Today, Williams can’t beat Ferrari, so I am rather indifferent about them. But at a time where the majority of the grid is made up of manufacturers — of cars and drinks — even I can see that there is something romantic about Williams. I think it would be good to see them at the front again.

But if I was a fan of the team, I would probably have well and truly lost patience by now. Every year the team says, “just wait — next year we’ll be back”. They spend all winter making positive noises. And then when it comes to the big day itself? They are even slower than they were before.

One of the most successful teams in history

When they last won a Constructors’ Championship in 1997, Williams had won more of them than Ferrari. The record was staggering — nine Constructors’ and seven Drivers’ Championships in just 20 seasons. It was an utterly fearsome record.

At that stage, Williams had won races in all but two of its seasons — its very first in 1978, and a brief drought in 1988 when the team had to make do with inferior Judd engines after Honda jumped ship to McLaren. Even then, Nigel Mansell managed to wring a couple of second place finishes out of it, which is more than can be said for what came after 1997.

Once again, Williams was left in the lurch after the departure of the front-running engine manufacturer — this time Renault. To make matters worse, chief designer Adrian Newey left Williams to join McLaren. 1998 was a year of continuity for Williams, in all the wrong ways — using what were effectively year-old Renault engines and what some said was the 1997 chassis adapted for 1998 regulations.

In 1999 the team faced further difficulties with Alex Zanardi struggling to adapt to F1 after a successful time in ChampCars. While the wins dried up, this difficult spell was thankfully short lived, as in 2000 Williams forged a new partnership with BMW.

2000 was a learning year for all concerned, but successes came between 2001 and 2003, when Williams returned to winning ways. Williams were even strong title contenders in 2003, with four victories and nine podiums, Williams were a strong player in a tight three-way battle for the championship. As unlikely as it seems today, Juan Pablo Montoya was almost a World Champion!

The slide from the top

Unfortunately, things started to go pear-shaped again in 2004. A radical “walrus nose” concept brought little in the way of performance, and a more conventional design was brought out midway through the season. Montoya managed to win the final race in Brazil, but this race remains the team’s last taste of success.

Almost every year since then has seemingly seen Williams slip back a bit further, with the successes of the old days becoming an ever more distant memory. In the past five years, the team has had just four podium finishes. (Barring success in Turkey, that number will reduce to three this weekend!)

The brightest spot has been 2007, when a consistent set of results from Nico Rosberg helped the team bag a commendable fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship (although that was after McLaren’s disqualification from the Championship). Apart from that, Williams have become a fixture at the back of the midfield — if you can call 8th out of 10 teams the “midfield”.

Arrogant enough to believe their own excuses

All the while, the excuses came, and fans were reassured: “next year is our year”. And next year comes and everything is all the same. Even if they trick people into thinking they’re fast by topping Friday Practice times, as Williams did in the first half of last season, people soon become wise to the fact that the car is not truly capable of it.

Before, there was always a positive spin to put on the situation. In 2009, Williams were bad — but at least Renault were worse and BMW weren’t much better. In 2008 people were more concerned with the alarming lack of pace in the Honda. 2006 was regarded as a tough deal for Williams, struggling with apparently sluggish and unreliable Cosworth engines.

It’s difficult to sugar-coat this year’s results in the same way. Although seventh doesn’t sound too bad, in effect the only teams that are behind them are either new (in the case of Virgin, Hispania and Lotus), facing hugely difficult political and financial constraints (Sauber) or have designed their own car for the first time (Toro Rosso). The shocker is that Williams are even being compared to teams like this.

Meanwhile, Force India look a great deal more convincing, and Renault have again leapfrogged Williams and look like potential challengers to the top four teams. Indeed, Toro Rosso even look like they can realistically challenge Williams on the racetrack, particularly with a couple of feisty young drivers who are stepping up to the plate in style, particularly in the case of Jaime Alguersuari. Meanwhile, in China Nico Hülkenberg finished behind the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen.

It seems as though Williams allowed arrogance to get the better of them. It was always someone else’s fault. But increasingly, Williams have been made to eat humble pie.

Williams lay the blame for their early-2000s dip at the door of BMW. This ended in an acrimonious split in 2005, by which time each party had become convinced that the other side was not pulling its weight. But BMW did a pretty good job when they joined forces with Sauber, the disappointment of 2009 notwithstanding. Meanwhile, Williams became inert — a permanent fixture of the midfield.

Of course, if it wasn’t the engine’s fault, it was the drivers’ fault. I was very interested to see Frank Williams admitting that, in the light of Mark Webber’s recent successes, the team was too hasty to lay the blame at the door of its driver for their average spell in 2005 and 2006.

When we had him obviously our car was a disappointment and we felt he was part of the problem. He probably wasn’t actually, with hindsight. The major point was that the car had problems.

Is there a way back?

I think the Williams of today is a great deal less arrogant than the Williams of four or five years ago. But now the damage has been done. Is there a way back to the top for this proud team? 13 years on from its last Championship success, it’s difficult to see.

Already, there are rumours that Williams are unhappy with Cosworth (just like in 2006). Rumours are linking them to a partnership with Renault. Williams were linked to Renault last year too, and Frank Williams confessed that the prospect of “Williams Renault”, a reminder of the team’s most dominant period in the 1990s, was exciting.

Other rumours link Williams to a partnership with Porsche, with whom they have collaborated on kers. But the problems run deeper than the matter of their engine supply, as surely the lessons of the BMW split show.

Despite all of its history and past successes, Williams have tried and failed to recover for too long now. Sadly, it seems as though this year Williams have to make do with racing against the likes of Sauber, a zombie team that is on emergency life support, and Lotus, a team that didn’t even exist a few months ago.

I hope they can make it. I was privileged enough to be invited to the Williams factory and museum last year. The museum is a wonderful place, brimful of some of the most successful grand prix cars there have ever been. The team only goes back just over 30 years, but it is such a huge part of Formula 1′s history. It would be such a shame if Williams were stuck at the back of the grid forever.

This is the legacy of the holy war waged by the former FIA president. The cause in question was to allow smaller teams to get into Formula 1. This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it. In the meantime, we have lost two constructors along the way, in the shape of BMW and Toyota, while at Renault, there’s not much left other than the name. Was it all worth it?

