In my review of the European Grand Prix, I didn’t mention Luca Badoer, who made his high-profile Ferrari début at the race. It was always going to be a tough ask, because the odds were so heavily stacked against him.

For one thing, he had to get used to the car, which he had never driven at racing speeds before. According to Ted Kravitz:

Evidently the Ferrari F60 is a very complicated car to operate. There are many buttons and dials to turn and twist: Kers harvest and usage settings, brake balance and bias levers, fuel and oil pumps, front flap adjusts and the usual revs, throttle and mixture settings.

I’m not sure if he is implying that the F60 is more difficult to get used to than other current F1 cars. But whatever, it is certainly new territory for Badoer who is used to driving cars in the relatively tranquil environment of the test session rather than the intense spotlight and razzmatazz of a grand prix weekend. To deal with all of this in the first time he’s properly driven the F60 — and in his first race for ten years at that — is undeniably a big ask.

Luca Badoer must have been as shocked as everyone else when it was announced that he was to race in Valencia. It is typical of Badoer’s luck. F1 has shat on this driver for his whole career. I would highly recommend his biography on F1 Rejects for a full overview.

He may not be F1 championship material. But he is the 1992 Formula 3000 champion, having beaten Rubens Barrichello, Olivier Panis and David Coulthard among others in the process. So he is no fool.

But in F1 he never got the proper chance to demonstrate his abilities, being stuck with back-of-the-grid teams Scuderia Italia, Minardi and Forti — and despite usually having the upper-hand over his team mates on the racetrack, politics often meant he found it difficult to move ahead in his career.

You might have thought that signing with Ferrari to become their test driver in 1998 would have seen an upswing in his fortunes. In a lot of ways, Badoer must be the unsung hero of Ferrari’s success since then. He is the test driver who has helped develop cars capable of winning Championship after Championship following a twenty year drought for Ferrari.

Normally a team’s test driver would be the first choice to step in if a driver needs replaced. Inexplicably, when Michael Schumacher broke his legs in 1999, Ferrari opted to look outside the team. They placed Mika Salo in the car, when most observers expected Badoer to get the nod. Subsequently, Badoer stayed on with Ferrari having been promised that he would be the reserve driver.

Since then, Ferrari has had a remarkable period of driver stability. Between 1999 and 2009, Ferrari changed drivers only three times (Irvine replaced by Barrichello, Barrichello replaced by Massa and Schumacher replaced by Räikkönen)! At no point did any driver have to be replaced at short notice. No space for Badoer ever emerged. One must imagine that after twelve years waiting, he would have given up believing.

Then Felipe Massa was injured at Hungary. In the year that there was a radical change in technical regulations which is said to be the biggest in 25 years. In the year that testing is banned. In the one year that Luca Badoer had never driven the Ferrari car. And when the next race was at a brand new circuit which he had never visited.

Of course Luca Badoer didn’t get the call. Michael Schumacher did instead, and the media could barely contain their excitement. Schumacher is a seven times World Champion, but still people openly wondered: is Schumacher up to the task? Can he get used to the new car? Is he fit enough? At 40, will he be too old? In the end, it turned out that Schumacher couldn’t do the job because of the injury he picked up while racing Superbikes in Germany.

So it was down to Badoer to shoulder the responsibility of making something out of the pickle that Ferrari found themselves in. Of course, the media won’t be lining up with the same excuses that were already being served up on Schumacher’s behalf before his comeback. This was despite the fact that there are actually quite legitimate reasons for Badoer to be off the pace. Badoer is not much younger than Schumacher, and is the oldest driver on the grid. But that is not an excuse apparently, despite the fact that it supposedly would have been for Schumacher.

Instead, the media has spent its time openly laughing at Luca Badoer, almost willing him to do badly. The schadenfreude soaked through the reports as the journalists gleefully reported Badoer’s four pitlane speeding offences on Friday, a symptom of the fact that the pitlane speed limit is substantially higher during test sessions and Badoer needed time to adjust to the new braking points required.

All I can say is, Badoer is not the one who parked his car at Rascasse, but never mind. Of course, the journalists were just taking it out on Badoer because he isn’t Princess Schumacher so they lost their “fairytale” story that is so desperately needed to sell a turgid circuit like Valencia.

