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Archive: autosport

Alan Donnelly inadvertently reveals FIA's Ferrari bias

18 October 2008 12:03

Categories: News, Opinion

A story has appeared on Autosport.com this morning which reports on some comments that Alan Donnelly made in Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. In it, the FIA’s man in the steward’s room and known Max Mosley lackey attempted to rebut claims that the FIA is biased in favour of Ferrari.

What I find interesting is that the example he uses to “rebut” the theory is exactly the same example used by Max Mosley in a recent interview with the BBC. This suggests that the FIA is now running a coordinated campaign in order to re-establish its credibility as governing body.

It sorely needs that campaign. With the multitude of increasingly bizarre penalties handed out throughout this season, trust in the FIA’s systems have taken a hammer-blow. The only thing that has become clear this season is that there is no way of knowing what will get punished and what won’t.

Fans no longer trust the FIA, as you will see by dropping in to any blog or message board. Many in the media no longer trust the FIA’s stewards. Increasingly, drivers are calling for urgent changes to be made to the stewarding system. Teams have decided that enough is enough and have formed FOTA to counter the FIA’s madness. And yesterday, even Bernie Ecclestone slammed some of the penalties recently handed out by the FIA.

It looks like the only people who have any trust in the FIA any more are the FIA themselves. And any government that has lost the trust of everyone is clearly no longer fit for purpose. Now, the FIA is erratically throwing out increasingly bizarre ideas to change the face of F1 from tip to toe. Many of the changes, most notably a standardised engine, are completely antithetical to the idea of grand prix motor racing as we have all grown to know it, and Max Mosley’s vision of F1 is sure to alienate most fans.

It is a sign of the mismanagement and desperation of the poisonous and discredited little man at the top Max Mosley. He should have left his post after the Indygate debacle in 2005 when Max Mosley, in consort with Jean Todt, refused to compromise to allow the race go ahead. Since then, Max Mosley has never had my favour and the events of this year have further underlined my feelings.

Earlier this year, at the height of the sex scandal, he promised that he would step down at the end of his term next year. But as I noted at the time, he promised to resign in 2004 then changed his mind. True enough, the signs now are that he will continue on as FIA President. It is clear that he only promised to resign to help him get through the General Assembly vote. This makes him a liar. What a terrible person to have in such a powerful position.

Let us not forget that at the end of last season, the well-respected permanent steward Tony Scott Andrews left the role which had been seen as a relative success. In his place, a new consultant to the stewards was appointed. That man was Mosley’s mate Alan Donnelly. Donnelly’s company, Sovereign Strategy, based in an FIA-owned building, used to list Ferrari as one of its clients on its website. The Ferrari name mysteriously disappeared when Donnelly was appointed in his new role.

Mosley and Donnelly are now trotting out the following “proof” of why the FIA is not biased in favour of Ferrari:

You just need one example to debunk that theory: at Monaco the stewards noticed that on Raikkonen’s F2008 the wheels had not been fitted before the three-minute mark as allowed in the regulations. So the stewards penalised Kimi with a drive-through in a track where you can’t overtake.

That would be an inadequate argument anyway, as I already wrote when Mosley came out with it on the BBC. But it is even worse than that. As Don Speekingleesh pointed out in the comments, the Sporting Regulations clearly state that such an infraction should actually result in a driver starting from the back of the grid.

Article 38.5 of the Sporting Regulations (PDF link) states:

When the three minute signal is shown all cars must have their wheels fitted, after this signal wheels may only be removed in the pit lane or on the grid during a race suspension.

Any car which does not have all its wheels fully fitted at the three minute signal must start the race from the back of the grid or the pit lane. Under these circumstances a marshal holding a yellow flag will prevent the car (or cars) from leaving the grid until all cars able to do so have left to start the formation lap.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. Alan Donnelly’s own “proof” that the FIA is not biased in favour of Ferrari actually appears to support of the conspiracy theory. It is clear that, according to the letter of the rules, Kimi Raikkonen should have started the race from the back of the grid. As it was, with just the drive-through penalty he never fell lower than 6th before crashing into Adrian Sutil.

