SA’s F1 return hopes will stall until Washington ties are fixed, and politicians step up - Anton Roux

Since the last South African Grand Prix was raced at Kyalami in 1993, the country has made several attempts to bring Formula One back. The circuit has been upgraded to FIA Grade 2 standards, and various promoters, including the Kyalami owners and international partners, have tried to secure a deal with Formula One Management. Most recently, Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie conceded that the 2027 race “will not take place now,” but said government remained committed to landing a future Grand Prix. Anton Roux, a former member of motorsport’s governing body, the FIA Senate, and a trustee of the FIA Foundation, says South Africa’s real obstacles lie elsewhere, in strained ties with Washington and a lack of political commitment at home. Roux told BizNews that South Africa has not done the diplomatic groundwork needed to convince Liberty Media, the American company that owns Formula One. His advice to the sports minister was blunt: start by backing, and showing up at, the international motorsport events South Africa already hosts, to prove the country can deliver an event that other African nations, like Rwanda, are now openly keen to host. But first, the interview dives into a question many motorheads are asking: Why are electric vehicles so ugly? Is Italian design the answer?.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Linda van Tilburg (00:00)Well, today I have Anton Roux in the studio with me. I can describe him as a global businessman, a sports enthusiast, or a motorsport enthusiast and he’s going to help me unpack a question that pops up every single time I walk past an electric car: Why are they so ugly?So, I just described you briefly, but you do so much more.Anton Roux (00:31)Yeah, Linda, I’m doing a number of things, but I’m the former chairman of Motorsport South Africa. I am also a former Senate member of the FIA, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the global governing body of motorsport worldwide. And at the moment, I’m a trustee of the FIA Foundation, which is a charitable foundation based in London where we promote safety on the roads and safety in motorsport.Linda van Tilburg (00:58)Well, that’s a mouthful. I think there are a lot of questions that come to mind with all your titles. To answer that question, why are electric cars so ugly, I think we need to start with the classics. You love them, I know I love them. So why do we love them so much? Is it nostalgia? What is it?Anton Roux (01:21.172)Look, it’s character. To me, it’s character. You know, I was walking past an MG in London two days ago. Initially when I walked past it, I thought it was a Volkswagen Touareg. And I think Mr Morris from MG would turn in his grave when he sees what’s happened.But we remember the classic cars, especially the British cars, there’s a long history. I think the golden era of motorsport is the 50s, 60s and 70s, and people relate to it. They can remember their first car. Everybody at some stage owned a Beetle in their lives. There’s some nostalgia involved.Where today I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think there are a number of people who actually don’t even want a car. And to them, it doesn’t matter if the thing looks like a throat lozenge.Linda van Tilburg (02:16.438)Well, you’re in London right now. Can you imagine James Bond speeding away in an Aston Martin of today? Or even the new electric one, which is not that ugly. Could that ever compete with the look and roar of a classic Bond car?Anton Roux (02:27.126)No, definitely not. But you know, I anticipated that you would ask this question. I would like to compare it to eating. I mean, I really enjoy eating. I enjoy a good meal and it’s part of the experience. On the other hand, I can just drink a protein shake every day.And to me, that’s the same thing. The people that maybe don’t like eating and are happy with a protein shake and a boiled egg, well, they can have the electric cars as well.Linda van Tilburg (03:00.236)But you know, I remember classic cars, or not quite classic cars, just Alfa Romeos. My brother had one; he had it in the garage idling for 15 minutes before he could drive off. I had one, and my uncle who had a garage told me, “Good thing you have a garage between your office and your home, Linda, because I’m going to see you quite often.”So are they these leaking, oilspilling cars that we all think of? Because you’ve got a garage that services some of these cars in Johannesburg.Anton Roux (03:32.388)Yeah, so look, I still think that Alfa Romeo today makes the prettiest cars in the world. They even make an electric Junior now, which is a car with some character.So yeah, I think the Italians… wait for the Italians to get more involved in some of the electric vehicles or EVs, we might begin to see some improvedlooking cars. The Italian detail has always been fantastic.So yeah, we’ll have to wait and see.I think the other thing we see right now, if we just think about the South African market, Hyundai and Kia came into South Africa a couple of years ago, and that was really the age when all the cars looked the same.And then we had some really, really ugly Chinese cars. But today they’re looking better. However, I miss some originality there. I see some of them and I look at the Lamborghini Urus, and I say, “OK, well, this is a fairly nice copy of a Lamborghini Urus.”And then I see an MG, which to me is a copy of a VW Touareg. And then you see some of the others, names I can’t pronounce, and I think I’m driving behind a Porsche Macan, and it’s not. So there’s not very much originality that we see.Linda van Tilburg (05:01.035)Well, let’s talk about the EVs. To me, they look like a block of butter that’s been left in the sun too long. What is going on with the design? Was it designed in wind tunnels? By accountants?Anton Roux (05:12.662)No, I think it’s really designed by good copycats. They sent a couple of people to some of the motor shows around the world and mentally they took images of these cars and went back and drew them. They might even have taken some of the designers from some of the motor manufacturers and said, “Design a car for us.”They’re starting to look slightly better if you look at the SUVs. But if I look at our South African term, bakkies, I mean, you don’t know if it’s an Isuzu or a Nissan or a Toyota Hilux, and then it’s got an unpronounceable name. So…Linda van Tilburg (05:58.462)Let’s talk about those names. I’ve looked at some of the EV names. There’s the Zeekr 001. And the Smart is called something like the Smart #1. There’s the Canoo Lifestyle Vehicle. They sound like Elon Musk’s children. Why are the names so weird?Anton Roux (06:18.804)Yeah, I’m looking at another one here, which I’ve never seen before, but it’s going on sale in South Africa, called the Lepas, spelled LEPAS, and then the model is an L4 or L6 or L8. Really no description of what it is.A ZEEKR, I’ve got no idea. It says it’s an EV range.And then there’s another one which is an ICar, I, and then CAUR, and the model is O3T. So really, some nondescriptive names. Yeah, I’m going to really struggle to get nostalgic about something that’s called the O3T.Linda van Tilburg (07:05.822)Yeah, because you know, Jaguar just rolls off the tongue so nicely. Even Mini actually means small and says what the car’s like. You just wonder where they get these names from. Are they trying to be futuristic?Anton Roux (07:21.833)Yeah, I don’t know. I remember a couple of years ago Mitsubishi had this problem with the Pajero. I can’t remember the exact detail, but the Mitsubishi Pajero is in some countries called something else because “Pajero” had an offensive meaning in some languages.So yeah. Looking at it, there are 41 different Chinese cars for sale in South Africa at the moment, which is actually quite astonishing, and the only one with a name I can relate to is a thing called the Dolphin. But none of the others.Linda van Tilburg (08:02.312)Well, is the battery the villain and maybe the design killer?Anton Roux (08:07.310)No, I think you’re raising a very important thing as far as batteries are concerned. I think the next big thing we’re going to see is competition around how quickly a motor car can charge, not so much the distance.Right now everybody’s saying EVs are limited by distance and so forth. But whoever can build an EV that can charge in 15 minutes will take the entire market.Very few people have the six hours to charge a Tesla Model 3 to a full battery from home. Yeah, maybe if you’ve got a very predictable life and you know what you’re going to do the following day.But I had a fascinating discussion with a taxi driver here in London who was using a Tesla. And he said to me he has to charge his car every night because he’s got no idea what work he’s going to have the following day.So to me, I see the next technological race being batterycharging technology that lets you charge your car quickly.Linda van Tilburg (09:26.024)Can we talk about something else? The grilles. The grilles are enormous, and some are just like a steel plate. What on earth is going on there? Some of them are so big it looks as though you can barbecue a whole kudu on it.Anton Roux (09:41.718)Well, the thing is you actually don’t need a grille. But I don’t think anybody knows what to put on the front, because you simply don’t need it.Most of these EVs don’t have more than 200 movable parts in the car, versus a normal internal combustion engine where you’re looking at about 2,000 parts. And you’ve got maybe a motor on every corner and a battery sitting underneath you.So you can do anything in the front. You really don’t need a grille at all.Linda van Tilburg (10:16.776)You’re hoping that the Italians would come up with something new. So if you could choose any car designer, living or from the past, to create a truly beautiful electric car, who would that be?.Read more:.BN Daybreak Fri 20 Feb: Global tensions, F1 roadblocks, and 'unholy pact' revealed.Anton Roux (10:28.527)Pininfarina. I would go back to Pininfarina and ask them to design a differentlooking car.But certainly, if you go back, whether they did the Aston Martin we’re talking about, the James Bond one, the famous DB5, that was a Pininfarina design. A number of the Italian cars: Alfa, Fiat, even Ferraris. And they’re still going today.So I think it’s a bit like fashion design, you’ve got your Versace’s and your Gucci’s and your Chanels, and I think the Chinese are going to look to those people to design prettier cars for them.Linda van Tilburg (11:01)I can’t have you with me without asking about the Grand Prix coming back to South Africa. Minister Gayton McKenzie admitted that the 2027 Grand Prix won’t take place now. So where are we?Anton Roux (11:14)I think we need to go back and say that there are a large number of countries around the world that really, really want to host a Formula One event. There’s huge competition, and each one of those countries sees the benefit of it. I don’t think it’s a financial issue.If you think about it, every Formula One event is the size of the Olympic Games. You’ve got the private sector willing to provide the facilities, you will get your sponsors, and the last economic study I saw showed that just the VAT that the teams and spectators would pay in South Africa is more than the guarantees that would be required.So from a financial point of view, it makes absolute sense.My advice to Minister McKenzie was: support one of our local international events in South Africa first. Show that we can do it, gain some credibility, and gain some experience.We had a magnificent event at Sun City last year, the World RallyRaid Championship. We had one of the rounds in South Africa where all the Dakar vehicles competed. And I’m going to say this: we did not have a single person there from the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture who actually attended the event.At the same time, I think the real issue, in my opinion, is something nobody will confirm, but South Africa needs to repair its relationship with Washington. Formula One is owned by Liberty Media. Liberty is a US company, and I don’t think that with the current relationship, where we don’t even have an ambassador in the US, we are going to persuade a US parent entity to hold an event in South Africa.Linda van Tilburg (13:34)So this is not about government guarantees that they also have to give.Anton Roux (13:38)A government does have to provide the guarantee. However, it becomes easy for government to provide that guarantee once they know it’s backed by the private sector.You may have a number of sponsors who make up the amount of money that’s required, and then it’s merely a government guarantee they offer.And you must remember, I’ll take you back to the World Cup in 2010, the big fear amongst sport organisers at the time was that President Mandela would pass away during that period or just before it. And then you’d have to move the event or delay it or defer it, and there’s a huge cost involved for everybody.And that’s really why you want a government guarantee, for something similar to that.Linda van Tilburg (14:37)Can I ask you, is the minister using the wrong channels to try to get this off the ground?Anton Roux (15:40)I think you can improve the channels you use. Again, I think if you show credibility, that you’ve hosted international events in the past, it helps. We had a great Formula E event in Cape Town, for example. We’ve had a leg of the World RallyRaid Championship. Use that as your sounding board, and then engage with the FIA, then engage with Formula One Management, and show that.But just to say that you are going to host an event… South Africa is no longer the darling of the world.Certainly, if I look at other countries, when I was with you in December, I was in Uzbekistan. You’ve got the president of the country present. In Rwanda, we had the president of Rwanda at an awards function, not even an event.So from a South African point of view, I don’t think anybody is going to be convinced that the politicians are behind this event.I had another minister say to one of my colleagues that they can’t really see the benefit because we’re promoting a “white elite sport.”Now, the big thing to me is: Formula One is not about the sport. It’s entertainment, and it’s an opportunity to showcase the country. And the biggest benefactor of a Formula One event is not sport, it’s tourism.Seventy percent of people going to a Formula One event are not from the host country. That’s an interesting stat.Linda van Tilburg (16:39)So is there a chance that Rwanda can actually become the next African country before South Africa?Anton Roux (16:44)I think Rwanda would really like to host an event. They’ve stated that openly. Botswana, believe it or not, has also said they want to express an interest. There were even rumours that Nigeria would like to host an event.The silly thing about that is that as an African continent, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. Because if you’re the promoter of Formula One, you’re going to play off South Africa against Rwanda, against Botswana, against Nigeria. That’s the foolishness, and nobody seems to understand it.But Rwanda certainly has the willingness. They’re spending a lot of time creating a sports hub in Kigali for cyclists, athletes, the altitude is there. They see themselves creating a huge business opportunity out of that.And there are even rumours, and this I can’t confirm, that it’s backed by Qatar, who wants to build an African hub from an airline point of view in Rwanda.Now, if you think about where it’s situated, it’s ideally situated. Africa actually needs a proper hub, and Kigali can be that.Linda van Tilburg (18:16)Anton, I’d love to hear about the work of the foundation, that’s why you’re in London right now, and you said before you’re sitting in the office of none other than Max Mosley. So can you tell us about that?

SA’s F1 return hopes will stall until Washington ties are fixed, and politicians step up - Anton Roux

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