I found the gulf in opinion between the journalists and the drivers very interesting. While the journalists were busy thinking up oh-so-witty nicknames like “Look-how Bad-you-are”, the drivers in contrast felt sorry for the situation that Badoer found himself in. Jarno Trulli described Badoer’s situation as “impossible”. Lewis Hamilton said that Badoer has “done a good job just to keep it on the track”, while Kovalainen shrugged: “I don’t know what else you could have expected.”

The split was also demonstrated on the Chequered Flag podcast. David Croft mocked, “even Yuji Ide had more promise” (which is totally untrue — Badoer has already achieved much more in his career than Ide could ever hope for). F1 Racing’s Bradley Lord said, “Badoer approached this race as a test — and he failed this one.” Ha-very-ha. Anthony Davidson had plead to his bloodthirsty journalist colleagues, “give him some space!”

David Coulthard summed up the situation nicely: “Who would be Luca Badoer? You wait 10 years for your chance to race for Ferrari and then, despite having no preparation whatsoever, you get slated for not being Michael Schumacher.”

In Checkpoint 10’s excellent analysis, it is shown that Badoer was not actually half as bad as the journalists would have you believe. His qualifying time was 103.4% of the fastest time, when the 107% rule used to eliminate drivers on a regular basis.

He struggled during the race. After a good start, he was obviously spooked by being surrounded by other cars on lap 1 and spun. He then panicked in the pitlane, seemingly allowing Romain Grosjean to overtake him before he crossed the white line. And he had a worryingly erratic second stint. But overall, Badoer showed improvement as the race progressed, and noticeably caught up with Räikkönen’s pace as the race progressed and Badoer became more comfortable.

In sum, yes, Badoer had a very disappointing weekend. But that is mostly because driving standards are so high these days. You don’t have to go far to find real joke drivers who definitely did not deserve to be racing and did a much worse job than Badoer.

I grew up watching people people who paid to get a race seat trundle around up to a dozen seconds per lap off the pace. Hell, you only have to go back a few years to encounter and Yuji Ide, who suffered the ignominy of being stripped of his super license. The last pay driver went when Sakon Yamamoto lost his seat. Driving standards all the way through the grid are very high compared with ten or even five years ago. This amplifies Badoer’s rustiness.

Badoer’s performance in Valencia is the sort of thing that would have been commonplace at the back of the grid in the mid-1990s. You might say that this is not the mid-1990s, but when you consider everything that is stacked against Luca Badoer — his age, his lack of experience, never having driven the F60 before, never having been to the Valencia Street Circuit before, and having to get used to the modern-day race weekend environment — I think he should be cut a bit more slack.

I feel very sorry for Badoer, who has had a very tough F1 career where he has been given the rough end of the stick at almost every turn. It looks likely that Badoer will be replaced come Monza, which would be fair enough if he doesn’t show a perceptible improvement in Spa.

But now Badoer will probably be remembered for these two difficult races where he was thrown in at the deep end, and everyone decided to point and laugh at this man (who, do not forget, is actually putting his life on the line when he goes out to race). I am not sure whether this is better than being remembered for breaking down in tears at his previous European Grand Prix, in 1999.

This week there has also been an avalanche of anti-Fota copy emanating from the FIA’s press desk. These have all been very carefully worded in order to try and present Fota in as bad a light as possible. However, a close reading of the situation reveals that it is in fact the FIA who are being stubborn here.

Take, for instance, this press release which criticises Fota representatives for not being “prepared to discuss regulation at all”. However, in the following paragraph, the FIA concedes that Fota did bring proposals to the table — just that they weren’t to the FIA’s liking.

the FOTA financial proposals were discussed but it became clear that these would not be capable of limiting the expenditure of a team which had the resources to outspend its competitors.

In other words, because Fota do not want a budget cap (and that surely cannot be news to Max), the FIA are not prepared to countenance any of Fota’s suggestions. That does not seem to me to be Fota who are being inflexible. It is the FIA slamming the door shut on anything that is not a budget cap.

