What were you doing at eight o’clock on Christmas morning? Same. Family time.
That was what Éric Boullier had planned. Planned. It didn’t play out like that. His phone pinged. And pinged again. Messages were coming in from all directions. All focused on the sale of the World Rally Championship Promoter.
Christmas Day was put on pause.
“It’s how it is,” says the Frenchman, closing his phone after demonstrating the timing and sheer volume of WhatsApp traffic through December 25 last year.
The potential for agreement on the sale of WRC Promoter has ebbed and flowed through the first half of the year. It’s been close, it’s been on the brink, cusp and verge of being done. And now it’s there.
And it’s there thanks to the perseverance and resolve of new WRC Promoter CEO Boullier and, of course, FIA deputy president Malcolm Wilson. Between them, they’ve run and ruled much of world motorsport, so the odds on this deal being landed were always looking good. But, as Éric’s topsy-turvy Christmas demonstrated, nothing in life is certain until the money’s in the bank and the right feet are parked beneath the right table.
But does Éric Boullier have the right feet? I wasn’t sure. Unless they’re called Kimi or Kubica, I tend to be wary of Formula 1 folk crossing over to the sport’s muddy side. And, I mean, I’ll bet Boullier doesn’t even know which dampers Jean-Claude Vaucard selected for Timo Salonen’s Peugeot on the second pass of Paijala on the 1985 1000 Lakes…
Which, actually, very much makes him the right person for this job.
Make no mistake, Boullier has our sport in his blood. It’s not a generational family thing – despite being raised a stone’s throw from Le Mans, his parents really showed no interest in motorsport. But he caught the bug early. Aged 17, he was sleeping on a local race team’s hospitality floor by night and cleaning tires and generally dogsbodying by day. Two short decades later – and despite never having worked in F1 – Boullier was announced as Renault F1 team principal. He guided the team to fifth in his first season.
He subsequently led Lotus and McLaren before becoming managing director of the French Grand Prix. Talking to him, his fundamental understanding of the sporting and commercial aspects of motorsport become abundantly clear. And, with Julien Vial alongside him, he’s got rallying – and likely the Salonen question – covered.
The service park in Jyväskylä was, it’s fair to say, an odd place. In Monte Carlo, Sweden, Croatia, there had been a genuine sense of anticipation. By Greece, that had flipped, for some, to foreboding. Was this thing every going to happen?
Bumping into Malcolm Wilson as he was literally checking in to his hotel on Wednesday, it would have been easy for him to have brushed Colin Clark and myself aside. Instead, he stood – bags in hand – for 10 minutes and talked through the current position and the intended pathway. Understandably, he didn’t put a definitive timeline together, but Friday night and the end of July was clearly the goal.
Thursday came and went, the doubters, naysayers and pessimists pedalled more of their misgivings. But Friday was different. As the rally played out, almost as a subplot, the meetings intensified. Usual sources became harder to source and anticipation ramped. Just after lunch, grateful ears took in quite words from those in the know. Be ready.
At 4.47pm, the email dropped: FIA Completes ‘Deal of the Century’ For FIA World and European Rally Championships.
Deal done.
The news electrified the service park, as folk appeared from behind closed doors and out of darkened rooms. The security of a bright future was juxtaposed by the gathering dark clouds which sat above the city.
Sunshine on a rainy day.
We’ll get to what this means for the sport in due course, with plenty more meat coming to the bones when the series lands in Paraguay at the end of this month. For now, let’s just breathe that bit easier. Agreement has been found, two years on from that shock announcement that the Munich-based WRC Promoter was for sale.
Boullier and Vial would have been forgiven for taking a moment to reflect, to consider the magnitude of the hundreds of millions of dollars Cosmobolis and Park Square Capital had just spent. Not a bit. They were immediately out and about, talking and – crucially – listening to stakeholders. And here’s the thing: among the list of stakeholders, they include fans and the media.
They have a mountain to climb, they know that. But they know they won’t be climbing that mountain alone. This moment must – and will – unify the sport. It’s a watershed moment, not just for the World Rally Championship, but for rallying at large. The doldrums are done, the winds of change are ready to fill the sport’s sails and send us forwards once more.
The ship (stick with me, the metaphors are almost finished…) will need steering, but Boullier is very much the man to take the wheel.
Sincere congratulations to you Éric and Julien, to chairman and CEO of Cosmobolis Jean-Louis Mosca and to all at Park Square Capital. You promised, persevered and now you will profit from your patience.
But it’s the sport which has the chance to profit the most. FIA president H.E. Mohammed Ben Sulayem has been clear on an investment strategy from the governing body, to sit alongside major financing coming from WRC Promoter. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is a huge, sport-shaping, era-defining opportunity for the World Rally Championship.
But we must still be patient: change will come, but it will be considered change. Kneejerk reactions are not needed.
And to Malcolm, to FIA road sport director Emilia Abel and, of course, to president Ben Sulayem, congratulations.
I caught up with MW shortly before 10 o’clock on Friday evening. He was finally settling down to a plate of pasta.
“Told you…” he said, shaking hands and grinning his broadest grin.
Indeed you did, Malcolm. Indeed you did.
