtown buildings as dramatic backdrops for F1
cars speeding through city streets (Lowes, 2002; Lowes, 2018).
The Australian GP, which began in 1985, exemplifies this type of tem-
porary circuit. Originally held on a street circuit in downtown Adelaide,
the race moved in 1996 to Melbourne’s Albert Park, a 225-hectare public
park surrounded by inner-city residential neighbourhoods. Backdropped
by downtown just two kilometres away, the race circles Albert Park Lake;
runs alongside the Albert Park Golf Course; winds between football
ovals, cricket grounds, and bowling greens; and passes the Melbourne
Sports & Aquatic Centre (Lowes, 2004). The Singapore GP provides a
spectacular night-time view of the city’s landmarks, as Singapore’s leaders
installed 1500 pylons and aluminium trusses for lights above the course
to reproduce daylight conditions for drivers (Hamilton, 2017; Henderson
et al., 2010). Since 2016, the Azerbaijan GP has been run through the
streets of Baku, where the race passes along the Caspian Sea Waterfront
and near the city’s UNESCO World Heritage old town and Azerbaijan’s
Government House in Freedom Square (Gogishvili, 2018).
However, providing such attractive views of cities through F1 Grand
Prix races creates several problems. First, preparing city streets to host a
high-speed race requires substantial infrastructure investments that pro-
vide little public benefit beyond the event (Henderson et al., 2010;
Lowes, 2002). Second, events can be highly disruptive to urban life due
to the time it takes to complete infrastructure improvements and the
closing of public areas for weeks around events as cities set up and disas-
semble race-related structures (Lowes, 2004). Third, beyond losing access
to important public spaces, F1 often requires cities to give up control of
these spaces during events and allow F1 to profit from their use for spon-
sorship and corporate hospitality (Tranter & Lowes, 2005).
636 M. Friedman and B. Wallace

In terms of infrastructure, city streets need significant upgrades to

accommodate the speeds of F1 cars. In Singapore and Baku, roads were
resurfaced, widened, and had curbs removed for the safety of drivers and
to facilitate competition (Gogishvili, 2018; Henderson et al., 2010). Pit
roads and race-related buildings were built at public expense in Melbourne
and Singapore (Henderson et al., 2010; Lowes, 2004). Races also required
substantial temporary infrastructure of track barriers, 4-m fencing, entry
gates, buildings for food and beverages, toilets, and grandstands
(Henderson et al., 2010).
F1 events also are highly disruptive to urban life. The road improve-
ments required for the Grand Prix circuit impacted traffic in Baku for
more than one year (Gogishvili, 2018). In Melbourne, the Australian GP
can limit for up to four months the use of fields and other recreational
infrastructure in Albert Park, one of the city’s most popular spaces for
physical activity (Lowes, 2004). As F1 demands control over race spaces
during the week of the event, the public loses access to many urban spaces
(Tranter & Lowes, 2005). In Baku, the luxurious corporate hospitality of
F1’s “Paddock Club” occupied Freedom Square and limited the ability of
Azerbaijan’s residents to interact with public officials in Government
House. Additionally, two layers of concrete and steel fences covered with
advertising curtains designed to prevent unticketed viewing also pre-
vented Baku’s residents from visiting or even seeing much of the city’s
core and waterfront (Gogishvili, 2018). The public even loses control
over the messages seen in public spaces as advertising from F1 sponsors
privilege hypermasculine messages promoting fast cars, smoking, and
drinking (Tranter & Lowes, 2005).

Conclusion: Spaces of F1 Racing

While the spatial development of auto racing spaces is subject to local

contexts and conditions, each instance shares common themes. Following
the general enclosure and partitioning of auto racing beginning in the
early twentieth century, development of F1 racing demonstrates patterns
of surveillance and spectacularization identified by Bale (2003), as venues
themselves have become profitable commodities designed to promote
 Circuits of Capital: The Spatial Development of Formula One… 637

spectatorship, consumption, and destination images to global audiences.

What differentiates the spatial politics of auto racing from other sports is
the sheer size and scale of venues capable of meeting the physical require-
ments demanded by speeding cars and their broader scope following F1’s
intensifying globalization. Such a combination has spurred the evolution
of auto racing spaces into profitable global commodities that serve as
spectacularized platforms for the transmission of images and messages
about urban spaces to global audiences. Whether within dedicated motor
sports venues or temporary circuits located in public spaces, the spatial
development of F1 racing tracks exemplifies the ways in which auto rac-
ing—as well as sport in general—is influenced by the dictates of (hyper)
commodification and globalization.

Notes
1. There remains debate around the first closed circuit race. Dick (2013)
identified the first circuit race as being held in Pau, France in 1901, while
Guzzardi and Rizzo (2001) identify the Circuit des Ardennes in Belgium.
2. Specific names of races will be identified as “[national] GP” going forward.
3. The Interlagos circuit has been renamed the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace
but is commonly known by its original name.

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 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban
Transformation in China: State
Entrepreneurialism and the Re-Imaging
of Shanghai
Andrew Manley and Bryan C. Clift

The spectacle manifests itself as an enormous positivity, out of reach and

beyond dispute. All it says is: “Everything that appears is good; whatever is
good will appear.”
—Guy Debord (1995, p. 15)

Introduction
As monuments to both temporary and long-term urban transformation,
sporting mega-events and the staging of sporting spectacles are often
imbued with a promise of heightened global visibility for hosting cities.
Predominantly adopted by dominant groups—be they the political and/
or economic elites—sporting mega-events perpetuate a discourse pro-
moting the positive financial, social, environmental, and political legacy
that is said to transform host communities and their surrounding

A. Manley (*) • B. C. Clift

Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath, UK
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 641
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_25
642 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

landscape (see Andrews, 2017; Hall, 2006; Horne, 2007; Horne &
Manzenreiter, 2006; Roche, 2000). Thus, nations and cities—and indeed
their respective local governments—have come to portray sporting mega-­
events as vehicles for economic investment, infrastructure development,
cultural expression and exchange, the re-imaging of place and the re-­
positioning of local destinations on a transnational scale (Silk, 2002).
Historically, this strategy of place-making has encouraged nations and
cities to engage with the wider logics of late capitalism and neoliberal
economic rationalities (see Andrews, 2009; 2017, 2019; Newman &
Giardina, 2011). Often incorporating an assemblage of public institu-
tions and private corporate interests, aspirational cities navigate the oper-
ational mechanisms of the free market, deregulation policies, and private
enterprise in a bid to enhance economic conditions and attain—or per-
haps even revive—a competitive position in the world economy (Hall,
1992; Waitt, 2008).
Advocates of these pro-growth strategies endorse the symbolic, built,
and economic restructuring of cities to support such place-making with
the understanding that longer-term economic development and job cre-
ation will ensue (Hiller, 2000). However, critics have consistently pointed
toward the dubiousness of such boosterish urban change on several
grounds, including for example: challenges to assumed economic benefit;
fiscal requirements to do so and risk of significant public debt; tensions
between temporary and post-event infrastructure usage; misplaced sense
of public priorities; distance between urban transformation and the lived
realities, problems, and challenges of inhabitants; disruption of social
networks and cohesion; magnification of human rights issues; and envi-
ronmental and ecological concerns (see Broudehoux, 2007; Roche, 2000;
Shin, 2012). Still, despite lack of certainty around positive domestic and
international outcomes, mass-mediated sporting events continue to be
leveraged by pro-growth advocates as key facilitators in realizing the
global growth aspirations of many major city regions, operating as irre-
sistible drivers for economic expansion through accelerated urban transi-
tion. Thus, and with reference to Ong (2011a), sporting mega-events are
considered experimentations in the “art of being global”, “urban initia-
tives that compete for world recognition in the midst of inter-city rivalry
and globalized contingency” (p. 3).
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 643

Contemporary examples of this strategy of urban growth and place-­

making have become prevalent throughout Asia’s cities and Mega-Urban
Regions (MUR). Over the past 40 years, China has demonstrated the
desire to position the city as an engine for economic development
(Douglass, 2000). Since the introduction of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘open door
policy’ in 1978, China has experienced a rapid rate of economic growth
and pursued a strategy of urban development that has invested heavily in
infrastructure and urban renewal projects, re-making cities through an
intensified engagement with transnational flows of capital, information,
and expertise (Logan & Fainstein, 2008; Wu, 2002; Ren, 2013). The
hosting of past mega-events—such as the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic
Games, Shanghai 2010 World Expo and the Guangzhou 2010 Summer
Asian Games—has formed a prominent aspect of this strategy, function-
ing as tools to construct a positive self-image of place (see Silk & Manley,
2012; Zhang & Silk, 2006; Zhang & Zhao, 2009). While still contin-
gent upon the mutually reinforcing processes of globalization and urban-
ization—and firmly connected to globalizing circuits of capital—the
hosting of mega-events and China’s approach to territorially based entre-
preneurialism is, however, still largely governed by the state (Wu, 2003).
Deviating from neoliberal sensibilities common in Western nations—
where the state gives way to market-based forces—China’s entrepreneur-
ial activities associated with urban growth are predominantly organized
at the local state level, utilizing financial instruments to tap the market
and implement development projects through state-controlled land
resources under the principles of ‘state entrepreneurialism’ (see Wei,
2012; Wu, 2020). Similar to large-scale events such as the Summer or
Winter Olympic Games, Asian Games, and the World Expo, the Chinese
Formula One Grand Prix encapsulated this approach towards urban gov-
ernance and the re-imaging of place. Primarily planned and endorsed by
state agencies, state-owned enterprise, and local public actors—yet oper-
ating in conjunction with global enterprise and foreign direct invest-
ment—these global-local forces coalesced to endorse the ephemeral and
exclusive aspects of mega-events that enable cities to climb the global
urban hierarchy (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011; Lowes, 2004, 2018).
Strategies aligned to the re-imaging of ‘place’ that operate around prin-
ciples of urban governance in this form, however, unevenly impact an
644 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

urban populace. As several have observed, effects of these strategies

include: spatial segregation of inner-city neighbourhoods into exclusive
colonies for transnational elites; encouragement of enclave urbanism
with the rise of gated, privatized and packaged suburban districts; and
displacement of poorer urban populations—in some instances forcibly
and with little compensation—through the planned processes of gentri-
fication (see Gogishvili, 2018; Silk & Manley, 2012; Ren, 2013; Shin,
2009). Whilst sporting mega-events provide cities with the opportunity
to engage in the processes of place marketing, nation branding, and
extensive urban transformation, the economic and political prosperity
derived from and affiliated with urban sporting spectacles typically resides
with those invested in public–private partnerships (e.g. public officials,
agencies, state-owned and international private business leaders) (see
Armstrong et al., 2011; Clift & Andrews, 2012; Friedman & Andrews,
2010; Manley & Silk, 2014a; Silk, 2004). Within this chapter, we draw
upon the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai as an illustrative example of
strategic place-making, a political economic project allied to China’s
broader policy agenda of urban and regional development. Expressive of
China’s state entrepreneurialism, the place-making project seeks to recast
Shanghai’s image—and ultimately the nation’s identity—primarily for
the purpose of driving capital accumulation and promoting the symbolic
values attached to a consumptive, modern, and entrepreneurial urban
spirit under the guise of “being global”. In doing so, we critically demon-
strate how the delivery of this sporting project has led to the exclusion
and removal of specific urban inhabitants both in terms of spatial reloca-
tion and representational identity. A process of sport-based urban place-­
making that sought to propagate a preferred and carefully managed civic
identity, whilst concealing a past representation of place deemed undesir-
able in light of China’s contemporary approach towards urban modern-
ization and distinctive strategies of political-economic expansion.
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 645

 tate Entrepreneurialism and Sport-based

S
Urban Place-Making in China
Entrepreneurial cities are often portrayed as implementing strategies of
spatial reconfiguration on the basis of maintaining or enhancing eco-
nomic competitiveness, a process of urban transformation centred on the
logics of “capital space” (Harvey, 2001). In doing so, such strategies work
to accelerate the establishment of public–private partnerships in an
attempt to attract new direct financial investment, and focus upon the
political economy of place to promote local economic growth and the
upgrading of a city’s image (see Harvey, 1989; Hall & Hubbard, 1996;
Jessop & Sum, 2000; Wu & Zhang, 2007). Whilst the promoters of
entrepreneurial cities are commonly guided by neoliberal sensibilities—
endorsing market conditions that call for a retrenchment of state inter-
vention—a variability exists between differing geographic contexts
concerning the state’s relationship with encroaching free market forces
(see Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Ong, 2006, 2011a). China provides one
such example where the development of its cities is still largely guided by
centralized authoritarian control, mediating international economic rela-
tionships through state agencies and demonstrating an amalgamated
market-oriented economy; highlighting the complex interplay between
an inherited institutional infrastructure and the dominant logics of the
global marketplace (see He & Wu, 2009; Liew, 2005; Wu, 2008). Thus,
China’s contemporary approach towards urban development and place-­
making has become shaped by the historic legacy of its socialist centrally
planned economy and the resultant economic and political transition
towards a socialist market economy.
Under the leadership of Mao Zedong (1949–1976) and China’s social-
ist ideology, urban governance was dominated by a strong presence of the
state that exacted control over the ownership of production materials,
urban planning and the organization of a collective consumption (Wu,
2002). Emphasis upon an administrative hierarchy and central planning
policy restricted the size and growth of China’s cities, delineating urban
space as a site of active governance through which the state created, spon-
sored, and managed organizations (see Derleth & Koldyk, 2004; Heberer,
646 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

2009; Read, 2003). Since the introduction of Deng Xiaoping’s economic

reforms in 1978, policies were imposed to open trade, partially decentral-
ize decision-making capabilities away from the state, and engage with
market-led urban development initiatives (Ren, 2013; Yeh & Wu, 1999).
The relaxation of state control over the private sector through economic
reform shifted China towards a city bias and away from rural areas and
the agricultural sector, restoring private control over land use and estab-
lishing housing as a free-market commodity (Wu, 2006). With the intro-
duction of an ‘open door policy’ in the Post-Mao era, and a clear
engagement with wider global economic forces, prior practices of urban
planning were challenged by a growing number of actors and interests
infiltrating China’s land development process (Yeh & Wu, 1999). The
departure from a political ideology steeped in socialist ‘egalitarianism’,
and the introduction of foreign investment into China’s local economies,
encouraged the municipality to pursue a more growth-oriented planning
philosophy (Bian & Logan, 1996; Yeh & Wu, 1996). As such, the com-
bination of local, state, and private enterprise sought to promote rapid
urban redevelopment as a key component for spatialized capital accumu-
lation, the promotion of place, and the economic development of China’s
cities (He & Wu, 2005, 2009).
Despite China’s accelerated adoption of strategies for growth that
reflect the values and tactics of urban entrepreneurialism—such as city
branding, marketing, and promotion—the state still maintains a promi-
nent and proactive role in supporting such entrepreneurial activities. The
state deploys market instruments to generate economic growth and to
legitimize its power. In doing so, local government officials are presented
with the capability to cultivate economic development activities, allow-
ing the state to operate as an agent acting through the market under the
guise of principles commonly aligned with ‘state entrepreneurialism’
(Wu, 2017, 2020). Unlike the pro-growth strategies for urban develop-
ment evidenced by many Western nations—largely driven by private sec-
tor interests and a reorientation towards a consumer-driven focus (Lees
et al., 2016)—China’s cities draw upon the influence of local govern-
ments to instigate policy initiatives and orchestrate entrepreneurial activ-
ities that are invested with significant national economic development
objectives (Wu & Phelps, 2011). Proposed land development
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 647

projects—often associated with the tourism industry, the development of

high-tech zones or educational districts—are thus utilized by the local
state as a tool to expand urban administrative areas in a bid to generate
growth (Wei, 2012). Here, the interventionist role of the Chinese state—
at both the central and local level—in controlling the land development
process has been of key importance to this particular model of urban
governance, shaping China’s contemporary pathway of urban (re)devel-
opment, strategies of place promotion and the economic growth of
municipalities and cities (Wu, 2003; Wu & Phelps, 2011; Wei, 2012).
Evidence of China’s engagement with state entrepreneurialism has
become increasingly prominent in relation to sport-based urban place-­
making initiatives. Instigated by the introduction of fiscal revenue-­
sharing contracts, which provided revenue incentives for local authorities
to engage in land development activities during the early 1990s (see Ran
et al., 2010), China began to construct large-scale sports venues through-
out major cities (Xue & Mason, 2012). These measures have been strate-
gically implemented by local governments to acquire and trade land for
the purpose of realizing economic growth, mobilizing resources and capi-
tal for continued public investment, to evidence a strong adherence to
the central state’s new urbanization plan, and competitively position cit-
ies through planned projects of urban renewal that coalesce around the
advent of sporting mega-events (Xue & Mason, 2011, 2019). As such,
the staging of mega-events and the development of sport stadia fold into
China’s existing urbanization processes and the global growth aspirations
of cities, strategically deployed by local governments to construct and
subsequently promote new images of place amidst intercity competition
(Silk & Manley, 2012; Yu et al., 2018; Xue & Mason, 2019). Whilst
many of China’s cities have utilized the development of large-scale sport
venues to enhance their image on a global scale, the planning and spatial
reconfiguration of place is strongly embedded in local and territorial poli-
tics. The arrival of the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix in Shanghai
provides a salient example of this approach towards sport-based urban
place-making, and the relevance of state entrepreneurialism as a guiding
hand for urban governance. Although not a nation traditionally associ-
ated with motorsport, the Shanghai International Circuit, and stage for
the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix, formed a prominent part of a
648 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

much wider large-scale process of suburbanization and new town devel-

opment in the city’s surrounding metropolitan area. This strategic shift in
city construction away from central districts to the suburbs was largely
driven by the municipal government’s entrepreneurial ambitions to
remold Shanghai as a global city, an aspect of urban governance that drew
upon market imperatives introduced, developed, and deployed by the
local state apparatus (Wu, 2003, 2020).

 egenerating Metropolitan Shanghai, New

R
Town Development, and the Arrival
of the Chinese Grand Prix
Since the post-reform era, China has adopted strategies of urban and
sporting reform as part and parcel of its national efforts towards interna-
tional political and economic competition. Sport’s role and presence in
the nation’s urban agenda has been deployed strategically to leverage
urban development projects with a focus on economic, political, social,
and cultural enhancement at local, national, and international levels
(Broudehoux, 2007; Cook, 2007). The arrival of the Chinese Grand Prix
to Shanghai was no different in this regard.
In 2001, under the Shanghai municipal government’s “One-City-­
Nine-Towns” (一城九镇) urban policy plan, a new development of sub-
urban satellite-town construction was initiated as an entrepreneurial
endeavour to attract residents away from the city centre, stimulate the
local economy, and continue to elevate Shanghai’s global profile (Shen &
Wu, 2012). This new decree would aim to promote urbanization through
the development of nine experimental towns built as authentic Western
townscapes in the city’s suburbs (Wang et al., 2010). As part of this devel-
opment, the Shanghai International Automobile City (SIAC: 上海国际
汽车城)—and subsequent construction of the Shanghai International
Circuit—reflected this aggressive adoption of place-promotion strategies
and land development projects to stimulate local economic growth.
Situated in Shanghai’s Jiading District—approximately 30 kilometers
northwest of the city centre—the SIAC was designated as one project of
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 649

the “One-City-Nine-Towns” plan instigated by the municipal govern-

ment (Shen & Wu, 2012). Following this approach to urban planning,
the Jiading District government merged two townships—Anting and
Fangtai—under the administration of the SIAC and redeveloped the area
based upon the existing automobile manufacturing industry (Chen et al.,
2009). Incorporating the Shanghai Volkswagen Industrial Park—devel-
oped to encompass manufacturing plants for the production of automo-
bile parts and accessories—the SIAC became host to educational
institutions (Tongji College of Automotive Engineering), trade and exhi-
bition centres, a new 5.4 square kilometer real estate development enti-
tled ‘Anting New Town’ (安亭新镇) as well as the Shanghai Formula
One International Circuit (Chen et al., 2009; Li & Wu, 2012).
In the promotion of a modern identity, the SIAC’s Anting New Town
was designed by the German architectural firm Albert Speer & Partner,
with the first phase of this major residential development completed by
2004 and in conjunction with the opening of the Shanghai International
Grand Prix Circuit. Seemingly disconnected from China’s traditional cul-
tures, Anting New Town is a modern housing development incorporat-
ing 5334 residential units for 50,000 residents that mimic the Bauhaus
architecture and landscape of Weimar, Germany (Chen et al., 2009;
Gutzmer, 2011). Through adopting this particular trend of ‘duplitecutre’
(see Bosker, 2013), Anting New Town’s Euro-style Weimar Villas were
marketed towards emerging consumers seeking Western comfort and
style, architectural replicas that would traditionally appeal to Shanghai’s
wealthy households looking to invest in property, China’s burgeoning
middle class and middle-to-senior-level employees at the Shanghai
Volkswagen joint venture company based within Jiading District (Wang
et al., 2010). Thus, with the arrival of the Chinese Grand Prix, the rede-
velopment of Jiading District sought to further position Shanghai as a
modernized socialist cosmopolitan city, a project of urban renewal that
worked to accelerate the urbanization of suburban and rural communi-
ties, incite consumption and competitiveness across the city, promote
economic growth and continue to raise Shanghai’s global image (Yu et al.,
2018; Xue & Mason, 2019). Alongside large-scale real estate develop-
ment, Jiading District accelerated the improvement of green space and
transportation infrastructure—constructing metro railways for a
650 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

connection to Shanghai’s city centre—in a bid to attract sports enthusi-

asts and an increased number of tourists to better serve the Formula One
Chinese Grand Prix (Xue & Mason, 2011).
As part of a mechanism for initiating a wider planned project of sub-
urbanization, the development of Anting New Town and the Shanghai
International Circuit followed specific features of urban design, planning
processes, and development outcomes that came to reaffirm China’s
approach towards state entrepreneurialism. Heavily guided by the central
government and its influence over Shanghai as a province-level munici-
pality, Jiading’s urban redevelopment incorporated local government
stakeholders—primarily the Jiading District Government; state-owned
corporations, such as the Shanghai Juss Event Management Co., Ltd;
foreign direct investment; and foreign design firms invested in urban
renewal (Xue & Mason, 2012). The Jiading District Government were
responsible for facilitating the development projects surrounding the FI
circuit, whereas the State-owned Shanghai Juss Event Management Co.,
Ltd was created to operate, manage, and finance the F1 Chinese Grand
Prix (Xue & Mason, 2012). Foreign direct investment was generated
through business groups seeking official sponsorship contracts and an
opportunity to enter the Chinese market. This amalgamation of actors
and interests illustrated the influence of China’s central government, and
the relative power of both the municipal and district government, in
guiding projects of place-making that are contingent upon national inter-
ests and partnerships that operate with/through the influence of global
capital. Thus, new processes of cooperation between elite Party cadres
and local, or indeed global, entrepreneurs created avenues to acquire new
sources of capital for investment in infrastructure and property develop-
ment projects, replacing the traditional state-directed central planning
and financed forms of China’s urban development (Walcott &
Pannell, 2006).
Although Jiading District reported to experience growth that corre-
sponded with the arrival of the Formula One Grand Prix—increasing the
district’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by more than 20% and annual
revenues by 36% (see Xue & Mason, 2011)—such transformation is not
without concern. Reliant on the disparate connections that held together
this project of spatial reconfiguration, the outcomes of such
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 651

regeneration—as with many urban redevelopment projects based around

sporting mega-events (see Silk, 2002, 2011; Silk & Manley, 2012, 2017;
Shin, 2009, 2012; Yu et al., 2018)—altered the original landscape and
fractured the social balance and dimensions of the region (Wang et al.,
2010). The transformation of rural land into an internationally oriented
race track and the arrival of Anting New Town symbolized the Chinese
state’s broader shift from agrarian to post-industrial uses of urban space,
serving as a platform for racing’s capacity to exploit diverse and varied
forms of entrepreneurial activity. In doing so, the voices of the (former)
local residents were seemingly unheard or disregarded as this project
came to redefine the suburban population to align with newly engineered
and pre-planned spaces of consumption (Chen et al., 2009). As such, the
motives for sport-based urban place-making become increasingly clear
amidst the context of inter-locality competition and a political agenda
that is seeking to provide districts, regions and indeed cities with new
avenues for capital accumulation. Therefore, it is imperative to pay heed
to the social impacts of urban mega-events as they become an increas-
ingly important strategy for city branding and the re-imaging of place,
addressing the particular consequences for citizenry as they speak to
notions of belonging, inequality and social polarization amidst the wider
framework of China’s urban policy (Shin & Li, 2013).

