Mark Hughes

Well, Damon, as we're coming up the Canadian Grand Prix and that gap between Miami and Canada, we've heard a few interesting comments from the government body, the FIA.

Senior people, one, the president saying, yeah, we're going to go back to V8s by 2030 or 31.

But senior technical people saying, yeah, we probably listened too much to the automotive requests.

And that's what's led us to have this trying to get to this 50-50 split, which has caused us some problems and we really need to change that split a bit more.

in favor of the internal combustion engine, particularly from 2027 on.

And it's an interesting point because certainly some of us have been saying for quite a long time, Formula One is so successful in its own right commercially.

Why is it giving itself such difficulties commercially?

just to accommodate the wishes of an outside entity such as automotive and can't exist on its own terms without compromising, in this case, the racing, just to accommodate those wishes.

Where do you stand on that?

Yeah.

And it was quite a happy marriage until we've got to this point where...

They wanted to do hybridization.

The automotives wanted to emphasize battery power and hybrid with the internal combustion.

Well, yes, there was.

But their business model to have to comply with regulations that were being imposed was they needed to produce these, A, and B, promote them.

And that led to Formula One going down this route under pressure from particularly Audi, but several manufacturers, Honda, Renault, several of them said, we want hybrid, much more enhanced battery power.

Ideally, something like 50-50 split, which has turned out to be deeply problematical with it.

It was too ambitious a target and has led all sorts of compromises that way.

Formula 1 is right in the middle of trying to sort out.

I think so, yeah.