As fans have watched the progress (and non-progress) of the new teams over winter, many will have been wondering just how much of a success the FIA’s initiative to introduce new teams have been. A lot of political turmoil was caused last year when the FIA all of a sudden decided that ten teams on the grid is not enough.

Never mind the fact that there were just ten teams on the grid for the majority of the past decade, and it was never viewed as a problem before. And never mind that it was Max Mosley who originally said that the existence of teams like Williams was not how he envisaged the future of Formula 1.

Just like that — to prove some kind of political point, or maybe just for a bit of a scrap — he changed his mind. New privateers were now essential for the future of the sport. Manufacturers were driven out, to the point where basically only Mercedes are left (and Ferrari remain, but clearly unhappy with the way the sport is run).

Quantity over quality?

Formula 1 2010 brings yet another radical new look to the sport. There is no doubt that the greatly shaken-up grid has generated a large amount of interest. But there is a distinctly different style to the grid. This brings us to ask: is the new way better than the old way?

In recent years, the emphasis has been on the quality of the participants. Yes, there were relatively few entrants. Costs were sky-high. But viewers were guaranteed to be watching the best of the best.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that the 20 drivers in F1 were among the 25-or-so most capable people for the job. Pay drivers, who have been a fixture of motorsport since its earliest days, had all but vanished. Even the very worst of recent F1 drivers — the likes of Romain Grosjean or Nelsinho Piquet — would put drivers like Jean-Denis Délétraz or Ricardo Rosset in the shade.

I am all for new and privateer teams coming into F1. But it should be a proper process, and not rushed and contrived like the situation this year.

Although the history of the F1 Rejects — the remarkable drivers who ploughed on with their F1 careers despite not ever having a hope of achieving anything — is long and proud, the pinnacle of motorsport ought to be the pinnacle of motorsport. Right now, F1 is going through a process of artificial watering down. This is thanks to the FIA.

The FIA’s fundamental misunderstanding of motorsport

I have been genuinely worried by the FIA in recent years. They seem to have genuinely no idea what makes motorsport great. Witness the continued decline of the World Rally Championship. While it is currently undergoing a slight boost thanks to Kimi Räikkönen, it is otherwise a shadow of its former self. Meanwhile, the relatively new Intercontinental Rally Challenge, just a few years old and more or less invented by a television company, continues to gain admirers.

IRC is attracting attention because it gives the fans what they want. Meanwhile, the FIA continue to do mad things with the WRC, such as messing around with the calendar unnecessarily.

Up until recently, the idea that the FIA were totally clueless was just a hunch of mine. Sure, it has appeared that way for a long time. But maybe they saw the bigger picture. Perhaps the crazy “world engine” concept — whereby Formula 1, World Rally and World Touring cars would all share the same engine — really was needed in order to save the environment.

Well, no. It simply derives from a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes motorsport exciting to so many people.

The January edition of the excellent Motor Sport magazine podcast contained a truly shocking revelation that I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of. I urge you to listen to it. The relevant section is 35 minutes and 50 seconds in.

Motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck recounts a meeting with Max Mosley:

He did actually say at one point — and he meant it, he wasn’t being facetious — we were talking about the spectators and he said, “Would they miss the noise, Nigel, do you think?”

I couldn’t believe he was asking the question. I said, “Max, the noise is half of it.”

And then he said, “I always find when I’m watching the race on television, the engine noise is such a distraction. I can’t hear what the commentator’s saying sometimes.”

And he wasn’t being facetious. It did strike me then — it does worry me. You know, “you and Bernie are the most powerful people in motor racing, and you’re not actually sure of the answer to that question. In which case, you’ve missed the point entirely.”

Thanks to the FIA’s recent moves, we are now in a situation where Formula 1 is no longer the elite sport that it was. I have recently been asked if the 107% rule — whereby excessively slow cars are weeded out during qualifying — is still in force. It hasn’t been for years, but it’s telling that some people haven’t even noticed that the rule was ditched long ago, but are now interested to find out if it still exists.

For the past few years, it didn’t matter whether the 107% rule existed or not. Every team was capable of producing a competitive car. Not this year.

Incidentally, the quotes from Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone about the introduction of the 107% rule are very interesting in relation to their recent policy of encouraging more small teams, regardless of their quality:

Max Mosley: “Any small team which is properly organised will be able to get within the the 107 per cent margin.”

Bernie Ecclestone: “Formula 1 is the best. And we don’t need anything in it that isn’t the best.”

By my reckoning, this is the first major decision taken by Mercedes since they bought the Brawn team. I feel that it is very revealing about the way a manufacturer approaches Formula 1, as opposed to a privateer team that is in it for the racing. While the lure of attracting the sport’s biggest name must surely attract any team owner, only a manufacturer would set their sights so firmly on the notion.

After all, aside from his reputation, there does not seem to be much going for Schumacher. At 41, he will be the oldest F1 driver since Nigel Mansell in 1995 — and we all know how that went. And it is difficult to think of someone who has taken a sabbatical of three years and made a successful return to F1.

Furthermore, I would have thought that after the embarrassing spectacle of the summer, when Schumacher threatened to return to race for Ferrari before deciding he wasn’t up to the task, he everyone concerned would have learnt their lesson. Michael Schumacher is struggling with what are now quite well-documented fitness problems.

His neck issues are now well publicised. James Allen revealed earlier this year that Schumacher also had problems with his back towards the end of his career in 2005.

With so many question marks surrounding his abilities, I find it difficult to see the justification for expecting Michael Schumacher to be truly competitive. There is no doubt that Michael Schumacher is the most successful driver of all time, certainly as far as statistics go. But the conditions surely just aren’t right for him to make a competitive return.

Yet, as we can all see, the prospect of Michael Schumacher returning to F1 generates a tremendous amount of publicity. It makes little sense in terms of racing, but in terms of marketing the possibility is apparently irresistible.

In other words, Schumacher is coming back to F1 for all the wrong reasons. And Mercedes have signed him for all the wrong reasons.

This move seems to be little more than a crass marketing stunt by Mercedes. Brawn would not have made this decision. Nor would any team other than Ferrari. Even Ferrari went off the idea after this year’s shenanigans.

I must say that I am disappointed in Mercedes. Throughout their involvement in F1 in the past couple of decades, they have seemed to be a very sensible operation indeed. They were a world away from the attention-seeking but ultimately hollow nature of other manufacturers, notably Toyota and Honda.

