They say you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, but Eric Silbermann risks the wrath of Mrs Manners by having breakfast with a pot-pourri of paddock people.
Organising a Formula 1 Grand Prix at a new circuit in a country with very little motor sport heritage is a gargantuan task. The man in charge of getting the job done here in Sochi is the unflappable Richard Cregan.
It does seem as though things have improved in terms of the facilities at the track and surrounding area this time. Has that been a lot of work since last year?
It’s been a lot of work but with a very receptive team, so it makes it easier. Part of our programme last year with the guys was to create a detailed ‘lessons learned’ document which covered all the areas and one of them was food and actually, it was one of the ones near the top of the list because everybody had major issues with it. Then we met the various hoteliers and restaurateurs and they said they would pledge to sort it out. They’re not quite there yet but I think they’ve done a good job.
It does seem better. There’s no great culture of Formula 1 in this country. How have you created a team to operate this place? What have been the problems other than food?
A lot of people that were here last year had done the Olympics and then they had stayed on and helped deliver the Grand Prix So basically, for this year, what we set about doing was trying to keep the key people but that didn’t happen in all cases so we ended up training a lot of people again. And that’s my biggest concern for year three is there’ll be another big turnover of people and again, we’re kind of starting not from zero but from halfway. But in fairness, with a small team, they’ve done a fantastic job. They’re a very, very hardworking people. They work for their country and there’s not too many places you see that. A lot of people talk about it but I have to say, the guys here, they want to deliver a Grand Prix for Russia and they work very hard to do that. My admiration for the people has gone up a lot since I started working in Russia.
As you say, motorsport in general is a very small sport in Russia and I suppose the whole idea of this was twofold - promote the country and try and develop motorsport. It is working. Unfortunately, this year, there were a couple of things with track settlement so they had to resurface different parts of the track, which cut out chunks of time but hopefully, after this one, there’ll be a little bit more time. The weather allows almost year-round activity on the track, which is very good.
You got this gig basically because you did a good job in Abu Dhabi. It must be a completely different philosophy behind the two circuits because I presume Abu Dhabi is rolling in cash and nothing’s too much bother. Whereas here, things are much tighter.
Abu Dhabi may have been like that in the distant past and I believe nothing like the Abu Dhabi circuit will be built again. That was a one-off. I think it was an amazing job from Hermann Tilke and Philippe Gurdjian. Abu Dhabi wanted to put its mark on the world stage of sport so that’s what they did. Since then, it’s changed a hell of a lot. They want very clear business plans. The new CEO, Al Tariq, has taken on the task of reducing costs as we were doing over the five years. Coming here, there was a similar culture in the sense that they had the Olympics to deliver, and the Formula 1 circuit is part of that facility, but, as soon as the Olympics were finished, it was like ‘Oh, we still have to finish the F1 circuit and we’ve spent all our money on the Olympics’ so that was a bit of a struggle, and still is to a certain extent. The guys here since last year have had very little budget and they have done a remarkable job.