Suburbanization and the Socio-spatial

Consequences of the Chinese Grand Prix
The regenerative investment surrounding Shanghai’s Chinese Grand Prix
presented an opportunity to transform the city’s Jiading District by
engaging in a large-scale project of urban reconfiguration that empow-
ered local states in the pursuit of growth. Yet, this process of (trans)
national urban redevelopment calls into question the socio-spatial conse-
quences of such grand projects of renewal and regeneration (see Zhang &
Silk, 2006).
Since securing a contract with the Formula One Constructors’
Association (FOCA) in 2002 that permitted Shanghai to officially host
652 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

the Chinese Grand Prix, both land prices and housing prices within
Jiading District increased at an exponential rate (Wang & Wang, 2011).
Whilst real estate developments surrounding the Shanghai International
Circuit were marketed on the principles of “new urbanism” in China—
espousing qualities of diversity, community, accessibility, and improved
living conditions—the rise of new town construction and residential
housing was primarily predicated on the speculative aspirations of devel-
opers, the local government’s desire to generate city competitiveness and
the ambition of transnational design companies to enter into the Chinese
market (Shen & Wu, 2012). Anting New Town’s embodiment of urban
duplitecutre worked towards exacerbating social segregation in the form
of exclusive gated communities, and generated further inequity between
spatial users of this new development and the surrounding residents
(Wang et al., 2010). Excluding the urban poor from the decision-making
processes of planning and construction, new town facilities and conve-
niences, the real estate developments bordering Shanghai’s Grand Prix
Circuit displaced former residents to the surrounding area of poorer loca-
tions within the new towns (Wang et al., 2010). This (re)shaping of
Shanghai’s socio-spatial structure pursued a more segregated and unequal
pattern of urban development, one that benefitted the local government
from the sale of state-owned land and real estate developers invested in
promoting image-building projects. Consequently, growing social
inequality has become synonymous with the bifurcation of China’s urban
landscapes, marginalizing lower-income families that are constrained to a
life on the urban periphery and denied access to the modern amenities,
lifestyle preferences and aspirations that are associated with new subur-
ban growth (Shen & Wu, 2013).
In line with market-led approaches to urban development, the con-
struction of high-end gated communities built to replicate Western sub-
urbia raise questions that are not only aligned to the wider logics of
transnational gentrification and the reproduction of class-based identi-
ties, but also speak to the loss of place attachment, sense of community
and way of life associated with collectivist cultural traditions and prac-
tices (see Breitung, 2012; King & Kusno, 2000; Manley & Silk, 2019).
While sport-based urban place-making initiatives throughout Asia have
come to reflect the complex interdependencies of the global and the local
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 653

(see Cho et al., 2012; Giulianotti & Robertson, 2012; Silk & Manley,
2012; Waldman et al., 2017; Yu et al., 2018), projects of urban transfor-
mation established in the pursuit of capital have, as with Ong (2011b,
p. 206), subjected “‘local’ spaces to the overarching logic of a capitalist
system with translocal or placeless determinations”. As is often the case
throughout urban China—and in many cities subject to rapid transfor-
mation—the commodification of urban developments has become
exploited by developers and place marketers seeking to (re)create a par-
ticular sense of place, or spatial identity, that is representative of the
exclusivist housing aspirations of the upper- and middle-classes (Pow &
Kong, 2007). The suburban regeneration surrounding Shanghai’s
International Circuit within Jiading District was reflective of China’s
trend towards Western urban mimicry (see Bosker, 2013; Manley & Silk,
2014b), and the construction of a social environment characterized by
social homogeneity (Pow & Kong, 2007). As such, these vast urban proj-
ects foster a particular sense of place that becomes devoid of ties to the
historic characteristics of locality, generic spaces or nonplaces that are
defined by their homogeneity and imposition—as opposed to inclusion
or integration—on the urban landscape (see Ritzer, 2007).
Shanghai’s suburban dynamics surrounding the arrival of the Chinese
Grand Prix, couched within the wider logics of a rapidly globalizing
megacity, faced additional challenges from the further development of
new towns in the surrounding area. With multiple real estate and urban
development projects being undertaken within the locale, Anting New
Town and the surrounding small-town urban planning had lost its terri-
torial and formal cohesion (Henriot, 2017; Li & Wu, 2012). As original
residents were displaced to surrounding areas, and white-collar workers
preferring to commute from Shanghai proper, the residential develop-
ment has become somewhat of a ghost town with few commercial, hotel,
recreation, and public amenities constructed (see Gutzmer, 2011; Lang,
2017; Wang et al., 2010). Despite the proposed plan of serving Anting
New Town’s population locally, the housing developments encompassing
Shanghai’s International Circuit have been viewed as a failure in provid-
ing commercial, medical, and educational facilities that meet the needs of
residents (Wang et al., 2010). With the majority of property purchased
for investment and subsequently remaining empty (Gutzmer, 2011), this
654 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

process of urban redevelopment emulated a pattern of marginalization,

polarization, and detached social networks that often arises as a by-­
product of hosting sporting mega-events, acting as a catalyst to exacer-
bate inequalities endemic among poorer urban inhabitants (Shin, 2009;
Shin & Li, 2013).
The repetition of dispossessing and displacing economically disadvan-
taged urban inhabitants in the name of sporting mega-events has become
all too common (Gold & Gold, 2008; Lenskyj, 2020). Over the course
of the twentieth century, mega-events have emerged as the new urban
spectacle that, on the one hand, promises positive benefits, revenue,
infrastructure legacies, and global recognition. Yet, on the other hand,
propagates the demolition of local housing, the forced displacement of
people, and repressive enforcement tactics. Such features of sport-based
urban place-making have thus come to create disparate consequences for
communities, seemingly effacing the traditions, histories, and heritage of
populations tied to former representations of place and a shared sense of
civic identity (Silk & Manley, 2012).

Conclusion
The hosting of sport mega-events across cities and many MURs have
sought to secure their legitimacy through the premise of positive legacy
outcomes manufactured upon ideological constructs (Gibbons & Wolff,
2012). Firmly embedded within the machinations of the global market
and in the pursuit of transnational capitalism, Formula One motorsport
is no exception. The spectacle of the event itself offers an influential tool
to cultivate an image of political value, a symbolism for contemporary
urban cosmopolitanism that supports a nation-building agenda by rein-
forcing images of a powerful, modern, and progressive state (Gogishvili,
2018; Lowes, 2018). Additionally, host cities profess to provide socio-­
economic benefits to local communities through investment in infra-
structure and projects of urban renewal. With respect to the Shanghai
Chinese Grand Prix, the event operated effectively as an instrument for
place marketing, working to positively project the image of a modern,
open, and metropolitan city towards live spectators (Liu & Gratton,
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 655

2010). In forging connotations of progress, vitality, and a sophisticated

self-image through the lens of a high-tech global media event (see Sturm,
2014), the perception and awareness of Shanghai could be enhanced to
elevate the affective qualities—such as local and national pride—associ-
ated with these spectacular spaces of cultural consumption (Huang et al.,
2014; Liu & Gratton, 2010).
Although Shanghai’s Grand Prix has been regarded as a key identity
card for positioning the city on a global scale (Liu & Gratton, 2010), the
benefits associated with hosting a Formula One Grand Prix are often
never fully realized—contributing towards the mythification of legacy
attached to the staging of sport mega-events (Gibbons & Wolff, 2012)—
and, in certain instances, have come to impact negatively upon local resi-
dents (see Gezici & Er, 2014; Lefebvre & Roult, 2011; Lowes, 2004,
2018). As projects that emanate from political decision-making and
rarely through public discourse, local assets and resources conducive to
the tourist gaze are exploited in a bid to showcase a preferred image of a
city, one that is often detached from the local culture and marketed with
the intent of generating economic growth to benefit local state officials,
media entrepreneurs, real estate developers and the tourism economy.
The suburban development of Anting New Town that neighbours the
Shanghai Formula One International Circuit is indicative of this strategic
approach towards place marketing, and the manipulation of place itself,
to attract investment and boost economic growth (Shen & Wu, 2012).
Such urban ‘duplitecture’ (Bosker, 2013) offers an image that coalesces
around, and seeks to reinforce, the consumptive lifestyle, urban identity,
and local cosmopolitanism attached to the performative aspects of
Formula One motorsport (Lowes, 2018). However, this process of image
building and place marketing holds real connotations for poorer urban
populations. Low-paid domestic workers who serve these new exclusive
communities (e.g. gardeners, maids, and security guards) are relocated to
rural areas, exemplifying the growing trend of social and spatial polariza-
tion between the rich and poor as new circuits of capital come to revalo-
rize suburban districts and the urban fringe (Chen et al., 2009). Through
this course of displacement and development, a new urban narrative is
created that functions to serve a particular and selected global city
656 A. Manley and B. C. Clift

imagery, an image of place that acts to suppress, and indeed efface, local
identities attached to cultures and communities subjected to relocation.
By drawing upon the Shanghai Chinese Grand Prix as an example of
urban place-making, we sought to demonstrate the conflicts that arise
from an enthusiasm to renew and (re)position the city based on state
entrepreneurial tactics, reflecting the local and territorial politics that
govern China’s urban development in the post-reform era (Li & Wu,
2012). The large-scale project of suburbanization surrounding Shanghai’s
International Circuit is representative of China’s contemporary approach
towards urban policy and development, emphasizing a model of state
entrepreneurialism that operates through the market via an assemblage of
quasi-government agencies (e.g. urban development and investment cor-
porations), state-owned enterprises and under the control of the local
state (Wei, 2012; Wu, 2020). While global financial instruments, capital
flow, and revenue are key considerations for such large-scale land devel-
opment projects, this process of suburbanization is not guided by con-
sumer choice nor overwhelmed by a market logic, but planned, driven,
and primarily controlled by state-owned enterprise (Wu, 2017). In this
instance, state entrepreneurialism within urban China is ‘deeply political’
(Wu, 2020), and calls for a contextual understanding of the particular
assemblages that govern urban development and the manner through
which contemporary China is seeking to (re)make its cities and select
parcels of transnational space (King & Kusno, 2000).
To conclude, the potential negative impacts of a mega-event can be
widespread, influencing host communities in a multitude of ways that
contribute towards social inequality, damage to the environment, eco-
nomic burden, and issues of surveillance and securitization (Coaffee &
Wood, 2006; Gezici & Er, 2014; Geeraert & Gauthier, 2018; Klauser,
2012; Manley & Silk, 2014a). As such, preparation to assuage these neg-
ative realities may indeed provide an opportunity to maximize the intan-
gible benefits of mega-events—often associated with national pride,
knowledge development, and governance reform (see Huang et al.,
2014)—as they become integral components of the legacy planning for
host cities. In the specific context of China, the alleviation of detrimental
outcomes arising from the hosting of mega-events and the reconfigura-
tion of urban space increasingly becomes a matter for the Chinese state
 Formula 1 as a Vehicle for Urban Transformation in China… 657

apparatus. State-owned enterprise is considered the ‘primary builder’—

both in terms of scale and defining role—in the development and com-
modification of urban space under globalization (Shen & Wu, 2012).
Thus, whether such future land development projects that seek to build
on the exposure of sporting mega-events will contribute towards any
form of spatial democratization is perhaps reliant upon a dramatic shift
in political agenda, and a desire to recognize the exclusionary model of
spatial, social, and economic stratification that is so often found within
China’s contemporary strategies for urban place-making, development,
and expansion.

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 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula
1 Grand Prix in Baku, Azerbaijan
David Gogishvili

Introduction
Mega-events, as agents of temporary and long-term urban transforma-
tion and policy change, are increasingly globalizing and diversifying.
Their staging is often justified by the increased global visibility for event
host cities and countries (Hall, 2006), together with promises of influxes
of tourists and foreign capital (Gruneau & Horne, 2015; Sánchez &
Broudehoux, 2013). Whether these promises are realized or not, it is
becoming a common practice for event organizers to use public funds
and public areas (parks, squares or street networks) as ‘event infrastruc-
ture’ to hold spectacular but strictly regulated and commercially ticketed,
frequently private, events (Smith, 2015; Smith & McGillivray, 2020).
Though mega-events are temporary happenings, they often provide an
example for permanent practices of spatial regulation and private-sector
appropriation of daily civilian life, producing long-term impacts on their

D. Gogishvili (*)
Department of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne,
Lausanne, Switzerland

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 665
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_26
666 D. Gogishvili

host communities and built environment (Hall, 2006; Smith, 2015).

These lasting actions are often facilitated by temporary regulations or
executive decisions that permit practices typically forbidden in the host
cities, but accepted on account of their alleged short-term nature
(Gogishvili, 2021; Gray & Porter, 2015) The Formula One World Drivers
Championship, or just Formula 1, attended essentially by the global
wealthy elite (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011) has become a significant part of
this mega-event business, and their urban impacts such as public space
commodification gentrification, securitization have also been increasing
over the last decades. Still, there is little academic research examining the
evolving relationship between the F1 and its host cities (on F1 and host
cities see Gezici & Er, 2014; Lefebvre & Roult, 2011; Roult et al., 2020;
Tranter & Lowes, 2005, 2009).
Baku, the biggest city in the Caucasus and the capital of the resource-­
rich Azerbaijan, is also one of the newest additions to the Formula 1
Championship hosts where the impact of event is particularly interesting
to trace due to race being hosted right on the central public street net-
work. After regaining its independence from the USSR in 1991,
Azerbaijan’s capital went through a dramatic process of urban changes
supported primarily by state revenues derived from hydrocarbon resource
export (Marriott & Minio-Paluello, 2012; Valiyev, 2013). This major
economic growth of Azerbaijan, entirely dependent on the extractive
industries, also strengthened the existing authoritarian regime. The polit-
ical and economic elite, spearheaded by the authoritarian political regime
of the President Ilham Aliyev, put effort into attracting global attention
to Azerbaijan, both as a tourist destination and as a regional economic
centre (Valiyev, 2014). Major international events, such as the 2012
Eurovision Song Contest or the 2015 European Games, in Baku were
considered as important state-funded occasions for putting the country
on the map (Gogishvili & Harris-Brandts, 2022). In 2016, Baku hosted
its first F1 race, later known as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, on its newly
created Baku City Circuit (henceforth, BCC). The city even inaugurated
a special statue dedicated to the Formula 1 and dressed central iconic
buildings in event colours and banners creating a spectacular urban envi-
ronment (Gogishvili, 2018) (Fig. 1).
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 667

Fig. 1 BCC map laid on a public street network of Baku. (Source: BCC, Compiled
by the author in 2016)

Through on-site observations, media analysis, and in-depth interviews

in Baku, this chapter explores the role mega-events such as the F1 race
play in transforming cities and examines its temporary legacies. The main
sources for this chapter are the field observations conducted in Baku
before, during and after the event (June 13–21 and October–December
2016). News from local and international media and reports from the
BCC and the Formula One Group (FOG) published between 2015 and
2020 were used to construct the event profile. Further information was
gathered from ten semi-structured interviews with representatives of the
BCC, journalists, academics and prominent activists all having knowl-
edge or experience with large international events, or with the process of
urban development in Baku.
Using the work of Giorgio Agamben on the state of exception as a
theoretical framework, this chapter examines the impact of event-related
temporary exceptional practices and restrictions upon the use of public
space in Baku during the 2016 Formula 1 race, and also in the later edi-
tions of the race. Agamben’s state of exception concept theorizes the
668 D. Gogishvili

abandonment of the rule of law by the sovereign during a supposed crisis

in the name of the greater public good. In Baku, a similar development
can be traced, as exceptional practices are applied to stage the costly pri-
vate event in public space within a limited time frame justified by the
promise of overarching global promotion and socio-economic progress.
The chapter begins with the outline of the theoretical framework
underpinning this work by presenting the concept of (state of ) exception
and its uses in urban environment and mega-events. An introduction to
the mega-event phenomenon and the developing relationship between
the F1 and its host cities follows. This leads to a discussion of the case of
Baku that conceptualizes the Baku City Circuit as a (wealthy) temporary
space of exception relying on state support financially, legally and politi-
cally while excluding the needs of Baku residents.

Mega-Events as Private Spaces of Exception

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in his seminal work State of
Exception (Agamben, 2005), Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben,
explores the suspension of the rule of law by the sovereign to preserve
public good which is realized by the provisional abolition of the distinc-
tion between legislative, executive and judicial powers fundamentally
altering the structure and meaning of legal and political form. Agamben
discussed the state of exception that occurs via the suspension of the con-
stitution and the extension of military authority into the public realm.
However, the same concept can also be applied to the different gover-
nance level when rules and regulations are sidelined to streamline par-
ticular activities or projects. Urban life is no stranger to the practices of
exception “both within and beyond the confines of existing legal frame-
works” (Baptista, 2013, p. 40). Scholars have demonstrated the use of
exceptional practices on the urban level. For example: the controversial
practices of privatization in Hong Kong in the aftermath of the Asian
financial crisis of 1997 (Chu, 2010); urban policies in Rotterdam based
upon securitization and gentrification of deprived areas (Schinkel & van
den Berg, 2011); the urban regeneration project, The Polis Programme,
in Portugal (Baptista, 2013); the Greenwich Park transformation for the
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 669

London 2012 Olympics (Smith, 2012); and others. Advancing the con-
cept, anthropologist Aihwa Ong (2006) claims that the creation of a par-
ticular space of exception can be characterized as simultaneously positive
and negative: Exceptions can be used both for “negative” exclusion but
also “positive” application to create a new entity or an opportunity.
However, an indicating Ong’s (2006) dualistic understanding of spaces of
exception, this positive inclusion disregards the non-exceptional popula-
tions and practices associated with the same space.
This argument can be extended to the F1 race in Baku, or many other
mega or major events, realized through the formation of spaces of excep-
tion in the city. Müller (2015b) describes mega-events as: ambulatory
occasions of a fixed duration that attract a large number of visitors, have
largely mediated reach, come with large costs and have large impacts on
the built environment and the population (p. 3). The preparation for
mega-events within a strict time frame and rules often creates the neces-
sity to modify the existing legal structure of the host. This means changes
in laws and regulations covering urban planning, taxation, immigration,
environmental protection, use of public infrastructure (Sánchez &
Broudehoux, 2013). This is possible through the unofficial imposition of
a state of exception that is justified by the political class and the events-­
rights holders by the temporary character of the event as well its alleged
longer-term positive impacts. However, often such actions leave behind a
legacy of permanent changes to the host city built environment or legal
framework (Smith, 2014, p. 250). These changes require massive use of
public funds and are rarely based on public consensus.
Increasingly, governments use mega-events to impose a temporary
state of exception on host cities during the event period. Moreover, cities
are often developed through exceptional and often exclusionary pre-event
legal actions. Marrero-Guillamón (2012), outlines that the colossal trans-
formation of the legal and spatial landscape brought by mega-events
relies on the unofficial declaration of a state of exception—the suspension
of the ordinary legal order. Brazilian scholar Carlos Vainer, studying the
2016 Summer Olympic preparations in Rio de Janiero argued that the
mega-events are realized in its intense and full form is the city of excep-
tion where “everything goes beyond the formal institutional mecha-
nisms. … The city of mega-events is the city of ad hoc decisions,
670 D. Gogishvili

exemptions, special permits” (Vainer, 2016, p. 99). Mega-events act as an

instrument for imposing the state of exception. Not only are they used to
create a state of exception, but they are also realized through exceptional,
often exclusionary, practices.
Up to now, only limited number of studies have discussed the excep-
tional practices introduced for hosting Formula 1 events in various cities.
Lowes (2004) examined how in Australia the Victoria State Government
relocated the race from Adelaide to Melbourne’s Albert Park as the orga-
nizers were attracted by the proposed race location. Staging the event in
a vast green space, protected by environmental and planning laws, in
downtown Melbourne became the exclusive condition for the relocation.
Thus, the state government used its executive authority to impose a state
of exception, and to evade potential legal limits, and converted a signifi-
cant portion of the public park into a private playground for the spec-
tacular event. The decision was officially justified by the tourism benefits
and potential inward investments. An analogous development with a dif-
ferent outcome took place with the Turkish Grand Prix held since 2005,
and marketed as a prestige project for Istanbul. Here, the location was an
issue again. However, the proposed race site was situated close to a pro-
tected forest within the Istanbul Master Plan and placed within the
boundaries of a drinking water basin where construction was prohibited.
To create territories of the exceptional rule, the central government of
Turkey intervened and modified the implementation plan of the basin
(Eryilmaz & Cengiz, 2015, p. 245). The authorities mobilized vast public
funds for this project. Yet, the race did not succeed in attracting the
desired visitor attention. Finally, due to disagreement over the franchising
costs, in 2011 the race was removed from the Formula 1 calendar. The
Turkish Grand Prix was reintroduced in 2020 after several host cities
could not host the event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Formula 1 as Urban Mega-Event

Similar to many other mega-events, Formula 1 grew from a small-scale
competition limited to Western Europe and the United States to a global
phenomenon hosted by large cities or metropolises all over the world.
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 671

Thus, it has transformed into a mega-event, increasing globally, and start-

ing to affect the urban built environment at the significant scale. An
urban impact of the F1 race differs according to how and where it is
staged. Most of the races are held on specially constructed permanent
circuits that require a large and static facility. Thus, the host cities do not
have to dismantle their structures after the race. Still, to add extra thrill
and sell the event destination, some races are held on street circuits laid
out on public roads, and are marketed by FOG as more exciting for the
locals as “it is right in the heart of the city” (Hamilton, 2016). In 2021,
Monaco, Singapore, Baku and Jeddah host F1 on their public street net-
work. Despite its temporality, F1 races on street circuits requires signifi-
cant disruptions to public life in the area the event is hosted and its
adjacency to prepare the event infrastructure, host the event, and then to
dismantle it. This extra thrill and entertainment that is highly valued by
the FOG imposes additional problems on the host cities and their
residents.
The transformation of F1, which initially was a sport with low media
and public interest, is linked to its commercialization, mediatization and
to the concerted diffusion of sports globally (Lefebvre & Roult, 2011;
Sturm, 2014). Initially, the technical quality of circuits was prioritized
over the urban scenery of event hosts. However, the influence of the
British business magnate, Bernard Ecclestone, as the head of FOG,
changed the paradigm and amplified the commercial value of F1.
Everything changed in 1974 with the precedent-setting introduction of
sponsorship. Today, the event is heavily branded according to guidelines
set by FOG. Private companies and governments invest heavily to get an
association with this motorsport in general, or to a racing team more par-
ticularly. FOG began capturing broadcasting rights since the 1970s, which
reached almost USD 770 million in the general profit of USD 2.02 bil-
lion earned in 2019 (Dixon, 2020). Sponsorship deals and franchising
also make a significant contribution (Sylt, 2015). Yet, the direct gains for
host city from the event are limited to the income from ticket sales accom-
panied with spending from the visitors on hotels, food, etc. However, this
often might often come at the expense of reduced number of general visi-
tors during the event as it is commonly known to happen during mega-
events (REF-mega-event encyclopaedia on economic impacts).
672 D. Gogishvili

The extreme mediatization of F1—as well as growing competition to

host the race among cities—has increased the role of the urban built
environment or scenery in attracting the event to the new host cities.
Since the 2000s, Ecclestone led a worldwide expansion effort for F1 as
European events were replaced on the calendar with cities including Abu
Dhabi, Bahrain, Istanbul, Jeddah, Kuala Lumpur (removed in 2017) or
Shanghai, Sochi. Emerging countries, often lacking democratic rule and
public oversight, were prepared to invest millions in hosting the race. As
of 2021, the F1 is still increasing globally with the newest editions in
Baku, Azerbaijan (since 2016), Bahrain, Bahrain (since 2004), Doha,
Qatar (since 2022), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (since 2021), Singapore,
Singapore (since 2008) and Sochi, Russia (since 2014). The F1 champi-
onship races have been also hosted in Shanghai, China from 2004 to
2019 and Greater Noida, India from 2011 to 2013.