But as soon as they have been released from the leash of McLaren, Mercedes have revealed their mad side. This is a decision made by money-men, and I would be amazed if this approach doesn’t end in tears like it has done for Toyota and Honda.

I am also stunned at Michael Schumacher’s decision to bite. Just a few months ago he was talking about his flirtation with replacing Felipe Massa as though it was a moment of madness. Now he has let the blood rush to his head again and is putting his considerable reputation on the line.

It also reveals his supposed passion and love for Ferrari to be just as shallow as his sportsmanship. As soon as another company will promise to stuff more money into his wallet, he will move like a shot. Very passionate, very romantic!

This whole thing comes across to me as the world’s most public mid-life crisis.

The French car company was considering whether to remain in the sport with its own team, switch to simply being an engine supplier or quit altogether.

Were Renault to pull out, it would conclude the removal of all of the major manufacturer teams in F1. Honda, BMW and Toyota have all gone in the past year. Renault are now seriously considering leaving.

In terms of manufacturer involvement, that would leave engine suppliers Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari. Both Mercedes and Ferrari are as close to being permanent fixtures as it comes in F1. Mercedes have been involved in F1 uninterrupted since 1993. With their increased involvement in Brawn, they look set to stick around. Ferrari have been in F1 since the beginning in 1950 and were they to leave it would be the end of F1. As such, you can more-or-less exclude both Mercedes and Ferrari from the list of manufacturers at risk of leaving F1.

I have to admit that I am wary of what Renault might do. I always suspected that Renault would be the first manufacturer to leave, certainly since Carlos Ghosn took over there. Now they are effectively the last one remaining. That is a surprise. Does it make it more likely for them to stay in the long run? Or is this the opportunity to join the queue of companies leaving the sport without looking a bit silly like Honda did?

There are more questions. Was Max Mosley right all along to push forward with his anti-manufacturer proposals? His justification was that manufacturers might leave with no warning, so it was wise to slash costs, freeze engines and neuter the sport in all sorts of ways. Now that manufacturers are leaving in droves, it looks like he may have been right.

The alternative possibility is that the changes he has forced through, along with the screeds of bad publicity it caused, have fundamentally made the sport less attractive. The manufacturers could well have preferred a breakaway than live with the FIA’s vision. But the FIA’s vision is what we’ve got. Ferrari certainly have their own views.

The thing is, manufacturers are always fickle. They always have been, and always will be. They will leave at the drop of a hat if it no longer forms part of their marketing strategy. Motorsport is not their core business. At the end of the day, if they won’t sell on Monday, why should they bother trying to win on Sunday?

But it was Max Mosley who originally moulded F1 into a sport dominated by manufacturers. He said that teams like Williams were not his vision of F1′s future. Now Williams is the model of the sort of team that will occupy around half of the grid next year.

In a sense, you can see this current phase as the F1 equivalent of a market correction. The bubble has burst. But while it seems painful now, this process paves the way for a more stable situation.

Throughout its history, Formula 1 has had a healthy mixture of manufacturer involvement and privateer passion. In recent years, the scales had tipped a bit too far towards the manufacturers, which drowned out the privateers to an almost dangerous extent.

F1 had become the plaything of manufacturers and multi-trillionaires. Let us not forget that alongside the likes of Honda and Toyota, businessmen such as Dietrich Mateschitz and Vijay Mallya — who have more money than they know what to do with — have bankrolled F1 teams to success. You will notice that, ignoring the ‘For Sale’ sign outside Toro Rosso (which isn’t very prominent), these teams have remained in F1, unlike the manufacturers.

They are a bit more like privateers in the traditional sense. They don’t want to sell cars, though they may want to sell drinks. But in a way they are in F1 because they are attracted to it as a sport, just as people like Frank Williams and Ken Tyrrell were. Manufacturers just do it because they feel like they should.

Next year there might be too few manufacturers. For there to be just three companies supplying engines would be a situation almost as unsustainable as what has happened up to this year. Cosworth may be crossing their fingers though. Their business model might work if they supply more teams.

But I can see Renault playing a happy role as an engine supplier, even if the Renault F1 team is put up for sale. I am certain that there would be a lot of interest from serious people wanting to buy the team. Despite the turmoil of this year’s scandal, and the fact that the team has gone off the boil for the past few years, this is a team that has the facilities and the capabilities to win World Championships.

I would be upset to see Renault leave the sport. I have a bit of a soft spot for them. Toyota were cold and clinical, on top of being comically bad considering their budgets.

Honda were always a bit of a fairweather presence. They took over BAR more-or-less because there was no-one else to do it after tobacco companies left the sport. Then they set up Super Aguri because they were scared to sack Takuma Sato properly. While many were attracted to Super Aguri for their pluck and while struggling at the back in difficult circumstances, it should never be forgotten that Super Aguri was always a crass and expensive publicity stunt.

Renault, though, have real heritage. They have a history in the shape of their involvement in the sport in the 1970s and 1980s. And the current incarnation of the team has been notably successful, mostly for being the one team that has been able to put up a sustained fight against Ferrari in this decade by beating the Scuderia two years in a row.

Here’s hoping that Renault don’t decide to depart. I am especially hopeful for Robert Kubica, a hugely talented driver who after being put through the wringer at BMW this year does not need this again. But, unlike the other teams, I have a feeling that the future of the Enstone-based squad will be perfectly safe no matter who owns it.

Toyota are the third major manufacturer to leave F1 in just twelve months, and now rumours furiously swirl around Renault as well. But, as you may have gathered from the tone of my last article about Toyota, I find it too difficult to get upset about them leaving.

Today, Toyota company president Akio Toyoda apologised for Toyota’s inability to win a race in its eight season long campaign. It was noted that Toyota probably needed a win in order to secure their future in F1. Had a Toyota taken a chequered flag this year, may they have been given a reprieve?

I was intrigued also by Akio Toyoda’s words: “I offer my deepest apologies to Toyota’s many fans.” Which Toyota fans? I have never met one. They have been easily the least attractive team for their entire existence. Their policy of designing their car by committee was wholly unsuited to F1, and their strategy of employing mediocre drivers was not at all endearing.

How ironic that the cold and calculating Toyota F1 project should show some emotion when it is carrying out its most calculating move yet, to place the jobs of all of its workers under immediate threat. Akio Toyoda was tearful while mentioning the workers during the announcement of the company’s withdrawal.