The following day, the FIA released this diatribe which was supposed to outline why Fota were such bad, bad people. But once again it demonstrates the arrogance of the FIA, who appear to be in cloud cuckoo land over what makes the sport attractive to fans:

The FIA and FOM have together spent decades building the FIA Formula One World Championship into the most watched motor sport competition in history.

Axis of Oversteer’s post is bang on:

This statement, which essentially blames di Montezemolo for the whole current mess, is set on the premise that the whole of Formula1’s success is based, in it’s entirety, on the FIA’s work. Apparently the reason people watch sports is not for the stars or the teams, it’s because of the rules. Brilliant!

The FIA goes on to describe Fota as being an organisation “made up of participants who come and go as it suits them”. That seems like quite an odd way to describe an organisation with the stature of Ferrari which is the only participant in any shape to have been involved in Formula 1 from the very start.

The FIA, on the other hand, always delegated the regulation of Formula 1 to Fisa, an organisation which was merged into the FIA by Max Mosley only in 1993. Mosley then set upon moulding it into his dictatorship. Foca (the precursor to FOM) only gained commercial rights to the sport in 1981. Interesting to note that Max and Bernie managed to find their way to positions of power in the governance of the sport following a war in which they both acted as representatives of the teams arguing against the governing body.

The Fisa-Foca war was a complex matter. But I think it’s fair to say that “to take over the regulation of Formula One from the FIA” is something that Max Mosley succeeded in doing, “and to expropriate the commercial rights for itself” is what Bernie Ecclestone once did. Strange that “These are not objectives which the FIA can accept” once the boot is on the other foot.

The FIA reject the notion that the governance structures need changed. But they have an odd way of showing it. One paragraph they talk about how important it is that Formula 1 has a “strong and impartial regulator”. Then in literally the next paragraph, they keep a straight face while admitting that Ferrari have been “officially (as well as unofficially)” represented on the WMSC since 1981. This is the “impartiality” of the FIA that is so important?

According to the FIA, the “Background” of the current political war is based on the fact that Honda pulled out of Formula 1 in 2008. This, apparently, was a bad thing, as it showed that teams could exit F1 at a moment’s notice. Quite why this should be a surprise to Max Mosley stumps me, because no fewer than 23 teams — easily enough to fill two healthy sets of grids — have left the sport since Max Mosley became President of the FIA in 1993 (I may have missed some out — this is just the quick count I did).

• Arrows
• BAR
• Benetton
• Footwork
• Forti
• Honda
• Jaguar
• Jordan
• Larrousse
• Ligier
• Lola
• Lotus
• Midland
• Minardi
• Pacific
• Prost
• Sauber
• Scuderia Italia
• Simtek
• Spyker
• Stewart
• Super Aguri
• Tyrrell

Apparently, Max Mosley didn’t notice all of this. Quite why the Honda scenario made him sit up unlike all the others is a mystery to me.

It is even more odd when you consider that the transition from Honda to Brawn has been a massive success. Unlike some of the above teams — which sometimes embarrassingly went to the wall mid-season, leaving gaps on the grid — the sale of the Honda team was a relatively successful pull-out. Yes, it was messy over the winter. But the Brawn team is reaping the rewards, and it’s a great story for F1. Yet, for Max Mosley, it’s a major problem.

There is also, in this statement, a tacit admission that a budget cap system in a single-tier Championship cannot result in a grid full of the best cars that perform to the standard that fans have come to expect from Formula 1:

…the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) decision of 17 March… introduced a voluntary financial regulation and technical freedoms for the capped teams to enable their cars to achieve Formula One levels of performance.

When the two-tier system was scrapped (as the FIA insist it has been), they decided to retain the budget cap and ditch the technical freedoms. Therefore, in the FIA’s own words, the “pinnacle of motor sport” will no longer contain cars which are “able to achieve Formula One levels of performance”.

Claims that the budget cap would damage the DNA of Formula 1 are rejected by the FIA, who say that the budget cap is a good idea because it evens the playing field. “Isn’t Formula One above all about competition?” I would agree that Formula 1 is about competition. And the budget cap idea is completely antithetical to the principle of meritocratic championship. A budget cap doesn’t “even the playing field”. It rigs the playing field in favour of teams who would not otherwise be in F1 on merit.

