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Rewriting the Rules. F1 cars - and how they race - are constantly changing...
...Magic Having dodged a hail of bullets last year, the barons of Formula One are breathing easier. Drivingwise, F1 looks a lot more exciting than it has in years. Last year's champion, Jenson Button, and 2008 winner Lewis Hamilton, both Brits, are driving for McLaren. Schumi's back and trying to win another championship at 41. Red Bull, last year's runner-up in the constructor's race, has a quick young German driver named Sebastian Vettel whose nickname is Baby Schumi. With Alonso and Felipe Massa behind the wheel, Ferrari is again a strong contender, and Ferrari...
None of which means F1 is out of the woods. The audience for the sport may be changing, but the sport's culture has not. Yet it must. F1 is about as likable as a 250-lb. bouncer. It lives in a high-tech bubble and thrives on a velvet-rope mentality that keeps all but a few very high rollers far away from the cars and the drivers. "F1 has gotten extremely constipated and overly grand for itself," says Jackie Stewart. "When I was a wee boy, I went to the track and got [Juan Manuel] Fangio's autograph...
...carbon emissions," says McLaren's Whitmarsh, who also heads the recently formed Formula One Teams Association (FOTA), which represents what insiders hope will be a new spirit of harmony in a sport traditionally run by tough guys behaving badly. "There's much work to be done so that F1 is seen as relevant to society." (See a brief history of Formula...
Ecclestone, a former driver and team owner, began to exert control over F1 in the late 1970s, when he got a lock on the sale of the sport's TV rights, its most valuable asset. In 2005 he sold most of his stake in Formula One Management to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners. But thanks to a complicated ownership structure, he's still the straw that stirs the drink. Ecclestone alone makes the big TV, sponsorship and track deals that keep F1's cash gushing. He rests his legacy on the numbers, and they are indeed impressive, not least...