While the rule changes were made under the charge of Max Mosley, and it’s maybe to early to judge Jean Todt, has Formula 1 and the FIA missed the point? All fans know what makes for an exciting race. Take the 2008 Belgian GP with Hamilton and Räikkönen going wheel to wheel for the final few laps.

I’m no engineer, but obvious improvements should be wider circuits, manual gearboxes, harder tyres and steel brakes. Maybe a return to a few ‘proper’ circuits as well…
Andy Geering

Dear Andy,
I’ll admit that I did feel a little depressed when I left Bahrain – we had all gone there with such high expectations, but the race was indeed a stone drag, quite devoid of racing.

However, there were good reasons why probably it was always going to turn out that way. This was the first race run under the new ‘no refuelling’ rule, and, for all their simulation work, the teams did not really know what to expect – particularly in terms of tyre wear (especially the softer of the two Bridgestone compounds on offer). The attitude of everyone was therefore conservative and cautious – and this at a track already notorious as a ‘no overtaking’ zone. On reflection, then, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised that the race turned out to be a damp squib.

Since Bahrain, however, I’m sure you’ll agree that things have picked up somewhat. I’ll agree that we have been lucky that rain featured in two of the three races, but I think Melbourne was an exceptional race, Shanghai a very good one, and Sepang not bad, either, given that the track was dry throughout.

It’s a fact, however, that we can’t rely on the elements to provide entertaining Grands Prix. The European season is about to get underway, and, while there may be odd wet races, the likelihood is that the great majority will be dry. As I’ve said ’til I’m weary of saying it, the powers-that-be have got to make really fundamental changes to the rules concerning aerodynamics – until one car is able very closely to follow another through a corner, overtaking will remain an endangered species in F1. No one is suggesting that passing should be easy – this is Grand Prix racing, after all – but certainly it should not be as difficult as it has been for the last 15 or 20 years.

Your points about wider circuits, manual gearboxes and steel brakes are all valid, but… where, in these depressed economic circumstances, does the money come from to widen circuits (save perhaps those in places where there is plenty of government cash, but pretty well zero local interest)? Mention manual gearboxes, and team owners shudder at the thought of all those missed shifts, and consequent costly engine blow-ups. Steel brakes, though, would be an excellent change.

As for your last point about a return to a few ‘proper circuits’, I’m afraid I can only say, ‘Dream on…’ We’ve still got Spa and Monza and Silverstone and Suzuka, while Monaco remains a great test of driving ability, but as Bernie casts his eye ever more eastwards, the likelihood is that new ‘autodromes’ will have an ever-bigger part to play in the World Championship…

It was, by general consent, an appalling happening, and draconian punishments were forecast and – in some cases, anyway – duly handed down. Flavio Briatore was banned from motor racing for life, and Pat Symonds for five years; Renault, the company, got away with a suspended ban (i.e. nothing) and Piquet himself – said by many to have been the instigator of the idea – got not even that, having been granted immunity for turning in his ex-colleagues when the moment suited him (i.e. when he had been fired, and had a powerful thirst for revenge to slake).

“The worst example of cheating I’ve ever known,” commented Stirling Moss at the time, and few would take issue with him. What Piquet et al did that day was to cause an accident with the intention of gaining from it, right?

Right. And all sorts of things – some of them a touch hysterical, in my opinion – were said about the danger, the risk involved, both to Piquet and to other drivers, marshals and so on. I’m not attempting to play down the gravity of the offence, but the incident occurred at the exit of a slow corner, and the Renault finished up flush with the inside wall, well off the line. It was not nothing, by any means, but nor – to my eyes, anyway – was it quite the potential catastrophe described by some.

Now let’s go back a couple of years before the Singapore incident, to Monaco in 2006, to the dying seconds of the final qualifying session. Michael Schumacher had the all-important pole position, but feared that Alonso, out on the circuit and going for it, was going to beat him. Therefore, in the most cack-handed manner imaginable, Schumacher contrived to ‘have an accident’ at Rascasse, thereby blocking the track, so as to thwart Alonso.

