Seems odd having what now appears to be a monthly blog so early this time.
Let's face it: Nowadays, it appears that a quintessential part of Formula One is at least one meeting with the WMSC or ICAduring a season. Whilst we were able to escape any last year, we still had a court case regarding Mosley and his off-track doings. In 2007, we had three meetings alone regarding stolen data (two between Ferrari and McLaren, and one between McLaren and Renault). And now, in the space of just 15 days, we're going to have two in one month.
The first and, probably least important of the two, is the diffuser row.
Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams are all running a "double-decker" diffuser to which the other 7 teams do not, under their interpretation of the rules. The FIA have already cleared the design, and both the Australian and Malaysian stewards have cleared the design too. So, we're going into a case to which the affected party has been found "not guilty" on THREE occasions already.
Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull and BMW-Sauber have all put in for this case to be looked at yet again, and, at least in the former two cases, maybe their accounts could be found a little more understanding than the latter two.
At the end of the day, diffuser or not, Red Bull and BMW are already close enough to the Brawn, Toyota and Williams cars as it is.
In fact, even at this stage, Renault and BMW have more points than Williams.
So in my judgement, the case will be dismissed on April 14th, because it's not only an issue which has been cleared three times before, but not to forget that Ross Brawn himself actually had a meeting with the other teams in order to get this loophole thrown out, and the other teams rejected it.
Therefore, Ferrari, Renault, BMW and Red Bull have shot themselves in their own feet.
The case everyone is talking about though is LiarGate.
It seems at this stage everyone is saying "It's disgusting/dispicable what they've done", and, quite frankly, are entitled to that opinion because it's true, it was a terrible thing to do. But said comments directed to Hamilton aren't. Here's why:
Once the race was complete, Hamilton told his account of the race to the press so they had their stories to write up. 4th place in a car as good as Honda's last two attempts is pretty special. Then, he and Dave Ryan were called up to the Race Stewards regarding the Safety Car incident between himself and Jarno Trulli.
Trulli was called in first to give his account of what happened. Whilst waiting, Dave Ryan then informed Hamilton to tell the stewards that he had not been informed by the team to let Trulli past - which, as we all now know from the team radio, was the case.
Hamilton himself already knew better - he knew after letting Trulli past he didn't have to do it, and that an opportunity had gone amiss. But this was a team who had backed him up for 13 years - he feared that if he didn't comply, he could be in trouble with the team, despite having 5 points in the bag already. It was an impossible position for him to be in, and because he loved the team so much, he went ahead and did what Ryan asked.
This itself is one of the crucial aspects to the story. The FIA have accepted that Hamilton was put in a place where he couldn't win, and so have stated that there will be no further action taken on the British driver himself.
When called again for another meeting regarding the issue, now the Race Stewards had the recordings of the press interviews and the team radio, the duo still said they had not discussed to let the Italian pass - and then they found they were done for.
As a result, we now have a World Champion who, for the first time, is in a highly negative mood, and a team manager who has left the McLaren team. And to top it all off, are being taken to the WMSC to answer 5 counts of bringing the sport into disrepute.
When it goes bad for McLaren, it goes HORRIBLY wrong. Considering the FIA wish to take no further action on Hamilton leaves me the problem of wondering what exactly the McLaren boys could face as a punishment. A hefty fine will definetly be somthing the Woking team can look forward to, but as to any race suspensions could be questionable. It could end up being the case that McLaren do not score constructors points again, ala 2007. We can only find out later.
My point is though, we haven't had a clean season since 2004, and quite frankly, to get the reputation of Formula One being a racer's sport again, we need all these issues to go away.
2005 - B.A.R. untruthful to race stewards about "unusual" car in San Marino: Lose points from race and banned from competing in the next two GP's.
2006 - Schumacher parks up car in Monaco qualifying to impede other drivers. Renault's Mass Damper is banned halfway through the season, ironically when Michael Schumacher starts climbing back up to Alonso in the Championship. Alonso also given grid penalty for impeding Massa, despite the closest Massa ever getting to Alonso was 93 metres - still not close enough to disrupt an air flow.
2007 - SpyGate: McLaren handed £100m penalty and DQ'ed from constructors championship. "Illegal fuel" debate ruled out which, if accepted, would've taken the title from Raikkonen and given to Hamilton after the season ended.
2008 - Numerous dodgy calls by race stewards, including Spa (Hamilton/Raikkonen) and Japan (Massa/Bourdais).
2009 - Diffusers, Misleading Stewards.
Five seasons in-a-row with some sort of row corrupting the sport. We just want the racing to determine the championship, please?