Baku’s Eventful Turn

Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is home to more than 2.2 million people.
This is also where almost 80% of the nation’s GDP is generated, which
mostly relies on hydrocarbon resources export (Valiyev, 2014). Regaining
independence in 1991, the country’s transition to a market economy
brought dramatic changes to Baku’s built environment. Oil and gas rev-
enues, and population increase due to in-migration, have triggered a con-
struction boom in Baku frequently realized by evading existing planning
regulations (Buchanan, 2012, p. 26; Valiyev, 2016, p. 133). The major
economic growth of Azerbaijan also strengthened the existing authoritar-
ian regime, together with the political and economic elite in close ties to
the regime, which controlled the oil profits (Hughes & Marriott, 2015).
Azerbaijan is a semi-presidential republic, with the president of
Azerbaijan as the head of state, and the prime minister of Azerbaijan as
head of government. Baku is governed by a mayor and twelve district
heads appointed and accountable to the president of Azerbaijan (Valiyev,
2013). Thus, the decision-making power is predominantly in the hands
of the latter. Judiciary also depends heavily upon the executive and fails
to provide recourse against violations of human rights (Buchanan, 2012).
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 673

Since independence, Azerbaijani political regime (which has been largely

in the hands of the Aliyev family and New Azerbaijan Party from 1993)
has continually been criticized for its poor human rights record,
authoritarian-­style government, high levels of corruption and restricted
media (Freedom House, 2020; Transparency International, 2019). New
Azerbaijan Party is in power on all political levels starting from the local
to the national. This confluence of political factors greatly impacts the
urban development of Baku as decisions made on the national level are
realized in Baku without transparent discussion. Frequently, decisions
made on the national level are implemented in the city without transpar-
ent discussion or scrutiny by the lower-level government. Baku’s approach
to hosting mega-events further underlines the authoritarian nature of this
regime, which is often even preferred by various mega-event rights holder
organizations (Fett, 2019). For example, hosting the F1 race has been
presented as the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev and as the Minister
of Sports concluded: “[A]ll the brightest ideas are born in his (presi-
dent’s) head”.
Since 2010, Azerbaijan put forward a plan to transform itself into the
main tourist node of the South Caucasus region and its economic heart
(Valiyev, 2014, p. 630). A range of major events were staged in Baku such
as the Eurovision Song Contest, the inaugural edition of European
Games, the Islamic Solidarity Games and the UEFA EURO Men’s
Championship in 2020. Iconic architectural projects by prominent inter-
national architects such as GMP Architects and Zaha Hadid Architects,
and numerous luxury hotels, were realized to reflect the novel glamorous
image of the capital, and to host potential visitors attracted by the afore-
mentioned mega-events. In preparation, the government also devoted
billions from public funds into urban infrastructure projects and event
venues. These efforts also included the beautification campaign (Valiyev
& Wallwork, 2019), causing forced relocation from central Baku to the
peripheries of around 80,000 people living within areas slated for rede-
velopment (Burger, 2010; Grant, 2014). Displaced families—sometimes
violently evicted—received compensation well below market value and
were left with few options for legal recourse (Human Rights Watch,
2012, p. 3). City beautification also took the forms of view protection—
high walls along prominent roadways were installed to seclude informal
674 D. Gogishvili

or deteriorated housing from the sightlines of visitors. Similar cases

directed towards excluding unwanted groups and sites from urban envi-
ronment have been reported from the Seoul 1988 (Davis, 2011) and the
Rio 2016 Summer Olympics (Broudehoux, 2017).
After the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 (the first major event
hosted in Baku), many attempts to equally high-profile events followed:
Such state efforts were mainly directed to improve the urban portfolio of
the city for its (unsuccessful) Olympic bids. In 2015, Baku hosted the
inaugural edition of the European Games, brought more than 6000 ath-
letes to the city at the expense of the Azerbaijani state and with a public
budget of over USD 10 billion (Waal, 2015). Baku also gained the host-
ing rights of the F1, the Islamic Solidarity Games 2017, the European
Youth Olympic Festival 2019 and UEFA 2020. According to the
Azerbaijani officials, their event hosting strategy is built to support
nation-building, boost civic pride and promote Azerbaijan worldwide
(Militz, 2016).

 he Azerbaijan Grand Prix’s Temporary Spaces

T
of Exception
A ten-year contract was signed between FOG and the Azerbaijani
Government in 2016, binding the latter to host the F1 race for at least
five successive years and was further extended to 2023 (Formula 1, 2019;
Trend AZ, 2016). The Baku City Circuit Operations Company, estab-
lished by the son of Azad Rahimov (the Minister of Youth and Sport
since 2006) Arif Rahimov in 2015, is responsible for organizing the
AGP. Preparations for the event started in 2014 with the creation of Baku
City Circuit. Running through the downtown core, the waterfront bou-
levard, the twelfth-century UNESCO world heritage site old town show-
ing “the beauty of the historical and modern sights of Baku” (Tilke,
2016). Media reported that costs for the inaugural event in 2016 reached
a remarkable USD 230 million and were fully covered by the national
budget (Recknagel & Geybulla, 2016). The licence fee paid to FOG
alone accounted for USD 40–60 million and will increase annually by
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 675

10% (Khristich, 2016). The yearly organizing costs decreased later as

major equipment required for the event was purchased in 2016 but orga-
nizing costs still reached at least USD 60 million (Clayton, 2019). No
official figures exist regarding the cost or the economic impact.
Together with the general planning, national government made other
attempts to facilitate a flawless event. Aliyev published a special decree
simplifying country’s complicated visa system for F1-related visitors
(Carrion, 2016, p. 23). This overall had a positive impact as issuing tour-
ist visas were simplified after the experience with event-hosting.
Furthermore, the universities in the capital were requested to postpone
their final exams, happening during to the race, to reduce the flow of
students in the downtown. This measure was repeated for the later edi-
tions of the F1 race.
Between 17th and 19th June 2016, Baku was transformed into a large-­
scale playground for the global elite and media to host the F1 race
(Williams, 2016). The event was hailed by FOG for being well-organized
and visually fascinating (Azertag, 2016; Walker, 2015). The AGP is over-
all considered as one of the most challenging and visually fascinating due
to its scenic background and the complexity of the track (Maher, 2021;
Walthert, 2016). This praise, however, overlooks the facts that the orga-
nizers were unable to sell a substantial number of tickets (ranging from
USD 90 to 665) during the inaugural edition. While the number of
attendants increased for the later years, one can still see substantial num-
ber of empty seats along the race. The detailed statistics on the number of
tickets are not made readily available. The comments from various gov-
ernment officials prior to the race indicated that despite a huge expendi-
ture a high attendance was not expected, justified by the fact that Baku
was an inaugural event.

Assembling the Event Infrastructure

The residents of Baku experience heavy disruptions to their daily prac-

tices every year as the event date nears. This happens not only during the
event but also within the lengthy preparation and dismantling periods
(1news.az, 2021; BCC, 2017). Building works to arrange the circuit for
676 D. Gogishvili

the inaugural race lasted for about a year. For the later years, this hap-
pened faster but on some cobble-stoned areas asphalt is laid every other
year which takes about 2–3 weeks at least (BCC, 2017). Temporary event
structures, such as grandstands, garages, barriers were built occupying
roads, sidewalks, and squares. The Paddock Club, the exclusive VIP hos-
pitality trackside viewing area above the team garages with gourmet cui-
sine and open bars, was also cited in one of the city’s most prominent
areas—Freedom Square situated in front of the Government House.
Baku’s medieval UNESCO World Heritage old town was one of the
key factors initially appealing to FOG. However, the cobblestone streets
had to be resurfaced with special asphalt to meet the race requirements.
The sidewalks on narrow parts of the circuit were also removed to accom-
modate the width of two racing cars. Race organizers claimed that these
changes would be reversed within one month after the 1st race However,
these promises did not materialize.
The Baku City Circuit was realized in the city by erecting two layers of
concrete and steel walls along its street network delimiting the circuit
from the urban environment. The walls are covered by F1-branded cur-
tains installed to market the event but also avoid unauthorized viewing.
The extensive network of barriers gives physical shape to the event but
also adds a level of inconvenience to city dwellers. This results in the shut-
ting of a substantial amount of the city’s public spaces (including one of
the largest public areas in Baku, its boulevard) and partly closed sidewalks
often leaving only a meter-wide passage there for pedestrians (Fig. 2).
While the planning and construction of the event-related facilities in
Baku caused disruptions and distress to the everyday lives of the residents
it has benefited the Baku City Circuit Operations company founded by
Mr. Arif Rahimov, the son of Mr. Azad Rahimov who served as the head
of the Ministry of Youth And Sport from 2006 to 2021. The company
has been granted exclusive rights to organize the F1 event in Baku since
2016 while the latter also contracted DDLAR Group, a construction
company that has been managed by Mr. Rahimov for six years before
committing to the F1 race organization. The same company has been
involved in the delivery of the many of the projects related to hosting
other mega-events in Baku (DDLAR Group, 2016).
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 677

Fig. 2 Barriers and fences erected in Baku downtown. (Source: Author, 2016)

Securitization and the Militarization of Public Space

Tightened and ubiquitous security measures are increasingly common

features of the F1 race in Baku, which are intensified during the race
weekend for what seems the largest security operation in peacetime
Azerbaijan. In 2016, the military and the police were mobilized to ensure
“public order” for patrolling the streets, ensuring the security of individual
officials and overseeing the city from rooftops (kaspi.az, 2016). The secu-
rity extended to all strategic urban areas, including the waterfront ports,
transport hubs, malls along with that of the hotels accommodating guests
and athletes. The coastline of the Caspian Sea was patrolled by military
ships, which normally are not present in this area (Armiya.AZ, 2018).
Security is also extreme inside the event territory. The ticket holders,
staff, and media have to pass through airport-style security checks to
enter the circuit zone and F1 Village. This job is done by the events pri-
vate security forces screened and provided by the state.
Since the first edition of the F1 race, additional security measures are
also implemented in the parks and public areas adjacent to the race to
produce a buffer space where at times access is fully restricted, or certain
activities (such as loitering, photography, and video recording) are
678 D. Gogishvili

banned. Metro stations at the lines leading to the city circuit and at the
stops close to the circuit are under tight control. Users of public transport
are screened by security while entering or exiting the station.

Restriction on Movement

Due to the central location of Baku’s racetrack, different parts of the city
are closed to pedestrians and traffic (including parking) for at least two
weeks during the event. Closure starts with the preparation of the road
surface but the geography of restrictions extends in the city as the event
approaches. In 2016, the limitations were imposed around the track
marked on the traffic restrictions map including the Old City and Azadliq
(Freedom) Square. The restrictions are most severe for three weeks around
the race period and cover the race area itself combining residential,
administrative, and commercial buildings. The government worried
about possible traffic jams and the visual appearance of the individual
vehicles bans the cars registered outside Baku.
During the first F1 race in Baku, pedestrians were limited to streets
adjacent to the racetrack. Crossing streets was only possible via a limited
number of distantly located underpasses or temporary overpasses. Lifts
for those with limited mobility were not present. Importantly, similar to
the other events hosted in Baku, it became accepted to reroute public
transport passing through the event area, causing problems to its users
and traffic jams elsewhere within the city (Figs. 3 and 4).
Since the 2016 race in Baku, the event organizers held lengthy promo-
tional activities mostly in the downtown using portion of the Caspian Sea
Boulevard already a few months before the event. The area later trans-
formed and expanded into the 2-kilometre-long F1 Village—an enter-
tainment space established exclusively for ticket holders. The boulevard
space was heavily commercialized and configured in a manner desired by
the commercial interests of the event’s sponsors.
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 679

Fig. 3 Map of the Baku City Circuit and traffic restrictions. (Source: BBC, 2016)

Fig. 4 Blocked entrance of the Old Town and the spectators stand (back). (Source:
Author, 2016)
680 D. Gogishvili

Post-Event Baku

After the event, most of the related infrastructure is removed and the
closed areas of the city resume normal operation. However, physical
interventions and the reconfiguration of the city’s landscape for the event
was not fully temporary. For example, from the first edition of the AGP
in Baku, objects of varying size and significance—concrete traffic medi-
ans to abandoned advertising—remained throughout the city pointing
towards the grandiose presence of the F1 (Fig. 5).
The street circuit in Baku is hailed for its exceptional fragments such as
a dual carriageway, a part of the circuit where cars drive in opposite direc-
tions from one another. This was realized by erecting a 600-meter-long
concrete barrier to split one of the main arteries of Baku, the Neftchilar
Avenue, into two. As security criteria required a solid structure, it was
built in situ and left as is during the non-event period. Moreover, a deci-
sion was made to leave the Paddock Club structure until the city ceases
to be on the F1 calendar.
The adaptation of Baku streetscape to the race needs sacrificed pedes-
trian spaces, and experiences, and continues to do. The street passing in

Fig. 5 October 2016, the Baku City Circuit paddock club and the Hilton Baku
Hotel on the left. (Source: Author, 2016)
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 681

the old town has now permanently been widened to provide more space
and the sidewalk was removed. Similarly, the remaining physical struc-
tures of the racetrack caused the abandonment of former street crossings,
road signs or changes in traffic regulations.

Discussion
The F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku takes place as a result of a collec-
tion of state-funded lengthy and disruptive practices. The residents have
to tolerate weeks and months of disturbing construction, blocked traffic,
and ongoing modifications to their public transit routes for ten days min-
imum and normally for much longer to organize the event largely ori-
ented towards the out-of-town visitor class. Considering the fly-in and
fly-out nature of event tourism, these problems are hardly experienced by
visitors coming to the race especially as the city is adapted to their needs.
This resembles the cases from the cities in the United States discussed by
Eisinger (2000) who argues that most of the events and the related infra-
structure development is explicitly “designed to bring visitors into the
city” and often skews the locally oriented urban agenda (p. 321). Costly
tickets make this even more evident as they make the three-day event
inaccessible to most of the locals as the poverty level in Azerbaijan is high
while the gap between the rich and the poor is striking (Marriott &
Minio-Paluello, 2012). Thus, since 2016 the AGP organizers created an
exclusive space of exception in the territory designated for the event—an
area where the glorious F1 spectacle was staged in front of a limited num-
ber of visitors and wealthy locals at the direct expense of the state budget,
while further keeping locals away via fences and roaming security forces.
Proponents often justify hosting a mega-event because of its general
socio-economic benefits, possibility to attract tourists or support the
international promotion of the country as argued by the Azerbaijani offi-
cials. Yet, often mega-event planning tends to privilege “local business
and real estate interests, global corporations, and the cronies of the politi-
cal elites” (Müller, 2015a, p. 11). In Baku, investment in a highly exclu-
sive F1 championship was instrumentalized for privatization of profits
that end up in the hands of an economic elite tied to the ruling
682 D. Gogishvili

authoritarian regime of the country. According to Müller (2015a), the

process defined as “financial seizure” occurs when due to the overarching
importance of a mega-event, as promoted by the national and local gov-
ernment, the public is forced to pay for loss-making projects and cost
overruns often associated with hosting these mega-events. Such circum-
stances often benefit local or international elites that have already been
awarded large contracts. In the case of Azerbaijan, we see the government
represented by the Ministry of Youth and Sport that oversees mega-event
hosting agenda including the F1 race in Baku, on the one side, and on
the other side the private organization the Baku City Circuit Operations
Company established by the son of the minister.
The staging of the race in Baku led to the heavy enclosure of multiple
prominent and central public areas in the city. The creation of the F1
entertainment zone in the Boulevard might have increased the number of
people coming to visit the centre, but the rules imposed on public space
excluded everyday practices. These reflect a general trend in the mega-­
event industry to look out for the wider urban environment as a site for
brand extension (McGillivray et al., 2015, p. 2). Such branded spaces
often are free to visitors but it also excludes any other unauthorized activ-
ity such as trading or fast-food restaurants not selling the products of the
event sponsors. The decision to utilize the Baku Boulevard exceptionally
for the commercial purposes of the AGP represents a practice that has
been normalized in the capital of Azerbaijan due to the events staged
there. This is an obvious risk that might happen in many other cities
hosting or striving to host mega-event (or a series of it) as the privatiza-
tion and commercialization of public spaces and public infrastructure is
becoming normalized.
While a limited permanent physical impact of the AGP can be observed
on the urban landscape of Baku after the event, there were large physical
objects left behind that exclusively used for the race and not convenient
for anything else. Their presence in the city is a bold statement rather
than just a mere fact which underscores the government’s decision to
allow such exclusive use of the space prioritizing urban spectacle-oriented
towards the visitor class and international media over the pressing needs
of locals. The remaining barrier at the Neftchilar Avenue and the Paddock
Club left at Freedom Square are good illustrations of this. In establishing
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 683

access rights to the city, the F1 race enjoys the priority. When the F1
returned in Baku in late June of 2017, it once again unfolded in its full
scale, absorbing vast portions of public areas. The contractual obligations
of Azerbaijan with the FOG can normalize this type of exclusive private-­
sector use of large portions of public space and public funds. The high
securitization and militarization that come together with the hosting of
mega-events create a successful ground for the normalization of these
practices as dissent from the local society can hardly be expressed in this
hostile environment. The political setting present in Azerbaijan makes
such development particularly likely.
Baku City Circuit, acting as a space of exception, is outlined on vari-
ous maps. It has concrete borders and more ambiguous adjoining buffer
zones where exceptional practices are realized through the omnipresence
of security guards and fences or the declared will of the executive rarely
supported by the legislative decrees. However, it also functions as fluid
space as the related actions and exceptions are not geographically
grounded and can affect developments beyond its physical boundaries.
This fluidity is illustrated with the governmental decisions related to the
visa regime simplification targeting specific visitors or delaying the uni-
versity final exams all over Baku. Moreover, the city circuit extended its
impact and tightened the security measures all over the capital, in loca-
tions arguably not related to the needs of the race. Creation of this fluid
and unofficial state of exception enabled the Azerbaijan Grand Prix to
take place in accordance with F1 demands. It had a temporarily transfor-
mative character empowered by the exceptional practice.
The AGP was an outstanding event for many reasons. However, the
significant point for this chapter is that thanks to an assemblage of deci-
sions, the BCC company staged the private motorsport event on public
roads—an exceptional practice not permitted in everyday circumstances.
In contrast, most other mega-events happen in stadiums or structures
separating them from the city. Rarely does an event of this scale take place
on city streets and is of ticketed access. While there are many other hap-
penings using public spaces, and particularly roads, for some part of their
event—torch relay at the Olympics or the fan zones at the FIFA World
Cup—this does not represent the core activity and the scale is normally
much smaller. In comparison with mega-events hosted by different cities
684 D. Gogishvili

across the globe, Baku also showed a distinct character that the excep-
tional practice of occupying public infrastructure for a private event
occurred without any legal decree that would frame the plans of the gov-
ernment on occupying the public space for the Formula 1 event. This
might be considered as the main difference from that of the experience of
more democratic states with offers compared to Azerbaijan’s political
regime, highly authoritarian and top-down, where the decision-making is
restricted to a very small group of political elite and the different streams
of government normally function as one. For example, this is not the case
when we look at Glasgow or London hosting a variety of mega-events
with exceptional characteristics.

Conclusion
Mega-event organizers globally use public spaces and public funds to
stage tightly regulated, commercial, and often privately owned events
that depend on public risk-taking for private benefits that accrue from
the contracts awarded to private entities responsible for the delivery of
the event venues and required urban infrastructure. The Formula 1
Azerbaijan Grand Prix held on the street network of Baku is another such
example. It favours private entities while putting the burden and the dis-
ruption on the public. Often, such events rely on exceptional legal prac-
tices and actions permitted by the executive decree(s) or the unofficial
declaration of a state of exception (Marrero-Guillamón, 2012, p. 20).
Those who support such events rationalize these exceptions by the public
good received and visibility they bring to the host city or nation and their
exceptional needs by their extraordinary character and temporary status.
Nevertheless, it has become clear that these exceptional decisions often
have lengthy consequences, high costs, and set an example for future
practices. In case of Baku, we see that often the arguments presented by
the national government regarding international promotion, branding,
and socio-economic development is often used as a cover-up to award
lucrative contracts to the economic elite allied to the ruling political
regime. Thus, the elites who drive the bid are at the same time those who
 Mega-Event on the Streets: The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Baku… 685

benefit from hosting mega-events as contracts to prepare the grounds for

the European Games or the AGP are in their hands.
This chapter has shown the evolving interrelationship between the pri-
vate mega-event F1, and the host city of Baku through the concept of
exceptionality. It described the exceptional decisions implemented before
and during the event to facilitate its smooth running and to protect the
interests of the events private owners, as well as a small but wealthy
Azerbaijani elite attending the race. As the decision on hosting the race
was taken without any public consultation, it also excluded most of the
residents from voicing their concerns as to how it should take place. Baku
City Circuit overall became a temporarily privatized corporate site where
space was reconfigured for the event, leaving behind parts of its structure
to occur again. This space of exception, while seldom legally defined, was
created by major reconfiguration of daily activities and flows or the cre-
ation of new practices in the middle of Baku to facilitate a privatized and
commercialized event. This elite urban event happens within the space
normally used by pedestrians and the traffic actively over the years.
The hosting of the F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku represents an
alarming example for many cities that are bidding to host events or are
already preparing to host one soon. The increased competition from the
leaders of the authoritarian states to invite such events in their cities cre-
ates a further risk that developments that have taken place in Baku will
be further replicated without democratic and participatory questioning.
The hosting of such events in cities where citizen participation in decision
making is absent and the project is implemented top-down runs the risk
in jeopardizing of free and open public space.

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 Motor Sport in the Middle East:
Regional Rivalries, Business and Politics
in the Arabian Gulf
Mahfoud Amara and Youcef Bouandel

Since the turn of the century, there has been a growing interest of coun-
tries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—particularly Bahrain,
United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar—in the automobile and motor
racing industries. This is reflected in direct investment as shareholders in
leading international manufacturers and suppliers of cars and in interna-
tional motor racing events and circuits. The aim of this strategy is to, first,
diversify the countries’ revenues and decrease their reliance on the oil
sector [isn’t there an irony here: diversify to counter oil reliance by going
into a petrol-intensive sport?]; which is contradicted by the growing
demand for cars and pickups and investment into a petrol-intensive

M. Amara (*)
Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences,
College of Education, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: [email protected]
Y. Bouandel
Department of International Affairs,College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar
University, Doha, Qatar
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 691
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_27
692 M. Amara and Y. Bouandel

sport; and, second, to showcase the mega urban development projects in

cities such as Manama, Abu-Dhabi and Doha. These developments were
organized around the development of airports as hubs for distance travel,
as well as tourism, retail and real estate.
Informed by media content analysis this chapter explores these devel-
opments. It begins with a general discussion of sports in the GCC coun-
tries situating the debate between globalization and the preservation of
local customs. We ask why the GCC countries have embarked on the
relentless pursuit of hosting international sporting events. In section
“Motor Racing”, we look at the emergence of the GCC, particularly
Bahrain and the UAE, as major destinations for Formula One. In section
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the New Mover”, we discuss how Saudi
Arabia is fast becoming one of the major players in motor sports in the
region. These developments lead us, in section “Motor Racing and GCC
Rivalry”, to discuss rivalries within the GCC to host and invest in motor
racing, within wider geopolitical context.