You have to feel sorry for the staff at the team’s base in Cologne. While any F1 team finding itself in trouble is bad news for that team’s workers, those based in Britain are insulated somewhat by the fact that there are always a few other teams just down the road.

Those who have families in Germany will not find it so easy to turn to another team in motorsport to help them pay their mortgage. The closest conceivable option for those wanting to remain in F1 is the Hinwil, Switzerland-based team formerly known as BMW Sauber. But of course the future of that team is also on a knife-edge. They probably have all the staff they need anyway.

Many are also sympathising with Kamui Kobayashi, the rookie Toyota protégé who had a spirited two races at the tail end of the 2009 season. Alan Henry even went as far as to say that Kobayashi is, “the very best Japanese driver I have ever seen.”

Steady on there! Yes, Kobayashi was very impressive in his two F1 races. But he was, after all, racing for his career. He didn’t have the funds to do yet another GP2 season, and he was lucky to get his F1 break. But if he didn’t succeed in his stint, he was going back to work in a sushi restaurant.

As such, Kobayashi was highly-motivated, and took the risks he needed to take to stand out. Would he be like this in normal circumstances? It is impossible to tell. But his GP2 form was not exactly exciting. And let us not forget that he arguably caused a big accident when he moved across on Kazuki Nakajima at Interlagos.

Now Toyota have left F1, thereby leaving Kobayashi without a drive. Now he is a hero; a martyr. I am not terribly sure that status is deserved. Nonetheless, I hope he doesn’t have to put his sushi preparation skills to use for a while yet.

Toyota’s sharp exit from F1 does perhaps explain their odd behaviour surrounding drivers towards the tail end of this season. Timo Glock suffered from mysterious illnesses and injuries which paved the way for Kobayashi to get a drive.

Perhaps Glock was asked nicely to stand aside for two races so that the team could give Kobayashi a “sorry” present. “Sorry for not finding that seat in F1 for you after all your years of hard work in our young driver programme. Here are a couple of consolation races.”

Perhaps the biggest point to chew over is what this means for motorsport in Japan. Axis of Oversteer notes:

Toyota and Honda left F1 as has Bridgestone. Kawasaki dropped out of MotoGP. Suzuki and Subaru quit the WRC and Mitsubishi has called off its Dakar efforts.

I find it unimaginable that Japan might not be represented at all in F1. For there to be an exodus across top-line motorsport is seriously worrying. Here is hoping that it is just a blip as the Japanese motor industry goes through a particularly tough time.

This is the inescapable conclusion one reaches when digesting the fact that Pat Symonds has been offered immunity if he “tells the truth” or, perhaps more accurately, in return for landing Flav in the shit whether it’s true or not. The scheme seems particularly odd given that most of the evidence thus far appears to implicate only Nelsinho Piquet and Pat Symonds for concocting any scheme that may have existed.

Even Piquet himself in his statement to the FIA seems reticent to directly accuse Flavio Briatore of concocting a conspiracy. Piquet only talks about Briatore’s presence in a meeting in which Symonds and Piquet discuss the crash strategy:

The proposal to deliberately cause an accident was made to me shortly before the race took place, when I was summoned by Mr. Briatore and Mr. Symonds in Mr. Briatore’s office. Mr. Symonds, in the presence of Mr. Briatore, asked me if I would be willing to sacrifice my race for the team by “causing a safety car”.

Instead, Nelsinho Piquet’s ire for Briatore is based on the fact that Briatore was reluctant to renew his contract. Boo hoo! Martin Brundle isn’t terribly impressed with that line of reasoning:

His rationale is that his contractual option hadn’t been taken the previous month so he was stressed and wanted to please the team. Try waiting the whole winter to sign a race-by-race contract days before the first grand prix of the season — that’s stress, but still not enough to crash a car intentionally.

I must agree with this. Normally, I would think that the normal course of action for a driver trying to renew his contract would be to improve his performances, not go around deliberately crashing.

For me, the only smoking gun we have seen so far is the reluctance of Pat Symonds to answer some of the questions the FIA investigators asked him. He was very reticent to discuss any plans he may have made with Piquet, while at the same time the idea was discussed. Symonds says it was Piquet who came up with the idea, while Piquet alleges that Symonds went as far as to specify on which lap and corner Piquet should crash.

Other evidence is inconclusive. The telemetry, which reveals that Piquet instinctively lifted but later applied full throttle while his rear wheels were spinning during the crash, is described by Symonds as “very unusual data”. But Piquet was no stranger to crashing. Meanwhile, the pit wall communications reveal little interesting, apart from an anxiety on the part of Piquet to know which lap he was on, and the fact that the team was concerned about Piquet’s condition following the crash.

So the evidence so far is that Piquet claims to have deliberately caused a crash. Symonds has acknowledged that a discussion took place, but refuses to talk any more about it. So where does Briatore fit in with all this?

We are now in the ludicrous situation where the two people who appear to be implicated the most have been offered immunity. Of those accused, that leaves just Briatore, against whom there appears to be very little evidence. It is surely not a coincidence that Max Mosley sees Flavio Briatore as an enemy.

There are other interesting aspects about the FIA’s behaviour over this scandal. Despite Max Mosley’s claim that he is greatly concerned about the leaks, The Times‘s Ed Gorman reveals that all of these leaks have come from the FIA! That newspaper would know — it is a common leaking outlet for both Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone.

Surely, Ed Gorman suggests, it is no coincidence that this entire scandal has overshadowed Ari Vatanen’s campaign to become FIA President. Mosley has made no secret of the fact that he would prefer his ally Jean Todt to replace him in the role, plumbing even his already-extraordinarily low depths to endorse Todt on FIA letterhead.

Vatanen has struggled to make headway in the media against the weight of the Mosley/Todt machine and recently his efforts to have his voice heard have been drowned out by leaks on the Renault case, widely thought to be from the FIA, and by strategically placed FIA announcements on the scandal.

I have to confess that I am not convinced by Ari Vatanen. To me, he seems like a failed MEP who is seeking attention and looking for a new purpose in life. His campaign has seemed ill-prepared in comparison to Jean Todt who has clearly been waiting to fill this role for a very long time. But what Todt has going against him is his anti-sporting record while at Peugeot and Ferrari, and the fact that his campaign has been unfairly advantaged by the FIA, which appears to be corrupt from tip to toe.