Why cack-handed? Well, for a start because it wasn’t even vaguely believable. Michael came into the corner off the pace, and off his normal line. He then put the brakes on hard, locked up – and stopped, a couple of feet from the barrier. As Keke Rosberg said at the time, “Jesus, he could at least have knocked the nose off…” The Ferrari was completely undamaged.

Outrage in the paddock was extreme, and the stewards announced that they would investigate. Who knows why, but it was late that evening before they concluded that Schumacher should be… not banned for life or for five years or even for one race. No, he would start from the back of the grid. Wow! Was that hard-hitting or what? On race day he duly came through to fifth place, and four points.

Now, was what Michael did greatly different from what happened in Singapore? Was not the intention the same in both cases – namely, deliberately to ‘have an accident’ in the hope of benefiting from it? All right, Schumacher didn’t actually hit anything, but his car was in the middle of the road, engine dead, and a carambolage could have occurred behind it.

Perhaps his sin wasn’t as great as Piquet’s, but still he cheated with thoughts of gain in mind (and not for the first time, either). Of course the argument was that Michael’s action wasn’t planned, wasn’t preconceived. Probably so, but it didn’t keep him from spotting an opportunity, and deciding instantly to act upon it. And the discrepancy in the punishments handed out for the two ‘crimes’ seems to me more than a touch absurd.

None argued Schumacher’s case more trenchantly than Jean Todt, but he was then of course a Ferrari man, doing right by his team and thinking of nothing else. Now he is the president of the FIA, and the hope must be that now the interests of ‘the sport’ are uppermost in his mind. On the face of it, sundry announcements made in the wake of December’s World Motor Sport Council meeting give cause for optimism – not least those proposing fundamental changes in the way FIA stewards conduct themselves at a Grand Prix. A most encouraging start to the new regime in Paris, I thought.

Vatanen, one of the great rally drivers (World Champion in 1981), is a popular and well-respected man in the motor sport world, and already a trustee of the FIA Foundation. As well as that, he was an MEP for 10 years (standing down this year), and thus has experience of real-world politics, rather than the ersatz variety so relished in the Place de la Concorde. Vatanen is, as one F1 team principal put it, ‘a proper bloke’. He is also one who genuinely loves this sport – and that in itself would be a breakthrough after what we have been through in the last 18 years.

Apart from Vatanen, there appear to be two names on the table at the moment, and it’s fair to say that neither would be welcomed by the F1 community. Max Mosley, having held the post of president of the FIA since 1991, announced on June 24 that he would not stand for re-election in the autumn, then said on June 25 that perhaps – in light of horrid things said about him by those common FOTA tykes – he might do so, after all. Luca di Montezemolo, Mosley said, had given to the press an impression that he had been ousted. The very idea

Does Mosley really intend to stand again? Or is this all an elaborate preparation for sliding into office his preferred successor, one Jean Todt? No one – on the outside, anyway – has a clue, and, quite honestly, most are losing interest by the day. At Silverstone Bernie Ecclestone was told – in words of one syllable – by F1 luminaries that they were no longer prepared to work with Mosley, and it’s clear they have no wish to work with Todt, either.

If FOTA is to continue to operate within the framework of the FIA, and compete for the F1 World Championship in 2010 and beyond, its favoured choice for FIA president is emphatically Vatanen, a man it feels may be trusted. The teams, though, have no direct say in who shall be in the job.

In 2005, immediately before Mosley won yet another term as president, a ‘cabinet system’ was introduced at the FIA. What this means is that anyone aspiring to the presidency must accompany his application with a list of 22 names of folk within the FIA offering support for his candidacy. This is his ‘cabinet’.

None of the names in one person’s ‘cabinet’, however, may appear in another candidate’s list. Thus, the most powerful – and the best connected – candidates are likely to collar the bulk of the most influential FIA figures. Beginning to get the picture?

Not really a surprise that many FOTA team principals devoutly wish for a clean break from Max, the FIA, Bernie, CVC and the whole damn thing, is it? A ‘breakaway championship’? Bring it on, say I – unless somehow a man like Vatanen can find his way to the top floor in the Place de la Concorde, open the windows, and let in a little fresh air.