Sport, Globalization and Localization Debates

When examining modern sport in the Arab World in general, and in the
Arabian Peninsula in particular, we cannot ignore the increasing inter-
connectedness between cultures and countries as well as the diffusion of
modern sport worldwide. Moreover, one needs to consider local attempts
to adapt sporting practices to local cultures to serve different interests
(Amara, 2012). Since the turn of the century, countries in the region,
particularly the UAE, Qatar, and to a lesser extent Bahrain, thanks to
significant revenue from oil and gas exports, have embarked upon a strat-
egy of integrating their country into the global sport arena. Consequently,
sport (and motor sport as argued in this chapter) is now at the core of the
(hyper) modern project of urbanization in the region. “Sport cities” and
“urban zones” built around the theme of sport, combined with high tech,
retail and tourism are emerging, offering the local population (citizens or
residents) the possibility of being part of the global sporting experience
(Azzali et al., 2021).
 Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business… 693

Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain have been proactive in shaping their
image as destinations for business and tourism and have had massive
investments into sports infrastructure. Sport has become an important
field of business activity, linked to city and nation branding as well as a
tool for “soft power” in the sense of strategic communication, mainly to
an external audience and to make the country more attractive (Alexander
& Cafiero, 2020). It should be pointed out that whilst “soft power” goes
a long way in explaining the GCC’s countries’ drive to become global
actors, should not be the only lenses through which to explain sport
industry in the region. The internal political dynamic and economic/
business dimensions are also significant. A country such as Saudi Arabia
which has been founded under the model of rentier state (where minority
controls wealth, derived mainly from oil and gas revenue, and the means
of its distribution to secure loyalty and allegiance), coupled with religious
legitimacy (the ruling family as the guardian of Islam holy sites of Mecca
and Medina) is in search of a new legitimacy. A model, which is less cen-
tered around religion in conservative terms, and more attractive to tour-
ists and investors. We agree here with Koch (2020, p. 355) that we need
to move beyond the general readings of Gulf investment in sport as only
an exercise in ‘soft power’, “to examining how these deals are strategic
nodes for diverse actors in the Gulf and in the international sporting
community to advance various interests: personal, political, financial,
and otherwise”. Investment in sport becomes an opportunity to build
alliances with the realms of finance and politics and thus to contribute in
improving positioning, and recognition by the international community
of the GCC countries as global actors. Indeed, the region has become one
of the major destinations for sporting competitions, including for differ-
ent types of automobile and motor racings, as illustrated in Table 1.
Motor racing, in its different formats, is at the core of this strategy. We
would also argue that becoming global actors in the world of sport is a
vehicle for internal transformation of these countries. In the case of Saudi
Arabia, for instance England and Ahmed (2019) correctly observe that
“sport becomes the latest platform through which Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman looks to deploy the kingdom’s financial muscle
to project the country on to the global stage, reshape perceptions about
the desert state and shake-up the nation’s conservative society”. Hosting
694 M. Amara and Y. Bouandel

Table 1 Examples of motorsport and motorbike series in the GCC (different inter-
net sources)
Motor race Description
Formula Gulf 1000 Single-seater racing series Run by Gulf Sport
(FG1000)
Radical Middle East Cup Organized by AUH Racing The SR8 Masters cars
can reach speed of up to 280kp/h and can get to
100kp/h in 2.7 seconds
Porsche GT3 ME Cup Run Lechner Racing the Porsche Sprint Challenge
Middle East launched in Bahrain in 2009/2010
https://www.gt3me.com/the-­challengeen
Touring Cars The UAE’s NGK Racing Series, It runs between
Dubai Autodrome and Yas Marina over eight
race meetings.
UAE Sportbike Features three classes: 600cc Supersport class along
Championship with a non-championship 1000cc Superbike class
Emirates Desert The UAE’s national rally championship. Organized
Championship by Emirates Motorsports Organization (EMSO)
The ABB FIA Formula E Held in Diriyah, an ancient UNESCO World
World Championship Heritage site, since 2018 (following a ten-year
agreement)
Saudi Arabia AlUla Electric SUVs competing in extreme environments
Extreme E Race
The UIM XCAT World Organized by Abu Dhabi International Marine
Series offshore Sports Club
powerboat racing
The MotorBike Grand Prix Season-opening race on the GP calendar
of Qatar

international sports events brings these countries under the spotlight and
invites international scrutiny. Making them more exposed to what
Brannagan and Giulianotti (2018, p. 1152) as “soft disempowerment”,
in other words “actions, inactions and/or policies of states that ultimately
upset, offend or alienate others, leading to a loss of credibility and attrac-
tiveness”. In the same vein, ALQST, a UK-based group that monitors
abuses in Saudi Arabia argued that the Kingdom is “trying to cover up
[its] abuses by holding high-profile sporting events and spectacles …
[and is] … not taking account of the deteriorating state of human rights.
(England & Ahmed, 2019). This in turn may result in the introduction
of more reforms to remedy any shortcomings, which in other circum-
stances would have taken a longer period to implement. Of course, there
 Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business… 695

is still a lot to be done in political terms to advance the process of democ-

ratization. This would need a genuine willingness internally to adopt the
democratization path and more importantly, a more coherent stance by
the so-called international community (including international sport sys-
tem) in striking the right balance between the promotion of democratic
values and national as well as business interests.

Motor Racing
In the last decade or so, the connection between the region and motor
racing has developed through a number of related aspects and facets, such
as hosting of events, investments in car industries, as well as sponsorship
and branding. Bahrain was in 2004 the first mover to host Formula One
Grand Prix for the first time in the GCC countries. Named after the
official sponsor, the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix has been held since
then, not without challenges though. In 2009, Abu Dhabi, representing
the central government of the Federal State of the UAE, was the second
city to be awarded the hosting of the competition, named Abu Dhabi
Grand Prix. Already in 2006, Emirates Airlines was the sponsor of Team
McLaren Mercedes Formula One cars at races across Europe, Asia,
Australasia, and North and South America, on the uniform of drivers
Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya, and in the team’s pit interior.
It should be noted that Bahrain’s government holding company
Mumtalakat holds a 50% investment in the Mercedes McLaren Formula
One Team, and owns 50% of the McLaren Automotive production-car
subsidiary. Another example of ruling family’s investment in motor rac-
ing industry is Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum’s cre-
ation in 2004 of the A1 Grand Prix series in which participating teams,
each representing different nations (22 in total), compete for the World
Cup of Motorsport. Abu Dhabi was also named as the official destination
partner of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) in 2007, follow-
ing a three-year-deal between the International Sportsworld
Communicators (ISC) and the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA).
The hosting of these events prompted a number of urban projects
within the region around the theme of motor racing. The Dubai
696 M. Amara and Y. Bouandel

Autodrome was built as part of the Motor City project, a development

led by Union Properties PJSC (UP), one of the leading property develop-
ers in the UAE. This was based on a unique automobile and motor sport
theme that includes Dubai Autodrome, F1 Theme Park, Business Park,
Motor City and its two residential components of uptown and Green
Community Motor City. The Dubai Autodrome incorporates an FIA-­
approved 5.39 km circuit, a race and driving school, karting track, and
the HSBC Bank Racing Academy, under the patronage of Sheikh
Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The Dubai
Autodrome was officially inaugurated in October 2004 when it hosted
the final round of the FIA GT1 Championship, and a number of other
competitions: FIA GT3 Speedcar, Formula Renault Campus, and UAE
National Races. In 2009, Aabar, a stock fund owned by the Abu Dhabi
government, took a 30% interest in Brawn GP, the world-champion
Formula One team that was renamed Mercedes Grand Prix (Hutton,
2011). Mubadala Development Co., an investment group controlled by
the government of Abu Dhabi, purchased in 2005 from the Italian Bank
Mediobanca SpA, a 5% stake in Ferrari, which prompted its further
investment in a Ferrari Theme Park. It was also the sponsor of Ferrari’s
Formula One team from 2007 to 2010. The 5% stake was sold back in
2010 to Fiat, which controls Ferrari with a 56% stake, for an amount
estimated at €122 million (George-Cosh, November 14, 2010).
Similar to its neighbouring countries, the UAE and Bahrain, Qatar has
also been investing in the car industry as a strategy to diversify its reve-
nue. For instance, state-owned Qatar Holding, LLC, owns 17% percent
of Volkswagen Group, including Audi, Bentley and Skoda. Qatar Holding
used to be owner of 10% stake in Porsche, which sold back to Porsche
and Piëch families in 2013. Qatar also sought to be part of the race for
staging international motor sport events. To this aim, the Qatari authori-
ties opened the Lusail International Circuit in 2004. Around $58 million
was spent building a 5300km motorbike circuit located outside the capi-
tal Doha. The Lusail International circuit hosts the Grand Prix Masters
leg, the World Superbike Championships and the MotoGP, Moto2 &
Moto3 official tests. It is also being used to promote community sport for
cyclists, runners, walkers and roller-bladers on Tuesday (women and chil-
dren only) and Wednesday evenings.
 Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business… 697

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the New Mover

Saudi Arabia, the most populous, richest, with the largest automobile
market in the GCC, estimated at 40% of all vehicles sold in the region
(International Trade Administration, 2010), is increasingly taking a more
visible/ pro-active approach in the international motor sport scene. The
Saudi authorities have been able to use their wealth to attract the most
significant motor sports events to their country. These developments,
however, should not be viewed in isolation. On the contrary, they should
be understood as part of general economic, social and political shifts in
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that has been taking place since 2016.
Indeed, the developments that followed on the economic and social
fronts, as we shall see later in this section, are far reaching and were
unthinkable even a few years ago.
The year 2016 marked the start of the 2030 Vision: the brainchild of
the then Deputy Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman. Vision 2030 is
a strategic plan for the following fifteen years to increase the country’s
openness, create a vibrant society and reform the country’s economy.
Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil revenues makes it less sustainable in the
medium and long term. Therefore, among the aims of this Vision are the
diversifications of revenues and boosting of investment. Indeed, in the
same year, 2016, Mohammed Bin Salman unveiled plans to list the giant
state oil company, Aramco, on the stock exchange. Mohammed Bin
Salman’s position within the Kingdom was enhanced in June 2017, when
his father, the ailing King Salam bin Abdulaziz, removed prince
Mohammed bin Nayef, then crown prince, from all official positions and
appointed his son, Mohammed, heir to the Saudi throne; a change that
has not been without controversy. This appointment not only strength-
ened his position within the ruling family, but also made him, given his
father’s age and ill health, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom.
The reforms were far-reaching. Their aim was to change many of the
practices that his Kingdom was known and indeed criticized for. The
liberal policies introduced led to the emergence of phenomenon that
were hitherto unknown in the country. He began by curtailing the pow-
ers of Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice
698 M. Amara and Y. Bouandel

(CPVPV). This Commission, commonly known as the Islamic religious

police, is a vice squad that enforced strict adherence to public morality as
defined by the state. In an attempt to improve his Kingdom’s image,
Mohammed Bin Salman made significant steps to improve the situation
of Saudi women, whose treatment was hitherto the subject of interna-
tional criticism. Hence, in February 2017, a woman was appointed to
head the country’s Stock Exchange. A year later, in February 2018, Saudi
women were given the right to open businesses without the need for a
male’s permission. The following month, March 2018, mothers, in
divorce cases, were given automatic custody of their children without
having to go court to claim it. Whilst aforementioned changes might not
have caught the attention of the layperson, the lifting of the ban on
female drivers in June 2018 certainly did. Mohammed bin Salman estab-
lished an entertainment authority that hosted a variety of shows (music,
sports and comedy). Indeed, in April 2017, the Crown Prince announced
that “Al Qidiya”, southwest of the capital city, Riyadh, would be devel-
oped into one of the world’s largest cultural, sports and entertainment
cities. The Saudi authorities also organized female areas in football stadia
and were allowed to attend football matches.
Whilst the Kingdom has been making strides towards economic and
social liberalization, including in sport, a number of issues pertaining to
Mohammed Bin Salman’s leadership and style raised several eyebrows.
Specifically, issues related to human rights question remain high on the
agenda. The detention of several members of the Royal family, allegedly
on corruption, was perceived as an attempt to strengthen his rule and
sideline would be opponents to his reforms. However, his efforts of mod-
ernizing the country and projecting a more liberal image have been ques-
tioned by country’s continuous human rights abuse, characterized by the
detention of activists, particularly women, continuous war in Yemen and
last but not the least, the three-year blockade of Qatar. However, perhaps
the most significant of all the negative press that the Kingdom received is
the assassination in October 2018 of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist
and an outspoken critic, in his country’s Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey. It
is against this background and geopolitical context that Saudi Arabia’s
relentless drive to change its image and become a major venue for hosting
 Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business… 699

international motor sports events can be analysed. The first such event is
the Dakar Rally.
Held in Africa between 1979 and 2007, one the world’s most famous
rallies, for political and business reasons, shifted to the mountainous ter-
rain of South America between 2009 and 2019, to arrive in Saudi Arabia
in 2020. The Dakar Rally has been positioned as the flagship of KSA’s
mega project NEOM, the planned $500bn 10,000-square-mile smart
city (including a 170-kilometre long car-free, zero-carbon city) to boost
tourism, and bid to become the centre of adventure sport and leisure in
the Kingdom. The staging of the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia has attracted
attention for a number of reasons. First in relation to business, as a num-
ber of international sport organizations and other corporate entities spe-
cialized in sport, hospitality, tourism, retail and property developers are
keen to be associated and have a share of the multi-billion NEOM devel-
opment project. Mercedes-Benz EQ Formula E Team signed a long-term
partnership with NEOM. According to the press release “The partner-
ship will provide secondment and development opportunities for selected
Saudi nationals, who work closely with the racing team and further qual-
ify as engineers and software developers” (Arabnews, 11 March 2020).
NEOM will also be a founding partner of the Mercedes-Benz EQ FE
Driver Development Program, starting in 2021, which aims to recruit
young drivers from KSA and train them to compete in Formula E within
the next few years. For NEOM, it is an opportunity for brand association
with Mercedes-Benz and for place branding, featured in “The race
towards a new future is ON” promotion video in EQ Formula E webpage
(Mercedes-Benz, EQ Formula E Team, 2021). EXTREME company,
specialized in broadcasting of extreme sport, organization of Extreme
sport Events, and destinations development and management of place-­
making sports, is among the partners of NEOM project (Merlin, 2
October, 2019).
In political terms, the Dakar Rally in Saudi attracted media attention
due to the political context and shift in the Kingdom described above,
with allegation of “Sportswashing”. In other words, campaigners have
levelled accusations towards the Saudi authorities that hosting such sport-
ing events is simply an attempt to wash over their poor human rights
record. Human Rights Watch and the MENA Rights Group urged Dakar
700 M. Amara and Y. Bouandel

organizers, participants and official broadcasters to press Saudi authori-

ties to release all detained Saudi human rights defenders and drop the
charges against them.

The Amaury Sport Organization should engage with human rights advo-
cates and adopt a human rights policy to ensure that its operations do not
contribute to human rights violations. (Human Rights Watch, 2020)

Having to deal in the past with criticisms regarding the nation’s ultra-­
conservatism and rejection of Western values, including those embedded
in global sport, the rapid changes taking place in the Kingdom, particu-
larly in the areas of sport, leisure, entertainment and fashion, took observ-
ers by surprise. Again explaining the new strategy of the increasing of
visibility of the Kingdom, as a form of “sportwashing” only does not give
justice to the real desire of Saudi society for openness to the external
world. As stated above, hosting international events invites interest and
criticism. This criticism, in turn, results in pressure from governments,
NGOs, journalists and sports personalities alike, eesulting thus in the
ruling elite initiating further reforms and dealing with controversial issues
to overcome any resistance, even minimal, from the more conservative
elements of society. For instance, a number of Israeli drivers took part in
the 2021 edition of the Dakar Rally. According to media reports, two
Israeli drivers Danny Pearl and Charly Gotlib entered KSA with their
Israeli passports to represent Belgium in the race, while two other Israelis
participated under the US-flagged CRV team (Khalil, January 17, 2021).
This would not be possible without authorization from KSA. Banning
these drivers from entering the Kingdom would have put KSA agreement
with the Dakar Rally into a serious test.
The Kingdom cemented its position as major hub for motor sports
when it finally won the right to host the jewel of motor sport: Formula
One. As of December 2020, 32 countries have held the championship
and the list is growing. Whilst until 2004, only one race was held in the
MENA region, Casablanca, Morocco, in 1958, since then the region is
fast becoming an important destination for the event. Following Bahrain
since 2004 and Abu Dhabi since 2009 Saudi Arabia is the 33rd country
in the world to host Formula One, named Saudi Arabian Grand Prix,
 Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business… 701

temporarily in the street of Jeddah’s Cornish area, the second biggest city
in the Kingdom. Chase Carey, Formula One Chairman and Chief
Executive, whilst confirming that the race would take place in Jeddah,
also acknowledged the Kingdom is “rapidly becoming a hub for sports
and entertainment with many major events taking place there in recent
years.” (Balfour, 2020). The Saudi authorities will, however, move the
race to the purpose-built circuit in the specially designed sport and enter-
tainment city of Qidiya by 2023. Carey defended the decision to hold the
race in the kingdom and pointed to the potential the region represents.
He argued that:

The region is hugely important to us and with 70% of the population of

Saudi being under 30 we are excited about the potential to reach new fans
and bring our existing fans around the world exciting racing from an
incredible and historic location. (Formula One, 2020)

Other commentators suggested that the main reason behind Formula

One expansion is the $50 million fee paid by Saudi Arabia, which came
at the right time to overcome the loss due to the effect of Corona virus
estimated at nearly $400 million (Medland, 2021).

Motor Racing and GCC Rivalry

There have been a number of attempts in the past to consolidate efforts
of GCC countries to establish a regional committee and championship
around motor racing. For instance, the GCC Young Drivers Academy
funded by the FIA Sport Grant Programme, with the UAE as the Regional
Training Provider, which first took place in 2017. It was a collaboration
between the Federation Internationale De L’Automobile (FIA), Bahrain
Motor Federation (BMF), Qatar Motor & Motorcycle Federation
(QMMF) and the Automobile & Touring Club of UAE (ATCUAE). The
circuit training part was conducted on Bahrain International Circuit and
Rally training was conducted in UAE. The first meeting between the
heads of GCC motor racing federations was held in March 2016
(Arabnews, 2016) to put together the plan for the regional championship
702 M. Amara and Y. Bouandel

named the Gulf Challenge, initially a five-round off-road rally series with
separate championships for motorcycle and quad classes. This alongside
Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) held since 1984 including
events in Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Cyprus and Jordan (FIA,
n.d.). MERC has been dominated by drivers from the UAE, Mohammed
Bin Sulayem and Qatari Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah. The Gulf Challenge
had five rounds with the first in Muscat on September 7 and 8, 2017. The
second round held on October 5 and 6 in the UAE, the third in Kuwait
on October 26 and 27, fourth in Saudi Arabia on November 9 and 10
with the last round in Qatar on December 7 and 8 (Rizk, 2017).
Qatar’s attempts to integrate the Formula One Circuit have been faced
by the veto of neighbouring countries. To counter the veto, Qatar, repre-
sented by Qatar Sport Investment (QSI), the owner of football club PSG,
joined forces in 2015 with the owner of Miami Dolphins to acquire a
major stake (35.5% interest) from private equity fund CVC Capital
Partners Ltd running Formula One. A bid was estimated by media sources
to be USD 7bn plus (Gibson, 2015). The deal did not go through and it
is interesting that Formula One’s previous decision was not to add another
race in the region. This position was reversed, resulting in the decision to
offer Jeddah in Saudi Arabia the opportunity to host a round of the
Formula One world championship. This was followed by the signing
with Formula One long-term sponsorship with Saudi Oil company
Aramco. As a result, Qatar-based pay TV Broadcaster BeIN Sports
decided not to renew its five contract with Formula One, as direct conse-
quence of large-scale piracy led by BeoutQ, which Qatar accused Saudi
Arabia being behind it. Interestingly, the broadcasting right of Formula
One for the middle East and North Africa was taken by the Saudi-owned
TV network, The Middle East Media Group (MBC). Formula One races
is to be broadcasted free to air for the Middle East and North Africa
region in MBC Action channel until 2023. The deal includes the broad-
casting of training sessions, qualifiers and Grand Prix day (Flanagan,
2019). In the same vein, Bahrain accused Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV of bias in
its coverage of the civil unrest in Bahrain which broke out in 2011 fol-
lowing events in Tunisia and Egypt, which toppled Presidents Ben Ali
 Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business… 703

and Mubarak and extended to other Arab countries (Yemen, Syria and
Libya). The uprising in Bahrain has had a direct impact on the season-­
opening Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix, including its cancellation in
2011, putting the country and Formula One Group under pressure. It
was estimated that Formula One lost USD 100mn in revenue due to the
cancellation, including the revenue from ticket sales which totaled USD
14mn. Bahrain had to pay $40m fee for the cancelled race (Benson, 2011).
To conclude, sport is an arena for states in the GCC region thanks to
the purchasing power represented by their Sovereign Wealth Funds, and
under the patronage of royal families, to negotiate a position for the
region in the impending post-oil era and to explore a new opportunity
for investments in the global markets including in automotive, car and
motor racing industries (Amara & Theodoraki, 2010). The rationale for
investment in the sport industry locally and internationally, in addition
to nation branding and prestige, is the bridging between different sectors
such as banking, retail, transportation, construction, tourism, entertain-
ment and hospitality. These are the pillars of the region’s strategy to move
away from its heavy dependency on the hydrocarbon sector, which is
facing a number of challenges with the decline of oil prices, and the
advent of other non-fossil energy sources. For FIA and other interna-
tional car and motor racing industries, it is an opportunity to expand
their markets and to tap into capital investment opportunities offered by
countries in the GCC region, which is much needed when their business
model is being challenged due to financial loss, affected by the economic
crisis which has impacted directly the global value chain (production,
supply and sales) of automotive industry. This is coupled with the finan-
cial impact of the recent global COVID 19 pandemic on global sport
industry as a whole.
For the car and motor racing industry, receiving direct investment
through the purchase of stakes or indirect investment through sponsor-
ship and hosting of competitions is an opportunity to boost their indus-
try and to appeal to potential customers in the GCC with its high
purchasing power. In the GCC, in particular Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar
and more recently KSA, automobile and motor racing industry, in addi-
tion to being a business opportunity for investment, is an instrument of
national branding. In the context of the political turmoil in neighbouring
704 M. Amara and Y. Bouandel

countries, particularly since 2011 following the so-called Arab Spring, a

number of political reforms in the region have been implemented, includ-
ing labour and investment laws, municipal and parliamentary elections.
Further, the young Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman understood the
global impact of sport in boosting the image of the Kingdom, including
its tourism sector and the marketing of its mega projects represented by
NEOM and Qidiya, the future hubs of sport and entertainment in the
country.
Motor racing has not been traditionally associated with the Middle
East in general and the GCC in particular. The situation, however, has
changed since the turn of the century. Countries in the GCC have been
making significant steps in this area and have invested large sum of money
to put their respective countries on the map of motor sports. Bahrain, the
UAE, Qatar and the KSA are now destinations for motor sport. The
study on motor racing in the region highlights a number of issues which
need further investigations: first, the intervention of different interests
groups and actors to push for their political and business agenda, includ-
ing ruling elite, national and private corporations representing different
sectors (hospitality, leisure, retail and tourism, to name but a few), motor
racing and partners in automobile industry; and second, the rapid soci-
etal change and dynamics in the region, which has been motivated by the
spread of technology as well as generational change in political elite.
Younger and more educated business-minded people are making the
decisions, pursuing a more pragmatic and lobbyist strategy. Finally, the
global and local nexus on issues pertaining to global sport industry,
informed by both economic and business rationale, on the one hand, and
debates on human rights and democratization, on the other hand. Whilst
“soft power” and “sportswashing” help to explain why these countries
have embarked on this path, these discourses do not provide the whole
picture. Hosting international sporting events may be another vehicle for
top-down social, political reforms and moderating state ideology, while
reducing the influence of ultraconservative components of society.
 Motor Sport in the Middle East: Regional Rivalries, Business… 705

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 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What
Happened to the Indian Grand Prix?
Callie Batts Maddox

Introduction
Greater Noida, October 2011

In this growing city in northern India, located in the state of Uttar

Pradesh thirty miles from Delhi, a sense of joviality was in the air. Not
only was it the week of Diwali—the most important celebration on the
Hindu calendar full of fireworks and festivities—but the city was also
preparing to host the inaugural Indian Grand Prix at the newly con-
structed Buddh International Circuit (BIC). Celebrated as a sign of a
thriving India (Spurgeon, 2012), the race brought glamour, action, and
promises to boost local development and promote India as a global sport-
ing destination. Described by one local journalist as “the biggest show on
earth” (Narula, 2012, p. 8), the Grand Prix attracted Bollywood stars

C. B. Maddox (*)
Department of Sport Leadership and Management, Miami University,
Oxford, OH, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 707
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_28
708 C. B. Maddox

Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone amongst others, cricket icons
Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh, and global business moguls such as
Vijay Mallya and Richard Branson. Two days before the race, a stray dog
wandered onto the track, interrupting the first practice run and prompt-
ing British bookmaker William Hill to offer 100-1 odds that either the
subsequent practice session, the qualifying round, or the race itself would
be delayed by the presence of a curious dog (Baldwin, 2011). The canines
stayed away, and on October 30 Sebastian Vettel won India’s first Formula
One race in front of 95,000 spectators. Hailed as a “stunning success”
and a “shining moment” (Keelor, 2011, paragraph 1), the Grand Prix
heralded the perceived triumph of private investment and corporate
vision, as the race was one of the few on the Formula One schedule not
subsidized by the government. Even American pop star Lady Gaga’s per-
formance at a private after-race party “set a tone of unapologetic extrava-
gance” (Elliott, 2011, paragraph 3): an apt end to an event that cost an
estimated US$650 million to bring to a country eager to prove itself on
the world stage of elite sport.
Despite the optimism of race organizers and fans, the initial glow of
excitement and success soon dimmed. The incident with the stray dog
had caused some minor embarrassment, but deeper cracks in the Indian
Grand Prix’s façade revealed questions about the long-term viability of
the event. After just three years (2011–2013), the Indian Grand Prix
dropped off the Formula One calendar and has yet to return. The race
ultimately folded after the state government of Uttar Pradesh categorized
Formula One as entertainment rather than sport, causing the imposition
of steep luxury taxes on everything connected with the race, including
tickets, equipment, and auto parts. The financial burden for the organiz-
ers, teams, and sponsors was too high for the Indian Grand Prix to sur-
vive. Its veneer of prestige and exclusivity quickly eroded, leaving a white
elephant race track, an abandoned planned city, and a questionable leg-
acy. Beyond the tax disputes and financial troubles, the story of the Indian
Grand Prix also reveals failures to sufficiently localize the event and to
mobilize the middle-class consumer. Facing pressure to redeem the image
of the nation after the 2010 Commonwealth Games held in Delhi, race
organizers aimed to showcase India’s modernity and place within the
global sporting landscape by casting aside any meaningful engagement
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 709

with local tradition and culture. They also failed to retain the interest of
the middle-class fan base, a key demographic for ticket sales, merchan-
dise, and promotion. In examining these factors, this chapter analyses the
short history of the Indian Grand Prix by contextualizing it within the
rise of the new Indian middle class and the glocalization of sport in con-
temporary Indian society. It is an insightful example of the precarity of
neoliberal investment in sporting spectacles in societies wrought with
profound social and economic cleavages, and it also underscores the
importance of integrating the local into global sporting structures
and events.

 he Indian Middle Class, Sport,

T
and Glocalization
Supporters of Formula One highlighted its association with wealth,
glamour, cosmopolitanism, and technology as selling points in bringing
a race to India (Chandhok, 2013; Narula, 2012; Rheinberg, 2011). As a
global brand representing status and prestige, Formula One held appeal
for members of the burgeoning Indian middle class: a diverse and expan-
sive group with significant symbolic influence and consumer power. This
“new” middle class is a product of economic liberalization and the move
towards privatization enacted in the early 1990s. The reforms put into
place starting in 1991 included stabilization measures that tightened
monetary policies, devalued the rupee, and reduced the fiscal deficit.
Labor laws were liberalized to favour business, numerous public enter-
prises were privatized, and the financial sector was opened to foreign
investment (Pedersen, 2000). These moves represented a shift away from
a “state-led development strategy to a policy of active reintegration with
the world economy” (Srinivasan & Tendulkar, 2003, p. 2). As the reforms
took hold, India saw its annual growth rate increase, averaging a rate of
8.5% during the five-year period between 2005 and 2010. By 2010,
India had become the second fastest growing major economy in the
world behind China (Pasricha, 2010). The significance of these reforms
was a “radical loosening” of controls and regulations (Oza, 2006, p.11),
710 C. B. Maddox

resulting in the emergence of a neoliberal India in which the free market

began to supersede the state, which contributed to a concomitant and
rapid expansion of India’s consumer lifestyle economy and culture. Out
of this grew the new middle class and the adoption of consumption-­
based lifestyles central to its identity. Alongside this rise of the middle
class grew increasing disparities between the rich who occupy privileged
spaces and the poor who are rendered invisible and forgotten (Andrews
et al., 2014; Fernandes, 2004).
Unlike the “old” Indian middle class comprised of government bureau-
crats and employees of state-owned companies, whose values and aspira-
tions were influenced by austerity and nation-building, the new Indian
middle class is predominantly made up of white-collar professionals, with
relatively high salaries and disposable incomes, who embrace consumer
capitalism and actively display their status through consumption (Brosius,
2010; Mathur, 2010). Enabled by what was an increasingly open neolib-
eral economic formation, the proliferating presence and influence of
transnational brands and products entering into the Indian marketplace
also encouraged new consumer practices and desires, and transnational
corporations played an important role in establishing the information
technology and service sectors that helped create the white-collar work-
force engaging in the consumerist lifestyle of the middle class (Andrews
et al., 2014; Derne, 2008). As such, the new middle class is less identified
with the state and “increasingly defines itself through cultural and con-
sumerist forms of identity” (Rajagopal, 2011, p. 1003). Moreover, the
size of this middle class—unquestionably small when placed in the con-
text of India’s overall population of 1.36 billion—is secondary to its place
within contemporary Indian society as an upwardly mobile and aspira-
tional group, that celebrates and vividly embodies the promises and ben-
efits of the free market.
A central part of what are expressive performances of belonging to the
new Indian middle class is the appropriation of certain key markers of
class status. Part of this is commodity consumption—the purchase of flat
screen televisions, jewelry, smartphones, laptops, cars—that displays not
only material wealth but a knowledge of, and interaction with, global
markets and brands (Brosius, 2010; Fernandes, 2016; Mathur, 2010).
Other distinguishing markers of middle-class consumption include
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 711

shopping at a mall, joining a private gym, eating out at restaurants and

cafes, wearing the latest designer fashions, and attending high-profile
sporting events (Brosius, 2010; Fernandes, 2004). For the consumer-cit-
izens of the middle class, it is “not so much a question of what is con-
sumed, but a question of knowing how to consume it” (Brosius, 2010,
p. 16, emphasis in original). Knowing where to display and perform this
status is also important. As Hiro (2015) notes, middle-class consumption
takes place in segregated spaces “in order to preserve its carefully crafted
image of high value” (p. 55). These spaces are highly controlled to shield
middle-­class consumers from the poor and reinforce the presentation of
exclusivity.
Partaking in certain forms of sport and physical activity, either as a
participant or a spectator, has become an important part of this middle-­
class consumer culture. For many young middle-class Indians, pursuing
health and fitness is a way to embody social status, as it exhibits that they
have the time and money necessary to focus on getting in shape. The
private fitness gym has now become a prominent, privileged, and exclu-
sive space of middle-class consumption and collectivization, where the
body itself is a commodified project (Andrews et al., 2014; Maddox,
2020). Playing golf holds similar meanings as an activity requiring a spe-
cific corporeal knowledge and access to controlled spaces. Previously
available to only the very wealthy, golf has become more popular amongst
the Indian middle class as the number of courses has increased in con-
junction with real estate developments aimed at the middle-class con-
sumer (Kahn, 2010).
Attending and watching sporting events are also key performative acts
that mark class status. The Indian Premier League (IPL), a Twenty20
cricket tournament first launched in 2008, was produced and packaged
as a mediated entertainment spectacle for mass consumption across India
and the Indian diaspora (McDonald & Nalapat, 2013). As a model of
privatized corporate sport with highly branded city-based franchises, the
IPL aimed to attract the urban middle-class consumer by selling excite-
ment, celebrity, showbiz, and cosmopolitanism. The middle-class cricket
fan, as Subramanian (2015) suggests, responded by embracing “more
fully his other identity of [sic] a consumer” (paragraph 16) in which
brand loyalty is paramount and the fan exists as a spectator-consumer
712 C. B. Maddox

interested not solely in the game itself, but in all of the “razzmatazz”
attached to it. The 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG), held in Delhi,
were also aimed at the middle-class spectator as a means to advance
broader soft power strategies that positioned the city as a global metropo-
lis and the country as a rising economic and political force (Andrews
et al., 2014). Visions of how the city should look for a global audience
promoted a “celebration of middle-class and consumptive lifestyles and
spaces” (Ghertner, 2010, p. 200), but also resulted in the displacement of
homeless residents and the demolition of urban slums. Like the IPL and
the CWG, the Indian Grand Prix appealed to the middle class as a space
to be seen consuming an elite and global sporting event. The race func-
tioned as an exclusive and segregated space where spectators engaged in
the consumption of a high-profile event and displayed their class status
through the deportment of designer fashions and brands, all the while
buffered from the realities of socio-economic inequality in Indian society.
In addition to their engagement with the new middle class, the IPL,
CWG, and Indian Grand Prix were also celebrated as glocal sporting
spectacles that bore “all the hallmarks of the global corporate sport model,
simultaneously exuding locally expressive components and/or aesthetics”
(Andrews, 2016, p. 232). The theoretical perspective of glocalization is
useful here, developed by Robertson (1995) as a way of accounting for
the relationship between the local and the global, not as opposites but
rather as mutual and interconnected forces. Glocalization refutes the
divide between homogeneity and heterogeneity by offering a framework
to understand the practices and processes whereby the local is influenced
and formed by the global, and vice versa (Andrews et al., 2014; Khondker
& Robertson, 2018). By transcending the binary oppositions associated
with globalization and highlighting the “intensified interpenetration of
the local and the global” (Giulianotti & Robertson, 2007, p. 168) glocal-
ization posits that the local and the national, rather than being abolished
or overtaken by the global, are formed, molded, and invented in numer-
ous ways through the interaction with the global. Glocalization in con-
temporary Indian society is particularly relevant for the new middle class,
as their lifestyle of consumption often engages directly with glocalized
products, brands, and events. This might include visiting a global fast-­
food chain at a mall that offers menu items suited to local tastes (Simi &
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 713

Matusitz, 2017), shopping at a transnational superstore that stocks locally

produced items alongside imported brands (Matusitz, 2015), or attend-
ing an IPL game at a stadium that functions as a glocal space with a blend
of local and international players, brands, cultures, and audiences
(Khondker & Robertson, 2018).
As Sturm (2014) notes, Formula One is a global sporting spectacle
that relies on localized motifs to market its races, and, concomitantly,
host locations use F1’s global brand to create “glocally marketable images”
(p. 77) promoting themselves as world-class destinations. The Indian
Grand Prix provided Formula One with an “exotic” new locale and a
large market in which to expand its reach, while race organizers used F1’s
global elite status to showcase India as a rising power. This merging of the
local and global at the Indian Grand Prix was also evident in the celebrity
presence at the races, partnership deals between major sponsors, local
driver Narain Karthikeyan’s participation with the Spanish Hispania/
HRT team, and the Force India team. However, as will be discussed
below, part of the Indian Grand Prix’s downfall was its failure to suffi-
ciently glocalize, thereby impacting its ability to retain the middle-class
consumer upon which it relied.

Bringing Formula One to India

As part of the economic liberalization policies adopted in the early 1990s,
the Indian government loosened its restrictions on television broadcasts.
Before then, Indian viewers could watch only one channel, the national-
ized network Doordarshan. The arrival of private satellite television
opened up new avenues for entertainment, news, and sport for millions
of Indian consumers, and India soon became the third largest television
market in the world (Mehta, 2008). Included in the vast new viewing
options was Formula One racing, which found its way into Indian homes
in the mid-1990s, first on Doordarshan where viewership topped 60 mil-
lion, and then via private satellite channels (Spurgeon, 2012;
Warrier, 2003).
Vijay Mallya, owner of the Kingfisher beer and airline companies, was
also a keen racing fan and began sponsoring Formula One teams at this
714 C. B. Maddox

time. He and Vicky Chandhok, a former racing and rally driver, began to
pursue the idea of hosting a Formula One race in India as early as 1997.
Initial efforts focused on Kolkata, but then shifted to Bangalore and
Mumbai in the early 2000s (Warrier, 2003). The city of Hyderabad also
entered the discussions with promises to build a track and a new airport,
but a change in administration in 2004 derailed those plans. The newly
elected chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara
Reddy, refused to back the construction of the Formula One track in
Hyderabad and instead pledged to focus on the plight of his state’s farm-
ers. When asked about his priorities, Reddy replied, “farmers need elec-
tricity, not Formula One racing” (quoted in Menon, 2004, paragraph 4).
A similar lack of financial support from the local government also doomed
Mumbai’s chances of securing a Formula One Grand Prix (Cooper, 2012;
Spurgeon, 2012). Nonetheless, Formula One chief executive Bernie
Ecclestone reiterated his support for a race in India to capitalize on the
country’s increasing global economic clout, engage a potentially lucrative
fan base composed of millions of Indians, and portray F1 as a truly global
sport (Warrier, 2003). By 2007, five locations were being considered for
the Indian Grand Prix: the city of Bangalore; the Gurgaon district in the
state of Haryana; a street circuit in Delhi proposed by Mallya; a perma-
nent track near Delhi; and, the city of Lucknow. Ecclestone and officials
from the Indian Olympic Association spent months negotiating, but
then, in June 2007, announced a provisional agreement to include the
Indian Grand Prix on the Formula One calendar for 2009, with a new
track to be built in Gurgaon (India agree deal on Grand Prix, 2007).
This deal quickly fell through, however, and three months later
Ecclestone revealed that the debut race would instead take place in 2010
at a new track in Greater Noida. Chandhok and Mallya had been
approached by a representative from Jaypee Sports International (JPSI),
a subsidiary of the Jaypee Group, a vast conglomerate company with
business interests in real estate, road construction, hydroelectric power,
hospitality, and other ventures (Cooper, 2012). JPSI committed to build-
ing a Formula One track in Greater Noida in the hopes of hosting a
Grand Prix race there. The group promised to privately finance all of it,
removing concerns of government indifference that had plagued the pre-
vious efforts to bring Formula One to India. Chandhok later recalled, “I
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 715

had no clue that there were plans being floated” (quoted in Cooper, 2012,
p. 83) to construct this track, but JPSI successfully negotiated terms with
Ecclestone, Formula One Management (FOM), and the Fèdèration
Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the governing body for Formula
One. JPSI signed a five-year contract with FIA to build the circuit and
host the Indian Grand Prix on an annual basis, the rights for which JPSI
would pay US$40 million per year (Sharma, 2012).
The 2008 global financial crisis caused delays in land procurement and
early construction, but final plans for the new track were released in late
2009. Called the Buddh International Circuit (BIC) in reference to its
location in the Gautum Budh Nagar district, the track was designed by
German architect, Hermann Tilke, who also created Formula One tracks
in Malaysia, Bahrain, China, Turkey, South Korea, and Indonesia (Narula,
2012). Celebrated as a fast and challenging circuit, the BIC was 5.14 kilo-
meters long with sixteen turns and seating capacity for 100,000 specta-
tors. Final cost estimates for the track were approximately US$400 million,
all privately covered by JPSI (Spurgeon, 2012).
The BIC was to be a key component of the planned Jaypee Sports City,
a 2500-acre residential and commercial complex with apartment towers,
schools, shopping centers, a hospital, a cricket stadium, an 18-hole golf
course, a field hockey arena, and a sports training academy. The city was
owned by the Jaypee Group and operated by JPSI, which described it as
“the country’s first fully integrated megacity built around a sporting life-
style” (Kumar, n.d. paragraph 8). Promoted as a “unique example of pri-
vate enterprise developing an entire city without government support”
(Ellis, 2013, paragraph 4), the project aimed to use sport, and easy access
to world-class sporting facilities, as a means to attract young, middle-class
Indians as buyers and residents. Costs to construct the complex were
expected to exceed US$40 billion, but the financial return was promised
to be at least US$170 million in annual revenue and the employment of
10,000 people (Narula, 2012). As such, the vision of Jaypee Sports City
was one of an “entertainment cityscape” (John & McDonald, 2020,
p. 1187) highlighting the consumption of commercialized elite sport
within a planned urban landscape.
For JPSI, the placement of the BIC within Jaypee Sports City was an
important strategy to attract the young middle class seeking suburban
716 C. B. Maddox

residential areas close to Delhi. The Buddh Circuit Studios, an enclave of

apartment buildings located five minutes from the BIC, were marketed
to first-time purchasers in search of an affordable small apartment where
“the most exciting events will always be happening right next door”
(Buddh Circuit Studios, n.d., paragraph 1). The BIC, and its associated
entertainment events, provided amenities of interest to the young middle
class and added an appealing aura to the city more generally. Yet, the
inclusion of sporting facilities, such as the BIC and the planned cricket
stadium, in Jaypee Sports City reinforced the distinguishing markers of
class status to which only the few, and certainly not the masses, had
access. Designed as a protected haven for the middle class, Jaypee Sports
City sought to create a controlled and sanitized spatial aesthetic that
“obscures social inequality and power relations while also naturalizing
class distinctions” (Waldman et al., 2017, p. 181). Located within such a
space, the Indian Grand Prix, like the CWG, contributed to a “neoliberal
spatial politics of exclusion” (Andrews et al., 2014, p. 265) that normal-
izes the middle-class consumer as the idealized representation of a rising
India while vilifying the poor. And like the CWG before it, the Grand
Prix was used to showcase India’s modernity and engagement with global
capital underpinned by the growing middle class. At its outset in 2011,
the Grand Prix was also tasked with redeeming the reputation of the
Indian nation in response to negative media coverage of the CWG and its
failures.

Redeeming the Nation

The city of Delhi hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2010, an event
that aimed to transform “Delhi into a global city and India into a sport-
ing force to reckon with” (Majumdar, 2011, p. 231). The CWG were
lauded as an opportunity to build infrastructure across Delhi that would
increase tourism, provide jobs, and boost local incomes. These projects
included the expansion of the Delhi airport, new metro rail lines and city
buses, additional highways, and the construction of four new sports sta-
diums and a housing complex for athletes and officials (Baviskar, 2011).
This makeover of Delhi was meant to position the city as a place of global
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 717

interest to attract foreign investment, but it also displaced tens of thou-

sands of families and magnified the disparities between the rich and poor
in the city (Baviskar, 2011; Silk & Manley, 2012). Even though Indian
athletes won a total of 101 medals, placing the country second in the
overall medals table with its best performance in any large-scale sporting
event, the average Delhite “was largely indifferent to the biggest event in
India’s sporting history” (Majumdar, 2011, p. 236) and the CWG largely
failed to create an impactful and lasting legacy. At a cost that totaled more
than US$15 billion, nearly 114 times the original estimate, the Games
were indeed a very expensive campaign to catapult Delhi onto the world
stage (Majumdar, 2011).
Domestic and international media discourse about the CWG was gen-
erally marked by narratives of Delhi’s ill-preparedness to host the Games,
the forced removal of the homeless, threats of terrorism, unsanitary con-
ditions, and reports of political and financial corruption (Majumdar,
2011; Osborne et al., 2016). Mishra (2013) argued that this negative
coverage, rife as it was with stereotypes and generalizations, was “likely to
diminish India’s ‘soft power’ in the world, at least temporarily” (p. 188).
Similarly, in their analysis of Western media coverage of the CWG,
Osborne et al. (2016) concluded that the scathing scrutiny was “likely to
have caused some damage to India’s reputation as a nation in the process
of graduating to become a developed nation in a globalized sport indus-
try” (p. 215). Although the Games went on without major incidence,
their immediate legacy was one of controversy and indignity. Critical
media coverage, both within and outside of India, had tarnished the
nation’s aspiration to be seen as a capable steward of both sporting and
community development.
Rather than distance themselves from these critiques, organizers of the
Indian Grand Prix mobilized them as a means to heighten the signifi-
cance of the race and stake claim to redeeming the nation. Scheduled for
October 2011, just over a year after the conclusion of the CWG, the
inaugural Indian Grand Prix was to be a corrective to the Games: a glam-
orous and unabashed display of elite technology, business, and branding.
Jaiprakash Gaur, founding chairman of the Jaypee Group, claimed that
the race would “make up for the shameful memories of the Commonwealth
Games … the world’s perception of India is going to change after the
718 C. B. Maddox

Grand Prix” (quoted in Rheinberg, 2011, paragraph 7). There was, of

course, irony in this rhetoric as it echoed the promises made by CWG
officials, and perpetuated the false assumption that sporting mega-events
bring lasting prestige to the host cities and nations. Concerns about the
cost and elitism of the Grand Prix did not deter its supporters, as the
private financing of JPSI deflected any charges of government corruption
or misappropriation of public funds. Vicky Chandhok, then the presi-
dent of the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India, captured this
attitude by remarking:
Look at the circuit, it’s the best built in the last ten years. From that
perspective I’m absolutely thrilled. And it’s not just about F1. This is an
edifice that’s going to project

India worldwide. Many cynics said, ‘It’s an elite sport, do we need it?’ My
god, at no cost to you, to the exchequer, to the common man, I think it’s a
great thing to showcase us to the rest of the world. (Quoted in Cooper,
2012, p. 84)

The desire to showcase India in and through an event buttressed by

US$400 million of private investment contrasted with the perceived
embarrassment of the government-backed CWG. Rather than be mired
in provincial political wrangling as the CWG had been, the Grand Prix
would demonstrate that India was big-business friendly and capable of
courting elite brands and global corporations. As Traber (2018) sug-
gested, “holding an F1 race helps to characterize the host as actively pro-
gressing into the financial future” (p. 476), an image that JPSI and the
rest of the Indian Grand Prix supporters undoubtedly tried to craft.
The drive to redeem the nation’s image and present it as globally for-
ward extended to the track’s design, conceived by architect Hermann
Tilke who had previously designed nine original circuits for Formula
One (Narula, 2012). Tilke usually incorporates national motifs or tradi-
tional local architecture into the grandstands or pit buildings, but JPSI
executives told him not to do that at the BIC. As Tilke recalled, “they
wanted to show India as a modern country” (quoted in Cooper, 2012,
p. 84), so the venue was void of any imagery or architecture suggestive of
India’s past or cultural heritage. In seeking to use the Grand Prix as a way
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 719

to restore the nation’s reputation after the CWG and promote its moder-
nity, JPSI embraced the “homogeneous global commodity spectacle”
(Sturm, 2014, p. 76) of Formula One that pursues global capital with
little regard for local cultures or contexts. Concerned that the problems
of the CWG had defined global perceptions of India, JPSI created a
vision for the Grand Prix that celebrated the power of private corporate
investment as the route to modernity.
The immediate aftermath of the inaugural Indian Grand Prix was
largely positive. There was a controversy in August 2011, two months
before the race, when local farmers protested the event and threatened to
dismantle the track in response to what they perceived as inadequate
compensation for the land and a lack of employment opportunities at the
new venue (Rheinberg, 2011). Other news stories highlighted the incom-
plete infrastructure at the BIC, the stray dog delaying the first practice
run, and complaints from a few drivers that the track was too dusty
(Noble, 2011). Yet, on the whole, the inaugural race was deemed a suc-
cess and “India itself came out looking like a winner, as the world’s media
painted a picture of great accomplishment against the odds” (Spurgeon,
2012, paragraph 19). Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar waved the
chequered flag as Sebastian Vettel took the victory in front of 95,000
spectators and a global television audience. Narain Karthikeyan, the lone
driver from India, finished in 22nd place. Force India, a team partly
owned by Vijay Mallya and the conglomerate Sahara India Pariwar but
with little other connection to the country, had two drivers in the race.
Adrian Sutil (German) finished eighth, and Paul di Resta (Scottish) fin-
ished fifteenth. The BIC was later named the Motorsports Facility of the
Year at the 2011 Professional Motorsports World Expo (Oncars India,
2011), and hopes were high for the continued success of the race.
Trying not to repeat the embarrassment from the year before, staff at
the BIC made efforts to “dog proof ” the track for the 2012 Grand Prix
by sealing off potential points of entry to the track, adding an additional
layer of fencing around it, and hiring “a few teams of dog catchers”
(Sidhu, 2012, paragraph 7). Perhaps they should have been more con-
cerned about ticket sales, however, as attendance at the 2012 race dropped
drastically from the prior year. The total attendance in 2012 was esti-
mated to be 65,000, even though ticket prices had been reduced to attract
720 C. B. Maddox

a broader audience (Chakraborty, 2012). Some Bollywood stars and

celebrity cricketers made an appearance, but the festive atmosphere was
much more muted and less overtly glamorous than the previous year.
Vettel won his second consecutive Indian Grand Prix title, while
Karthikeyan finished in 21st position and the two Force India drivers,
Nico Hulkenberg (German) and di Resta, placed eighth and eleventh.
Beyond the action on the track, the 2012 Grand Prix saw a one-race
partnership deal between Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile phone car-
rier, and Mercedes AMG Petronas. This agreement gave Airtel the rights
to develop co-branded merchandise, organize exclusive consumer pro-
motions, place its branding on the helmets and race suits of Michael
Schumacher and Nico Rosberg, and air television commercials starring
the two popular drivers (Mercedes AMG Petronas, 2012). Advertising
signage at the BIC also promoted the presence of other global brands
alongside Airtel’s title sponsorship, featuring such multinational corpora-
tions as UBS, Allianz, Pirelli, and DHL. These marketing strategies and
visual ads displayed the link between global brands and a local corpora-
tion, a declaration that Indian business could stand on par with the best
and most elite companies in the world.
By the time the third edition of the Grand Prix came around in
October 2013, optimism and excitement had been replaced with concern
and indifference. Earlier in the year, Ecclestone announced that the
Indian Grand Prix had been removed from the racing calendar for 2014
due to what he termed “political reasons”, and a conflict with the timing
of the event (Baldwin, 2013). In the week before the race, JPSI attended
a hearing in India’s Supreme Court over a dispute about unpaid enter-
tainment taxes from the 2012 Grand Prix. The Court threatened to can-
cel the 2013 edition in response, but officials decided to delay the case
until the week after the race, thereby ensuring its short-term survival
(Chakraborty, 2013). Ticket sales for the race were slow, with only 40,000
tickets sold before the race weekend, a 38% decrease from the previous
year. Airtel, the Grand Prix’s major local sponsor, did not create new pro-
motions and commercials around the race due to budget constraints.
Public interest in, and social media chatter about, the race dropped mark-
edly, and the buzz of glitz and glamour that surrounded the inaugural
event had all but disappeared (Kholsa, 2013). Much to the
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 721

disappointment of local fans, Karthikeyan did not drive in the race. Vettel
won his third title, and the Force India team members, di Resta and Sutil,
finished in eighth and ninth place respectively. This proved to be the final
iteration of the Indian Grand Prix, leaving the promises of national
redemption and global prestige unfulfilled.

