William de Braekeleer: “Accustomed to experiencing ups and downs”

How is this confinement going at Honda Europe?

From a personal point of view, everything is fine, knock on wood. From a professional point of view, due to my role, I am already a teleworker; so it hasn't changed much in the way I work. Except that with the successive postponements of the start of the WTCR season, each time we are in the process of readjusting the plans and our organization to be ready for the day when we say “we really start on this date”.

As you know, Honda does not have an official program in Europe, we are focusing on the WTCR relay program in Japan. It's a championship for private teams, in which we support Münnich Motorsport (which this year is entering all the cars prepared by JAS. Editor's note). It's a very good team, financially solid and they are ready to leave too.

With one small caveat though... the team did some testing at Motorland Aragon at the beginning of March and they left the cars there in preparation for the media day which was to be held there three weeks later. In the meantime, the Covid-19 wave arrived, confinement was decreed and the borders were closed. As a result, the truck with the three cars inside is still parked in the parking lot! They have contacted various authorities to search for him, but it is simply impossible to cross borders at the moment.

Well... It's half a penalty because you can't test anywhere at the moment. But the team will be at a slight disadvantage when restrictions begin to be lifted. This will not be done everywhere in Europe in the same way, and they may not be able to get their cars back as quickly as if they had stayed in Germany.

More generally, how do you see things for our sport?

What is happening can be worrying. There is always the risk, as in any economic field, of the “domino effect”. For private teams, if there are fewer races in a season, inevitably the sponsors or drivers who contribute to the budget will pay less.

Structures that put together a business plan based on a certain number of meetings will suffer because there will be fixed costs anyway. We must hope that everyone has sufficient resources to sit back and let the storm pass. Like the economy in general, motorsport will start again but with a little slimming down.

So, I don't think that, in 2021, the championships will be as extensive, or even as numerous. Sponsors will still be recovering from this year's slump; Marketing and advertising budgets will be reduced slightly, that's obvious. Motorsport is neither more nor less well accommodated than other sectors of economic activity.

Are there reasons to be optimistic?

We must remain optimistic, we are in fact, that the WTCR will take place this year. With fewer meetings but perhaps not fewer races, because Eurosport Events is talking about keeping 18 to 20. We would have a tighter championship that still looks like something, even if there will be fewer events. The advantage of motorsport is that it already usually requires a lot of flexibility and rapid reaction.

We are used to experiencing ups and downs, to constantly adapting. From one year to the next, we are never certain of having the same pilots, and therefore the same budget. There are also staff turnovers that you cannot predict. This is a sector used to being quickly reactive, and this is perhaps the advantage we will have when we have to start again. We are so used to evolving in a very changing environment!