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From Paddock to Platform: How Media Shaped Formula One’s Story · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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From the paddock to the slipstream, transformations in
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media relations in Formula 1.
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By Richard Haynes.
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Richard Haynes is Professor of Media Sport in the Division of
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Communications and Media Culture at the University of Stirling in Scotland.
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He is author of seven books on sport and communications, including the award
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winning history BBC Sport in Black and White, published by Palgrave in 2016,
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and his forthcoming book with Raymond Boyle, Streaming the Formula One Rivalry,
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Sport and the Media in the Platform Age, to be published by Peter Lang in 2024.
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Based on archival and biographical research, the interviews with
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British journalists, broadcasters, and communications managers,
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this presentation provides an analysis of the transformations
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in media relations in Formula One.
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From the 1960s onward, the presentation explores the professional careers
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of leading British journalists and broadcasters of Formula One to explore how
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media relations have changed over time.
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We conclude with some thoughts on how Formula One, in the era of Liberty Media,
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is bringing new opportunities to F1 across different platforms, transforming
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again the media relations in the sport.
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So my talk is based on a book which I've just written with
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my colleague, Raymond Boyle.
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The talk is really about the changing, Relationships between journalists and
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Formula One, that's the focus of our book.
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I'm mainly going to talk about the kind of historical aspects of that,
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but also point towards some of the contemporary issues that this has raised.
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We researched the book doing interviews.
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We interviewed journalists, both contemporary journalists and
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journalists that have been in F1 or motorsport journalism for many
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years, many decades in some cases.
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And we also spoke to broadcasters, and we spoke to communications
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managers who work in F1.
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And one of the reasons we wanted to do this was because neither Raymond or I
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would say we're experts in motorsport by any means, but we're both your average
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fan, I guess, of F1 for many years.
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But what we noticed as researchers of the relationships between media and
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sport, that F1 is delivering something different, new in this relationship, and
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it may be signposts to where other global sports may be heading in the future.
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And that was one of the reasons why we were intrigued.
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To explore this with journalists, with broadcasters, with the comms
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people from within that industry and see what they thought was going on.
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Because definitely things have changed in that sport quite radically, certainly
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since Liberty Media took over, of course, that was one reason for writing the book.
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The other really is to look at how the media ecology of sports changed.
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So we placed the contemporary media relations in a broader historical context.
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We identified the central role that the media, particularly television, played.
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And it's placed in the history structure and the governance of the sport.
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Bernie Eccleston's been mentioned various times and he's had his fair share of
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run ins with the law and governance throughout his reign in Formula One.
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For a used car salesman who, uh, is recently found guilty of tax fraud.
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Certainly, you know, he made, obviously, Formula One a very intriguing and lively
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and a kind of business that it has become.
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But arguably it's moved on from his reign in tune.
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And I'll talk a little bit about how in Eccleston's period, the media.
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Bill, a certain type of media relation within the sport, which was again, was
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maybe unique and a sport enters into a kind of digital age of engagement of
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seeing things like tick tock and so on are just a wash with content to do with
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formula one, that intense relationship between F1 and the creative industries
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not only shows us something about where the media are changing, but also How we
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understand what even the term sport or motorsport means, because I think there
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are aspects of how the sport is changing because of the media, which again are
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intriguing and tell us something a bit different about our relationship with it.
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So those are the reasons why we wrote the book.
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But first, my historical journey about the sport.
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Formula One begins with Murray Walker.
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He was BBC and then ITV commentator, or announcer, as
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you'd call here, for many years.
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For somebody of my generation, Murray Walker was synonymous
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with motorsport and Formula One.
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His voice, I mean, I can hear it now, it's quite a high screech.
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Somebody said it was like a 500cc motorcycle, kind of high
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pitched, kind of rev, um, and he spoke that quickly as well.
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All of his commentaries, he was stood up because his adrenaline
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and his excitement at motorsport just came through the microphone.
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Now no longer with us, he died in 2021.
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But when I was researching another book on the history of BBC sport over a
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decade ago now in 2008, had the pleasure of interviewing Murray, which again
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was a kind of interesting experience.
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Murray's professional career was not in broadcasting at all.
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It was in advertising.