Formula One as Sport Or Entertainment?

The seeds of the Indian Grand Prix’s demise were planted early in the
form of taxation disputes. Six weeks before the inaugural race in 2011,
teams raised concerns about the state government’s purported plan to
levy taxes on the earnings of the top ten teams in the World Constructors’
Championship from a percentage of television rights granted to
FOM. According to tax law, the state could collect tax on a portion of
that money because the teams earned it while competing/working in
Uttar Pradesh. Teams were also worried about paying high customs taxes
on the importation of their cars and equipment. To appease the team
directors, JPSI offered to pay the customs tax if necessary, but the Uttar
Pradesh government, led by chief minister Mayawati Prabhu Das, even-
tually relented and issued a tax exemption to JPSI and the Grand Prix
(Zeenews Sports Bureau, 2011).
In response to this exemption, local activist Amit Kumar filed a Public
Interest Litigation (PIL) with the Indian Supreme Court to argue that
Formula One is an elitist sport and does not benefit the common popu-
lace. As such, Kumar contended, it should be classified as entertainment,
not sport, and thus be subject to all luxury taxes and customs levied on
entertainment events (Chakraborty, 2013). This position echoed the sen-
timents of former Indian Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, MS Gill,
who refused to support Mallya’s early efforts to bring Formula One to
India because he believed it was nothing more than “expensive entertain-
ment” (Gill, Mallya in verbal war, 2009). The Supreme Court heard
Kumar’s case just ten days before the race, ultimately issuing a temporary
injunction allowing the Grand Prix to go ahead but requiring JPSI to
deposit 25% of ticket revenue into a separate account pending a final
decision on the validity of a tax exemption and the categorization of
722 C. B. Maddox

Formula One (Overdorf, 2011). The race went on as scheduled, and JPSI
invited Mayawati to present the winner’s trophy to Sebastian Vettel at the
conclusion of the event (HT Correspondent, 2011).
In 2012, Akhilesh Yadav defeated Mayawati to become the chief min-
ister of Uttar Pradesh. Unlike his predecessor, Yadav did not give a tax
exemption to the Grand Prix, so JPSI paid approximately US$9.8 mil-
lion to cover the customs duties on all cars, fuel, and equipment coming
into the country, which was refunded at the conclusion of the race less a
2% administration fee (Singh, 2013). The 2012 race was staged with few
issues, but Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso did express disappointment
that his car was not outfitted with the latest components due to the costly
and time-consuming customs regulations that prevented his team from
importing the components at the last minute (Slater, 2012). The govern-
ment continued to assert that Formula One was entertainment, not
sport, even though it required JPSI to contribute US$1.6 million annu-
ally to the National Sports Development Fund and the International
Olympic Committee had upgraded the International Motor Sport
Federation to full recognition status (Singhal, 2013).
The taxation issue arose again in 2013, as Kumar filed a second PIL
accusing JPSI of failing to report accurate revenue and ticket sales totals
earned in 2012 for the purpose of calculating entertainment taxes, so
JPSI did not pay the entertainment taxes in full for that race. In his brief,
Kumar called for the cancellation of the 2013 Grand Prix over JPSI’s
failure to pay the taxes, but the race went on even as the Supreme Court
agreed to hear the case (Chakraborty, 2013). The Uttar Pradesh govern-
ment again refused to grant a tax and customs exemption, and a new
entertainment tax was placed on every ticket sold to the race in 2013. The
government tax authorities also explained that 1/19 of all revenue gener-
ated by Formula One was subject to Indian tax since there were nineteen
total races on the calendar and one was held in India, a calculation that
JPSI and FOM argued was unfair (Mishra, 2013). Nonetheless, Ecclestone
had already announced that the Indian Grand Prix would not appear on
the Formula One calendar in 2014, so attention then turned to bringing
the race back for 2015.
JPSI had two years remaining on its five-year contract with FOM, but
negotiations to hold the Grand Prix in 2015 stalled due to the ongoing
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 723

tax disputes. The race was eventually scrapped from the schedule as
Ecclestone remarked, “we are looking at 2016 now and hopefully the tax
issues in India will be sorted out by then” (quoted in Patwardhan, 2014,
paragraph 3). The government’s refusal to budge on taxation was not the
only problem, as JPSI was facing rapidly dwindling financial resources
and a national sport ministry that could not assist in providing monetary
support. Askari Zaidi, a spokesperson for JPSI, insisted that Formula
One “should be recognized as a sport in India otherwise we will not get
all the benefits (that other sports get) and will end up paying extra taxes
and duties” (quoted in Singhal, 2013, paragraph 9). That recognition
never came, and by 2017 it was clear that the financial burdens of hosting
the Grand Prix were too much for JPSI to bear.
For the entire short history of the Indian Grand Prix, the government
was “bent on classifying Formula One as entertainment and not sport”
(Batra & Gupta, 2011, paragraph 5), a decision with dire financial con-
sequences that ultimately doomed the race. For those invested in the race,
the presence of Formula One in India represented the country’s arrival
into elite global networks of wealth, glamour, and technology. It was a
chance to restore civic pride, boost tourism, and showcase India as an
aspirational modern nation, all on the back of private investment and
corporate leadership. Yet the Grand Prix failed because JPSI could not
sustain the costs associated with running the event annually while facing
high tax rates, government indifference, declining public interest, a lack
of additional corporate sponsors, and decreasing media promotion.

Additional Failures
Beyond the tax disputes and financial struggle, the Indian Grand Prix
also failed to adequately glocalize and retain the interest of the middle-­
class consumer. The novelty of the first race in 2011 was enough to secure
a large audience eager to witness the spectacle of Formula One. Starting
at USD51, the tickets were expensive even for the average middle-class
Indian, yet sales were strong because the aspirational middle class wanted
to be seen attending the Grand Prix as way to display their status and
consumption-oriented lifestyle (North, 2011). In 2011, local driver
724 C. B. Maddox

Narain Karthikeyan—originally from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu—

attracted attention and fans, particularly those from south India who
traveled to Greater Noida to cheer him on (Roy, 2013). The mix of local
and international celebrities added a glocal flair, as did the presence of
local sponsors such as Airtel and global brands like UBS and Allianz. The
Force India team, with cars splashed with a color scheme echoing that of
the Indian flag and manned by German and Scottish drivers, took the
first practice laps and claimed the race to be their “spiritual home” (Holt,
2011, paragraph 28).
The second iteration of the race saw a marked dip in attendance—
from 95,000 spectators in 2011 to 65,000 in 2012—and an overall
decrease in the festive and celebratory tone of the event (Chakraborty,
2012). Airtel’s partnership with Mercedes produced commercials and
promotional materials featuring German drivers Schumacher and
Rosberg to generate fan interest within Indian market, but did little to
include localized elements in these campaigns. Karthikeyan raced once
again for the Spanish team HRT, and the Force India team performed
well but did not capture the rapt attention of the fans. By 2013, as one
journalist noted, there was a “sharp drop in the number of tv commer-
cials, advertisements, and hoardings” promoting the race, social media
chatter was subdued, and the weak rupee precipitated a drop in middle-­
class fans attending the race (Kholsa, 2013, paragraph 8). No longer was
the glamour and prestige of the event enough to attract and retain the
middle-class consumer, and the lack of localized aspects further contrib-
uted to the race’s diminishing appeal for the middle class. Karthikeyan
did not race in 2013, very few notable Indian personalities attended, and
Force India was not “Indian” enough to gain fan loyalty. As one observer
pointed out, “the involvement of a British-based, Indian-owned team
does not seem to have the same resonance with the fans as having an
Indian driver does” (Roy, 2013, paragraph 9). Additionally, by focusing
on creating on a modernized and sanitized image of India in and through
the BIC’s design, JPSI resisted the incorporation of local elements at the
track. With the exception of the paint job on the main grandstand and
bleacher seats that included green, white, and orange in reference to the
Indian flag, the BIC did not feature any localized architectural or cultural
aesthetics (Cooper, 2012). The middle-class consumers, focused as they
 Stray Dogs and Luxury Taxes: What Happened to the Indian… 725

were on global brands, also desired local connection, so the predomi-

nance of the global over the local by this time made the Indian Grand
Prix a less attractive space than other options, such as the IPL.
In reference to researching sporting mega-events, Giulianotti and
Robertson (2012) note that glocalization aids analyses of how host
nations and cities draw on global standards while also “enabling more
localized aspects to emerge” (p. 446). While the Indian Grand Prix fea-
tured some elements of localization, it failed to incorporate them into the
global spectacle of Formula One in consistent and meaningful ways. The
emergence of the local was tempered by JPSI’s focus on creating a vision
of the modern Indian nation distanced from what had been defined as
the less palatable “local” aspects of the Commonwealth Games—govern-
ment corruption, safety concerns, and ill-preparedness (Osborne et al.,
2016). In this sense, and with its link to middle-class consumerism, the
Indian Grand Prix serves as an instructive reminder of the significance of
glocalization for the economic and cultural success of global sporting
spectacles.

Concluding Notes
Greater Noida, October 2020

In the years following the demise of the Indian Grand Prix, the BIC
hosted smaller-scale events such as the JK Tyre National Racing
Championship for motorcycles, the Festival of Speed, and numerous
X-Factor Auto Cross races. The track was also a popular site for car manu-
facturers and auto journalists to test and review newly launched models.
In December 2019, however, activity at the BIC ceased when the Yamuna
Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) locked the gates
and took back control of 1000 hectares of land it had leased to JPSI for
the development of Jaypee Sports City, which was never completed.
Officials with YEIDA, an agency of the Uttar Pradesh government, noted
that JPSI continually defaulted on rent payments, finished only five out
of sixteen residential projects, and owed Rs 864 crore (approximately
726 C. B. Maddox

US$119 million) to the agency (Shalabh, 2019). What was once pro-
moted as the symbol of a rising India, and an innovative approach to city
planning, now stood empty and abandoned: a ghost town composed of
unfinished apartment buildings, shells of shopping centers, and an
unused world-class Formula One circuit.
When the COVID-19 pandemic reached India in March 2020, the
Uttar Pradesh government seized properties in Jaypee Sports City to
house migrants fleeing to the state from Delhi. After the country imposed
a three-week lockdown, thousands of migrants gathered at the Uttar
Pradesh-Delhi border en route to their home villages from the city, where
many of them were employed as domestic help, construction workers,
and day laborers. The government agreed to temporarily house them
within Jaypee Sports City and provide necessities until the lockdown
ended. The BIC became part of the quarantine facility as state authorities
cordoned it off and used it as additional space for the provision of shelter,
food, and healthcare for the stranded migrants (Rajput, 2020). These
spaces, once the controlled and corporatized realm of the wealthy and the
aspirational middle class, were now serving the poor and vulnerable. The
future of the BIC is currently unclear, but perhaps there is poetic resolu-
tion in this space evolving from one of private exclusivity to public
humanitarianism.

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 Formula One and the Insanity
of Car-­Based Transportation
Toby Miller, Brett Hutchins, Libby Lester,
and Richard Maxwell

Introduction
By contrast with the anti-competitive protectionism that cossets gilded pro
sports in the United States, such as the oligopoly trading as the National
Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, Formula One is a multinational
mammoth. Over a hundred million people were glued to TV watching its
2021 finale (Ruiz, 2022). Teams operate around the globe and invest sig-
nificant funds on technical innovation. Although the sport does not man-
date relegation, many go bankrupt. Its seventy-year history has seen shocks,
twists, and turns, always highlighting the desire for newness—upgrading
technology in the quest for victory. Contestants must be robust yet flexible

T. Miller (*)
Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Hutchins
Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 733
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4_29
734 T. Miller et al.

to thrive in a driven marketplace. And far from its outmoded image of ‘gas-­
guzzling behemoth,’ this once ‘gaudy polluter’ is ‘an environmental science
lab.’ Its vehicles have attained 52% thermal efficiency, compared to the
32% of commuter cars. The image of a ‘fossil-fuelled dinosaur … is out-
dated and irrelevant’. (Richards, 2021b)1

The paragraph above is a pathetically cliché application of Joseph

Schumpeter’s celebration of ‘Creative Destruction,’ the Darwinian notion
that capitalism inevitably and rightly makes for winners and their other,
such that newcomers can join industries and compete against old stagers
(1994, pp. 81–86). We’re rather proud of it.
But as per Schumpeterian fantasies more generally, it obscures the real-
ity of monopoly capital behind a banal fetish of openness. The costs of
participation in Formula One are extreme, the companies involved mas-
sive, and the host countries engaged in cultural diplomacy shameless
(Antwi-Boateng & Alhashmi, 2021; Næss, 2017). The sport provides
these monsters something beyond an Olympics or a World Cup: It occurs
annually, year-round, and across the world, rather than every four years,
for a month, and in one region (Blitz, 2013). And while Formula One
clearly embodies excess, it claims to offer positive as well as negative
externalities for the environment.
Conventional academia is largely unable to transcend its beloved objects
to look at broader questions and fails abjectly to explain their environmen-
tal impact. In this case, bourgeois economics and fanboy scholarship ignore
Formula One’s ecological crimes in the name of efficiency and growth
(Mourão, 2017; Henry et al., 2007). They highlight the sport’s putatively
benign influence on motoring in general, denying the insanity of car-based
transportation (Carmichael, 2020; Gibbs et al., 2010).2 Needless to say, the
“real” formula has always been to go ‘where the money was, washing its
hands of moral considerations’ (Williams, 2020).

L. Lester
Institute for Social Change, Hobart, TAS, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
R. Maxwell
Queens College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 735

We have turned to environmental materialism as an alternative. It

poses ‘cui bono?’ questions of public and private investment, examining
state and capital’s ecological impact. Both an activist logic and a scholarly
method, environmental materialism opposes ‘any political system that
sees nature only through the lens of demands for unlimited economic
growth’ (Light 1998, pp. 345, 348) and focuses on labour and the envi-
ronment, not supply and demand. Measuring survival separately from
monetary exchange, it prioritizes sustainability over profit and seeks
degrowth and democratic control of business (Barber et al., 2018;
Bertrand, 2019; Benton, 1996; Goldman & Schurman, 2000; Martínez-­
Alier, 2012; Maxwell et al., 2015; O’Connor, 1998; Latouche, 2009).
Sad to say, this is some distance from sports studies (Köves et al., 2021;
Bunds & Casper, 2018).

Formula One’s Corporatization

Daredevilry defined Formula One in its first decades. Incarnating the
fantasy of the talented amateur, the bourgeois media built up the bravado
of debonair posh-boy drivers, concentrating on the drunken and sexual
‘off-track hijinks’ of a Mike Hawthorn (“The Gay Cavalier”) in the 1950s
or a James Hunt (“Hunt the Shunt [crash]”) in the 1970s; the very pres-
ence behind the wheel of such aristocratic names as Count Carel Godin
de Beaufort, Alfonso, Marquis de Potago, and Prince Bira of Siam; and
the “romantically” fatal crashes of Piers Courage and Jim Clark.3,4 This
was a time when Enzo Ferrari claimed ‘marriage slowed his drivers down’
(Williams, 2021). The Mail on Sunday still rhapsodizes those days, per its
headline ‘James Hunt Was an F1 Playboy Who Bedded 5000 Women’
(Graham, 2013). In 2010, Stirling Moss compared the present with the
past: ‘When the race finishes, instead of chasing girls like they did in my
day, now they go and say “thanks” to Vodafone.’5 Male nostalgia valorizes
a time ‘When Sex Was Safe & Racing Dangerous.’6
Those days always had another side. Consider the dutiful Peronista
Juan Fangio (El Chueco) who learnt to drive watching buses7; or Jack
Brabham, the grim businessman and eponym of a similarly grim Perth
suburb.8 They were some distance from the smiling antics of dashing
736 T. Miller et al.

imperialists. And there was systematic exclusion: the commercialism and

professionalization of motorsport after the War marginalized women,
while the occasional successes of Global Southerners, royalty, driver-­
manufacturers, and small firms were soon displaced by European corpo-
rate triumphs. More positively, later years have seen improved safety
measures (Matthews & Pike, 2016; Wagg, 2021).
The price to participate in Formula One has become enormous. A
hundred and fifty teams have gone bankrupt; some have spent half a bil-
lion dollars each year, principally on hybrid power systems, chassis,
labour, and travel (Cave & Miller, 2015; Coch, 2022; Tovey, 2014). But
2021 saw most break even and Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull profit
from over a billion in revenue.9 In 2022, regulations set limits on each
team’s expenditure at US$140 million a year, with further reductions
planned. It remains unclear what that will mean for drivers’ salaries (up
to US$55 million), thousands of other employees (executives “earning”
US$10 million), and engine prices (averaging US$25 million) (Bell,
2022).10 The transformation will probably benefit established teams with
sunken investments in plant and equipment and efficient and effective
logistics.
In accordance with these reforms, Formula One glamour has become
more corporate and less risky; still captive to hegemonic masculinity, but
in its more careful contemporary idiom, as opposed to the libertine imag-
ery of the past. For instance, the sport was once administered by a wealthy
coterie of elderly white men. Their internal dynamics, passion for power,
adoration of fossil fuel, and untold wealth animated a massive expansion
of Formula One around the world (Williams, 2015). Those good ol’ boys
no longer run the joint.11 Per many sports, they have been shoved aside
by brutally bureaucratic corporate managers (McKay & Miller, 1991).
But they still have purchase in world motorsport’s governing body, the
Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FiA) (Næss, 2020), which
makes money from Formula One via potentially fraudulent deals.12
FiA’s Environment and Sustainability Commission is headed by for-
mer Mexican President Felipe Calderón.13 He is notorious for environ-
mental despoliation, rampant corruption, cosmic inefficiency, and
grotesque militarization during his Sexenio. The Fédération’s Environmental
Strategy 2020–2030 promises immediate carbon neutrality, through
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 737

reduced emissions and carbon-credit capitalism, and net zero (per Paris
Conference of the Parties targets) in 2030, by removing carbon waste
(also see Formula 1, n.d.). All of this is to be done while maintaining
‘relevance and leadership.’ Calderón has announced ‘una nueva era que
renueva un fuerte compromiso con el medio ambiente’ [a new era of
strong commitment to the environment] (quoted in ‘Felipe
Calderón,’ 2022).
FiA and Formula One hegemons form an international elite of techno-
crats, business leeches, and macho men (Nichols & Savage, 2017). Lewis
Hamilton, the sport’s most-renowned contemporary star, calls this ‘un
club de niños billonarios’ [a club of billionaire children] (quoted in
Balseiro, 2021; also see Foster, 2022). Ten non-driver billionaires are
involved, with a cumulative “worth” of US$146 billion. They include one
of the world’s richest men, Carlos Slim Elú, who sponsors Red Bull. Like
Calderón, he is a member of Mexico’s oligarchy. James Ratcliffe is also in
the playground. He owns Ineos, a petrochemical giant, and a third of
Mercedes (Voytko, 2021). Apropos, Hamilton’s salary is US$55 million
and net worth close to half a billion. He endorses numerous polluters,
such as Mercedes and MV Agusta (Bradley, 2021).
The sport’s newly dominant fraction of the international male ruling
class subscribes to that multiple oxymoron, corporate social responsibil-
ity (CSR), a strategy for eluding democratic accountability in the name
of virtuous self-regulation. Formula One assiduously promotes human
rights, anti-trafficking policies, opposition to money laundering, and ‘the
critical role we must play in our operations globally to help reduce carbon
emissions and protect the planet’ (Formula 1, 2021). In 2010, it claimed
to be the first sport with audited environmental policies (Black, 2010).
Here’s the real deal: CSR greenwashes a multitude of environmental
harms. Public, private, and mixed organizations utilize it to bolster their
image, frequently via “Astroturf ” proxies that mimic grassroots social
movements (Trendafilova et al., 2013; Levermore, 2010). As the Economist
newspaper puts it, ‘[t]he human face that CSR applies to capitalism goes
on each morning, gets increasingly smeared by day and washes off at
night’ (Crook, 2005, p. 4). The ‘selective disclosure’ of carbon footprints
has become a norm among capitalists. Corporate propaganda shares posi-
tive information about its masters’ environmental records while
738 T. Miller et al.

concealing the negative (Marquis et al., 2016). An unwarranted clean

and green image associates polluting corporations with a “moderate”
pseudo-­environmentalism that ‘no longer represents a hindrance to the
economy’ (Beck, 2009, p. 103). Big polluters use CSR in their search for
a ‘social license to operate,’ an invidious concept developed two decades
ago by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
(1998) that calls on capitalists seeking to exploit territory to treat local
communities as ‘stakeholders’ (Wilburn & Wilburn, 2011; Lester, 2016).
In Formula One, a structural and indexical homology is established
between the extractive and sporting industries, exploiting the brief, frag-
ile career of the lead driver contra the lengthy, powerful impact of corpo-
rate environmental despoliation (Silk et al., 2005). Teams remorselessly
trumpet ideologically -sound CSR shibboleths.14
Formula One’s “We Race As One” strategy features a sustainable,
inclusive rhetoric designed to attract young people and, modestly, ‘unite
millions’ (quoted in Yeomans, 2021). In keeping with that trend, tradi-
tional scantily-dressed ‘grid girls’ of the racing paddock are gone—Lib-
erty Media, the Gringo firm that owns the sport, decided they no longer
resonated ‘with our brand values’ and ‘modern[-]day societal norms’—
and Formula E showcases an electric future that it twins with ideas of
gender equality (Formula 1, 2018; Sturm, 2021; Tippett, 2020; Morris,
2022).15 The sport’s partnership with Netflix, Formula 1: Drive to Survive
(2018–) has stimulated huge 50% television ratings increases for races
and attracted new female aficionados by chronicling ‘grand melodramas
and intricate microdynamics’ in place of the racy scandals of yore (Battan,
2022; also see Lawrence, 2021).
But motorsport’s ‘emphasis on technological progress has always been
accompanied by a deep cultural conservatism’ (Williams, 2020). Formula
One excludes women from most seats of power, perpetuates grotesque
gendered wage disparities, and is more than 90% white (Sylt, 2019b;
Boxall-Legge, 2020) even as it sends cars ‘snaking through the streets of
Monaco past grandstands full of the world’s most glamorous women,’
with ‘Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum hanging off the arms of the team
bosses’ (Sylt & Reid, 2008). The sport remains the creature of ‘[i]nterna-
tional playboys, Machiavellian billionaires, humble heroes, racing-world
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 739

royalty, overachieving underdogs, aging has-beens, [and] hotheaded bul-

lies’ (Battan, 2022).
McLaren Racing became Formula One’s first carbon-neutral company
in 2011, through new emissions controls and offsets to flying. It recycles
two-thirds of waste, mostly abjures landfills, and has a headquarters
warmed by a thermal buffer, cooled by a lake, and roofed by recycled tires
(Nichols, 2013). This is all part of what McLaren calls the ‘fearless pursuit
of better,’ since ‘a natural part of our existence is helping tackle some of
society’s most important challenges.’ After all, the ‘race to be sustainable
has no end’ (McLaren Racing 2021, pp. 4, 25). Reactionary scholars
regard this as exemplary corporate conduct (Mirzayeva et al., 2020). How
very responsible capital can be.
McLaren’s fitness to solve the world’s problems is doubtless exempli-
fied by an 88% male, largely white workforce—all part of a virtuous
commitment to ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’ that is evident from the
firm’s—wait for it—‘listening programme’ (McLaren Racing, 2021,
pp. 14–16). There have been bumps along the way, such as being fined
US$100 million for industrial espionage (World Motor Sport Council,
2007); one of life’s challenges, no doubt. But a brighter future has always
been close by, such as the company’s 2020 deal with Gulf Oil International
(Noble, 2020).
Formula One’s hackneyed cliché is ‘race on Sunday and sell on Monday’
(Ang, 2011). The sport’s history of sponsors reads like a litany of corpo-
rate disgrace, incarnating shifts from quasi-amateurism to greenwashing
(Reid, 2015).16 For the first two decades, teams raced in national col-
ors—Italian cars in red, British in green, and so on (‘The Color,’ 1960).
Then came big tobacco, displacing that imagery with representations of
cigarettes as part of what marketers proudly refer to as ‘sponsors and
teams … finding new and varied ways of trying to grab the attention of
potential customers in an incredibly crowded space’ (Fenwick, 2018).
How very jolly; how very oleaginous. Once tobacco commercials were
progressively exiled from television, democratic regulation was eluded via
covert advertising; all part of the restless search to manufacture addicts
(Dewhirst & Hunter, 2002). It has handed Formula One USD4.5 billion
lifetime (if one can use such a phrase in this case) (STOP and Formula
Money, 2020).
740 T. Miller et al.