This is all turning out to be very convenient for the Mosley–Todt camp. Mosley has spent much of the past year trying to edge the manufacturers out of F1 (mere years after he lambasted the Williams-style model which he now apparently thinks is the life and soul of the sport!). He is clearly not good friends with Briatore, and is doing his very best to bring Briatore down. Very interesting that this comes mere months after he successfully brought Ron Dennis down, as though Mosley realised that this year was his last chance to do it. The Todt advantage is the icing on the cake.

I really am sick of the FIA. If an actual government behaved like this, there would be riots on the streets.

It can’t be called a complete shock. It had become very fashionable in F1 circles to say something like, “I am sure one or two or all of BMW, Renault and Toyota will pull out of F1 this season.” But the rumours were particularly centred on Renault and Toyota, and BMW were probably widely considered to be the team out of those three with the most stable future.

That made BMW’s exit a shock. In a way, though, it is not a surprise. It was well known that when BMW bought the Sauber team back in 2005, they set themselves very ambitious targets that were to be met within a matter of a few years. This was the basis for the team’s famously methodical (although too-clinical-for-some) gradual, targets-based approach.

So while it may seem a bit of an over-reaction for BMW to pull out so suddenly, it’s worth remembering that this was the year when they were supposed to be fighting for the championship (or regular wins, as the target appeared to become more recently). Instead they have one of the slowest cars in the field. Worse still, unlike with Honda in 2008, BMW fully expected to be fighting for the championship. They thought they had a great car.

Instead, 2009 has been a complete disaster for them. They put too much faith in their kers, a device which they thought would give them an advantage but proved to be anything but. Over the winter they were the only team favouring kers, but it turns out that Mercedes have a much better one while BMW’s is so useless that they will never use it again.

Now it seems as though the teams have agreed among themselves not to use kers for next season. Such technologies appeared to be a major motivation for BMW’s involvement in Formula 1. It was certainly an aspect they played up in their marketing.

Unfortunately, the way the FIA introduced kers to Formula 1 was a complete botch-job. Kers has been left with a seriously bad reputation, even though McLaren-Mercedes have now managed to make it work for them. Whatever happens to kers in the short term, it will be around for the long term. That was certainly the view of Williams Technical Director Sam Michael when he spoke to bloggers last week.

Perhaps as a result of focusing on kers, BMW’s F1.09 car is not up to the job. It must count as one of the biggest disappointments of the season. Even though Ferrari and McLaren also started the season poorly, those teams have fought their way back to the front. Meanwhile, BMW only seem to have fallen further away from the front as the season has progressed.

During the Hungarian GP weekend, Mario Theissen claimed that BMW had found the cause of the problems that had struck their car and that they would soon see an improvement in performance. The BBC’s commentators, Jonathan Legard and Martin Brundle, were both sceptical as they commented on BMW during the race. Legard said that if they think they’ve got a handle on the problem, they’ve got the wrong handle. Meanwhile, Brundle said that BMW’s statements about their performance sounded like PR-speak.

It is highly unlike BMW, and especially Mario Theissen, to make positive statements if they cannot back it up with evidence. Yet that was what they appeared to do when they said they knew what their problems were, while still qualifying 16th and 19th in a grid of twenty cars.

It wasn’t the only uncharacteristic behaviour from BMW over the weekend. Robert Kubica’s team radio transmissions on Friday have become famous for exhibiting the Pole’s grumpy and fussy attitude. He constantly complains about his car, even when it is setting fast times. Yet during practice in Hungary he actually sounded happy about his car. It was very unusual indeed.

Could it be that the BMW Sauber F1 team knew what was coming? Perhaps their statements about how good their car was becoming were a last-ditch attempt to convince the bosses that an improvement in fortunes was imminent. Obviously it convinced no-one.

Nevertheless, the BMW board deny that their exit from F1 is a kneejerk reaction to this season’s poor performances, with Klaus Draeger saying it was nothing to do with “our current performance or the general economic situation.” But it was obviously on his mind, as he saw fit to mention that, “It only took us three years to establish ourselves as a top team with the BMW Sauber F1 Team. Unfortunately, we were unable to meet expectations in the current season.”

It would be odd, however, for BMW to pull out on the basis of one disappointing season. BMW’s first season on 2006 was a solid start, and with the first car to be fully developed under BMW’s management they firmly established themselves as “best of the rest” behind Ferrari and McLaren. They remained so in 2008, bagging an impressive win in Canada along the way. Before the BMW partnership, Sauber were never so competitive.

Obviously, the fact that the FIA is asking all teams to commit to Formula 1 until 2012 by signing the Concorde Agreement imminently was a crunch moment. We have all seen how a year, or even a few months, is a very long time in the volatile worlds of both F1 politics and the car manufacturing industry. It should be no surprise that, without a crystal ball, a company should be unwilling to make promises it is unsure it will be able to make. You almost sense that this was a deliberate ploy by the FIA to get a high-profile scalp, a theory made all the more likely by the FIA’s highly undignified “I-told-you-so” press release.

As has been widely noted, BMW’s press release is itself written largely in corporate jargon that seeks to hide the real reasons for BMW’s exit. My reading is that they would rather focus on motor sports where they can develop technology, particularly technology which is more road relevant. The political issues surrounding kers will therefore have not helped persuade BMW to stay.

It is not as though BMW wants to distance itself from the FIA either. It has pledged to stay in WTCC, which is an even worse example of FIA mismanagement.

But clearly talk of cost cutting or budget capping or resource restriction, whatever it’s called these days, is not the vision of F1 BMW had for the future. It was prepared to negotiate until the end. But come crunch time, with the Concorde Agreement sitting on the table waiting for the signature, BMW obviously found that the settlement was not what they wanted.

But a split would have been a calamitous situation. The new series, despite having all the big names and probably some decent circuits, would still have taken some time to find its feet. Plus, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Fota series would have got good television coverage. Don’t forget that for the vast majority of fans, television is the only way we can consume the sport that we love, so this is an essential element.