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It was involved in the second world wars.
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He drove tanks.
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He was in the tank regiment.
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As he left, he joined the advertising industry.
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Obviously you would have heard of Mars chocolate.
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He ran the account for the ad campaign, which went a Mars a day
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helps you work, rest and play.
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And he was in charge of that.
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It's a very famous slogan from advertising from the 1970s.
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And Murray was involved in that, but he did commentary part time.
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When I interviewed him, he said, if you ask me, how did I get into broadcasting?
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He said it was nepotism.
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My dad and his dad, Graham was a radio commentator in the 1930s for
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the BBC and also raced motorbikes.
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And it was that passion for motorbikes that mainly led
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Morita to get into broadcasting.
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So he did it part time.
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But one of the most interesting things he said to me, to quote in there,
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he said, I believe motorsport needs explaining more than other sports.
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Partly because most people haven't done it.
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Whereas with most other sports, they have done it.
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Whether it's cricket, football, soccer, tennis, most people at a
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participatory level have played these sports, but motorsport is different.
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Most people haven't done it.
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And partly because also the equipment itself, the technical aspects
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of the cars or the motorcycles.
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It's an interesting quote because I think that still resonates today, doesn't it?
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Most people have never raced cars and certainly most people
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have never sat in an F1 car.
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So the job of the broadcaster to explain what's going on is quite a difficult one.
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In a sense for us, the audience to pick up on that.
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And that plays through into some important aspects of how
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television in particular works in its coverage of motorsport and F1.
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And why in the 1970s that again, we've heard the name James Hunt
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mentioned and Murray Walkers commentated with James Hunt.
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He very quickly became a kind of the analyst for the BBC coverage of
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Formula One in the 1970s and also people like Jackie Stewart as well.
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And today for Sky Sports, Martin Brundle is probably the most
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well known ex driver that does.
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Broadcasting for F1 British television.
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But for all the journalists, broadcasters and communication professionals, we
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interviewed the route to becoming an F1 journalist involved elements
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of luck and happenstance really was the professional journey into F1
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journalism by design or straightforward.
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Rather journalists followed their instincts of the kind of career that
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they wanted and develop their craft of journalism and move quickly.
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An opening appeared into their chosen career.
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And another good example of that, apart from Murray's, I guess, is uh, Morris
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Hamilton, again, a well known motorsport journalist, but also author from Ireland.
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He explained that as a young man in Ireland, he was very passionate
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about motorsport and just wanted to get some association with it,
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to be on the track, at the side of the track, to see his heroes.
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And so he wrote just randomly as a young man to a guy called Ian Young,
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who was a columnist for Autocar.
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But also a friend of Bruce McLaren and had strong associations with the McLaren team.
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And for whatever reason, Ian Young said, well, come over to Britain.
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And he took him under his wing.
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He basically, Hamilton was kind of held onto his coattails.
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sideman of coverage and interviews around motorsport and F1 again, in particular,
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and introduced Hamilton to the kind of top tier, to the team managers, to drivers,
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sponsors, and so on at a very early age.
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And he said, He was incredibly lucky.
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It just happened to be at the right time, the right place.
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Probably his face just fitted for whatever reason from that very early
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experience in his early twenties and having that network very early in his
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career was able then to become the Guardian's motorsport correspondent in
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the 1970s and then has gone on still is reporting on motorsport decades later.
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One of the interesting things about motorsport when generally you look at it.
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In terms of its relationship with the media is the longevity of some of the
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publications within it and some of the journalists that have had really long
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careers in association with Formula One.
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Again, some years ago, I was asked to do a Oxford Dictionary and National
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Biography entry for a guy called Bruce.
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Bill Body who's uh, and Bill Body was the editor of Motorsport from 1936 to
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1991, and he continued to write for the magazine until his death in 2011.
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That was an 81 year career as a journalist in Motorsport.
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And at the time, he was not only the longest serving editor in the British
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media, but I think the longest serving journalist nonstop in the world.
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81 years, which is quite incredible.
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So Boddy was by far and away, you know, one of the more fascinating
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characters that I've come across from the world of motor sport journalism.
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His career began when he visited Brooklands as a young
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man or a young boy in 1926.