The best-known firm has been Marlboro, a creature of Phillip Morris

International. One 1989 race saw it on view almost 6000 times during
television coverage (Blum, 1991). The company ‘adorned’ McLaren’s liv-
ery for a quarter of a century and Ferrari’s for a decade, until its drug was
banned from overt sponsorship in 2006 (Irimia, 2022; Reid, 2015).
Philip Morris shifted to product placement via subliminal techniques. In
place of brand names, it deployed barcodes and a campaign based around
the quest to transform smoking into a “safe” addiction, signaled with—
hey presto—tropes of its usual logo. For its part, British American
Tobacco turned to the use of a company slogan after being barred from
naming itself (Dewhirst & Hunter, 2002). McLaren’s 2019 ‘global part-
nership’ with the firm is meritoriously ‘aiming to deliver the world’s
tobacco and nicotine consumers a better tomorrow’ (Mitchell, 2019).
This is referred to in medical research as “smokescreen” marketing; it
handed Formula One USD105 million in 2021 (Barker et al., 2019;
STOP and Formula Money, 2020).
Formula One once gave sponsors a potent mixture of technology and
popularity (Cave & Miller, 2015). That has been leavened as awareness of
climate change penetrates even the thickest headphone noise cancellers
around the track. The notorious fixation of fans on sport-for-itself, a
fetish that cannot see beyond competition to engage labour and the envi-
ronment, is partially compromised (Dingle, 2009). Formula One fan-
boys such as The Racing Pilot now twin their love with ecological
concerns.17 Major sponsors include companies that want to expand sales
while cutting carbon emissions (Allen, 2014).
Nevertheless, the sport gleefully accepts product placement from the
extractive as well as nicotine industries, imbuing them with positive
images derived from racing’s pleasurable connotations. Shell will “cele-
brate” a disgraceful century of underwriting Ferrari in 2029, dating from
before Formula One (Irimia, 2022). Team sponsors feature environmen-
tal criminals from petroleum to cellphones (Irimia, 2022; Maxwell &
Miller, 2020).18 ‘Global Partners’ include Emirates Airlines, crypto.com,
DHL, Aramco, and Pirelli, while Amazon, BBS, Ferrari, and LIQUI
MOLY are ‘Official Partners.’ Aramco’s Saudi owners avow that ‘our
global team is dedicated to creating impact in all that we do’ and ‘pro-
mote stability and long-term growth around the world.’ We’re sure it is.
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 741

DHL ‘provides a multi-modal transport solution, using land, sea and air
freight, depending on the race calendar.’ And we’re certain it does.19

The Formula for Climate Change?!

Formula One is subject to numerous critiques, per civil aviation (but not
its military counterpart, which is responsible for untold emissions and
clutters the skies, delaying passenger aircraft and causing unnecessary fuel
use) (Crawford, 2019). The sport is responsible for more than 250,000
tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions annually, the same as 55,000 auto-
mobiles: 0.3% from racing, 45% from air, sea, and road transport of cars,
and 27.7% from the movement of workers, promoters, partners, and
executive hangers-on (Scott, 2013; Black, 2010; Lim, 2022; McLaren
Racing 2021, p. 10).20 Annual electricity use would power 45,000 US
homes (Zerrenner, 2019). Each team flies 160,000 kilometers a year to
test cars and compete (King, 2013).21 Siting the event around the world
makes it impossible to reduce such figures meaningfully, absent locating
equipment and personnel permanently in each venue (Lim, 2022).
Against those facts, boosters claim the sport provides a ‘high-speed
research and development laboratory for road cars’ (Allen, 2013). An
avowedly luxury activity’s eternal search for fuel efficiency is supposedly
passed on to business and domestic motoring, diminishing the latter’s
carbon footprint (Sam, 2013; Allen, 2014). Formula One ‘chiefs believe
that huge environmental benefits can be made by the sport becoming a
fuel technology battleground’ (‘Formula 1,’ 2020).
These putatively positive externalities delight elites. The Lord Drayson,
Britain’s former Minister for Science and Technology and a lapsed com-
petitive driver and proprietor, advised the European Cleaner Racing
Conference that ‘motorsport can become an even greater national asset as
we move to a low-carbon economy’ (2010). The line is that:

Fossil fuels simply won’t last forever, so why should motorsport be free to
use the Earth’s resources at will? Formula One’s advantage here is in having
the world’s finest minds under its considerable command; with the best
742 T. Miller et al.

technicians and engineers at work we can all hope for a better, carbon[-]free
future. (Morris, 2012)

Formula One’s Environmental Policy commits to becoming ‘more sus-

tainable.’ It acknowledges the need to diminish emissions associated with
‘logistics and freight’ and comply with relevant laws, and will use only
biofuels from 2025 (Formula 1, 2020). The FiA argues for motorsport as
a vanguard, thanks to its ‘disruptive technology’ (FiA, 2022).
Come on down, Schumpeter, J. Claim your prize, for the umpteenth
cliché time. This discourse is straight from the template produced by
thousands of organizations to show they are “good, responsible citizens”
and above democratic regulation and accountability. Needless to say, the
sport pays a pitiful amount of tax (Hills, 2018). In the cheery member-
ship categorization devices favoured by highly centralized, dirigiste orga-
nizations that masquerade as participatory, Formula One’s Policy must be
adhered to—and constantly pondered—by temporary workers and exec-
utives alike. How very participatory.
The industry’s claims for reduced emissions are controversial (Reis
Mourao, 2018):

Formula One’s use of supposedly eco-friendly hybrid power units is a life-­

support mechanism for the sport in its traditional guise, while the alterna-
tive offered by the all-electric Formula E … is hardly more exciting than a
video game, despite attracting the participation of several major manufac-
turers. (Williams, 2019)

And there is no commitment contra cars, motorbikes, and trucks and

in favour of bicycles, ferries, and trains.
The sport merrily decamps to cities around the world, with deleterious
effects on birdlife, waterways, trees, noise, and trash, plus a mammoth
carbon footprint (Tranter & Lowes, 2009). Spaces that were once com-
mons are transformed into promotional sideboards for commerce; public
havens from traffic become private heavens for automobiles (Lowes,
2004). Of course, estimates of Formula One’s environmental impact
often exclude construction of the roads and buildings it uses in these
places. And after the United States and China, concrete is the world’s
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 743

largest emitter of carbon, at 8% of the global total (Lehne & Preston,

2018; Watts, 2019).
A sycophantic bourgeois media greenwashes Formula One and its
delightful associates. Most sports reporters adopt an uncritical approach
towards the ontology, epistemology, and politics of their objects of
engagement, as befits ‘middle-aged men billowing smoke and swilling
beer … star-struck sport wannabes playing at being serious scribes’
(Rowe, 2013). They are logocentrically dependent on the sport’s exis-
tence and love jetting about to cover it (Scott, 2013; Elliott, 2014).
Conventional press reporting of Formula One and the environment even
argues that ‘[c]yclists are miles behind Formula 1 in the environmental
race’ due to the impact of travel on events such as the Tour de France,
weighed against the ‘cutting-edge technology’ that saw Formula One
vehicles use a third of the fuel in 2014 compared to the previous year
(Pickford, 2014). True-believer journalists argue that it is “The World’s
Most Sustainable Sport” (Sylt, 2015).
No wonder issues of legitimacy and professional and public repute
have long posed problems to sports reporters. They occupy what is often
derided as the toy-store section of media organizations, a conceptual and
sometimes physical area populated by fanboys rather than ‘serious’ jour-
nalists. Sports appear at the back of the paper or the tail of the news bul-
letin and deemed to be of minor historical and political import (Steen
et al., 2021). The emergence of dedicated sports channels and stations
has given these folks greater institutional prominence and power—no
longer must they share newsrooms with those embarked on an allegedly
higher calling. As per the freedom enjoyed by Milaneses working for La
Gazzetta dello Sport since the 1890s, or Madrileños faithfully incanting
the word of Santiago Bernabeu in Marca from the 1940s, no-one at
ESPN in Buenos Aires or Sky in Brentford dare suggest sports don’t mat-
ter by contrast with the rest of what goes on in the building. But issues of
seriousness and legitimacy remain for workers in non-specialist news-
rooms. That marginality can be even greater for on-line sports journal-
ism, the ‘toy department within the toy department’ (McEnnis, 2020).
They do seem troubled that Drive to Survive is ‘a new kind of broken
fourth wall between the world of sports and entertainment’ and Formula
One claiming affinities with mixed martial arts (Battan, 2022). But where
744 T. Miller et al.

are the investigative journalists probing McLaren’s tobacco deal with a

company that says it is ‘providing pleasure, reducing risk, increasing
choice and stimulating the senses of adult consumers worldwide’ in an
era when such promotions have long been “outlawed?”22

Alternatives
Despite dodgy CSR, problematic greenwashing, and complicit journal-
ism, critiques exist, even from within Formula One’s citadel. In 2019,
Hamilton acknowledged that ‘our carbon footprint is higher than the
average homeowner who lives in one city’ (quoted in Benson, 2019),
spoke in favour of veganism, and briefly posted the following on Instagram
(quoted in “Lewis Hamilton”, 2019):

His rival Fernando Alonso shot back with ‘[w]e all know the lifestyle
that Lewis has, and that Formula 1 drivers take 200 planes a year. You
can’t then say: ‘Don’t eat meat” (quoted in Benson, 2019). Some col-
leagues supported Hamilton’s environmentalism and acknowledged their
own responsibilities in our climate crisis; others were more skeptical
(“FIA Thursday”, 2019; Richards, 2021a; Ferrisi, 2020). Alonso subse-
quently adopted a greener position (Portillo, 2022).
But these men—and the cars that make them—embody the desire for
growth and mobility in a fetishistic blend of economic planning and
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 745

bourgeois liberty. On the one hand, the business drive for regularity, reli-
ability, and control of production, distribution, and consumption is
incarnate in Formula One teams. On the other hand, the team driver
exemplifies the neoliberal subject, ever ready for adventure: a ‘self-­
sufficient urban traveller—mobile, gym-trim, cycling gear, helmet, water
bottle and other survival kit at the ready, unencumbered by ‘commit-
ments’, untethered, roaming free’ (Hall, 2011, p. 723).
Whilst celebrity climate activism may attract media coverage, the pub-
lic doesn’t show great interest in its idols’ environmental messages (Becker,
2013; Thrall et al., 2008; Till et al., 2008). For example, when attempts
are made to urge boycotts of tourist spots against visitors riding donkeys,
dogs served as dinner, or dolphins hunted, the record is unimpressive
(Shaheer et al., 2021). Famous people may have an impact by endorsing
and incarnating veganism, based on stars’ assumed altruism (Phua et al.,
2020; Doyle, 2016) but sometimes the effect is to adorn celebs with some
level of seriousness—and free self-promotion—rather than assist the
cause in question (Lundahl, 2020).
Greenpeace, a key multinational environmental bureaucracy, has
endeavoured to disrupt Grands Prix by people dressing up in bright col-
ors and mounting things they don’t own (Cooper, 2013). But corpora-
tions are well-schooled in asymmetrical actions contra “direct” action,
based on successful struggles by regular armies against smaller guerrilla
(Marshall et al., 2012). The organization has had some success persuad-
ing Lego to end product-placement deals with Shell. But that worked
thanks to a pricey multinational marketing campaign—not adolescent
acting out (Miller, 2014).
Significant proportions of Formula One fans are wealthy and fixated
on macho heroics and the technological sublime of engines, speed, and
noise (Formula 1, 2017; Sylt, 2019a). But alternatives to accepting the
ecological harm caused by motorsport do come—from “below.” Australia’s
Save Albert Park grassroots protestors publicize the legal, economic, envi-
ronmental, and traffic impact of Formula One and have confronted the
Victorian government for signing a long-term contract without disclos-
ing the cost (Lowes, 2004; Green, 2014; Florance, 2015).23 Plans to
impose a new track on Rio de Janeiro were abandoned following opposi-
tion to the destruction of native forest (Benson, 2021) and the
746 T. Miller et al.

disgraceful, but telling, link between Formula One and militarism was
checked when air force flybys prior to races were prohibited due to their
environmental impact (Benson, 2022).

Conclusion
The force of history is clear—our climate is changing; humans are mak-
ing it do so; and the Global North has been overwhelmingly responsible.
We can’t undo the damage, but we can mitigate it, and place its real costs
where they belong.
Sports never transcend the environment, from traditional golf links to
Olympic TV studios. They produce massive carbon footprints, via con-
struction, repairs, maintenance, transport, energy, sanitation, water use,
and media coverage, even as they promote themselves as good environ-
mental citizens (Warren, 2020). Sports are part of our anthropocentric
conjuncture, from risks to playing fields from pollution to the damage
done when flyboys trample across time zones in search of glory. In Bruno
Latour’s words, it is as if a ‘significant segment of the ruling classes … had
concluded that the earth no longer had room for them and for everyone
else’ (2018, pp. 15–16).
That matters far beyond the decadence mixed with scientific manage-
ment—the Tayloristic glamour—of Formula One. For the dominant
norm of puerilely reformist management, journalism, policy, and aca-
demia merely tinkers at the margins of a comprehensive revolution
against petroleum (Mair & Smith, 2021). And it matters because the
alleged benefits of motorsport’s drive to efficiency encourage the domi-
nant means of transport. The Union of Concerned Scientists advises that:

cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all US emissions, emitting
around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for
every gallon of gas. About five pounds comes from the extraction, produc-
tion, and delivery of the fuel, while the great bulk of heat-trapping emis-
sions—more than 19 pounds per gallon—comes right out of a car’s
tailpipe. (2014)
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 747

Heavy lorries form 5% of vehicles in the United States—and emit a

quarter of the road’s greenhouse gases (Union of Concerned Scientists,
2018). The Environmental Protection Agency notes that almost a third
of US emissions derive from transportation. That number has grown 7%
year on year since 1990. The average passenger car emits just under five
metric tons of CO2 annually, and car mileage increased 48% between
1990 and 2019 (n.d.-a, n.d.-b).
Growth in the human population is literally matched by growth in its
automotive correlative—80 million new people and 80 million new
chassis a year (Noor, 2021). Pollutants from cars, trucks, and buses have
adverse effects on every human organ. Apart from the global impact,
there are local implications. Eight thousand US schools are located within
yards of freeways, exposing pupils to toxic emissions day after day, hour
after hour (‘School Haze,’ 2017).
Car culture is a fixture of bourgeois and aspirational life and the corner-
stone of much suburban planning. Visions of automobiles as cosmic
signs of freedom dominate the airwaves. Together, they create a commut-
ing labour force with frail senses of individual autonomy and familial
security. Meanwhile, the data show that individual car use slows down
commuting times (Prieto Curiel et al., 2021).
Beyond the contamination and delays of everyday life, advertising’s
free-wheeling, ‘driven’ life is spectacularly irresponsible: automobiles are
weapons of destruction. More than 3500 people worldwide die in road
accidents each day. COVID-19 lockdowns and fears kept these appalling
statistics in check recently (apart from in the United States). The likely
future will see horrendous increases, with killer drivers on the loose once
more (International Transport Forum, 2021).
To counter this, oil companies, vehicle manufacturers, and drivers and
riders must fund the full cost of constructing and repairing roads and the
public-health crises incurred by fossil-fueled mobility (Trigg, 2017). And
we must support initiatives like Paris banning through-traffic by private
cars from 2024 and Los Angeles reviving what was once perhaps the
world’s leading mass-transit system (‘Paris,’ 2022). The eventual aim
should be to expel casual and quotidian use of automobiles from the
land; forever (Nguyen, 2019), thereby refusing Formula One’s ‘gift’ of
‘improved’ internal-combustion engines. Life without a car must become
748 T. Miller et al.

a commuter, middle-class reality and logistics minus long-haul trucks a

corporate one.
For all its speed, Formula One is complicit, both directly and indi-
rectly, with what Robert Nixon calls the ‘slow violence’ of ecological
destruction:

[a] violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed
destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence
that is typically not viewed as violence at all. … neither spectacular nor
instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous reper-
cussions playing out across a range of temporal scales. (2011, p. 2)

Richard Williams imagines a world without Formula One, when ‘the

curtains of history will have been drawn across the entire spectacle’
(2019). His words echo modern environmentalism’s talismanic writer,
Jane Jacobs. In 1961, she wrote that we must choose between the ‘erosion
of cities by automobiles, or attrition of automobiles by cities’ (509). The
day of reckoning against automobility in general can’t come soon enough.

Notes
1. Giles Richards is cited invoked here but is a competent critic of
Formula One.
2. This expression was inspired by Raewyn Connell’s 1960s work opposing
freeways.
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyiJQ5_CbXM&ab_channel=Briti
shPath%C3%A9.
4. A Formula One world champion, Clark perished in a Formula Two event.
5. h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = -­4 U X f y x g Z s k & a b _
channel=ChrisThorne.
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGP5FEIMza4&ab_channel=Pole
PositionMotorsport.
7. h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = 9 4 Ne K Yu c S S E & a b _
channel=SportsonWheels
8. h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = T-­N B q 3 n q 2 a U & a b _
channel=BSPVintage.
 Formula One and the Insanity of Car-Based Transportation 749

9. https://www.grandprix.com/sponsors/history-­o f-­s ponsorship-­i n-­

formula-­1.html.
10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWCPCVpLMLU&t=12s&ab_
channel=Driver61.
11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1hAWttvFuk&t=4s&ab_
channel=FormulaMoney.
12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRmtMkaxvbY&app=desktop
&ab_channel=ITVNews.
13. https://twitter.com/FelipeCalderon/status/1490834916472414209.
14. https://www.mercedesamgf1.com/en/corporate-­social-­responsibility/;
https://corporate.ferrari.com/en/about-­us/sustainability.
15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixiz0slnUSU&ab_channel=Good
MorningBritain.
16. https://www.grandprix.com/sponsors/history-­o f-­s ponsorship-­i n-­
formula-­1.html; https://sponsors.formulamoney.com/.
17. h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = f _ 4 v 8 U E a 7 g k & a b _
channel=TheRacingPilot.
18. Recent environmental crimes include the Bhopal disaster, the Exxon
Valdez, Hout Bay Fishing, Hooker Chemicals, and US hunting under-
taken contra the Endangered Species Act. Possible future felonies might
cover the use of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases; releasing pharma-
ceuticals into the environment; deploying nanotechnology without con-
cern for its potential impact; and electronic waste.
19. https://www.formula1.com/en/toolbar/partners.html.
20. h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = f _ 4 v 8 U E a 7 g k & a b _
channel=TheRacingPilot.
21. h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = f _ 4 v 8 U E a 7 g k & a b _
channel=TheRacingPilot.
22. https://www.mclaren.com/racing/partners/british-­american-­tobacco/.
23. http://save-­albert-­park.org.au/sapweb/kits.html.

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 Index1

A Alonso, Fernando, 362, 363,

Abu Dhabi, 16, 17, 376, 583, 599, 380n4, 380n5, 522, 525,
634, 672, 692, 695, 696, 700 526, 528, 532, 551, 552,
African American, 10, 328–338, 722, 744
341–346, 348, 349, 358, 373, Anti-Semitism, 82, 83,
458, 459 88, 96
Agency, 9, 11, 282, 283, 285, 286, Apartheid, 9, 111, 295, 296, 299,
334, 342, 467, 500, 519–552, 300, 307–309, 313–317,
559, 566, 574, 643–645, 656, 322, 502
725, 726, 747 Aryanisation, 78, 93, 113n12
Agnelli, Giovanni, 185, 188, 190, Assemblage, 13, 395, 396,
191, 194 406, 526, 531, 533,
Alfa Romeo, 12, 86, 88, 140, 147, 534, 545, 547–549,
149, 162, 166, 168, 186, 552, 601, 603, 613,
188–192, 194–198, 203, 211, 642, 656, 683
225, 257, 300, 414, 577 Autarchy, 149, 193, 194

1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 761
D. Sturm et al. (eds.), The History and Politics of Motor Racing, Global Culture and
Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22825-4
762 Index

Automobile, 7, 11, 23–36, 38, 39, Black geographies, 327–350

42, 80, 85, 93, 96, 119–121, Boycott, 38, 235, 236, 311, 321,
123, 126–128, 130, 131, 341, 745
137–140, 145, 148, 151, 159, Branding, 11, 217, 413, 414, 416,
160, 180, 181, 186, 188, 189, 417, 421, 425, 426, 431, 524,
224, 231, 249–251, 253, 602, 644, 646, 651, 684, 693,
266n7, 273, 297, 337–339, 695, 699, 703, 717, 720
343, 345, 414, 432n1, 447, Brazilian history, 156
449, 467, 483, 488–491, 559, Brescia, 135, 136, 138–140, 142–147,
620, 625, 626, 629, 630, 649, 150, 151, 188, 189, 196
691, 693, 696, 697, 703, 741, British American Racing (BAR),
742, 747, 748 212, 421, 529, 546, 547, 549,
Automobile industry, 7, 24, 88, 180, 551, 552
181, 226, 626, 704 British Broadcasting Corporation
Automobile racing, 25, 26, 42, 75, (BBC), 281, 363–365, 374,
120, 127 377, 381n6, 391, 393, 399,
Automotive, 33, 39, 52, 75, 76, 414, 478, 482, 492, 498, 501,
79–81, 83, 87, 88, 90, 95, 502, 505, 579, 679
110, 112, 113n8, 141, 150, Broadcasting rights, 11, 53, 387,
196, 206, 211, 213–216, 250, 391–393, 398–401, 403, 406,
263, 266n5, 267n17, 423, 671, 702
479, 491, 703, 747 Brooklands, 203, 204, 224, 228,
Autostrada, 145–147 251, 252, 479–483, 485–490,
Azerbaijan Grand Prix, 16, 666, 492, 493, 628
674–675, 681, 683–685 Buddh International Circuit (BIC),
605, 707, 715, 716,
718–720, 724–726
B Business opportunities, 629, 703
Bahrain, 15, 16, 284, 421, 672,
691–693, 695, 696, 700,
702–704, 715 C
Baku, 16, 583, 635, 636, 665–685 Carbon footprint, 3, 598, 609, 613,
Baudrillard, Jean, 394, 395, 399, 737, 741, 742, 744, 746
519, 523, 524, 526, 528, 530, Celebrity, 8, 10–13, 226, 230, 260,
531, 533–537, 539, 266n8, 356–359, 364, 365,
541–543, 548 382n9, 395, 397, 400, 402,
Bentley Boys, 482–485, 489, 492, 419, 424, 477–508, 520, 526,
498, 500, 504 527, 531, 539, 540, 543–545,
Black athlete, 329, 355–379 588, 711, 713, 720, 724, 745
 Index 763