What a mess the FIA is in. It is no wonder stewards’ decisions are so erratic and unpredictable. The FIA do not even appear to know what their own rules are. This is shown in the FIA’s embarrassingly wrong-footed attempts to debunk the Ferrari International Assistance theory. What a cock-up.

12 comments

More on the Max Mosley allegations

1 April 2008 01:31

Categories: Opinion

I don’t want to dwell on it, but I have a couple of extra thoughts on the Max Mosley allegations after reading some more articles on the subject.

Firstly, this one from Planet-F1. The site is not one of my regular visits, but this article caught my attention. And this paragraph in particular is interesting.

So far we have seen no denial from Max Mosley that he likes to spend his time with highly-paid dominatrix, giving out and receiving punishment and acting out bizarre role play. However since the story was revealed in the British Sunday newspaper, the photos of “spanking Max” that adorned the item on the website have disappeared.

The story remains, though, which would seem to indicate that although the photos were an invasion of Max’s privacy – they couldn’t get him to sign a model release form – the facts are not in dispute.

I am not a legal expert by any means, but this seems very interesting to me. If the photographs have been taken down, then Max Mosley’s lawyers have surely been in contact. Also note that the video has been removed from both the News of the World website and YouTube (though, as we all know, you can’t keep these things quiet on the internet these days).

So it looks as though Max Mosley has successfully had the images and video removed from the News of the World website on the grounds of invasion of privacy. But he has not succeeded in removing the actual allegations. Like I say, I could be off the mark on this. But a lot of people are noting that Max Mosley has not yet come out with a denial.

Now, on to my second point. Yesterday I, and other bloggers (e.g. F1Fanatic, BlogF1, F1Wolf), mentioned the fact that the mainstream F1 websites had ignored the story.

Now all of the websites I singled out in yesterdays post have mentioned the scandal in some form or another. Presumably the editors of the websites each woke up on Monday morning and realised how ridiculous it was that they did not even mention this story that potentially has huge implications for Formula 1.

The excuses some of the websites have come up with are pretty weak. Here is what Grandprix.com had to say for itself:

We would not normally cover such stories, but this one may have a significant effect on the FIA, and the world of motorsport and we feel that it should be noted.

Yeah, about 24 hours after everyone else noted it!

Then there is Pitpass’s excuse:

Pitpass would like to make it clear that it doesn’t do private lives, not unless a story has serious implications on the sport.

Fair enough on the first part of the sentence, but the second part then goes and undermines it. Of course this story has serious implications on the sport, even if the allegations turn out to be false in the end. It is not as if we are talking about a flag marshal being caught kerb-crawling. This is an allegation about the President of Formula 1′s governing body taking part in acts that make light of and fantasise about victims of Nazi death camps.

This is not a mere sex scandal. If it was, I doubt many people would care very much. It is the clear fascist overtones of the allegations that bring this to the public’s attention. You don’t have to be a rabid hater of Max Mosley to realise that this immediately brings the governance of the sport into question. People are rightly asking how someone who fantasises about fascism can be trusted to lead, say, a scheme such as Racing Against Racism.

As I said in the post I wrote yesterday, I do not think that newspapers should sniff around in people’s private lives, even if I don’t like the people in question. I also said that what happens between consenting adults is not the business of anyone else. Furthermore, I pointed out the dubious reputation of the News of the World and the vested interest that News International has in undermining Max Mosley.

But I recognised the potential importance of the story for the future of the governance of Formula 1. I realised that these allegations undermine the authority of Max Mosley unless it can be determined that they are false. I saw that people will question if someone who has Nazi fantasies is fit to be the President of an organisation such as the FIA.

So why couldn’t Pitpass, Autosport, Grandprix.com et al. say that? They just had to say that allegations surround the President of the FIA. They can tiptoe around the finer details if they want. But they cannot ignore it. This is a big Formula 1 news story — there can be no question about that.

My guess is that on Sunday the websites were too scared to upset the powers that be in F1. But you can’t keep these things quiet. The editors of the websites in question woke up on Monday to find that the entire world was talking about the Max Mosley allegations except the major F1 websites. What a patently absurd situation.

And the media wonders why people are increasingly turning to blogs.

