Silverstone Roots Need Careful Cultivation to Survive

A s he dashed around the Shanghai paddock at the weekend, Sir Jackie Stewart was preaching the message of government intervention to anyone willing to be seen talking to a man sporting a pair of loud tartan trousers. It is a mere five years since Sir Jackie pocketed somewhere around £60m from the sale of his formula one team, yet now he is recommending all and sundry to follow the example of Mao Zedong's heirs. The world has indeed become a different and more complicated place when capitalists and communists appear to be making common cause.

In Stewart's view, the first Chinese grand prix provided a textbook case of what can happen when a government decides to make a significant investment in a round of the formula one world championship. The gleaming stands, the exciting track and the extensive facilities for the teams cost the citizens of the People's Republic about £300m, recoupable only from ticket sales, since the much larger takings from broadcasting rights and circuit advertising are all scooped up by Bernie Ecclestone's companies.

The Chinese organisers kept a low profile before and after the event, allowing formula one to speak for itself. At no point did they reveal the exact source of the money with which the circuit was created on swampland 25 miles outside Shanghai, in a region earmarked to become China's Detroit, a centre of its growing automobile industry.

But it can be assumed that they were as happy with the event as the members of the formula one circus, who showered praise not just on the spacious garages and the little village of bungalow-style hospitality units in the paddock but also on the circuit itself, which offered challenges that the drivers professed to enjoy. People within the grand prix world tend to say what they are paid to say, but this time there seemed to be a genuine quality to their enthusiasm.

And yes, Shanghai did indeed make Silverstone look like the disused second world war bomber base that it used to be. The only part of the Northamptonshire track that matches the latest addition to the formula one calendar is the clubhouse, which the members of the British Racing Drivers' Club built for themselves with money received from an American-based sports promotion group whose attempt to run the British grand prix ended so disastrously earlier this year.

No doubt we shall be hearing much more about Silverstone's shortcomings from Ecclestone in the coming months, as he tries to nudge the BRDC into a corner during negotiations over the future of Britain's round of the world championship. In that respect Shanghai has done Britain no favours at all, since the Blair government is more likely to have the troops home from Iraq by Christmas than to invest in a sport that left it badly singed after Ecclestone's notorious £1m donation to New Labour.

There are, however, few points of legitimate comparison between Shanghai and Silverstone. The Chinese city is in the throes of leading the country's modernisation programme, aimed at attracting inward investment from the west. It already has an international airport, Pudong, that makes London's Heathrow look, well, like a disused second world war bomber base. Its new race track, now known around the world, is another symbol of national progress.

For Britain to try and match it would be impossible, not least because to build a similar circuit would probably cost 10 times as much, given the disparity between the average wages of British and Chinese construction workers. And there would be little general enthusiasm for spending public money on a sport from which Ecclestone has taken £2bn and Stewart £60m.

There are subtler ways, however, to ensure that Britain maintains its long-established role as a centre of formula one technology, thereby retaining its prima facie right to host an annual grand prix. Giving more assistance to the training of young engineers, for instance, would fit in with the government's established priorities without directly subsidising the activities of the paddock's multi-millionaires. Men such as Ferrari's Ross Brawn, BAR's Geoff Willis and Williams's Patrick Head would probably be happy to take part in such a scheme.

But what Ecclestone should bear in mind, while congratulating himself on a job well done in Shanghai, is that formula one needs to pay attention to the places where its roots are deepest as well as those where they have only just been planted. And for all the excitement over the sheer novelty of last weekend's event, perhaps the success of the first Chinese grand prix had more to do with the fact that it was actually a halfway decent race.