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And he published his first article on the history of the
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Brooklands motor track in 1930.
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Boddy developed a career as a freelance motor journalist, and after a brief spell
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working in a motorcycle shop, his first editorial role came in 1933, as the editor
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of Brooklyn's Track and Air, for which he also road tested new cars as a passenger
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because he hadn't passed his driving test.
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The image of a Grand Prix racing has also been key to our popular
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imagination of the sport.
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The brand of Ferrari, for example, is heavily linked to the rise of
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sport photojournalism in the 1960s.
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Italian photojournalist, Franco Linney was one of the first journalists to travel
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to all Grand Prix races around the world.
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Reporting for the Journal Auto Italiana, Enzo Ferrari was so impressed
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with Lynn's knowledge, his contacts, his multilingual capabilities.
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He offered him the job of team manager in 1966 and helped.
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In the changing of, again, we heard about the image of motorsport and the
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image of the Scuderia from that period.
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The brand and the imagery that goes with Ferrari really all links back to the
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work of Franco Lini and a lot of his photographs from the fifties and sixties.
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We interviewed a number of former editors and photographers of
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motorsport magazines who'd followed in the footsteps of Boddy and Linney.
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This included people like Matt Bishop, who latterly was the comms manager for Aston
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Martin F1 team, but previously had spent nearly 30 years as a journalist and editor
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of F1 Racing, which then became GP Racing, now part of the Motorsport Network.
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And he remarked about the importance, uh, as a young boy, Passionate again
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about soccer, and he had a subscription to a soccer magazine, but going
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in to collect it one day, he saw a copy of Autosport on the shelves.
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It's just intrigued again.
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I think it was a, an amazing image of an F1 car on the front.
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His fascination got the better of him.
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He changed his subscription from a soccer magazine to a motorsport
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magazine, and the rest is history.
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From that point on, all he wanted to do again was get to get close to the
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drivers, get close to the cars and develop a career in the business.
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I suppose one of the things to say, finally, about the longevity
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of some of these titles is that, obviously, they've had to change
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as the media ecology has changed.
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So, obviously, Motorsport is not only a magazine in print, it's a website,
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it works across different platforms, it does video, it does podcasts, it
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does lots of social media as well.
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So, again, how the longevity of Motorsport magazines has changed over time has
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had to change with the technology.
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that delivers them and how people want to read them.
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The history of broadcasting in F1, and again, forgive me, the
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focus here really is on the UK.
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Different nations have different kind of broadcasting histories around
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sport, not least in the United States.
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Britain has a quite distinct, I would say, history of broadcasting
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sport, and particularly motorsport.
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And that's mainly because the BBC itself continues to be publicly funded through a
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license fee and doesn't take advertising, although I know if you watch BBC America
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here, you'll see lots of advertising.
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But in the UK.
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Still, there's no spot advertising between programs on the BBC, even though
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it arguably works more and more as a commercial type broadcaster in many ways.
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The first notable radio broadcast on the BBC on the subjects of Grand Prix
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racing was in August 1926, in a 30 minute talk entitled, The Brooklyn's
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Grand Prix by the Engineer and Journalist and Motoring Enthusiast.
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Mervyn O'Gorman, and the talk was broadcast on the eve of Britain's
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first Grand Prix on the 7th of August, 1926, at Brooklyn's racetrack.
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On the 1st of October, 1927, the BBC carried its second eyewitness
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report of the second British Grand Prix, also from Brooklyn's.
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And on this occasion, the BBC turned to a racing driver called Sammy Davis
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to provide The account of the race.
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Davis had not long returned from winning the 24 hour race, but was also the sports
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editor of the magazine AutoCar and was therefore viewed as someone with both a
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sporting and journalistic credibility.
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And I think one of the interesting things about broadcasting in particular, and the
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challenge that sport broadcasters have had ever since the medium was invented was.
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Announcers have to have that skill of being a broadcaster, of kind of
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being mellifluous, of being able to speak to an audience and explain
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what's going on, and balance that out with being an expert in the sport.
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Quite often, or increasingly, I would argue that those two
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roles are kind of split now.
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Obviously, we have an announcer that does the play by play commentary of
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explaining what's going on, sat next to or alongside an expert, a former player.
