A pain in the neck has brought a halt to Michael Schumacher’s planned comeback. The injuries caused by his motorcycle accident in February have proved too much to cope with.

There were rumblings about his neck immediately after his first test in an F2007, but the extent of the problem was not made clear. The possibility that Schumacher’s comeback was gently brought into focus last week when his spokesperson Sabine Kehm emphasised that his comeback was not certain and depended on medical assessments.

Now we know for certain that Schumacher will not be racing in Valencia. Now it was nothing more than a useful distraction for the media to occupy themselves with over the otherwise quiet holiday period.

Amazingly, in Schumacher’s place instead will be Ferrari’s veteran test driver Luca Badoer. In a way it is payback for the way he was treated in 1999. I always felt sorry him since he was overlooked in favour of Mika Salo when Michael Schumacher was unable to race after he broke his legs at Silverstone that year.

But Badoer’s comeback is a real shock for a variety of reasons. For one thing, he is almost as old as Schumacher himself. At 38, Luca Badoer will be the oldest driver on the grid in Valencia. He also becomes the second man on the grid to have raced against the likes of Prost and Senna. Like Rubens Barrichello, he made his début in 1993.

Barrichello has gone on to race in every season since then, in the process becoming the most experienced Formula 1 driver in history. But Luca Badoer has notched up a very different kind of record. He has amassed more starts than any other driver never to have scored a point. In 48 races, his career best finish was 7th, at the 1993 San Marino Grand Prix.

He did almost score three points at the hugely eventful 1999 European Grand Prix. But when his Minardi had to be stopped with gearbox problems, he famously broke down in floods of tears at the side of the track.

But in his defence, he has only ever driven for minnows in the past: Scuderia Italia, Minardi and Forti. This will make Ferrari the fourth Italian team he will have raced for.

His last race was a staggering ten years ago. I can’t imagine even Badoer ever believed he would get the race drive at Ferrari, especially after the 1999 snub. If he wasn’t good enough then, what on earth makes him good enough now, ten years since his last F1 race?

On paper, Marc Gené seemed like a much more feasible candidate. His last race was only five years ago. He scored a point for Minardi after Badoer’s breakdown in Europe, and scored another two at Monza with Williams in 2003 when he stood in for another Schumacher, Ralf.

He also has recent experience of other racing, having put in some relatively good performances in Le Mans Series. Indeed, he won this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans alongside David Brabham and Alexander Wurz. Being a Spaniard, Marc Gené would also have made commercial sense for racing Valencia.

I am sure Ferrari have their reasons though. I look forward to seeing how Luca Badoer performs. No doubt he is being thrown in at the deep end, but I for one am happy to see him getting one last chance to race in a Formula 1 grand prix.

It has to be said, unintended consequences are never far away in the world of F1 rule changes. For just one example, take a look at how quickly aerodynamic flick-ups have resurfaced, despite their supposed banning. Skate fins? What on earth?

Now we are presented with a number of oddities that have come about as a result of this season’s new testing restrictions. In-season testing is banned completely. Each team is limited to 15,000km, but according to James Allen it looks as though no teams will top 10,000km, because this year’s testing events have been so heavily disrupted. Teams that go to Portugal and Spain get relentlessly rained on. Those that go to Bahrain are treated to sandstorms.

Moreover, what little testing time there is has been eaten into by the need to test 2010-spec tyres. The bans in refuelling and tyre warmers coming into effect next season will put different demands on the tyres. As such, Bridgestone need to get data so that they don’t end up barking up the wrong tree as they develop the new tyres. But with no opportunity to do this later on in the season, some teams (McLaren and BMW) have had to sacrifice some time from their already tight pre-season test schedule.

Now McLaren’s test driver Pedro de la Rosa has expressed concerns that the lack of test time is actually dangerous for reserve drivers. Should a reserve have to come in for some reason, he will be thrown into the deep end, straight into the action having had little experience of the car. That would be bad enough in a normal year, but with the radical rule changes that have come into force this season you can expect out-of-practice drivers to be even rustier.