In a lot of ways, the roots of the current problem in Formula 1 lie with Bernie Ecclestone. Or, to be more precise, CVC. They are the ones who suck the money out of the sport in order to pay the interest on their debts. That is why F1 ends up visiting sterile circuits with minuscule crowds — because those governments will pay huge sums of money for the privilege of holding an F1 race. That is probably also the reason for the fervour over cost cutting. If the teams spend less, Bernie can get away with giving the teams less of the sport’s revenues, and giving CVC more of them.

But despite that problem with CVC, I can’t find it in myself to be too angry with Bernie Ecclestone. In truth, he has done a great job of promoting the sport, and F1 may never have appealed to me were it not for Bernie’s efforts. Sure, there are a lot of areas where he can improve, particularly on the dire online offering.

But under Bernie Ecclestone, the television coverage of Formula 1 has been revolutionised. He got his fingers burnt with the adventurous F1 Digital+ endeavour. But while those innovatory days may be no more (and it is notable that F1 is still not broadcast in HD), today’s FOM-produced World Feed (used for all races except Monaco and Japan) is based on many of those innovations and television coverage has improved immeasurably over the past fifteen or so years.

We seldom have to deal with relatively amateurish efforts from the host broadcasters. Just compare these two videos of the same incident as it unfolded live. One is from the FOM F1 Digital+ World Feed, and the other was from the host broadcaster. (To view them side-by-side ‘as live’, start the second video when the first video reaches 17 seconds.)

The difference in quality is massive. F1 Digital+ caught the accident live so viewers knew immediately what happened. This was no coincidence. It happened because a system of sensors around the circuit could detect when cars were running close together, and coverage automatically switched to those cars in the expectation of some kind of incident unfolding. Later, replays from multiple angles enhanced the viewer’s understanding of the incident.

Meanwhile, the host broadcaster cut to Ralf Schumacher climbing out of his car ten seconds after the incident originally started. And it was a long time until viewers found out that the accident also involved Jacques Villeneuve — and there was only one angle of the incident. Note also how Martin Brundle had to rely on the superior coverage which he could see outside his commentary box window to tell viewers that Villeneuve was unhurt.

The Australian host broadcasters were not dummies. They just did the best job they could with the resources they had at their disposal. “Bernievision” was only good because of heavy investment and years of experimentation.

Bernie’s television operation was pretty impressive even in 2001, though not all of the innovations remain in today’s coverage. But it is thanks to Bernie Ecclestone that today’s coverage is more like the first video than the second one. A Fota-run championship would not have had such a slick operation going from day one, and the fans would have been worse off for it.

(For more on the amazing “Bernievision”, check out these decade-old articles on GrandPrix.com: Inside Bakersville and Inside the F1 digital television centre.)

Then there is the question of whether it would have had any coverage at all. The BBC would have been scared off, and television executives would have been confused. They want the World Championship, whether or not an alternative series is better in the eyes of the fans. Take, for instance, the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, which I hear is better than the FIA’s World Rally Championship. Not that I’d know, because the former is ghettoised on Eurosport while the FIA’s weak WRC gets terrestrial coverage.

No matter if it has all the current teams and good circuits — signing up to show a new series is a risk which television executives wouldn’t want to take. The prospect of the best F1 series being on some pay channel and having no terrestrial coverage was a real one. That aspect of the breakaway scared me.

On the other hand, the proposed breakaway presented the opportunity to create a great new version of Formula 1, unshackled from the financial needs of CVC or the warped politics of Max Mosley. Fota had some crazy ideas, but they carried out market research and were far more receptive to the views of fans than the FIA have ever been.

I particularly liked the idea that the new series could have been particularly focussed on attracting an American audience. The FIA Formula 1 Championship has dumped on US fans time and again, and today there is no race in North America even though it is a major market for the manufacturers.

There would also have been a careful look at ticket prices and the fees circuits have to pay to hold an F1 race. No-one (apart from Bernie apparently) likes to arrive at sterile circuits with a dozen people in the grandstand. It comes across on television too, whether or not FOM’s cameramen are instructed to avoid shots of empty grandstands.

I could feel the atmosphere of the passionate British crowd on the television. The difference could hardly be more stark from the previous race at Turkey, where the crowd was around 10% of the size. And Silverstone is a circuit that Bernie wants to move away from.

Even the little things that are wrong with F1 could have had the magnifying glass applied to them. Such as, why can’t a driver keep the same number for his whole career. In other categories such as Nascar or MotoGP, a driver’s number becomes part of his legend, every bit as important as, say, his helmet design. Even in the history of Formula 1, the number 27 car is almost synonymous with Gilles Villeneuve. Imagine the marketing potential too. But in the clinical world of Formula 1, driver numbers are determined by the positions of last year’s Constructors’ Championship.

In short, the breakaway could have been a great opportunity to fix everything that is broken with F1. I doubt the breakaway would have been a true ‘split’, and it probably wouldn’t have had the same consequences as the Cart / IRL split. It was pretty clear from the fact that the FIA never released a finalised 2010 entry list that the FIA didn’t have a 2010 F1 Championship to speak of, and Fota’s would have been the only show in town.

That, I think, is why the deal must be seen as a victory for Fota. It has turned out to be a powerful organisation that did after all have the ability to at last stand up to Max Mosley’s dictatorial authority.

There is a part of me that suspects that the FIA as an organisation simply isn’t fit for the purpose of overseeing motorsports. We will eventually see how things develop with Max Mosley’s successor. I think today is just the starting point though, and we will see some more loose ends being tied up in the coming months. There will be power struggles there too, I am sure.

It looks like these negotiations will in fact be handled by Michel Boeri. That in itself is interesting because he is the promoter of the Monaco Grand Prix. It was reported that he would take the Monaco GP with him to the Fota camp if the breakaway went ahead.

What we need now, most of all, is someone in charge of the FIA who is not a glorified politician, constantly interfering. I remember Maurice Hamilton making the point once that everyone knows who Max Mosley is, and many people can tell you that Jean-Marie Balestre was his predecessor. But not many can tell you who Balestre’s predecessor was (for you history buffs, on the Fisa side it was Pierre Ugeux, and in the FIA it was Paul Metternich). Yet the sport still ran.

It sounds like from now on there will be more checks and balances in place, with the F1 Commission being given more of a say from now on. No doubt Fota will continue to play its role too, and I think it would be best for everyone if Williams and Force India re-joined and USF1, Campos and Manor all joined too. That way the teams, who create the sport, can have a say in its governance too.

