It is spring in São Paulo and the purple jacaranda trees are blooming. It seems funny to talk of all things natural in relation to the city, a vast urban sprawl with concreted riverbanks and a mass of humanity, and yet over the years the city has tried hard to make itself a nicer place. It was not always a public policy, sometimes people just planted trees on their own, fed up with the desolation. A man named Helio da Silva embarked on a one-man campaign and in the course of the last 20-off years he has planted around 40,000 trees, which he has paid for himself. Things grow in this part of the world, because it is warm, sunny and it rains a lot. Having plants makes a big difference and on the way to the airport on Monday, driving alongside the Tietê River, on the road they call the Marginal Tietê, I was astonished to see an animal, happily grazing in the grass next to the expressway. I think it was the first wild animal I’ve ever seen in São Paulo, although I guess the occasional cats and dogs are not all domesticated. This was a large rodent, which I guess was probably a capybara, a race which is flourishing at the moment in Brazil. It is all very different from the place I first visited in 1990 when F1 returned to São Paulo, after a few years in glamorous but dangerous Rio de Janeiro.
Some F1 folk thought that São Paulo was Hell. I’ve been to Hell, it’s rather a nice place actually, about 25 miles to the east of Trondheim in Norway, where they sell postcards with a picture of an old steam train pulling into the station set against a blood red sunset. Anyway, São Paulo was not much fun in those days. Since then it has slowly has become a place with shiny tower blocks rising where once there were fields with raggedy horses wandering around. There are glitzy shopping centres and most of the population seem to spend their time texting one another, particularly when driving. Where once there were favelas, now there are apartment blocks, but it is progress. The Tietê is still dark brown in colour, but there are always people working to fish out the nasty stuff. Sao Paulo may not be as glamorous as Rio de Janeiro, but it is not only Brazil’s biggest city but also the largest city in the southern hemisphere, with an estimated population of 22.8 million, which makes it the fifth largest city in the world. When they built the town of Interlagos, it was out in the country. That was back in the 1930s. The name, which is Portuguese for ‘between lakes’, was inspired, so they say, by the picturesque Swiss resort town of Interlaken (German for ‘between lakes’) but it had none of the glamour of its Swiss cousin. The reason they put a race track there was because part of the land was an unstable hillside, unsuitable for housing because of regular subsidence. They didn’t waste much time on design questions, they simply took the design of a race track in Long Island, New York, known as Roosevelt Field, and with a few nips and tucks, including a bank first corner because they did not want to spend too much moving vast amounts of earth, they fashioned the new track. In the end, more by luck than judgement, they came up with a terrific racing circuit although the timing was dreadful as it was opened when war was breaking out around the world in 1940. It was not until the 1970s that Interlagos found fame on the international scene. By then, the city of São Paulo had expanded and the track had been engulfed by shanty towns, built by tens of thousands of country folk who had moved to the city looking for work. At the time Emerson Fittipaldi was becoming a star and Brazil wanted to be part of the F1 circus. The first World Championship Brazilian Grand Prix was in 1973 and the 1972 World Champion Emerson Fittipaldi won for Lotus. A year later he won for McLaren and in 1975 another Brazilian Carlos Pace, took victory for Brabham, although he would die two years later in a plane crash. The track was named in his honour soon after his death. It is a little known fact that last year an urn containing Pace’s remains was disinterred from the Araçá cemetery in Sao Paulo, where his grave had been vandalised, and was reburied at the Autodromo, next to the bust of Pace that stands near the entrance gate. The Brazilian Grand Prix went off to Rio de Janeiro in 1978 as Nelson Piquet became the big Brazilian racing star but then the rise of Ayrton Senna, a Paulista, saw the race move back to Interlagos. The old circuit was modified, shortened and spruced up (a little). The locals promised that there would be lots of improvements and they kept on promising, but little really changed. It is only in recent years that things have been improved, but there is still a lot to do. I love the passion and energy one feels at Interlagos but the Brazilians make the Italians look efficient. The two nations have much in common, including a passion for waving their arms in the air and shouting a lot, but you cannot help by smile. I am not the most organised person but I think I would go bonkers if I lived in Brazil. At times I get frustrated and hate it but then the bubbling energy sets me back on a more positive path. This year Interlagos felt even more energised than normal, probably because there is another talented Brazilian youngster rising through the ranks in F1. Gabriel Bortoleto had a rotten weekend, including a monster crash at the end of the Sprint race, but the fans see him as a star of the future. It helped that thousands of Argentines, who make Brazilians look rather sleepy when it comes to supporting a driver, turned up to cheer for Franco Colapinto. They too see him as a future mega-star and will not be told that perhaps they should lower their expectations… Whatever the case, the big news in the F1 Paddock (there was not much) was that Colapinto has been re-signed by Alpine. The only drives now left are at Red Bull and it would be a big surprise if the Austrian drinks company did not promote Isack Hadjar to Red Bull Racing to replace Yuki Tsunoda as Max Verstappen’s team-mate; and put Arvid Lindblad into Racing Bulls alongside partner Liam Lawson. Colapinto’s deal comes in part because his performance is improving and in part because he brings considerable financial support for the team from Mercado Libre, the Argentine-owned e-commerce firm. The amount is not known, but it is a significant sum of money. This is important because the team’s poor performance this year is going to create a large hole in the budget next year because the drop in prize money from sixth in the Constructors’ to 10th is a sum in the region of $30 million, which means that Alpine will need to find money from elsewhere. It is difficult to sell sponsorships if one finishes last and there is also a risk that existing sponsors may depart. That means that in order to maintain the same budget, the shareholders might have to be asked to put in extra cash – and that is not going to appeal to those who are looking at F1 as purely a place to invest money. There has been talk for some time that Otro Capital, which bought 24 percent of the team in 2023 for a sum of around $218 million, is looking to cash in because the shares are worth probably twice what Otro paid for them. We hear that