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Or former motor racing driver in the case of F1.
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That's the challenge of broadcasting commentary and announcing is that
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balance between expertise in the sport and being an expert broadcaster.
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And so we see early examples of the BBC trying to do that with Sammy
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Davis being a driver, but is also just happened to be a journalist as well.
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It was not until 1950 that the BBC found its main voice of motorsport
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with a guy called Raymond Baxter.
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Again, a long standing broadcaster in the UK.
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What's quite interesting about this period, all these guys were involved
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in the war in some shape or form.
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Baxter was a fighter pilot in the Second World War, but also spent some time
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working for British Forces Network radio in Hamburg during his time in the forces.
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He entered the BBC as their first motoring correspondent in 1946.
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He worked across radio and television, not only active as a broadcaster,
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but also as a motor racer himself.
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He competed in 12 Monte Carlo rallies and quite often did radio reporting
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as he was doing the, the racing.
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One of the interesting asides about the BBC and the Monte Carlo rally.
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As in, I think nine, I might say in 1958, they entered a London taxi to the Monte
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Carlo rally from Glasgow to Monte Carlo.
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One of the doors fell off as they got on the ramp to go on
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the ferry across to France.
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So they did most of the race without one door.
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And then they also went missing.
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So the BBC had put journalists all around the, you know,
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along the course or the route.
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The driver, a guy called Tony Brook decided, well, there's no way I'm
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getting a London taxi, you know, around the central massif of the
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mountainous area of central France.
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So I'm going to go round the flatter course, but the BBC had put Posted
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one of its journalists at the top of the mountains and they were waiting
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and waiting and waiting for this car never arrived And so they posted back
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to London to say we think he's crashed He's disappeared and it wasn't until
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he turned up in Monte Carlo that they actually realized he was still alive And
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he got a rollicking by all accounts by the producer for changing his route The
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London Times had headlines of BBC taxi disappears in the mountains of France
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But partly because of the challenges, I guess, of covering motorsport was
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one of the reasons why between the 1950s and 1970s, there really wasn't
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much Formula One racing on television.
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There was a bit of film coverage.
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BBC did show quite a bit.
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Again, one of the producers of BBC Sport in this period in the
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fifties and sixties said to me, they used to buy film from America.
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of crashes and their editor used to just put them all together
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in a two minute sequence of just lots of car crashes, whatever sort
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of track it was from the States.
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They thought the audience found that entertaining for whatever reason.
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I guess that's one of the appeals maybe of the jeopardy of motorsport on TV, but
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let's think of a sport like boxing, for example, that's relatively straightforward
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to cover because it's what you might call maximum action in a minimal space.
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Whereas motorsport, well, it's maximum action, but it's in
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a really expansive terrain.
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You know, trying to cover that on television or on radio
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is a logistical nightmare.
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It's a real challenge, even to this day, arguably.
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So you can post cameras all around a track, but how you make sense of that
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for the audience is really difficult.
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And that was one of the reasons really why motorsport didn't take off on
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television in the UK, certainly in this period, because it was either too
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expensive to do that or hadn't figured out what the best way of doing it was.
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So during the early 1950s, Baxter persuaded the BBC also to
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create its own motorsport events.
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So one of the interesting things is hill climbs was a big thing
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in the UK from the 1920s onwards.
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And just after the war, Baxter came up with a new competition
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called the BBC Television Trophy.
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And him and a producer came up with a bespoke track just north of London.
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So it was easy to get, again, the outside broadcast.
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cameras there, they set the course so that they could strategically place the
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cameras in the right places and so on.
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This lasted for about seven or eight years, and one of the interesting
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things about it is the trophy there.
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That is a, what's called an image orthicon camera, which was the main camera
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that the BBC then used in the 1950s.
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And so they had an artist design that trophy that looked like
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the camera, and that was first used as a motor racing trophy.
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But from 1954.
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The same trophy was also used for what's called the BBC Sports Personality of the
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Year, which still continues to this day.
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It's one of the most prestigious awards sports people in Britain
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receive from the viewers.
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So viewers vote for who they want to win that trophy.
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And in 1961, we've got Sterling Moss receiving it.