Speaking of the new teams, I think as we sit here today, with much of the damage repaired, the biggest shame of this episode is that two capable teams have been denied a place on the entry list as a result of Max Mosley’s petty politicking. I think many of us can’t wait to see Prodrive finally get a chance to enter F1, and Lola were a promising prospect too.

No doubt the FIA actually had a tough choice to make, as according to Joe Saward at least the Manor Grand Prix team is actually a seriously strong prospect. With costs set to be cut and a more stable future for F1 promised, and with that troublesome Max fellow out of the way, at least we know there are capable teams that are ready to fill any potential gaps that appear.

This week the ACEA, the European Car Manufacturers’ Association, came out to say that the “current governance of the sport can’t continue”. The FIA’s retort was predictably arrogant and bitter. One thing that particularly interested me was this irrelevant paragraph at the end:

The FIA understands that Porsche did not support ACEA’s Formula One resolution and has instructed the ACEA secretariat to make this clear in response to any press enquiries.

Grasping at straws, this was the one thing the FIA found to attack the ACEA with (and how typical it is of Max to go on the attack with a straw man like this rather than methodically argue their case — probably because their case is filled with holes). It’s odd that they should find the view of Porsche within the ACEA so important. This is a manufacturer which was last involved in F1 way back in 1991, and not very successfully either. They have shown very little interest in returning to F1.

Indeed, a certain revelation last year put paid to any slim chance that Porsche might enter F1 while Max Mosley is in charge. Wolfgang Porsche said last year: “After the affair with Max Mosley and the women it would not be very savoury to get involved (in Formula One) now.”

Funny how Max Mosley didn’t pay so much attention to Porsche’s views then, isn’t it?

It strikes me as odd that Mosley should bang on and on about how the current recession means that the manufacturers must be told how much they will be able to spend. Somehow I think the ACEA is in a much better position to know where than manufacturers stand.

Yesterday, the FIA released to the media a further exchange of letters between the FIA and Fota. Presumably this is again supposed to show Fota in a bad light. But Fota’s letter is conciliatory in tone and the content clearly seeks a compromise. Fota propose solutions in four key areas. Max Mosley’s response? Four doors slammed shut.

On governance, Mosley wants the teams to agree to extend an 11-year-old Concorde Agreement and from that point negotiate forwards. This would involve the teams placing a huge amount of trust in the FIA, and the FIA have shown themselves to be a distinctly untrustworthy organisation. Slam.

On resource restriction, the FIA still contends that “a fundamental problem with the Fota proposal was the absence of a clear figure”. In other words, unless the budget cap is on the table, the FIA will not discuss it. Slam.

On the two-tier system, the FIA confirms that even though it says there will be no two-tier system in F1 next season, the technical regulations will still in fact be rigged in favour of teams running the Cosworth engine which will not have a limit on its performance, as all other engines do. Slam.

Bye-bye compromise. And it’s all thanks to Max Mosley. The letter looks as though it was formulated in order to tweak the teams’ tails. It leaves F1 facing the serious prospect of a breakaway.

It pains me to say it, but I am beginning to find the idea of a breakaway very appealing. By the FIA’s own admission, next year’s budget capped cars will not perform to F1 standard. All of the top teams in F1 currently do not stand on the FIA’s side, and the most promising of the new teams were not given a slot on the entry list last week. As things stand, the FIA Championship will have no teams of a high pedigree.

As for drivers, as things stand the FIA Championship will have no Champions on the grid. Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa and Mark Webber have all spoken out against the FIA’s budget cap proposals, lamenting the fact that it would bring to an end the notion of F1 being the pinnacle of motorsport. All three drivers would sooner drive in a breakaway series than drive in a budget capped series.

Fernando Alonso:

I prefer to race in any other category before in the new F1. A model similar to GP2 or F3 is not interesting for any driver, for any sponsor or for any circuit or television network. In that case it would be a category without any sense.

Felipe Massa:

…we need to look seriously at what is the best option: as the teams appear to be united, then maybe it is time to look at doing something different that could be better for the sport.

Mark Webber:

Collectively everyone has played a role in trying to help and protect the sport and you just see all that effort down the years being devalued or diluted through some pretty radical ideas.

It’s good to have some stability, to be able to predict what’s going to happen, not have different things going on every six months.

All the drivers share the same view. We want to drive for the best teams and race against the best drivers. If it’s not the FIA Formula 1 world championship, so be it. It’ll still be the most prestigious championship.

Mark Webber’s opinion is particularly useful to pay attention to, as he the most senior member of the GPDA, the F1 drivers’ union, to have a race seat. He therefore has an intimate knowledge of what the drivers are thinking, and he has pointed out that “All the drivers have the same view.”

So the teams are against the FIA. The drivers are against the FIA. And the fans are almost universally against the FIA (see, for example, here and here).

I sense that there are a few journalists who have taken the FIA’s side. However, it is well known that journalists who speak out against the FIA sometimes find themselves having “problems”. After The Sunday Times received a writ for libel from Max Mosley following a column written by Martin Brundle, he had this to say:

I’m tired of what I perceive as the “spin” and tactics of the FIA press office, as are many other journalists. I expect my accreditation pass for next year will be hindered in some way to make my coverage of F1 more difficult and to punish me. Or they will write to ITV again to say that my commentary is not up to standard despite my unprecedented six Royal Television Society Awards for sports broadcasting.

The FIA vets journalists, so they must be seen as another F1 institution that is inherently biased towards the FIA’s point of view. In that sense, it is amazing that a few journalists have decided to speak out. See, for instance, Richard Williams (who I believe does not attend grands prix anyway as Maurice Hamilton is The Guardian’s main F1 correspondent) and Ed Gorman.

Unless the unthinkable happens and Max Mosley capitulates, we as fans (who have been given no say by the FIA, unlike Fota who have conducted proper market research) will have to endure his rotten vision of F1 anyway. At least with a breakaway we will have a choice.

What do we want? Max Mosley’s dungeon dictatorship which, like all dictatorships, will run his playthings into the ground? Or the best drivers racing the best cars at the best circuits? It’s surely a simple decision.

Of the 25-or-so teams that are angling for some sort of F1 slot next season, only a maximum of five will be happy with the situation as things stand. It goes without saying that the three new teams that have been guaranteed a slot — USF1, Campos and Manor — will be delighted. Williams will also be content, having been the first of the Fota teams to jump ship.