China, 14, 15, 404, 421, 641–657, 391–393, 404–406, 417, 493,
672, 709, 715, 742 571–589, 596, 631, 714, 715,
Cinema, 444, 446–448, 452, 458, 720, 722, 723
459, 462, 470n3, 470n5, Elitism, 138, 395, 430, 602, 718
470n6, 482 Enclosure, 620, 623, 625–629,
Circuit of circuits, 597, 598, 601, 636, 682
603, 605, 606, 608, 610, 613 Englishness, 368
Cluster, 201, 215–217 Entertainment, 14, 51, 54, 58, 61,
Commerce, 526, 742 64, 312, 394, 405, 429, 521,
Commercialisation, 4, 16, 51, 234, 572, 573, 586, 588, 597, 606,
256, 322, 388, 394, 413, 572, 623, 624, 671, 678, 682, 698,
600, 621–625, 671, 682 700, 701, 703, 704, 708, 711,
Concorde Agreement, 237, 713, 715, 716, 720–723, 743
577–578, 583, 586 Environment, 4, 17, 190, 260, 368,
Confinement, 15, 619, 621–625 371, 498, 520, 533, 601, 606,
Consumerism, 725 608, 620, 622–624, 653, 656,
Corporate sport, 359, 535, 547, 666, 668, 669, 671, 672, 674,
711, 712 676, 682, 683, 734, 735, 737,
Counter-mobility work, 740, 743, 746, 749n18
10, 327–350 Ethics, 39, 233, 534

D F
De Portago, Alfonso, 230 Fangio, Juan Manuel, 7, 156, 161,
Digital, 11, 13, 14, 60, 214, 215, 164, 166–170, 172, 173, 233,
388, 393, 394, 399, 401–407, 595, 735
468, 527, 530, 550, 564, Fascism, 2, 5, 6, 135–151, 187, 191,
572–574, 583, 584, 587–589, 192, 226, 557
600, 611, 612 Fédération International de
Digitalization, 600 l’Automobile (FIA), 26, 48,
Digital plenitude, 50, 64 52–54, 56–58, 61, 63, 111,
Drive to Survive, 11, 404, 405, 156, 162, 167, 202, 204, 207,
407, 597 237–239, 267n14, 297, 300,
303, 304, 306, 308, 310, 311,
316, 320, 321, 382n11, 392,
E 421, 532, 533, 536, 546, 548,
Ecclestone, Bernie, 7, 11, 46, 48, 577–579, 581, 605, 608,
52–54, 236–238, 305, 311, 701–703, 715, 736
312, 314–316, 320, 321, 387, Feminism, 9, 248, 282–286, 565
764 Index

Ferrari, 12, 167, 168, 170, 197, 198, 213, 224, 237, 250, 257, 310,
205, 208–211, 226, 228–231, 333, 390, 399, 406, 421, 423,
234, 363, 364, 380n5, 456, 491, 527, 604, 625, 627,
382n11, 405, 414, 419, 420, 628, 637n1
425, 428, 430, 453, 468, 490, Futurism, 140, 187
493, 513n67, 526, 527, 529,
534–538, 551, 566, 577, 596,
696, 722, 736, 740 G
Fiat, 181–186, 188–191, 193, 194, Garagisti, 201–217
196–198, 203, 211, 696 Gender, 2, 8, 9, 12, 248, 250, 254,
Film technology, 463 256, 258, 259, 263, 267n17,
Florio, Vincenzo, 181, 182 273, 274, 276, 280, 332, 336,
Ford, Henry, 6, 119–130, 224 379, 390, 395, 407, 444, 460,
Ford Motor Company, 6, 56, 461, 464–466, 478, 496, 503,
119–123, 125–130, 188, 189, 505, 508, 522, 523, 527, 560,
192, 207, 211, 231, 265n3, 565, 566, 738
297, 305, 468, 500 Gender politics, 271–286, 461
Ford Racing, 120, 128, 129 German, 6, 36, 37, 75–112, 149,
Formula One/Formula 1/F1, 2–5, 160, 162, 163, 181, 191, 194,
9–15, 17, 46–49, 51–54, 59, 195, 226, 227, 235, 236, 464,
61, 77, 112, 156, 168–173, 469n2, 477, 481, 490, 505,
196, 204, 206, 207, 209–216, 579–581, 605, 649, 715, 719,
227, 228, 233–241, 247, 249, 720, 724
256, 261–264, 271–286, Globalisation, 4, 13, 14, 209,
295–322, 332, 355–379, 595–613, 620, 633, 637, 643,
387–407, 413–431, 453–455, 657, 692–695, 712
462, 466, 467, 470n4, 490, Glocalization, 598, 709–713, 725
492–494, 496, 498–500, Greenwashing, 429, 739, 744
503–507, 519–552, 562, 563, Grid girls, 9, 271–286, 738
568, 571–589, 595–613,
619–637, 641–657, 665–685,
692, 695, 696, 700–703, 708, H
709, 713–716, 718, 719, Hamilton, Lewis, 10, 76, 77, 321,
721–723, 726, 733–748 332, 355–379, 380–381n6,
Formula Woman, 260, 261 381n7, 381–382n8, 382n9,
Foucault, Michel, 562, 566, 567 382n12, 400, 413, 414,
France, 6, 14, 23–42, 81, 83, 86, 429, 478, 507, 508, 522, 523,
114n13, 115n18, 131, 162, 526, 528, 533, 550, 552,
167, 181, 182, 188, 196, 203, 737, 744
 Index 765

Hawthorn, Mike, 115n19, 205, 229, Innovation, 3, 5, 11, 39, 42, 46,
230, 243n40, 329, 334, 490, 121, 126, 129, 180, 187,
494, 496, 735 208–211, 232, 233, 335, 398,
Hegemonic masculinity, 274, 736 402, 406, 420, 425, 426, 431,
Heritage circuits, 605, 612 454, 471n10, 480, 481,
Hill, Damon, 362, 432n1, 589, 733
508, 515n91 International Sportsworld
Hill, Graham, 12, 132, 302, 303, Communicators (ISC), 46,
362, 478, 496–501, 507, 508, 52–58, 579, 695
528, 536 Interpellation, 557–568
Historic motorsport, 264 Isolation, 193, 697
Hollywood, 217, 231, 330, 449, Italian Fascism, 6, 146, 187
451, 452, 455–457, 461,
465, 484
Hunt, James, 12, 236, 362, 366, J
391, 417, 466, 467, 478, Jim Crow, 334, 337, 344, 345
499–505, 507, 508, 735
Hypercommodification, 622,
624, 637 K
Hyperreality, 530 Kyalami, 295, 304–306, 309,
310, 312–320

I
Ideology, 6, 76, 102, 104, 106, 109, L
110, 136–141, 148, 150, Le Mans, 5, 23, 25, 32, 38–42, 52,
267n17, 558–560, 565, 567, 127, 132, 186, 203, 214, 230,
568, 645, 646, 704 231, 239, 259, 260, 280, 298,
Independent Television (ITV), 391, 456, 468, 469, 483, 487,
393, 399, 575, 585 513n67, 627
India, 14, 15, 17, 295, 382n10, 522, Liberty Media, 9, 11, 14, 241, 271,
528, 672, 707–711, 273, 280, 282, 284, 388, 393,
713–724, 726 400–402, 404, 406, 407, 424,
Indianapolis/Indy 500, 3, 126, 132, 571–589, 738
231, 256, 259, 272, 333–335,
390, 395, 449, 451, 455,
544, 630 M
Indian Grand Prix, 17, Male-dominated world, 9, 286
596, 707–726 Malone, John, 573, 584, 585
766 Index

Mansell, Nigel, 12, 316, 362, 366, Mega-events, 4, 59, 320, 599, 633,
478, 503–508, 517n128 641–644, 647, 651, 654–657,
Marketing history, 214 665–685, 718, 725
Masculinity, 2, 4, 12, 229, 249–251, Memory, 23–42, 77, 148, 450, 717
273, 274, 420, 444–447, 450, Middle class, 104, 225, 457, 479,
452–454, 461, 464, 465, 484, 486, 496, 503, 565, 599,
467–469, 478, 482, 521 649, 653, 708–713, 715, 716,
McLaren, 208, 210, 215, 216, 723–726, 748
361–363, 366, 373, 380n5, Milano, 186
380n6, 382n11, 404, 419, Mille Miglia (MM), 6, 7, 135–151,
420, 424–428, 454, 500, 523, 189, 193, 194, 196, 203, 224,
538, 541, 547, 551, 739, 230, 231, 493
740, 744 Modernism, 79, 491
Media, 3, 6, 9–11, 14, 37, 46, Monaco, 10, 14, 32, 167, 310, 505,
48–52, 55, 57, 59–64, 129, 523, 603–605, 629, 630,
181, 182, 184–186, 189, 191, 671, 738
195, 211, 241, 257, 260–262, Monopoly capital, 734
267n14, 276, 277, 280, Monza, 84, 85, 137, 167, 185, 186,
283–285, 296, 310, 313, 316, 190, 226–229, 232, 235, 583,
328, 357, 361, 362, 365, 366, 604, 605, 628, 630
371, 378, 387–407, 416, 418, Mosley, Max, 48, 49, 52–54, 56, 57,
424, 427, 430, 482, 485, 507, 111, 229, 237–240, 315, 392,
521, 526–528, 530–533, 539, 577, 578
540, 542, 543, 550, 571–576, Moss, Stirling, 12, 115n19, 206,
579–581, 583–589, 596, 597, 228–230, 232, 234, 301, 302,
601, 602, 610–612, 620, 621, 362, 364, 377, 452, 467,
625, 630, 631, 655, 667, 671, 477–508, 735
673–675, 677, 682, 692, 699, Motor racing, 6–12, 14–16, 23–25,
700, 702, 716, 717, 719, 720, 32, 35, 37, 38, 40, 42, 52,
723, 724, 735, 743, 745, 746 76–78, 81, 83, 84, 86, 87, 94,
Media event, 11, 276, 279, 387, 98, 100, 102–105, 107, 110,
393–395, 406, 655 111, 130, 137, 141, 156–173,
Media spectacle, 4, 279, 388, 179, 181–184, 186, 189, 192,
394–397, 406, 482, 587 193, 196, 198, 202, 203, 205,
Media sport, 14, 63, 65, 388, 206, 208–211, 223–241, 251,
401, 574–577 252, 260, 261, 264, 278,
Mediatisation, 4, 46, 59, 63, 391, 295–322, 355, 356, 361, 363,
574, 597, 633, 671, 672 369, 373, 378, 381n8, 395,
 Index 767

419, 420, 427, 443–469, Non-places, 606, 653

477–479, 481, 482, 484, 485, Nuvolari, Tazio, 86, 147, 149, 150,
488–492, 494–496, 499–508, 189, 191, 192, 226, 491
522, 523, 546, 568, 605, 626,
627, 691–693,
695–696, 701–704 O
Motor sport/motorsport, 1–8, 16, On-board cameras, 11, 60, 397, 403
23–42, 45, 48, 52–54, 56, 61, Online streaming, 402
63, 65, 75–112, 119–130, Ownership, 6, 14, 46, 58, 62, 64,
135, 137, 140–142, 148, 96, 106, 137, 139, 197, 198,
155–173, 179–198, 201–217, 216, 252, 319, 333, 393, 400,
237–240, 247–265, 267n14, 571–589, 599, 645
271–278, 280, 283, 286, 296,
297, 300, 306, 327–350, 361,
367, 373, 378, 388, 390, 396, P
400, 402, 421, 431, 491, 499, Partitioning, 621–623,
522, 523, 571, 573, 574, 577, 625–629, 636
579, 586–588, 595–598, 605, Partnerships, 206, 214, 215, 262,
608, 609, 611–613, 620, 621, 400, 404, 420, 423, 425–427,
625, 628, 632–635, 637, 647, 431, 644, 645, 650, 699, 713,
654, 655, 671, 683, 691–704, 720, 724, 738, 740
736, 738, 741, 742, 745, 746 Performance engineering, 201,
Motorsport Valley (MSV), 7, 201, 213, 215
202, 205, 207–217, 237 Peronism, 7
Mussolini, Benito, 86, 136, 138, Piazza della Vittoria, 136, 145, 146
143–146, 149, 150, 163, Placemaking, 4, 15, 16, 397, 625,
184–187, 191, 193, 194, 226 642–648, 650–652, 654, 656,
657, 699
Place marketing, 16, 602, 644,
N 654, 655
National Association for Stock Car Politics, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 17, 45–65,
Auto Racing (NASCAR), 3, 5, 75, 83, 95, 102–103, 111,
10, 127, 132, 249, 256, 274, 136, 137, 139, 157, 158,
327–350, 457, 458, 460, 461, 179–198, 223–241, 296, 311,
465, 733 332, 333, 336–339, 342, 344,
Nationalism, 5, 79, 83, 226, 333 349, 356–359, 369, 370, 372,
Nazi, 2, 76–78, 92–98, 100–111, 373, 449, 477–508, 541, 542,
113n8, 113n12, 136, 491 557, 558, 565, 637, 647, 656,
Neoliberalism, 13, 561, 564, 567 691–704, 716, 743
768 Index

Populism, 6, 83, 138, 140, 155–173 314–320, 328–333, 335–346,

Powder puff, 247–265 348, 349, 355–379, 387–399,
Professionalisation, 46, 48–59, 403, 404, 406, 407, 413–423,
61–65, 202, 275, 572, 736 425, 427–430, 444, 446–466,
Promotion, 7, 28, 35, 36, 46, 47, 51, 468, 470n2, 470n3, 470n4,
52, 54, 58, 59, 64, 104, 106, 479, 483, 487, 488, 490–499,
107, 130, 139, 147, 171, 173, 501, 504, 505, 507, 508,
183, 188, 236, 252, 262, 284, 521–523, 525–527, 530, 533,
421, 425, 426, 431, 432, 480, 535–541, 543, 544, 548, 549,
481, 572, 583, 586, 600, 633, 558, 559, 562–566, 568, 574,
634, 646, 647, 649, 668, 681, 577, 578, 581, 583, 586, 588,
684, 695, 699, 709, 720, 589, 596, 597, 601–613, 619,
723, 744 620, 625–636, 637n1, 637n2,
Propaganda, 78, 92, 93, 95–97, 100, 666, 667, 669–673, 675–678,
102, 105, 136, 137, 144, 150, 681, 685
163, 171–173, 174n4, 188, Racial spatiality, 331, 332, 334, 335,
189, 191, 197, 737 339, 340, 345
Public space, 635–637, 666–668, Racing, 1, 6–16, 23–42, 47, 52, 58,
676–678, 682–685 75–112, 119–121, 123–132,
137, 138, 140, 141, 144, 147,
149, 156–173, 179, 181–198,
Q 199n16, 202–212, 215, 216,
Qatar, 16, 389, 429, 672, 692, 693, 223–241, 247–265, 272, 274,
696, 698, 702–704 278, 280, 295–322, 327–335,
338–341, 343, 345–348,
361–365, 369, 377, 381n8,
R 392, 396, 397, 405, 414,
Race, 2, 3, 6–17, 23–29, 32–42, 51, 416, 419, 429, 443, 447–448,
52, 62, 78–81, 85, 86, 88–95, 452, 454, 455, 465, 466,
97–100, 102–106, 110, 111, 468, 478–488, 490, 493,
113n8, 115n19, 119–129, 499, 500, 620,
131, 132, 135–151, 155, 156, 628, 629
158–170, 179, 181, 182, 184, Racism, 75–112, 327–332, 334,
185, 187–197, 202–209, 211, 336, 338, 340–342, 346–350,
223–231, 233, 236–238, 356, 368, 369, 371, 375, 378,
250–257, 259, 260, 262, 263, 379, 566
266n4, 272, 273, 275–280, Raikkonen, Kimi, 13, 363, 380n5,
282, 284, 285, 295, 297, 298, 520, 528, 538–544, 548, 550,
300, 301, 303, 304, 306, 311, 551, 695
 Index 769

Red Bull, 12, 59–62, 423, 431, 526, Shanghai, 605, 634, 644, 647–653,
529, 736, 737 655, 672
Reliability, 27–30, 34, 38, 42, 390, Silver Arrows, 6, 76–78, 90, 91, 94,
625, 745 95, 97–102, 104, 171, 227
Ring Free Motor-Maids, 258, 259 Silverstone, 204, 205, 207, 212, 213,
Risk, 64, 86, 141, 228, 237, 239, 215, 278, 390, 492, 506, 508,
312, 360, 374, 395, 406, 454, 583, 604, 605, 630–632
468, 489, 519, 548, 567, 578, Simulation and simulacra, 395
581, 642, 682, 685, 744, 746 Sky Sports, 399
Rosenberger, Adolf, 84–92, 96, 97, Socio-cultural changes, 9, 273,
105, 106, 108–111, 280, 284
113n8, 114n14 South Africa, 9, 15, 111, 295–322,
Royal Automobile Club of Brescia, 576, 630
138, 143 Space, 15, 148, 156, 158, 187, 214,
248, 265n1, 271–286,
330–332, 334, 336, 337, 339,
S 344, 345, 357, 378, 398, 403,
Safety, 8, 48, 61, 111, 129, 131, 445, 539, 541, 545, 550, 567,
186, 194, 223–241, 313, 336, 597, 600–602, 606, 607, 613,
345, 478, 484, 489, 520, 524, 619–624, 628, 631, 632,
548, 606, 620, 622, 623, 634–637, 645, 649, 651, 653,
625–627, 631, 636, 725, 736 655–657, 666–670, 676–678,
Saudi Arabia, 16, 389, 428, 680–685, 710–713, 716, 725,
429, 605, 672, 726, 739, 742, 748
692–694, 697–702 Space of exception, 668–670,
Scheckter, Jody, 9, 295 674–675, 681, 683, 685
Schumacher, Michael, 13, 132, 363, Spa-Francorchamps, 235, 604, 605,
364, 373, 380–381n6, 627, 630, 631
382n12, 477, 520, 523–526, Spatial development, 15, 619–637
528, 534–538, 544, 548–552, Spectacle, 4, 10, 11, 15, 16, 49, 78,
720, 724 83, 86, 155, 241, 254, 255,
Seaman, Dick, 228, 491 279, 301, 306, 394–400, 402,
Securitisation, 16, 656, 666, 668, 406, 452, 463, 482, 546, 548,
677–678, 683 574, 587, 595–613, 619, 625,
Senna, Ayrton, 173, 235–239, 362, 631, 635, 641, 644, 654, 681,
432n1, 505, 506, 520, 694, 709, 711–713, 719, 723,
534, 550 725, 748
770 Index

Speed, 4, 23, 28, 30, 32, 35–37, 506, 507, 519–533, 535, 537,
39–41, 47, 81, 85, 86, 97, 121, 545–547, 549, 551, 552, 558,
122, 125, 129, 131, 137, 139, 563, 572–577, 583, 584,
140, 144, 147, 148, 161, 184, 586–589, 595–606, 608, 609,
186, 187, 194, 210, 224, 227, 611–613, 619–625, 627, 628,
230, 239, 241, 251, 253, 258, 630–635, 637, 644–648, 650,
279, 395–399, 406, 420, 449, 654, 655, 671, 682, 691–704,
466, 478–492, 497, 508, 524, 708–718, 721–723, 733–738,
525, 530, 602, 609, 620, 625, 740–743, 746
628, 629, 636, 725, 745, 748 Sport management, 46
Sponsorship, 4, 11, 12, 35, 38, 61, Sports car racing, 140, 212, 253
91, 159, 213, 235–239, 256, Stardom/celebrity, 8, 10–13, 226, 230,
260–262, 275, 314, 315, 328, 260, 266n8, 356–359, 364,
329, 335, 337, 339, 340, 345, 365, 382n9, 395, 397, 400,
348, 364, 391, 392, 413–431, 402, 424, 477–508, 519–552,
459, 479, 480, 482, 499, 500, 588, 711, 713, 720, 724, 745
504, 505, 508, 523, 529, 563, State entrepreneurialism, 643–648,
574, 577, 578, 583, 586, 602, 650, 656
611, 633–635, 650, 671, 695, Stewart, Jackie, 233–235, 362, 449,
702, 703, 720, 740 478, 490, 500, 507, 508,
Sport, 2, 4–17, 23–42, 46–51, 515n91, 516n113, 629
53–65, 77–81, 83–86, 88, 89, Stock car, 10, 125, 128, 253, 327, 331,
91, 92, 95, 96, 98–100, 102, 332, 338, 340, 343, 345, 346
104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 120, Subjectivity, 343, 559, 560, 562, 567
135–141, 147, 148, 150, 151, Sustainability, 2, 3, 15, 212, 337,
155–173, 179–198, 201–217, 378, 423, 598, 608–611,
223, 225, 230, 235, 237–241, 613, 735
252, 253, 255, 256, 261, 264,
266n4, 266n9, 267n14,
272–280, 282, 283, 285, T
296–300, 304, 307–309, 313, Taxes, 83, 96, 109, 194, 234, 235,
314, 318, 320–322, 327–329, 496, 500, 629, 707–726, 742
331–333, 335–337, 341–343, Team Aseptogyl, 257, 258
345, 346, 349, 355–357, Television (TV), 3, 8, 10, 11, 14, 46,
359–368, 370–379, 380n3, 47, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55–60, 64,
387–396, 398–407, 413, 238, 241, 260, 261, 266n8,
415–419, 421–424, 427–431, 278–280, 316, 360, 364, 365,
443–447, 449, 450, 453, 376, 387–407, 416–419, 428,
456–468, 491–493, 498–502, 492, 495, 501, 502, 530, 559,
 Index 771

573, 576–579, 581, 583–585, V

587, 588, 607, 611, 631, 633, Vargas, Getúlio, 7, 155–173
702, 710, 713, 719–721, Venues, 7, 30, 164, 169, 170, 181,
733, 738–740 196, 203, 228, 236, 248, 250,
Television technologies, 396 252, 253, 256, 262, 263, 265,
Tourism, 4, 17, 23, 31, 32, 40, 161, 300, 301, 304, 305, 310, 311,
318, 389, 601, 634, 647, 655, 315, 316, 390, 422, 479, 482,
670, 681, 692, 693, 699, 703, 492, 597, 604, 611, 612,
704, 716, 723 620–625, 628, 631, 633–637,
Turati, Augusto, 139, 141, 189 647, 673, 684, 698, 718,
719, 741
Video game, 4, 13, 397, 464,
U 557–568, 742
Uber-sport, 595–613 Villeneuve, Jacques, 13, 432n1, 520,
United Kingdom (UK), 11, 86, 111, 522, 523, 525, 528, 532, 536,
181, 188, 192, 196, 202–204, 541, 544–549, 551, 552, 632
206, 208, 210–215, 217, 224, Violence, 10, 83, 187, 330, 335,
249, 252, 260, 275, 278, 367, 343–346, 361, 369, 378, 449,
387, 399, 401, 406, 416, 421, 469, 748
424, 430, 466, 489, 575, 576, von Trips, Count Wolfgang, 228
585, 595
United States (US), 6, 11, 14, 25,
36–38, 81, 83, 105, 119–131, W
173, 181, 183, 188, 189, 191, Wendell, Scott, 10, 327–350, 458
192, 213, 215, 217, 231, 232, White Supremacy, 328, 330, 334,
250–253, 256, 258, 262, 336, 338, 339, 343,
266n5, 275, 310, 316, 327, 344, 347–349
332, 333, 335–338, 349, 361, Williams, 208, 209, 212, 215,
374, 404, 414, 416, 419, 432n1, 505, 530, 546, 547
423–425, 427, 430, 444, 445, Women-only racing, 8, 9, 247–265
447, 454, 459, 465–468, Women’s racing series, 260–264
469–470n2, 544, 565, 571, Women’s racing teams, 257–260
572, 574, 576, 584, 587–589, World Rally Championship (WRC),
597, 599, 604, 627, 628, 630, 3, 5, 6, 45–65, 213, 249,
632, 634, 670, 681, 733, 741, 577, 695
742, 746, 747, 749n18 WRC Promoter GmbH, 46,
Urban renewal, 643, 647, 649, 59, 62, 64
650, 654 W Series, 247–265