Is Formula One Still The Pinnacle Of motorsport?

1950. The year of the first Formula One World Championship, a fully confirmed championship where the best drivers and machines would battle it out for the top honors in what was the world’s premier class of motorsport of its time. Giuseppe Farina would take victory in his Alfa Romeo in the race around the perimeter road of the disused World War Two airfield of Silverstone. Fast forward to 2015. We are at a time where at least half of the teams in the championship are struggling financially, historic circuits are disappearing off the calendar in place of countries with no motorsport heritage or pedigree and ticket prices are still rising. Is Formula One still the pinnacle of motorsport? In the modern era of Formula One we have a fantastic show to be proud of, but many deep-seeded issues are still rooted in the sport. An example would be in the driver market. The last three GP2 champions have failed to find seats in Formula One when some of their competitors from the same series have. This has often been down to financial backing, but how can it be justified that champions of the feeder series to Formula One don’t get seats? The World Endurance Championship is rapidly becoming a series coming to the forefront of attention because a lot more manufacturers are now entering the championship due to its roadgoing implications and competitiveness within its ranks. Drivers have more room in WEC due to the fact it’s not one driver per car and generally a three-driver team – especially at Le Mans. Nico Hulkenberg is proving to be a driver who is testing this theory by entering the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours with Porsche. Another issue that Formula One is suffering is that some circuit venues are slowly falling off the calendar. In the 1995 season only six out of the seventeen races were held outside of Europe. Fast forward to 2015, only seven out of nineteen races are in Europe. While it does state that Formula One is a World Championship, can it really be sustainable to keep Formula One out of Europe where its core audience is supposed to be? We have lost the German Grand Prix for the this season and we could also potentially lose the Italian Grand Prix from next season onwards due to financial constraints from Bernie Ecclestone. Losing races calendar like this is a sign that Formula One is in big trouble, if we were to continue to lose such races with huge history and heritage and where teams like Mercedes and Ferrari come from it would be a huge travesty for the sport. Over the past few years, teams such as Toyota, BMW and Honda all pulled out in the wake of the global financial crisis, we have yet to see any interest from those manufacturers coming back into the fray, only Honda have done so as an engine supplier due to the roadgoing relevance of the V6 hybrid turbo engines. Independents such as Caterham and HRT have been forced to dissolve due to the financial constraints of the sport, and this was not helped by the latest Concorde Agreement signed by the teams. Money at present is currently not spread across the field evenly and this does not help the smaller teams struggling to keep their finances in check just to stay in the sport. Formula One is top class motorsport, nobody can deny that. But is Formula One still the pinnacle of the motorsport world when many other series are gaining popularity, coverage, top drivers and look to be cheaper to run? Main image: