Formula One – May The Farce Be With You
You thought that I’d given up writing, didn’t you? It has been nearly a month since I last wrote anything, so I apologise for that. I’d like to say that I think it has been worth the wait, but I think we all know that’s probably not true.
Formula One has been in the headlines a bit recently, with the Renault F1 team being found guilty of ‘race-fixing’. Flamboyant Flavio Briatore has been banished, possibly forever, Pat Symonds is out for five years and the team has a suspended two year ban.
It’s a very serious situation and needed to be dealt with severely, but I don’t think that it has been. Nelson Piquet Jr, the third point on the triangle, has basically got away scot free – given immunity from prosecution for providing evidence. But why should he? The whole situation only came to light after Piquet was dumped from the Renault F1 team for not achieving results. He attempted to play the hard man and blackmail Flavio to regain his place and when Flavio told him where to go, he threw his teddy out of the pram and went to the FIA.
But the whole thing could not have happened without his involvement and his complicity. If he wasn’t happy about doing it, he should have gone to the FIA at the race last year. But he didn’t. Instead, he risked his own life and that of spectators and marshals and then kept quiet about it all.
And Max Moseley’s contention that parent company Renault should not be punished, as it was not their responsibility? Sorry, that doesn’t wash either. Ultimately, they are responsible for everything that their employees do – whether sanctioned by them or not. The team, the parent company and all of the individuals directly involved should have been banned with immediate effect.
Of course, the reasons they weren’t are commercial ones. If you exclude Renault from F1, then a number of other teams are going to be unable to compete because they won’t have engines. And then Bernie and Max’s little money-spinning empire comes crashing down around their ears.
On the face of it, though, that wouldn’t be all bad – having seen Bernie’s tap dance today when being ‘interviewed’ by the BBC at the qualifying session for this year’s Singapore race, my opinion of the man has not improved – we need someone straight running F1,
Bernie, what are you doing to us?
With much fanfare and publicity, Formula One has today had its first night race at the new Singapore street circuit. Much has been made of the added excitement that night racing brings to the sport, how fantastic the circuit is and what a great day it has been for the sport.
The main force behind getting a night race, and another street circuit, has been F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. For some reason of his own – probably something to do with European television rights, as if the man wasn’t rich enough already – Bernie has decided that night races are the way to go. The same thing was tried with the opening race of the MotoGP season this year.
Having watched both the MotoGP and now the F1 race under lights, I find that I have to ask the question “Why?”. I just don’t get what all the fuss is about. After all, it’s not like they’re racing in the dark; there are so many floodlights around the place so that the cars can be seen on TV that they might as well not bother and just hold the race in the daytime.
“Oh, but it makes it more exciting” I hear you cry. Which is a nice idea, but unfortunately isn’t borne out by what actually happened in the race. Singapore is a street circuit, like Monaco. It’s narrow, there are no real straights and there are only about two places where an overtake can be attempted. So, basically, it’s a procession from start to finish. Yes, today’s race was full of incidents and the pole sitter didn’t win – but those incidents were either in the pits (Massa’s fuel rig still being attached as he drove off) or caused by accidents and subsequent safety car sessions (Piquet, Sutil).
F1 has been processional for quite some time, but there are circuits that do at least have some chance of giving us some racing. The street circuits don’t do that. Monaco was under threat not so long ago because it doesn’t make for good racing, and was only saved (I think) because so many of the drivers are based there. But at least it’s pretty to look at. But now we’ve got this new Singapore circuit, which is even worse from a racing point of view and most certainly isn’t pretty to look at – most of the time, it looked like the cars were driving round a multi-storey car park.
Yet, this is apparently what Bernie wants for the sport. He’s also added a new street circuit at Valencia this year (didn’t see that race, but apparently it was no better) and has said he wants more. And he wants more of the long haul races to become night races, too. What he should be trying to do is move the races to proper circuits where cars can overtake each other and we don’t have to rely on incidents and accidents to give us some entertainment.
Lewis, where did it all go wrong?
This weekend’s French Grand Prix was not a good one for Lewis Hamilton. Following on from his disastrous mistake in Canada (running into the back of Kimi’s Ferrari, which was stopped at a red light on the pit lane exit), this weekend Lewis was deemed to have “gained an advantage” when he straight-lined a chicane as he tried to overtake Vettel. Hamilton is now fourth in the Championship, ten points behind leader Felipe Massa.
These things happen; Formula One is a fast, high-pressure sport where split-second decisions are required constantly and where even blinking at the wrong time could cause you to have a big accident. You can put them down as just racing incidents – just wasn’t having a good day. But after the promise of last season, which ended so crushingly with poor tactics in the second-last race and an attack of the nerves in the final race, it seems that Lewis is (already) in danger of doing a Coulthard (or a Button, in fact). Promising so much and not quite managing to deliver.
At the moment, Lewis’ problem seems to be that he thinks everyone is out to get him, saying in an interview this week “You can keep on giving me penalties, whatever you want. I’ll keep battling, and trying to come back with a result.” Lewis, they keep giving you penalties because you keep breaking the rules. You ran into the back of stationary car – in the pit lane, no less – two weeks ago, and didn’t have the grace to apologise properly for it (“I saw the red light but it was too late to stop. I don’t think it’s a racing incident. It’s just unfortunate when this stuff happens… I apologise to Kimi if I ruined his race”). Now, you straight-line a chicane because “I couldn’t turn in on the guy, or we would have crashed”, which seems to indicate that you hadn’t overtaken him until you went straight on.
I want to see Lewis win the Championship (it’s about time another Brit did) but I’ve got a horrible feeling that his chance this year is not as good as it was last year.
All the excitement is off the track
There’s lots of flak surrounding Max Moseley (FIA President) at the moment, over allegations that have been made about events in his private life. He’s called a special meeting of the FIA, after four of the major teams in F1 called on him to explain himself, and apparently he’s been asked to stay away from this weekend’s Grand Prix in Bahrain.
I’ve no idea if the allegations (supposedly about “a Nazi-style orgy in a torture dungeon”) are true, and even if they are it is his private life so shouldn’t have any bearing on his job, but for me the best part about the whole thing is the only comment I’ve read from Max himself is to deny any Nazi connotations. Which seems to imply the rest of it is true.
Ewwwwww.
Update: there’s even a video. Although – as is the way of these things – it could be anyone. And thankfully it doesn’t go into detail.
Formula 1 2008: the season starts here
And let’s hope its a better one that last year. While the racing was at least slightly better than in 2006, especially with Brit interest at a height with the amazing debut season of Lewis Hamilton, the whole sport became mired in what can only be called farce with the “Spygate” scandal involving McLaren and Ferrari.
This year, hopefully, the FIA will allow all of that to be laid to rest (they’ll have to think up some other ruse to make sure Ferrari win) and we can get on with some proper racing.
There’s been some moving about in the off-season; former champion Fernando Alonso has moved back to Renault – who had a bad season last year without him (and were also found guilty in the off-season of spying, but escaped punishment due to the inadequate nature of the FIA) but good things are promised for 2008. He swaps with Heikki Kovalainen who says that he expects to be treated as an equal to his new team-mate Hamilton at McLaren. Time will tell. Meanwhile Alonso is joined at Renault by Nelsinho Piquet – bringing back one of the all-time great racing names to the Formula One paddock. You can see the full drive line-up on the F1 site.
Not too many of the cars have shown their colours yet, but Hamilton’s been out in the new McLaren and says that “It was fantastic to get my hands on the MP4-23 this morning in Jerez” and he thinks good things will happen. Meanwhile, Alonso called his first drive of the Renault “encouraging”.
BMW Sauber have thrown down the gauntlet to the big two teams, saying that they “are confident we can turn the battle in front into a battle of more than two teams” and challenge for race wins. They scored points at every race last season, but were over 100 points behind false champions Ferrari at the end of the season. It remains to be seen whether they can really do it.
So as usual all the pre-season feather-ruffling is in full swing; lets hope that this year we get some decent races and honest results to bring some credibility back to the sport.
Wolfs Helpers