Now it is becoming obvious that the testing restrictions are damaging the careers of young drivers. All winter, it had looked as though Rubens Barrichello’s chances of retaining his seat at Honda / Brawn were close to zero. Reading some reports, you’d believe that Bruno Senna was practically a shoo-in.

Now it looks as though Barrichello has been given the nod, leaving Senna with nowhere to go. The ever-excellent Grandprix.com trailed the possibility a few days ago, noting that “Barrichello is a better bet [than Senna] as his experience will be useful in a year when there is little opportunity for young drivers to learn how to drive F1 cars.”

From this perspective, it looks like Honda / Brawn have made the right decision here. Moreover, Barrichello outperformed Button last season, and it would have been a real shame if Barrichello’s career ended with a snub. Mind you, there is the risk that Barrichello will have a David Coulthard-style final season of doom, and we wouldn’t really want that.

But what now for Bruno Senna? Holding out for an F1 seat, he has more or less ruled out staying in GP2 for a third season. Indeed, it is difficult to see what he could achieve with another year in GP2. Drivers who spend too long in a category like GP2 tend to have their potential stunted.

In a sense, this is a predicament which is yet another symptom of the serial mismanagement at Honda which has deteriorated this winter to extreme levels for obvious reasons. Senna sounds pretty frustrated over this situation, and wouldn’t you be?

But any other year it would be no big deal. Senna could sign as a test driver for one year, as countless other drivers have done before, and spend the season racking up the miles on the test track in preparation for his first full season. And should he needed to replace another driver mid-season, he would have experience required of him.

Failing that, he could have gone on to make a decent career as a test driver. It may not have the glamour of a race role, and you can bet your bottom dollar that all test drivers yearn to race. But it is, at least, a decent income earned from driving cars — and they can always hope. People like Luca Badoer, Marc Gené, Anthony Davidson, Alexander Wurz and, yes, Pedro de la Rosa, have all made a decent living out of testing F1 cars. Felipe Massa started out at Ferrari as a test driver, and today he challenges for Championships.

Now what? All Bruno Senna can do is twiddle his thumbs. He can always suffer the humiliation of going back cap in hand to a GP2 seat. But this could backfire on him, and all the best seats have already been filled.

Could this be one reason why there is only going to be one rookie this season? Sébastien Buemi is the only newcomer to F1 this season, but he has done plenty of testing for the Red Bull teams and he is filling a vacancy that David Coulthard voluntarily left behind.

Remember when everyone was certain that Renault were not going to re-sign Nelsinho Piquet? Then, out of nowhere, they signed him for another season. Is that because, for all his faults, he at least has experience that the likes of Romain Grosjean and Lucas Di Grassi now cannot hope to attain?

Let us not forget another major FIA-instituted change for 2009, which is yet another instance revealing the lack of joined-up thinking inside the FIA. This season sees the inauguration of Max Mosley’s Formula Two project. Remember, this new feeder series was supposedly invented specifically to make it easier for young drivers to reach F1.

Well, it’s all very well adding yet another “second-top” rung in an already-cluttered world that contains GP2, A1GP and World Series by Renault among others. But the top rung now has a fundamental crack that will cause the ladder collapse when a driver reaches it, sending him — and his career — crashing to the floor.

There might be an allowance in F1 for “young driver training”, but this is no more than a fig leaf. A “young driver” is someone who has not tested on more than four days in the past 24 months. How is a young driver supposed to progress with such scant “training”?

Max Mosley likes to use F2 to make out that he is opening doors for young drivers. The reality is that this door leads drivers up the garden path. There have seldom, if ever, been as many feeder series as there are today. An F1 team can take their pick from 20+ GP2 drivers, countless A1GP drivers, anyone from WSR who takes their fancy and goodness knows how many F3 drivers. F2 isn’t needed, especially now that young drivers will find the welcome mat at F1’s door cruelly swiped from their feet.

I didn’t have the time to blog about it when the story originally blew up, but I have a few thoughts on the issue. Late last week Bernie Ecclestone gave an interview to BBC Radio 5 Live where he made comments that were interpreted by some as condoning racist behaviour in the grandstands at Formula 1 circuits.