15 comments

F1 season review: websites

30 December 2007 20:51

Categories: Blogging, Formula 1, Internet, Media, Newspapers, Technology, Television

2007 F1 season review

A series of posts

I am making this the last in my series of posts looking back on the 2007 Formula 1 season. Truth be told, I’ve become a bit sick of writing them every Sunday. I skipped last week. Anyway, next Sunday is in a different year, and it’s a bit off to be looking back when everyone else is looking forward.

Anyway, I promised I would review Formula 1 websites, so here goes. Again, this is all in alphabetical order.

Autosport.com

A reliable source of Formula 1 — and other motorsport — news. It is also the most frequently updated of the F1 RSS feeds I subscribe to. So chances are that if something has happened, Autosport will have the story.

There is also a neat ‘Autosport TV’ feature, containing highlights of certain motorsport events. Bernie take note — this is how things will be done in the future, so don’t leave F1 lagging behind every other series!

Unfortunately, not all of the content on Autosport.com is free. But you can’t have it all. The website also performed badly on the day of McLaren’s WMSC hearing, when the website was down for huge parts of the afternoon, and then when it came back up it got the story wrong. Oh dear.

BBC Sport | Motorsport | Formula One

The BBC’s F1 news website is as you would expect — solid, but not really in-depth enough for obsessives like me. Only the very biggest F1 stories appear on BBC Sport Online, and they seldom contain anything revelatory.

Having said that, there are some neat features from time to time. Heikki Kovalainen wrote a regular column. I also particularly enjoyed reading an article about Kimi Räikkönen’s playboy image! There is also some good video and audio content collected from the BBC’s output.

However, the stories and features also concentrate too much on Lewis Hamilton. I guess this is to be expected from the BBC, but it’s all a bit fawning and not very balanced.

So much Lewis Hamilton!

As for the other features, again they are pretty good, although they haven’t changed much for several years. I would imagine that features such as the pitstop guide are excellent resources if you are just getting into the sport.

BlogF1

Ollie White’s BlogF1 was the first Formula 1 blog I started reading regularly. The posts strike a neat balance between news and opinion, although I personally prefer more opinion-heavy pieces.

I have to confess that nowadays my favourite feature of BlogF1 is the weekly caption contest. However, there are some other neat features hidden away from the main blog area.

There is a particularly comprehensive section on racetracks from around the world, complete with images from Google Maps. There is also a stunning complete list of championship statistics going all the way back to 1950, the inception of the Drivers World Championship.

F1 Insight

This excellent blog is, as its title suggests, very insightful. What I love about it is the fact that Clive doesn’t just churn out banal posts about the issues of the day. Instead, he finds an interesting angle and then writes about it, bringing to the reader’s attention an aspect that he may not previously have thought about.

To take some recent examples, there is a post questioning Sebastian Vettel’s reputation as a promising driver. And here is an interesting take on Fernando Alonso — is he going to be the greatest reputation-maker of all time?

In sum, F1 Insight is guaranteed to challenge the conventional wisdom, making it an essential read.

F1Fanatic

Without a doubt, the best Formula 1 blog around! What astonishes me is that you can visit the website every single day and there will be something new — even in the depths of the off-season. There was even a new post on Christmas Day, but you are just as likely to find three or four new posts per day even at this time of year.

The breadth of features is also breathtaking. Book and DVD reviews often appear. The Lapped Legends series takes a look at some of the less talented drivers and teams in F1′s history. And the ‘F1 in the Blogs’ feature is a must-read roundup of the best F1 blogging. The blog has also been known to hold competitions which I have been lucky enough to win!

Main writer Keith Collantine is clearly very dedicated to the website and infinitely knowledgeable about the sport. It could so easily fall into the trap of being a haven for stattos, but it actually strikes a perfect balance between geek heaven and accessibility.

Ah, and I have also had a guest post published on F1Fanatic. So obviously it’s a must-read!

Formula 1 Blog

This is the Formula 1 Blog as in Negative Camber and Grace, whose podcast I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The blog is rather different to their podcast. You would never guess that it was the same thing. The long, in-depth podcasts are accompanied by very concise, brief, pithy blog posts.

Despite the difference in style, the blog is great for all the same reasons as the podcast. Priding itself on being a “journal of opinion”, forceful opinion is certainly what you get.