Despite saying friendly words about Fota’s cause, Frank Williams has made it clear that being part of a championship with “FIA” in the title is of paramount importance to his team. Williams have been close to the FIA for years, having been the second team to sign a deal with the FIA to leave GPWC in 2005. Williams are also grateful for the FIA’s stance on customer cars, which mysteriously changed at some point during the past couple of years (much to the frustration of Red Bull). Williams have also designed the cars for Max Mosley’s vanity project, Formula Two. Moreover, Williams CEO Adam Parr is said to have a close relationship with Max Mosley.

Force India are also committed to the FIA’s side, but they seem to be a lot more grudging about it than Williams are. Vijay Mallya cites vague commercial reasons for his decision to jump ship from Fota. Many have noted that Force India must race in 2010 at all costs because it exists only to race, whereas the manufacturers exist to sell road cars. But Vijay Mallya won’t exactly starve to death if he exits F1. He is in F1 to showcase his other businesses, just as the manufacturers are. Sure, Force India F1 Team would cease to exist, but so to would Renault F1 Team if Renault pulled out, and just as Honda Racing F1 Team ceased to be when Honda pulled out. The cases seem identical to me.

Meanwhile, those aspiring new teams who have not been placed on the entry list have been left with a bitter taste in their mouths. It seems pretty clear now that Max Mosley is banking on some of the existing teams not being around by next season. There is no way that Prodrive and Lola would have been refused a slot otherwise. They — along with other teams — have instead been placed on a “reserve list”, a queue of teams waiting for a slot to become vacant.

You get the sense that Prodrive and Lola are not to keen on being used as political pawns like this. They wanted a fuss-free entry into the 2010 season, but obviously forgot that this involves dealing with the FIA and its vindictive style of operating.

Lola in particular have been spitting feathers. They aren’t keen on being messed around, and are considering pulling the plug on their F1 project before the FIA get another chance to play games with them. Furthermore, Lola boss Martin Birrane has criticised the standard of the three new entries, saying: “one of three that has been chosen is worthy in my view. They will have a proper car. The other two – who knows?”

That sentiment was very closely echoed by Epsilon Euskadi’s Joan Villadelprat who also turned his nose up at the FIA’s vision of F1 2010-style: “I’m a bit surprised because I thought we were fighting against Aston Martin, and Lola, and companies with a pedigree, if you will.” The implication, of course, being that the new teams that have been guaranteed a slot do not have a pedigree.

The FIA may think that new teams will be enticed by a budget cap. But given these grumbles about the standard of the teams currently set to take part this season, they were rather expecting to be competing against the big names with world-famous brands like Ferrari and Aston Martin (manufacturer brands), not a couple of F3 teams.

Another entrant, which is said to be strong by those in the know, has gone as far as to explicitly state that the new teams have been used as pawns. N.Technology’s Mauro Spisz said: “The applications have been used by the Federation as pawns to move in the fight against the teams… We are victims of their war.”

Moreover, N.Technology appear to have been victims of the FIA’s well-known gross mismanagement, alleging that their application was not properly processed, with documents being lost. This would not be a major surprise. The FIA is well-known for being an incompetent organisation. Most famously, it once inadvertently revealed sensitive information about Ferrari and McLaren’s cars due to its own techno-incompetence.

If these strong teams are to enter F1, existing teams must leave. The FIA is banking on it. At the current rate, that actually seems like a fair assumption — though probably only because Mosley himself seems intent on driving them out.

In fairness, people talk a lot about the rumours that both Renault and Toyota are on the brink of exiting F1 anyway. From time to time, it is also said (even by Mario Theissen himself) that BMW may pull out. These three teams are probably the most disposable to F1, and I find it very interesting that it is these three very manufacturers whom the FIA cite in one of its press releases today (I will cover today’s developments in more detail in a separate article). All of these teams are peripheral players in this year’s Championship, and none has a particularly strong pedigree. But to lose all three in one year would be careless.

Renault have won the Championship twice in recent years, but it would not be unlike them to leave the sport. Indeed, with the famously motorsport-phobic Carlos Ghosn in charge of Renault, in a way it’s a surprise that they have not pulled out before.

I could easily imagine the Renault team surviving in one form or another though without the political crisis. The team’s history can be traced back to 1981, when it was Toleman. It became Benetton in 1986 before being bought by Renault in 2000. In this sense, the team has one of the richest histories in the sport, which stretches to half of Formula 1′s history.

For much of the team’s life, the team has rather successfully been run by Flavio Briatore. It is not outside the realms of possibility that, should Renault decide to pull the plug, Briatore could buy the team in an emergency measure and run it as a privateer entry, Brawn-style. But given his acrimonious relationship with the FIA (which is ironic given that he works with Bernie Ecclestone on other business endeavours), that now seems like a distant possibility.

Of the five teams with asterisks next to them on the entry list, McLaren and Brawn are the ones that the FIA cannot afford to lose. McLaren must be kept on board because of their history in the sport, which is rivalled by no-one’s except Ferrari’s. Meanwhile, to lose Brawn — who will almost certainly be World Champions this year — would be a major disaster for the FIA, and would only serve to underline the point that the new teams cannot compete with the best in F1 on merit.

In a way, then, McLaren and Brawn hold the aces. Interestingly, both are a strange kind of beast that is neither privateer nor manufacturer. This gives them a different perspective to the Renault / Toyota / BMW triumvirate — but it also distances them from being enticed by gimmicky budget cap proposals. Brawn could be seen as a full privateer from next season onwards. But the FIA must keep Mercedes happy to keep McLaren on side. Interestingly, Mercedes also plays a major role in Brawn’s success.

Therefore, as much as it (apparently) wants to drive the manufacturers out of the sport, Mercedes is ostensibly the one company which the FIA can’t afford to mess around. But, McLaren-Mercedes has been successfully neutered by the umpteenth high-profile hauling over the coals by the FIA. The FIA therefore have the whip hand, and Mercedes may be happier to defer to the FIA’s will than it otherwise would have been. Funny how it works out like that, isn’t it?

By now, it is abundantly clear that last week’s publication of the entry list was not designed to clear up the situation. Every single line in that publication was designed to wind someone up. It’s the way Max Mosley does his business: personality politics, vindictiveness and grandstanding. He clearly gets a thrill out of putting people in painful situations.