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So again, the lineage of a kind of major Sporting Award has its links
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back to the BBC trying to create a motorsport event for its cameras for
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itself that it knew it would cover.
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So it's a nice kind of link back, I guess, to that early history of how broadcasting
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of motorsport began on the BBC.
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It's also interesting to note that Formula One drivers or motorsport
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drivers more generally have won that trophy on eight occasions, which
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is only surpassed by athletics.
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Many people would argue that football, soccer is the biggest sport in the
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UK, but in terms of that trophy.
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It doesn't equate, it doesn't link.
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And I think partly one of the reasons for that is that motor racing drivers
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just have that kind of hero factor.
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You know, they're risking their lives.
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They just become kind of heroic figures like Sterling Moss.
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So the winners include Sterling Moss, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart, Nigel Mansell.
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Damon Hill and Lewis Hamilton, and in fact, Hill and Hamilton have
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won it on more than one occasion.
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So the success of that award, and the success of F1 drivers in that
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award, is maybe suggest a signpost to the broader cultural appeal of F1
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to the British public, even though in the, like I say, the 70s, they
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didn't really see very much action of drivers at all, but they continue to
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be worshipped, I guess, as key sporting heroes within British popular culture.
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Okay, now the Eccleston part.
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Bernie recently, uh, found guilty of tax fraud at the grand old age.
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I think he's now about 96 or something, certainly in his 90s.
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But for many years, obviously the extrovert, controller, owner,
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commercial entrepreneur of Formula One.
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One of the interesting things in talking to the journalists was what they perceived
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was the relationship or the access that journalists had during the Eccleston era.
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And I think to sum it up is basically that Eccleston just Loved newspaper
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coverage, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent, he didn't really care.
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But if F1 or his name was in the papers, that's all he was interested in.
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So it didn't have to be a good news story, it could be a bad news story.
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But it was just getting the visibility of F1 out there.
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He liked to be controversial.
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I think Rebecca Clancy, who's one of the few female F1 journalists of the times,
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she said, Bernie's creating headlines.
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In F1, it was known as throwing a grenade.
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So he was well known for throwing a grenade all the time,
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I guess, to get in the news.
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The ability to more or less get access to all areas of the racetrack is one of
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the major differences of the late 20th century compared to how things developed
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once press officers and communications managers came into the sport.
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Again, to quote Morris Hamilton, he said, It was very open and you
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were on good terms with everybody.
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You could chat away as they walked along the pit lane.
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You could talk anytime you liked.
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Similarly with team owners, Colin Chapman, less so because he was
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God and I was terrified of him.
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But people like Ted Mayer, McLaren, Ken Turrell, for example, you
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could go and chat to Ken anytime about any topic on anything.
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And Hamilton also talked about a time where journalists.
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Would turn up at driver's motorhome and just huddle
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around a table asking questions.
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He mentioned James Hunt again was one of the key characters that you could
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just roll up and just ask him questions and they would use those stories as the
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follow ups for their Tuesday edition.
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So Monday was for reporting on the weekend racing, um, you know, the factual
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aspects of what happened on the race, but Tuesday was the follow up of the kind of
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different kinds of angles and stories.
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So he said, we all had different thoughts, and so it was really quite good.
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You recall.
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The tabloids would have their different line and they were reporting on kind
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of personal angles of the drivers.
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I might be more interested in how the chassis setup works or
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some of the technical details.
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So he worked to build the relationships with mechanics who would provide
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insights on how cars were performing and in particular cars were running.
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And he said, now there's security, you can't get close to them.
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They're not allowed to talk to you.
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They're scared and terrified of breaching their protocols.
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So I think one of the key things that start to come out of the conversations
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we were having with journalists was particularly the ones like Morris
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Hamilton, who'd been doing it for decades, was since Eccleston finished
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then Liberty Media took over, is far more control about how the media relations
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work and the access that they have into the pit lane and with drivers, which is
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far more kind of controlled and timed on particular days and at particular times.
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What that's created is, of course, our kind of media hierarchy, so
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it's no surprise because television broadcasters pay the lion's share
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of the income that F1 receive.
22:10
I think Sky Sports, which is the main broadcaster of F1 but also in Germany,
22:15
Italy, I think, Think Spain, they are literally one of the largest commercial
22:19
sponsors of F1 at the moment because the amount of money they pay in rights.