One problem is that you have to be registered to comment. This is okay, and understandable in an age where upwards of 95% of blog comments are spam. But I tried to register and never got my confirmation email, so I am locked out (well, not really, but I can’t be bothered going through the rigmarole of registering again). Okay, so it’s not the end of the world, but it is a bit off-putting.

As well as the blog, there is a forum which I hear is buzzing. But forums are not quite my thing.

Formula1.com

This is the big daddy — Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula 1 website. It has come on leaps and bounds in the past year.

The best bit is still the Live Timing facility. If you have access to a computer during a grand prix, having Live Timing open will keep you up to date, with access to pretty much all of the information you would want, updated in real time.

The news section is so-so, but this is more than made up for by the site’s other features. A particular joy is the technical section, which looks in detail at the developments each team makes throughout the season. There is also great information on each circuit, a fine image gallery, profiles on all the teams and drivers and — for the bravest among us — a good section on F1′s Byzantine rules.

Perhaps the strongest part of the website, though, is the database of past races results, stretching right back to 1950. An excellent, in-depth resource if you want to look up old race and Championship results.

However, this section suffers from a frustrating navigational quirk. Say I want to look up the past results of a driver. I can select the driver, say Kimi Räikkönen. Now I want to look at his results from 2002, so naturally I select 2002 from the drop-down menu. But this takes me straight to the Championship Table of 2002, not the results of Kimi Räikkönen. What a pain!

Little annoyances aside though, Formula1.com is better than you might expect. It is finally catching up with other motorsport series. Now FOM needs to move into offering video on the website urgently. An insipid, 30 second long ‘highlights’ clip (which inevitably focuses on the crashes rather than the racing) will not do. Bernie needs to offer more video content online in future. If he is going to take all the interesting videos off YouTube, he had better offer them on Formula1.com.

Fun F1

A fair attempt at an F1 humour website, although not the best.

GrandPrix.com

One of the best F1 news sites going. This website might not have the budget or the big-name status of, say, Autosport, but it undoubtedly has the contacts.

Often the stories are as much about rumours as they are about hard facts. But this is often to its advantage. I seem to remember that GrandPrix.com was the first website to announce that Kimi Räikkönen had signed for Ferrari. Some other websites laughed at the suggestion at the time, but GrandPrix.com was proved right.

It was also consistently ahead of the curve in the reporting of the Stepneygate scandal. You simply had to read GrandPrix.com to keep on top of the facts surrounding the issue. Remarkable reporting.

ING Renault F1 Team – Weblog

A fine companion to the Renault podcast. Once again it demonstrates that Renault are serious about reaching fans in ways that other teams don’t consider. The blog is properly done as well, not half-hearted and with a buzzing comments section.

The design is rather busy for my liking, but to be fair I am not the biggest fan of the content either (unlike the podcast, which is excellent). Nevertheless, this is a lesson to the other teams: this is how it should be done.

ITV Sport – F1

This season saw the ITV-F1 website turn from a reasonable, accessible guide to Formula 1 into a central cog of the Lewis Hamilton hype machine. No doubt it is good for raking in the advertising money, but it is awful for genuine F1 fans.

Nevertheless, there are some top features on the ITV-F1 website. For instance, there are regular columns from Peter Windsor and David Coulthard. And Ted Kravitz’s notebook is often worth a read.

Next year I expect nothing less than a Lewis stalking feature which will plot on a Google Map where Lewis Hamilton is at this precise moment in time.

Linksheaven

A reasonably good Formula 1 group blog.

Pitpass

A fine independent Formula 1 website. Like GrandPrix.com — a reliable news resource, although Pitpass has a much slicker design! I have to say though, it is rather annoying that you can’t copy any of the text if you want to quote it. I can’t think of any other websites that persist on using this user-unfriendly technique that treats normal users — even people like me who want to approvingly link back — as criminals.

I would also rather that the news feed did not contain stories about that awful tripe known as A1 Grand Prix. Yeah, that toytown motor racing series where drivers don’t win, nor do teams — but countries do. What a load of nationalistic gash!

Apart from that, the news reports are good. The opinion pieces are fine, but often come across as a bit curmudgeonly. And the endless predictions of the imminent death of Formula 1 do get tiresome after a while.

