The unavoidable pain forced by Formula 1's better future
F1's welcome confirmation of its 2021 rule package aimed at sustainability was juxtaposed by the announcement a day earlier that McLaren would be making massive layoffs as a result. But pain like this is unavoidable if F1 wishes to survive
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The news that McLaren is expected to shed around 70 staff from its Formula 1 team as part of 1200 job cuts across its Group sent shock waves across the motorsport and automotive world this week.
At a time when many people's lockdown thoughts are shifting towards the new normal, and what happens next when the show gets back on the road, it brought a grim reminder that there are not just sunlit uplands ahead.
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Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.
Jonathan has won multiple awards for journalism - in 1991 he was the winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Sir William Lyons’ Award for young journalists, in 2010 he was awarded the Outstanding Individual accolade for consumer journalism in the Haymarket wards, in 2011 he won Haymarket’s Scoop of the Year, and in 2018 he was awarded a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for his contribution to F1 journalism.
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