There is also no mention of the fact that the one credible new team on the FIA’s entry list, USF1, declared its intention to enter the sport long before the budget cap proposals were announced. USF1 is totally indifferent towards the budget cap, and has dropped a hint that it entered as a non-cost-capped team. It also seems as though the smallest of the current teams, Force India (which split off from Fota for legal reasons), is not interested in the cost cap either.

The FIA claims that “Left to their own devices, at least half the existing teams would have adopted those [budget cap] rules.” This neatly sidesteps the fact that left to their own devices, all of the current Fota teams joined Fota and remain members of Fota as I write.

The FIA says that its actions have been motivated by the need for “new entrants needed to know urgently if they had a place in the Championship.” That is completely contradicted by the way they have treated teams such as Lola like political pawns. Indeed, Lola have decided to withdraw its F1 entry, so incensed were they at the FIA’s behaviour. In the process, Lola have dropped a heavy hint that they will join any potential Fota-led breakaway series (more about that theory can be read on Will Buxton’s blog and at Grandprix.com).

So, what do we want? Top-level grand prix racing? Or Max Mosley’s Formula None?

In my chats about Formula 1 with more casual fans, or perhaps those who just hear headlines in the news about F1, I have noticed a worrying trend. There are many people out there who simply do not buy the idea that Brawn have become so dominant on merit. There are a number of reasons.

First of all, there is no doubt that this is an unusual situation, which raises suspicions among many. This is, after all, a team that did not exist a few weeks before the season began. With hardly any meaningful testing, they hit the ground running in Australia and have been dominant ever since. Never has a new team been so successful so quickly.

Of course, those who have studied the situation know that there are good reasons for this. For starters, the car was always going to be mighty. It is the first car which Ross Brawn — one of the smartest men in the business — has overseen the development of. That Ross Brawn, a man who has been responsible for so many World Championships in the past fifteen years, should be able to put together a winning car should not be such a surprise.

The Brawn team is helped by the fact that the team knows how to win races. Ross Brawn himself has the confidence, experience, expertise and management skills to turn an average team into a great one. He was a pivotal influence in the dominance of Michael Schumacher throughout his entire career. You can add Ferrari’s dominance in the late 1990s and early this decade to Ross Brawn’s CV.

The old Honda team and Jenson Button also won a race, which must count for something. It has been noted that often the first race is the most difficult one to win, so Button’s win in 2006 — though some saw it as a bit of a fluke — must count for something, despite the two year long slump the team took afterwards. This is especially the case when you consider Toyota, who seemingly did their best to throw away victory in Bahrain. That was a scenario which some saw as the jitters of a team not used to winning.

There is also the fact that this car was basically developed with Honda’s resources. Honda gave up on the 2008 season pretty much straight away, allowing them to focus fully on 2009 while others had to split their development between two radically different cars.

The fact that Honda have pulled out has also given Brawn the ability to run with Mercedes engines. There seems to be little doubt now that Mercedes has the strongest engine in F1.

Many casual observers do not seem to be aware of these factors surrounding Honda’s exit. It rather underlines just what a mess the Honda management made of F1 by letting this massive PR opportunity slip. Not only that, but Honda continues to pay Brawn for the privilege of not entering F1. Their customers, including Force India who used to run Ferrari engines, have been effusive about the Stuttgart company’s lump.

Brawn have also probably been helped by the fact that this year’s World Championship is being run to radically different technical regulations to last year. The cards were thrown in the air by Max Mosley, and Brawn have ended up with all the aces in their hand. You could argue that it was engineering excellence rather than luck that has placed Brawn in this position. But ask Max Mosley’s “man in the pub”, and he thinks it’s all too fishy.

This hasn’t been helped by the fuss that was made over the diffusers earlier this season. In my conversations with more casual fans, I have been left with the distinct impression that there are many out there who believe that the F1 community is also sceptical of Brawn’s success and that there is a full-blown investigation into whether Brawn are cheating. This nasty impression could have been avoided had the FIA simply declared that the diffuser was fully legal before the season started, but petty political interests yet again got in the way of common sense.

I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who was encountering these sceptical views about Brawn’s success. But speaking to other F1 fans, it seems as though the public at large is suspicious of the emergence of Brawn and Jenson Button. I heard something similar on last week’s Formula 1 Blog.com podcast. I have even caught myself being sceptical when I sought to explain just what it was that made Brawn so superior this season.