Sidepodcast

A great blog to accompany a great podcast! They have recently had a new lick of paint. That’s all I can say. A cracking read, just as much as the podcast is a cracking listen.

Sniff Petrol

The best attempt at a Formula 1 humour site. This site provides some much-needed light relief amid the turmoil and politics of an F1 season.

Highlights include Crazy Dave Coulthard (complete with entertaining descriptions of what Red Bull tastes like), D.I. Blundell’s latest report and the latest advice Michael Schumacher has given to his brother.

Times Online Formula One blog

Ed Gorman’s Formula 1 blog is easily the best of the MSM F1 blogs. I do hope it returns for the 2008 season. I imagine it will because apparently it has been very popular indeed.

I can vouch for that. I think I can thank the comments section of Ed Gorman’s blog for a few of this blog’s readers nowadays. It is still to this day one of my top referrers. Infact, it is the top referrer to this blog all year apart from Google Images UK. And this is all from the comments sections of two posts from October. Blimey.

One problem was that it came to be defined in terms of its (oddly) mostly Spanish readership clashing with Ed Gorman’s British perspective on events. Thankfully in the end the relationship appears to have become the more respectful, ‘agree to disagree’ type, rather than the antagonistic relationship it could have been.

I think that’s about it, mostly because I am losing the will to live. As are you, most likely. Er, any other suggestions, blah blah, etc.?

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14 comments

Why F1 is in such a mess

6 October 2007 15:37

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Formula 1, Newspapers, Politics, Radio, Television

Despite what I have written about Lewis Hamilton’s actions behind the Safety Car over the past couple of days, I think the FIA’s decision was the correct one (it’s not often I say that!). Hamilton broke the rules, but it was not the sort of thing that merited a serious punishment. A slap on the wrists or a fine perhaps, but not points deductions or anything like that.

But I don’t like the implication from the biased British media that Hamilton was found “not guilty”. Remember that Sebastian Vettel’s punishment was taken away from him. There has only been one major piece of new evidence since Sunday, and we all know what that shows.

Of course, the British media is absolutely unbearable when it comes to this sort of thing. Mark Blundell was on ITV this morning criticising the fact that the stewards have never driven a Grand Prix car before, so they’re bound not to know what it’s like. That’s funny, I don’t remember him making such a criticism before, but there you go.

It’s also quite amusing because Blundell would know a lot about not being qualified for your job. He is, after all, a broadcaster who has a shockingly poor grasp of the English language.

Funny also how all of the other Grand Prix drivers seem to have been criticising Hamilton as well. Mark Blundell conveniently ignored this point. After being grilled by his colleagues, Hamilton said:

It was a bit disappointing because I knew a few of the drivers there and I didn’t expect them to say certain things.

Perhaps it’s time to admit when you are in the wrong.

In a way, the FIA couldn’t really have risked giving Hamilton a larger penalty because they would have been accused of manipulating the championship. It’s a sign of the sorry state of affairs that the FIA has found itself in. It is constantly being accused of bias one way or another and of manipulating this and that.

There are a few measures that I would like to see the FIA bring in to help prevent this.

When the race result is announced, it should not be changed

I think there should be a time limit on when the race result can be changed. This is not to say that teams should not be able to appeal or that stewards should be unable to punish bad driving. But there should be a time limit for when a team can appeal a result. Something like six hours for instance. This does not even necessarily mean that the result has to be set in stone — just that we know what is going on. For a race result to come under question several days after the event is simply unacceptable.
(This would be the case for drivers breaking the rules, but should be different in case a car is found to be illegal. But illegal parts on a car ought to be caught during scrutineering anyway.)
Stewards in one race should not rule on something that happened in another race

For the second time this year, the stewards have found themselves ruling on something that happened in another race. This week the Chinese GP stewards had to discuss something which had already been discussed by the Japanese stewards. This is not on really. It is like a referee at a football match giving someone a yellow card for something a footballer did in his previous match.
Make penalties more sensible and predictable

Whenever somebody is in trouble, you simply do not know what kind of punishment they are going to get. I once saw somebody referring to ‘The FIA Random Penalty Generator’ and it really is true. Disqualification? 10 place grid penalty? Drive through penalty? Start the race from the pits? Points docked? Seconds added to your time? We just don’t know which of these punishments will be used at a particular time. The stewards appear to award penalties in a completely arbitrary manner. It is no wonder people wonder about possible FIA bias. This must be sorted out, as a matter of priority.