22:23
So there's no surprise that they get first access and incredible
22:26
access really around the paddock.
22:28
You know, we've got Martin Brule there talking to Brad Pitt, and again,
22:32
this pre-race walkthrough and walk around has become synonymous with
22:35
the house sky cover of the sport.
22:36
Martin Brundle is the one that leads that.
22:38
We're talking about the image of the sport rubbing off of celebrities
22:42
that are also there in the pad.
22:43
But you won't find one single journalist on pit lane.
22:46
They don't have that access.
22:47
They're back in some media center somewhere watching
22:50
it unfold on the screen.
22:51
Whereas broadcasters, they're there on the ground getting really intimate
22:55
coverage, interviewing drivers if they're prepared to talk before the race.
22:59
Sports writer, Richard Williams, again, who wrote a fantastic book,
23:02
Racers, which is about the 1996 season when Damon Hill won the championship.
23:07
And a great insight into, again, how one season unfolds and the
23:10
narrative unfolds around a story.
23:12
He argues that then, so again, we're going back to the 1990s and until maybe
23:17
10 years ago, I would say that television provided the images, but it was the
23:22
tabloid newspapers that provided the stories for the British public around F1.
23:26
So for a good 20, 30 years, newspapers.
23:29
Remain important for telling the stories for the angles for celebrity
23:34
culture around sport and some of the scandal, of course, around the sport,
23:37
but he argues that that's now changed.
23:39
Newspapers just don't have that leverage anymore.
23:42
And another interviewee, Andrew Benson from the BBC sport online, he acknowledged
23:46
that broadcasters are definitely ranked higher than the written media and where
23:50
there is high demand for interviews and drivers are selecting who to talk to.
23:54
It.
23:55
They will always go to broadcasters first.
23:57
They will not choose a journalist, even an online journalist for a
24:00
reputable organization like the BBC, they will skip the overlook those and
24:04
go to the, uh, the main broadcaster.
24:06
So fundamentally they're using the media to expose their brand.
24:10
He said, as they see it, which is part of the complications of the
24:13
job from the media's perspective.
24:15
So you can understand.
24:16
Why they're going to rank the importance of outlets as far as they're concerned.
24:19
What happened in there with the quality of access dictates really both the
24:22
ranking order, but also the quality of the media representation that
24:26
any particular outlet can produce.
24:28
And so that's continues to be a major struggle for what we might
24:31
call traditional journalism.
24:34
So, to finish off, one of the things, again, no surprises really,
24:38
as the media ecology has changed.
24:40
The most significant shift in the media relations has been caused by social media.
24:44
Many journalists noted frustration with how drivers and teams released
24:48
information on social media.
24:49
Usually Twitter or X or Instagram that stands as the final communication on
24:54
particular events and Lewis Hamilton has done this on numerous occasions where
24:58
if he wants to get a message across he'll use his social media but he won't
25:01
talk to a journalist he'll just say a question about whatever the matter
25:04
is arises he says just go and look at my social media there's my answer.
25:08
So when questioned further on the information released on social
25:11
media drivers are reluctant.
25:13
To expand on the detail, preferring to let their comments and images
25:16
posted on social media stand as the final point of communication.
25:20
Long time journalist and author, Morris Hamilton, again, believes
25:23
this has changed everything.
25:24
And Rebecca Clancy of the Times argues that when drivers have their own media
25:28
outlets, why do they need to talk to us?
25:30
So, to conclude, we would argue that the rise and importance of social
25:33
media in the last decade or so has cut across the value of traditional
25:37
news media and accounts of the race.
25:39
By the time the newspaper hits the shelves, or even the website,
25:42
the main story of the race has been told and covered on multiple
25:46
channels, broadcasters and social media, with multiple perspectives.
25:50
from different commentators.
25:51
This has changed the dynamic and become the key factor in both policing
25:55
behavior but paradoxically allowing drivers to take greater control of
25:59
the narratives that surround them.
26:01
In so doing, it has allowed the drivers and the teams to reach out
26:05
to a wider audience, many of whom simply do not read newspapers anymore.
26:15
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