I think it’s a shame that people should find it so difficult to come to terms with Brawn’s success. There is no real suspicion that Brawn have cheated their way to the top. The car is a beauty, and the real consensus among the F1 community is that engineering excellence has brought Brawn where it is.

What does this situation tell us? Perhaps that the FIA should quit meddling with the rules all the time and bring about stability in the regulations. That would remove much of the doubt that a team that climbs its way to the top does so on merit.

Perhaps it also says that a situation where the sport’s grandees are neutered means that people see a victory by a small team as less legitimate. People would probably believe if Brawn were fighting with the likes of Ferrari and McLaren rather than Red Bull.

It doesn’t bode well for Max Mosley’s future vision for F1, where Ferrari may not exist at all, in favour of smaller teams. Max Mosley’s friend, the man in the pub, wants to see the historic names battling for wins.

Personally, I find that sad. Privateer teams are every bit as important to the history of F1 as names like Ferrari. You only really have to go back fifteen years to see a period where practically every car was entered by a privateer, and Championship after Championship was won by a Williams or a Benetton or a (pre-Mercedes) McLaren.

But the public at large has become used to an F1 dominated by manufacturers. The sport faces a difficult transitional period if the public is supposed to take Max Mosley’s new F1 seriously.

F1 politics-watchers will be intrigued to read the news today that Williams have become the first of the current teams to confirm that they have submitted an entry for the 2010 season. This is an embarrassment for Fota, as it makes mincemeat of the organisation’s President’s assertion — which was only made on Friday — that none of the current teams would enter unless the FIA promised to change the 2010 technical regulations.

Indeed, Luca di Montezemolo practically made it the defining policy of Fota. It must be disconcerting for him to see that already one Fota member has undermined this.

The Williams team’s explanation is interesting though. Their CEO, Adam Parr, has gone out of his way to point out that Williams is still fully aligned with Fota:

The unity of FOTA is of paramount importance to Williams. Yesterday we joined the other members of FOTA in writing to the FIA (International Automobile Federation) to request a continuing effort to find a compromise concerning the regulations for 2010.

We believe that under the leadership of (Ferrari president Luca) di Montezemolo and (Toyota motorsport president) John Howett, FOTA has extracted some very significant concessions from the FIA.

These include not only the procedural aspects of the budget cap but also other elements that will enable the higher budget teams to participate.

But explaining the team’s decision to enter the 2010 Championship, contrary to Fota policy, Mr Parr has essentially said that Williams felt that it had no option but to enter the 2010 World Championship:

Williams has — and has always maintained — that we have a binding contract with both FOM (Ecclestone’s Formula One Management) and the FIA to participate in the world championship from 2008 to 2010.

Presumably if Williams has a binding contract, so do other teams. I assume the binding contract is the Concorde Agreement. In a way, therefore, it is unsurprising that it is the manufacturer-backed teams who are standing up to the FIA the most. Williams can’t really afford to breach a contract. But manufacturers have enough money — economic downturn or not — to buy their way out, just as Honda essentially did.

But if it is the case that all these F1 teams are contractually obliged to participate in the World Championship in 2010, why is the FIA asking them all to re-enter?

The Formula 1 news has been dominated by political activity of late. I have struggled to bring myself to write about it, but today’s events seem like a good stage to provide an overview of where things stand.

This business with Ferrari taking the FIA to court over a veto is very interesting. Ostensibly the loss of the court case is bad news for Ferrari, but in fact their point has been proven. The court did confirm that Ferrari do have such a veto — just that they have failed to play their card correctly.

What this has conveniently done, though, is proved the point that the FIA simply are not to be trusted in this sort of situation. This technical veto — along with a host of financial and sporting perks — was given to Ferrari as a reward for jumping into bed with the FIA the last time the governing body’s power was put into question. GPWC (later GPMA) was an alliance of some of F1’s biggest names. It was essentially a bargaining tool for the teams not unlike today’s Fota. Ferrari was a major player in it — until the FIA lured them away with bribes. With Ferrari gone, GPMA was toothless and little was heard of it ever again.

