By sportswriter Michael Butterworth
SINGAPORE, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Former Formula 1 world champion Alain Prost says he can see a future where the sport will stage over 25 races per season, with teams requiring two distinct sets of engineers and mechanics to cope with the increased workload.
Next year's F1 season will be contested over 22 Grand Prix races, making it the longest in the sport's history, and many within the F1 paddock have raised concerns about the effects of an inflated calendar on drivers, team personnel and ancillary staff.
"We are already on the limit," the Frenchman told Xinhua at the Singapore Grand Prix. "A lot of people have families, and if you have more races, it's going to be too much for them and they would prefer not to travel."
"Maybe we can go to 25, 26 races a year, but then you need another organization. That means you split teams into two [groups of people going to different races], but it would cost a lot of money. That's what we are going to be facing, in my opinion."
One of the new races for 2020 will be staged in Vietnam, a country with little history of motorsport. Over the past 20 years, Formula 1 has sought to widen its appeal by hosting Grands Prix in new territories, to a decidedly mixed reception.
Some within F1 have suggested that the sport should focus instead on securing the futures of races in countries with a long-standing tradition of motorsport, though Prost says that F1's continued global expansion is necessary in view of current economic realities.
"When I ran an F1 team [Prost Grand Prix, which operated from 1997-2001], I said we should keep a certain number of races in Europe, Japan, and South America," the four-time world champion said.
"But times have changed. [Now] there are fewer sponsors, and the only way you can get more money is with more races, and you are not going to get six or seven more races in Europe, because the economy is not there. It's a compromise."
Having won 51 Grand Prix races across a 13-year career as a driver in addition to his stint as a team boss, Prost is well qualified to discuss the future direction of Formula 1, whose powerbrokers are yet to decide upon a new set of regulations due to be introduced in 2021.
Much of the recent criticism that F1 races have become processional and predictable stems from the design of the current generation of cars, with their highly intricate aerodynamics often making it difficult for drivers to follow each other closely and overtake.
Having driven in a time where cars were designed with far fewer appendages and accoutrements, Prost feels a back-to-basics approach is necessary to improve the standard of racing, and says some of the teams' expensive testing equipment should be outlawed.
"I would ban wind tunnels, and try to do everything possible to create a much simpler car with more mechanical grip, and much less aerodynamic [grip]. The [current] cars are much too heavy, but that's difficult to change. I would also open the sporting regulations - for example, on the choice of tyres. I would give much more freedom to allow people to change things on the car on the starting grid without anybody knowing."
A recent innovation in F1 has been the increased use of the black and white flag to indicate unsporting behaviour, with the aim of giving drivers a final warning before any punishment is meted out. With race stewarding much more laissez-faire in his era than it is today, how does Prost feel about this development?
"I'm very much in favour of not giving penalties all the time for all sorts of reasons, because for the image of the sport, it's not good," said the Frenchman, who was involved in several on-track incidents over the course of his career that went unpunished. "On the other hand, you have to be careful about this 'yellow card', because you either have a rule or you don't. But leaving the drivers more open and fighting a little harder sometimes is good, because we have seen too many [penalties] where they didn't deserve any punishment."
Now 64, Prost sits on the board of Renault Sport, which oversees the French firm's F1 team, and is keen to put the record straight regarding comments he was alleged to have made suggesting that current Renault driver Nico Hulkenberg was to be dropped for 2020 for being too negative.
"I never said that," Prost asserts. "I was very happy that a lot of people on social media defended me, because I never give bad comments on drivers. The only thing that I said, which was true, was that Nico was not very happy about our progression in terms of the chassis, and that maybe next year is not going to be a big step. We don't know yet, but it's going to be another tough year."
Prost's comments echo those of Hulkenberg himself, who told Xinhua last weekend that Renault had not achieved their objectives in 2019. The F1 team's recent struggles coincide with turmoil in the French firm's road car division, with former chairman Carlos Ghosn resigning in January after being detained in Japan amid allegations of financial irregularities.
But despite a difficult year for Renault both on track and in the boardroom, Prost sought to allay any fears that the French firm might use this as an excuse to scale back its F1 program.
"Since Carlos left we have new directors of commercial and marketing, and they have the same philosophy and strategy [towards F1 as the previous incumbents] so we are safe [on that front]. It is important to understand that carmakers today are going to get bigger and bigger, because a small one cannot survive."
"If you want to be bigger, you need to be known worldwide, and F1 helps a lot. I'm not going to say how much we spend exactly, but if you look at the investment from Renault itself, it's absolutely peanuts. So I think F1 is still a very good investment, but we need to be a little bit better."