Renault has the right of first refusal on the shares at “fair market value” but that would mean that Renault would have to pay twice what the deal brought in two years ago and that might be hard to sell to the board. Renault is still influenced by the French government and so appearances are important. There is no shortage of investors willing to put up cash to get their hands on equity in a Formula 1 team. One whisper in Brazil was that Christian Horner is currently visiting investors in the Middle East and the United States in order to put together a group to acquire shares in a team, which would allow him to get equity, probably by offering an equity for services agreement, which would grant him shares in exchange for his abilities, contacts and expertise in the F1 world. Renault says that it intends to stay in F1 but little progress has been made since former Renault CEO Luca de Meo took on Flavio Briatore in a consulting role. This was always a strange deal and with de Meo gone one can imagine that the new Renault management might see Horner as a better idea for the future. There are good reasons for Renault to stay in F1 to promote Alpine but rebuilding the team will take time and money because hiring good people is tough because of the competition for talent at the moment. Horner will give people confidence that Alpine is moving in the right direction. Colapinto’s primary value to Renault is his popularity in Argentina, which fits in neatly with Renault trying to sell more cars in Latin America. There is strong Argentine influence in Renault Latin America and in fact the boss of Renault Brazil in recent months is an Argentine executive called Ariel Montenegro. Alpine sales are growing as a result of F1, but the numbers are still not really sufficient to warrant the investment needed in F1. To be fair there is also talk of Horner buying into Aston Martin and that makes sense as well as he knows how to handle Adrian Newey, he knows how to deal with Honda and the team has had a lot of investment already. We will have to see what happens… The news that Colapinto is staying at Alpine has increased talk about the possible return of Argentina to the Formula 1 calendar in 2028. The country is famed for its economic instability but things have stabilized of late thanks to the policies of President Javier Milei, who hopes to transform the very wealthy country into a place where people trust the local currency. It should be noted that the City of Buenos Aires has already developed a plan to rebuild the Autódromo and has committed $110 million for the work, which will prepare the facility to host a MotoGP event in 2027. MotoGP is now owned by Formula 1 and there have been discussions that once the track is upgraded, it could be further improved in 2028 in order to host an F1 race. The Autódromo will be closed down at the end of this month and work will begin, including the demolition of the current pits and new facilities being built. F1’s usual architect Hermann Tilke is overseeing the work and the idea of an F1 race makes a lot of sense as it could be twinned with the race in São Paulo, which would significantly reduce the transportation costs involved and give F1 two races for the price of one. Elsewhere the FIA seems to be wrapped up in legal actions at the moment and it is probably best to avoid wasting energy discussing them all until we hear what the courts think about the various cases/investigations. There is some discontent among the teams about the plan to change the way that entry fees are handled, in order to give the FIA more money, so that a Concorde Governance Agreement (CGA) can be signed off. Teams generally accept that the sport needs to be run in a professional manner and that despite its faults, the FIA is probably the best solution. Some of those involved would probably prefer a different President but it is unwise to say these things publicly because Mohammed Ben Sulayem has been known to get quite upset when anyone dares to challenge him. But if the FIA membership is happy with such a leader, there is not much that anyone can do about it, unless courts rule that his policies err too far from the norms of polite society. The entry fees were previously decided by the number of points scored by each team. The problem with this is that the top four teams score most of the points and thus have a much higher entry fee compared to the midfield teams. In an effort to balance things a little more the top teams will pay less and the mid-ranking teams will now have to pay more. The FIA promises to use the money to make its organisation more professional, but there are no details about this and F1 as a whole wants to know that the money will be used to make F1 better, rather than subsidizing other floundering championships or on things like FIA entertainment for club presidents, which has seen a huge increase in the last year, judging by the busloads of gold passes that can be seen in the paddock at every race. We are told that the teams will end up collectively paying about $15 million a year more than they have done thus far. Over a five-year deal that means that the FIA will be pocketing an additional $75 million, in addition to the extra money that Formula 1 has agreed to put in, so it is no real surprise that everyone wants to know what they will get back from this additional expenditure. Ferrari had an awful weekend in Sao Paulo, with the team falling behind Mercedes and Red Bull Racing in the Constructors’ Championship, which will translate into a financial hit of about $30 million if it remains the same at the end of the year. Ferrari has loads of money but seems incapable of translating the financial advantages it enjoys into Wolrd Championships. The team made a big deal over the weekend about winning the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ titles in the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship, but soon afterwards Ferrari chairman John Elkann showed why the team is not going to be successful any time soon by criticising his F1 drivers for talking too much. Elkann does not seem to understand very much about how things work in Formula 1 as this will serve only to make the problems worse. Some might even suggest that if you have been unable to win the title despite a string of team principals and loads of different engineers, the real problem may lie higher up the ladder – with the people making the decisions. Still, he owns the company and if he wants to break the toys that is really his problem… Elsewhere, Liberty Media continues to do well. The latest Q3 figures are good and Liberty continues to develop new ways to make more money from the sport. The latest wizard wheeze has been to buy a strip club in Las Vegas. Strange, but true. Campaigners for public decency can, however, rest easy, because Liberty intends to demolish the Club Platinum, which (I’m told) can be found on East Flamingo Road, next door to the Tuscany Suites & Casino (which serves as the Media Center for the Grand Prix) and is adjacent to the Grand Prix Plaza. The plan is to build a four-storey F1 merchandise store on the site, which will be highly visible to the 50,000 cars that pass by every day.