This time, Ferrari aren’t for turning. The threat to the FIA’s power is therefore much greater this time round. So the FIA has preoccupied itself with looking for ways to either break up or undermine Fota. That is why they have this sudden obsession with new teams, even though there have been vacancies on the grid for over ten years. I seriously doubt we’d be hearing about how vital it is to attract new teams were it not for Fota. By doing whatever they can to bring in new teams, the FIA can ensure that there will no longer be unanimity among the teams.

After all, the FIA does not really have much else going for it. Participants, fans, media commentators and other onlookers have all completely lost faith in the FIA as it brings in ever-dafter regulations that lack any cohesion. For just one example, they will constantly bang on about cost cutting, then force teams to incur further costs by radically changing the regulations periodically.

Moreover, the FIA constantly fail to meet their own regulations, such as when earlier this year they attempted to change the sporting regulations within days of the season starting without first consulting the teams. Nor can the FIA administrate the sport in an even-handed way, as has been patently demonstrated by countless unfathomable stewards’ decisions over the past few seasons. The FIA is also wholly inadequate at formulating or policing the technical regulations, as is apparent with the completely botched introduction of kers and their inability to simply tell anyone if the double deck diffuser was legal.

Earlier this year Fota put forward a measured set of proposals that were based on actual market research which was conducted in an open and transparent manner. By contrast, Max Mosley just plucks new rules out of his freshly spanked arse. The FIA changes the regulations willy-nilly, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, without consulting anyone. The views of the teams, drivers, fans and the wider industry all count for nothing as far as the FIA is concerned.

This is the nub of the matter really. As has now become clear, the budget cap controversy was merely a conduit for a larger battle to begin — a battle over the governance of the sport. Do we want Formula 1 to continue to be driven into the ground by a frustrated politician who has no interest in consulting the people who really matter to the sport? Or would we prefer a future where fans and teams have a say, and where regulation changes can be measured and predictable? Well, I know whose side I’m on.

While people may scoff at the apparent arrogance of Ferrari’s recent statements, they do have a point. As readers will know, I am no Ferrari fan. But there is no doubt that this brand carries a lot of history, a lot of status, a lot of respect, a hell of a lot of fans and money by the bucket load. Arguably, the Ferrari brand is much more famous than the Formula 1 brand.

So Ferrari’s point about the calibre of the supposed new teams is bang on in my view. Make no mistake, the vast majority of these are teams that under normal circumstances would not be able to even consider entering F1, with an F1-standard car at an F1-standard budget. It is feasible only with the FIA promising to skew the rules in their favour — just as they skewed the rules in Ferrari’s favour back in 2005. This sort of crap has no place in a “sport” in the 21st century.

Privateer teams may be romantic, and I would love to see decent private teams to be able to compete at an F1 standard on merit, just as Brawn and Williams do today. But F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport. And though some of the proposed new teams are accomplished enough at certain levels, few if any could claim to be on the cusp of being at F1 standard in normal circumstances.

As Joe Saward put it, it beggars belief that Max Mosley would think that it would be worth trading names like Ferrari, Toyota, Renault, BMW and potentially Mercedes for names like Wirth Research, Epsilon Euskadi, RML, Formtech, Campos and so on. Ask Max Mosley’s precious “man in the pub” about any of the names from the first list, and their eyes will light up in recognition. Asking about names from the second list would elicit a nonplussed response.

A grid full of teams like this, and with none of the historic and famous names that mean so much to people, would be an empty F1 indeed. It could be a return to the bad old days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the grid was full of half-arsed operations which polluted the field and acted as mobile chicanes. The FIA went too far in its efforts to get rid of these teams in the mid-1990s. Now it seems happy enough to go too far back the other way.

Max Mosley’s case seems utterly weak. He should know that too, because the last time he threatened the teams by forcing them to enter at short notice, the list of “new teams” was similarly long. Of these teams, one — Prodrive — was given the nod. It never materialised because the FIA decided to forego the biggest opportunity to cut costs they could ever ask for by making customer cars illegal.

As before, these new teams look like paper tigers. Yet Max Mosley is hinging the future of the sport on them because he finds it more palatable than relinquishing any of his power.