What happened during the Japanese Grand Prix is actually a good case in point. Robert Kubica was given a drive-through penalty for being involved in an accident with Lewis Hamilton. Now, Kubica’s move was quite ambitious and he was unlikely to be able to pull it off, but did it really merit a drive-through? After all, other drivers crash into each other all the time and never get so much as a slap on the wrists. It’s kind of seen as part of the territory of motor racing.

You have to wonder when Fernando Alonso got whacked pretty hard by Sebastian Vettel. Unlike Hamilton, Alonso sustained quite bad damage to his car. Did Vettel get punished? Of course not — the FIA is biased against Alonso and in favour of Hamilton.

I know some people don’t believe me when I say that the FIA is biased in favour of Hamilton and that he is the successor to Michael Schumacher in this regard. To me, it is clear in the FIA’s eyes that the departure of Schumacher has left a void, and they have decided that Wonder Boy Britain’s Lewis Hamilton shall fill that void. (I believe it is actually illegal to say ‘Lewis Hamilton’ without prefixing it with ‘Britain’s’.)

There is a resentment about the fact that Alonso was able to beat Michael Schumacher fair and square, when Schumacher had no excuses. Alonso is the only driver ever to have managed this (apart from possibly Mika Häkkinen, and he only did it once, not twice like Alonso did).

But don’t ask me if the F1 establishment favours Hamilton. Ask the F1 establishment itself.

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has hailed Lewis Hamilton as the saviour of the sport…

“Lewis Hamilton has been a real breath of fresh air and has resurrected Formula One,” Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoted commercial rights holder Ecclestone, who is not in Shanghai, as saying…

“We lost a big hero in Michael Schumacher but in Lewis we have another. But for him, I’m not sure where the sport would be heading.”

Straight from the horse’s mouth.

There is no doubt that the mess that the FIA and Formula 1 as a whole currently finds itself in is directly the fault of its power-mad President Max Mosley. A lot of people have been criticising the FIA’s bad management recently (not just the Hamilton investigation, but the bungled email to the teams about tyres at Fuji).

Max Mosley seems to do business on the basis of personal vendettas and the FIA’s institutional pro-Ferrari bias rather than anything to do with notions of fairness or merit. This year’s witch-hunt against McLaren is a case in point — all to do with Max Mosley’s personal dislike of Ron Dennis.

Then there are the extraordinarily offensive comments he made about Jackie Stewart, somebody who had the cheek to criticise the FIA’s handling of the Stepneygate row. Doesn’t he know that people are not allowed to criticise Mosley?

Mosley said: “There’s one particular ex-driver who because he never stops talking, never has the chance to listen — so he doesn’t know what’s going on.

“He said the FIA’s decision would not have worked in a civil court. He has no qualification to say that.

“Then he starts saying this is personal between me and Ron Dennis, at great length, because everything he does is at extreme length.

“It’s annoying that some of the sponsors listen to him because he’s won a few championships. But nobody else in Formula One does — not the teams, not the drivers. He’s a figure of fun among drivers.”

Mosley, presumably alluding to the tartan trousers and cap Stewart wears to races, added: “He goes round dressed up as a 1930s music hall man. He’s a certified halfwit.”

The comment about Jackie Stewart being a “certified halfwit” is seen as a reference to Stewart’s dyslexia. Damon Hill says all that needs to be said in his letter to Autosport magazine.

Update: Pitpass also has a good article on Max Mosley’s comments about Jackie Stewart.

With such contemptuous regard for his fellow inhabitants, one has to wonder what Mosley really feels about the diminutive former second-hand car salesman who not only facilitated his entry to Planet Paddock but has allowed him to enjoy the sort of totalitarian power trip his name prevented him enjoying in the real world.

You don’t often see professional media outlets referring to the fact that Max Mosley is the son of fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Some believe that Max Mosley really wanted a career in politics, but was advised against it due to who is father was. So rather than fucking up the country, Max Mosley decided to go into motor racing politics instead so that he could fuck up motor racing.

16 comments

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