I actually heard a little bit of that interview when it was originally broadcast, and I heard the controversial comments. I was initially surprised, because I saw how the comments would be interpreted by many. I was just surprised because I would have thought Bernie Ecclestone was savvy enough not to give an ambiguous answer to such a question. Sure enough, it became a bigger news story.

But while the comments were unfortunate, I don’t think they really deserved the reaction they got from some quarters. Ex-footballer Paul Elliot, speaking on behalf of Football Against Racism in Europe, even called on Ecclestone to resign.

This is a completely over-the-top reaction. I understood the nature of what Ecclestone was trying to say, even if he didn’t manage to articulate it very clearly on breakfast radio.

Formula 1 has only ever had one publicised incident of racial abuse, when a small clutch of Spanish spectators blacked up at a Barcelona test session before the 2008 season started. The pictures at were shocking, and I criticised the participants at the time.

However, in the discussions that ensued it became clear that many Spaniards were perplexed at the shocked reaction from Brits. I doubt that this is because Spain has a problem with racism. That was despite what some in the media tried to make out, without a hint of irony of course (read Richard Herring for a good take on this). It seems as though blacking up simply does not have the same connotations in Spain as it does in places like the UK and the USA. (And let us not forget, too, that it was only a few short decades ago that blacking up was totally acceptable in the UK.)

That is not to excuse the behaviour. We all must be sensitive to other cultures, and all decent people should take great care not to offend others’ sensibilities. Clearly, a widespread interpretation of the behaviour of those people at the Barcelona test was that it was racial abuse. Indeed, that was my interpretation of it, even if it was not the intention of them to cause offence.

The fact that it is not obvious that the people deliberately set out to cause offence is, I believe, the origin of Bernie Ecclestone’s comment that it was a “joke”. I noticed many Spaniards saying that it was something to do with a carnival which involves dressing up, and I saw at least one person saying it was intended as a friendly gesture towards Lewis Hamilton rather than a malicious one.

The wonderful thing about improved communications and increasing globalisation is that we can more easily learn about other cultures. In that regard, it is notable that there has not been a repeat performance of the behaviour from Spanish supporters. There were two grands prix in Spain this year which, as far as I am aware, went off without any hint of trouble.

There was some booing in Brazil which Anthony Hamilton criticised live on ITV. I did not spot Anthony Hamilton implying that the booing was of a racial nature, although he may have thought that. It was certainly the spin that some in the media attempted to apply to the booing. But I saw absolutely no evidence that the booing was of an abusive or racial nature, and most accept that. In sport, you will have a partisan crowd, and this is understandable and should not be criticised.

Following on from the reporting of Ecclestone’s comments, news bulletins spoke of Lewis Hamilton “hitting back” and “blasting” Ecclestone’s stance. Going by the reports, you would have thought Hamilton had been mortally offended. In fact, Hamilton’s comments were quite measured:

I didn’t see it as a joke. It’s something that happened but it is in the past.

What’s more important to me is that I had a lot of support, especially from UK fans. As long as I have my country behind me, it makes me very proud. I’m proud to see my fellow countrymen holding up the flag. All the other stuff I need to put behind me.

I don’t generally keep up with what’s being said and I haven’t read what Bernie said. I know Bernie and have a huge amount of respect for him. I can only assume he said positive things.

It is unfortunate that Britain’s excitable media has distorted the reporting of this issue so much that I know of at least one person who was under the impression that Hamilton was subject to a barrage of abuse across all three days of the Spanish Grand Prix, which is not the case at all. The fact is that a small group of people did a stupid thing which was a one-off incident at a test session. In fact, the very reason it was so shocking is because it was so unknown in Formula 1.

Formula 1 can be proud of the fact that racism is as small a problem as it is. That is certainly a lot more than can be said for certain other sports. Barely a month goes by without reports of racial abuse at a football match, sometimes even coming from the players themselves. In comparison to the world’s most popular sport, Formula 1 is highly civilised.

David Coulthard is absolutely right in his comments supporting Bernie Ecclestone:

It is trying to be built into something much bigger than it is. What happened in Spain because of those four guys, I’m sorry, but it hardly represents a nation of racists.

