Ambitious exhibition is F1's plan to go places races can't reach

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The F1 Exhibition's project leader and head curator Tim Harvey explains the ambition and concept behind the championship's latest event

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F1 plans to draw the crowds in at locations which desire a race but don't have the facility to hold one

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The elegant arc of a Jim Clark racing line; the satisfyingly simple layout of a Cosworth V8; the red-hot glowing brake disc of Senna’s McLaren MP4-4.

Those in the know have always regarded these as fine art, and now they are being treated as such in Formula 1’s first ever official exhibition next year in the home of Velázquez and Gris in Madrid.

Curator and project leader Tim Harvey told Motor Sport that F1’s new immersive multi-media show is an attempt to bring the series to life in locations that races can’t reach.

A “platinum, museum grade” exhibition will tell the story of 120 years of grand prix racing through interactive displays, artefacts and films across six individually-curated rooms, from those explaining the genesis of ground effect and legendary drivers’ greatest triumphs to the championship’s darkest hours. The ambitious project will begin in the IFEMA exhibition centre in March 2023.

The seeds of the exhibition were planted almost as soon as Liberty took over in 2017, with previous CEO Chase Carey and former commercial director Sean Bratches looking at both expanding the brand and offering events when F1 was either in the off-season or at locations that can’t hold a GP.

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A huge number of F1 ‘artefacts’ will be on display

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“Chase and Sean came to me and said ‘Look, we’ve realised there’s only so many GPs we’re going to be able to run each year, but there are all these cities around the world that would love to have an F1 event’,” says Harvey.

“How can we create an event that doesn’t require the drivers, cars and all the complexity of actually staging a grand prix but is still of real consequence and brings the sport to life in a really authentic and interesting way?

“Without being an expert, I’ve always followed the sport. It became apparent to me that this was an incredible story that is perfectly suited, with some caveats, to an exhibition.

“You just couldn’t think of a body of storytelling content that is better suited to this kind of show.”

As Harvey emphasises, a project which has taken five years to come to fruition has been a massive operation.

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“By F1’s estimation, this is the largest series of interviews around the history of the sport that has ever been undertaken,” he says.

“It’s not a theme park experience, it’s a museum-grade exhibition that’s been carefully curated by a collection of expert contributors and curators with lots of support from F1 teams and drivers.

“We’ve interviewed nearly 80 people, we’ve got nearly 150 hours’ worth of aural testimonies. Each of these interviews are being stitched into nearly 70 short films that appear across the show.

“It’s taken us five years – it would have been out last year were it not for Covid.”

So, dealing with abstracts aside, what will the exhibition actually look like? It’s difficult to get a straight answer from Harvey, so keen are he and the press team to trickle out teasers in the build-up rather than revealing anything solid.

Artist impressions show little more than what you might imagination – a full-size vintage F1 car divided up into various components, giant LED screens and plenty of precious artefacts in glass cases.

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The exhibition will be an “immersive, multi-media experience”

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However, Harvey does shed some light on how an interview with a man who quite simply changed F1 contributes to what he believes will be one of the most arresting parts of the show.

“We went to interview Peter Wright [aerodynamicist and founding father of Lotus active suspension system], up at his home in Wales,” he says. “It was a fascinating few hours for the team, listening to him talk through how the whole ground effects thing came into existence, as well as the story of Colin [Chapman].

“We’ve been able to stitch his testimony and contrast it in a way so it’s relevant to all of the struggles and difficulties that the teams have had this year.

“For many of this new generation of fans that have connected with the sport through Drive to Survive over the last five years, they have no idea that ground effect was first used in F1 in 1978, not 2022.

“We’ve connected the string theory together in so many different instances, through the interviews, contributions and the artefacts, in a way that not only celebrates the early discovery of ground effect at the Imperial College wind tunnel, but also conveys the scientific principles behind it.

“We are doing that through the above as well as a motion graphic – a fully projection-mapped display that combines all of the best technology in a way that even my nine-year-old son, I hope, will be able to relate to.”

Trying to illuminate the vast, multi-faceted history of F1 in a way which appeals to both diehards, casual fans and young children is no mean feat – but Harvey emphasises he believes the exhibition will successfully do that, without revealing exactly how.

“The benchmark is set really high, because you can take a kid into a museum and you can show him a bunch of interactive touchscreen displays to a five-year-old, and they’re not engaged at all,” he says.

“When you see kids in museums, often they’re interacting and focusing on items and elements of the experience that you would never imagine them to be interested in.

“Yes, there are some interactive elements [at the F1 exhibition], there are a lot of kinetic installations through the show, but the ways in which particularly we are creating a journey for younger audiences is slightly different for that exact reason.”

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F1 exhibition opens in Mardi

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How different remains to be seen, but Harvey says that the exhibition has equally not shied away from the bad as well as the good.

“We’re dealing with some pretty sensitive subject matter here,” he says. “This is the story of not just triumph, it’s also in some cases tragedy, life-changing injuries and loss of life, there’s been a lot of talking to people about how we intend on covering this, which had to be done.”

Persuading people to get involved and open up about the world of F1 has been one of the toughest tasks for Harvey and his team.

“Such a part of what defines Formula 1 is its impenetrability,” he admits.

“It’s not like you can just email or ring up [McLaren Racing CEO] Zak Brown, it takes time. These folks are busy people, and there’s a there’s a very narrow pyramid of decision makers that sit at the top that you’ve got to reach to make anything happen.”

But why is F1 going to all the effort in the first place? World domination in terms of global grand prix awareness seems to be top of the list.

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“When we first announced the show in July, we were a little taken aback by the range of expressions of interest that came in from all over the world, different venues and host cities wanting to host it,” Harvey says

“So we’re taking a little bit of time to think about exactly where the show goes next but I think pretty much at the end of the season there will be an announcement that comes out that says where the show’s going.

“It’s a long lifespan – there’s no doubt in any of our minds about how global the appeal of this show can be. There’s nowhere we can’t go.”

Tickets, which cost €19.99 (£17.50) go on sale on December 1, and can be purchased at the website, whilst pre-sale tickets can be bought from November 29 here.

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