Leading Formula 1 figures say the sport has to be careful not to price fans out of going to grands prix after poor attendance figures throughout the Turkish Grand Prix weekend.
While the Istanbul Park circuit itself has been lauded as the best modern track on the calendar since it was opened in 2005, the F1 fraternity has complained about a lack of atmosphere at the venue due to poor spectator numbers.
Those problems continued for this year’s event, the majority of grandstands empty for Sunday’s race and some covered with black netting.
The lack of local fans didn’t escape the notice of leading drivers and team figures, all of whom agreed that something has to be done about ticket prices at venues that struggled with attendances.
But although Turkey in particular experiences problems in attracting fans to its race, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa believes there is enough local F1 interest for the grandstands to be filled if the tickets were priced at more affordable levels.
“I think when you come here and you go in the city and see there are massive [amounts of] fans around and then you come here and have nobody, it means that it is too expensive,” he said.
“It means that we need to make it cheaper. We prefer to race in a circuit with cheaper tickets and a lot of people inside because I’m sure that if you put down the price of tickets it would be full.
“That’s also one of the issues that we have – it’s too expensive. If you go in normal families, if you need to spend 1000 Euro for you and your two kids you think about what to do.
“You say, ‘no I prefer to watch on the television’, so for me it’s clear.”
Having been outspoken about the demise of more traditional F1 venues such as Silverstone on Thursday, Mark Webber was another driver to express concern about the dearth of spectators for Sunday’s race.
Given organisers knew ticket sales were struggling, the Red Bull driver reckons people should have been let in for free for the race – a move which he believes would have had positive benefits for the sport.
“There was no atmosphere in Turkey,” Webber said after finishing second in the race.
“I think that there were a lot of people that tried to come in today but obviously it’s not that cheap and things like that but we should have let them in for free at the end.
“It would have been nice for the show to let people in.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would want to come to the Turkish Grand Prix but can’t afford to because it’s very expensive.
“Jenson [Button] and I spoke about this on the parade lap that on the day maybe we should have made an announcement yesterday or even this morning to get some more people in here to let them experience our sport and that’s a shame that it didn’t happen today.”
Although Formula 1 has successfully expanded into new markets in the Far East and Middle East over the past decade, many of the new venues have struggled to build consistently strong fan bases at the circuit compared to some of the more traditional races in Europe.
Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali admits such issues have been lost amid the current atmosphere of political infighting within Formula 1 – but says it is something that must be urgently addressed.
“I think this is one problem that we need to solve for sure,” Domenicali told reporters.
“Now we are concentrated too much on other things and it seems that we don’t care about the public, about the show and about what’s going on around us.
“I know that media and television is very important, but it’s like being in a football stadium that is totally empty.
“All the stakeholders in Formula 1 realise this is an issue, but we need to solve altogether – teams, commercial rights holder, FIA, promoter, organiser. This is for sure one point that has to be put on the first priority on the table between all of us.”
Toyota’s team president, and FOTA vice-chairman, John Howett says it is his understanding that Turkish GP chiefs were keen to do something about the poor attendances, but “weren’t encouraged to do so”.
However, he stressed that Formula 1’s worldwide TV viewing figures proved the sport had strong popular support.
“I didn’t speak to the [race] promoter, but I think the promoter told Flavio [Briatore] that they had been willing to do some fairly serious activities to actually increase the traffic and that they weren’t encouraged to do so.
“I think that we have to realise that we are in an economic situation where entry prices to the tracks is important to the customers, but if you look at the viewing figures, that we receive anyway at Toyota, they are encouraging.
“Our sport is as strong, if not stronger, than it has ever been.”
But asked whether poor circuit attendances were nevertheless not good for the sport in the long term, he added: “I do recognise that, but it is a situation partially beyond our [the teams’] control.
“One has to say that if you look at the viewing figures it indicates that the product is very strong, you have to question whether potentially the price of entry is too high or what we need to do to improve that.
“But FOTA has always made it clear it is very open to work with the commercial rights holder to improve this.”
Source - ITV-F1
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