I’ve seen some people having a pop at Bernie for trying to play it down, but what would you expect him to do? He is the ringmaster, the guy that has created this amazing foundation of business success that enables all of us to earn our pennies.

We’re all talking about Lewis being the first billion dollar sportsman, well that is on the foundations of what Bernie has created. To turn round and try to get Bernie to offer an apology to Lewis is just ridiculous.

F1 may have many failings, but it does not come close to the racism you see in people’s first love, and that’s football.

Ecclestone’s claim that he pulled the South African Grand Prix in 1985 because of apartheid may be spurious. But it is worth remembering that Bernie Ecclestone played a pivotal role in Formula 1 having its first black driver.

No, not Lewis Hamilton as the media may sometimes have you believe, but Willy T. Ribbs. The then-Nascar driver was given a test at Ecclestone-owned Brabham. Ribbs became the first black person to drive an F1 car, and although it was only a test and not a race drive, it hardly represents the actions of someone who would condone racism. For that reason alone, the calls for Bernie Ecclestone to resign are wide of the mark.

The media seriously needs to calm itself down over the colour of Lewis Hamilton’s skin. The civil rights activist Martin Luther King dreamt of a time when people “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” I agree, and that is why I find the obsession surrounding Hamilton’s colour so distasteful.

It is true that Lewis Hamilton has achieved amazing things, and he has undoubtedly broken barriers by becoming the first black race driver in Formula 1. But time and again the media keeps on making comparisons with people like Tiger Woods and even Barack Obama. And while I am not in the best position to judge, in my view, that is just crass.

Lewis Hamilton is not “Lewis Hamilton black man”, “Lewis Hamilton mixed race man” or “Britain’s Lewis Hamilton”. He is “Lewis Hamilton racing driver”. My understanding is that Hamilton sees himself as a racing driver who happens to be black rather than a black racing driver. This report on the celebratory McLaren press conference very much suggests that:

Questions included his thoughts on Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential election that very morning and how he feels about his position as a black role model. Hamilton shifted uneasily in his seat and swerved around the ‘race’ question as best he could. He just sees himself as a racing driver, nothing more, nothing less.

I very much think it’s time to get over Lewis Hamilton’s skin colour. That goes for anyone who may racially abuse him, but it also goes for the media which constantly makes his colour the story. His colour was notable at first, but now it is not the story. His driving is.

This weekend’s European Grand Prix is held on a brand new circuit, the Valencia Street Circuit. The circuit has a contract for seven years, so we may as well try and get acquainted with it as best we can.

We won’t know exactly what to expect until the F1 cars arrive there. But for a street circuit it seems rather promising. For a street circuit, it is particularly fast. It is estimated that the F1 cars will reach 185mph at least four times during a fast lap. The top speed is estimated at an incredible 199mph, with an average speed of 140mph. Pretty quick for a street circuit.

The circuit is also said to be very smooth for a street circuit. In addition, the circuit is wide and has plenty of run-off area which should encourage overtaking. Alex Waters, who competes in Spanish Formula 3, said in the September 2008 edition of F1 Racing that there are three obvious overtaking spots. That is more than some circuits, like a certain other one in Spain. To demonstrate this, Waters reached as high as 6th position from a grid position of 18th before retiring. So the drivers should have no dodgy excuses for not being able to overtake!

Here are a few videos to help us get acquainted with the circuit.

First is Sidepodcast’s ‘Inside Track’ preview, which takes us on a virtual tour of the circuit.

Here is some on board footage taken from a Formula 3 car. This gives you an idea of the speed of the circuit and the amount of run-off there is.

And here is a video from the International GT Open race which was held on the circuit earlier on this year.

Keith at F1 Fanatic has collected more on-board videos and television footage of the races.

Keith also has a guide to the characteristics of the Valencia Street Circuit.

I’m looking forward to this weekend’s sessions and the liveblogs that will take place throughout the weekend will be indispensable as we come to terms with the new environment.

Max Mosley has won his privacy case against News Group Newspapers Ltd, the publishers of the News of the World. A full PDF of the verdict is here. I am in two minds about this verdict.

On the one hand, the News of the World is a scumbag newspaper full of scumbag stories, owned by a scumbag, written by scumbags and read by scumbags. Their respect for privacy is a national disgrace, and watching media types bemoaning their apparent new-found inability to pry into people’s lives this morning has been pathetic.

It was pretty clear that the Nazi angle of the story was exaggerated somewhat by the News of the World, even if it was perhaps not totally unfounded. Thinking back to the original story, around half of it or maybe even more reflected on his family background rather than his wrongdoings in the bedroom department. The attempt to connect Max Mosley to fascism on the flimsiest of grounds, on the basis of who his parents were, was disgusting. Max Mosley did not choose his parents.

Even so, in my view there has been no satisfactory explanation for the overtones that allowed the Nazi conclusions to be drawn. The recordings include German speaking. This was explained as being down to the fact that one of the prostitutes was German. However, what has not been explained is why they were speaking English in a German accent. Phrases such as “I sink she needs more of ze punishment” (uttered by Mosley himself) and “We are the Aryan race!” do not strike me as being part of just another S&M orgy.

Max Mosley apparently had a sudden hearing loss during the phase of the conversation. Mr Justice Eady concedes that this sounds like a rather tall story, but says that it doesn’t matter because it was “clear… that the remark was unscripted”. He seems to think it was as though they were discussing whether an episode of EastEnders had Nazi overtones.

I also find it incredible that the judge has decided there was no public interest in the story. Oh really? The Crown Prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, was interested. King Juan Carlos of Spain was interested. Prince Albert of Monaco was interested. Galeb Majadle, Israel’s minister for sport was interested. BMW, Mercedes, Honda and Toyota were all interested. Bernie Ecclestone was interested.

The fact is, no matter how disgusting I think it is that the News of the World should invade people’s private lives, once the world had the knowledge that he indulges in that kind of behaviour it affected his ability to do his job. That in itself surely demonstrates sufficient public interest in any sense that would be meaningful to anybody not sitting in an ivory tower.

There were a lot of people who scratched their heads about the huge £100 million fine handed down to McLaren by Max Mosley last year. I think a lot of people have a feeling that they now know it is because Max Mosley gets a sexual thrill out of inflicting a harsh punishment. The next time the FIA has to hand down a punishment to someone, it will be an open goal for easy jibes. This puts Formula 1 and the FIA itself into disrepute. It ability to govern the sport properly has been diminished.

It would be bad enough if Max Mosley was just the “boss of Formula 1″ or the “head of motor sport” as the media constantly referred to him as. This probably made the public at large a lot more sympathetic towards Max Mosley than they otherwise would have been. The fact is that the FIA has a huge responsibility not just for sport but for the motor industry as a whole.

The FIA has a huge amount of weight and influence when it comes to aspects like road safety and green technologies. The FIA works together with the United Nations and the European Union among other organisations to make things happen. The FIA was pivotal in the formation of Euro NCAP, the European car safety assessment organisation.

Max Mosley is so much more than just an F1 man or motorsport president. He is responsible for cars full stop. This gives him a huge amount of power — probably more than most British politicians can dream to have.

I think the public saw this as quite a jokey story. Yet if we were talking about a cabinet minister or the CEO of a multinational company he would never have lasted this long. It might well have been a different story if the public realised just how much power Max Mosley has.

Do we really want someone who gets his sexual kicks out of inflicting pain to have so much responsibility over road safety? Do we want someone whose judgement is so questionable that he would regularly cheat on his wife and lie to his family to have such responsibilities?

As I have said countless times, Max Mosley should have done the honourable thing and resigned months ago. But we know from years of experience that Mosley is not an honourable man. Had he resigned, I would have fully supported him in his court case today.

However, his behaviour since the revelations have demonstrated that he does lack judgement and that he does have too much power. The FIA General Assembly vote simply demonstrated that it is a rotten borough, and the FIA is filled to the brim with Max Mosley lackeys.

Ideally, Max Mosley would have resigned and News Group Newspapers would have lost its court case. As it is, Max Mosley will go to bed tonight feeling vindicated. And that makes me angry.