MOTORSPORT: Double standards in F1

Except for the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) letting off Renault without penalty after finding it guilty of the same breach of article 151c of the International Sporting Code that McLaren was some months ago in the first of the spying cases.

It should be remembered that McLaren also went unpenalised initially, but then copped its US$100 million fine and the loss of all its 2007 constructors' world championship points -- and thus the constructors' world title -- after Ferrari appealed and emails between McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa and Fernando Alonso came to light.

Renault was hauled before the WMSC at the end of last week over material a former McLaren engineer took to the French-owned team.

"Although a number of very unsatisfactory elements were noted during the deliberations, the WMSC concluded that there was insufficient evidence to establish that the information was used in such a way as to interfere with or to have an impact on the championship," an FIA statement said.

While McLaren clearly isn't happy at what it -- and most of the world that's watching this saga -- sees as inconsistency, unlike Ferrari it is not going to appeal or "squeal".

"We made it very clear that we were not seeking a big penalty," McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh told The Guardian newspaper. "We would not wish the same sort of penalty which we received to be imposed on any other competitor."

We have followed this whole F1 espionage business here closely for several months now.

It remains intriguing, and the issues are not that difficult to comprehend if you have the appetite and time to digest them, but the whole saga becomes a blur simply because of the sheer volume of reading material.

As we have said here repeatedly, FIA president Max Mosley has a brilliant mind, and he has an explanation for everything his governing body has done.

However, it is hard to escape the conclusion that personality conflicts are playing as much a part as substance in the whole affair, and that in the case of McLaren the FIA/WMSC has been playing the man (McLaren chief Ron Dennis) rather than "the ball".

The most cynical F1 observers see it all as a vindictive game being played on Dennis, stretching the credibility of what is meant to be motor racing's premier category and the most important people running it (Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone) and perhaps threatening its very future.

Now, there have been doomsayers about F1 for decades, but this matter is unlike any before.

The perceptions of unfairness are only strengthened by the FIA initiating legal action against Martin Brundle -- international television commentator and previously a driver in 158 grands prix -- for his suggestion in September that the governing body was running a campaign against McLaren "that has all the feel of a witch-hunt".

Brundle is now quaintly calling it "the energetic manner in which Mosley was apparently pursuing McLaren".

"The guillotine fell as McLaren went under it and Renault have passed unscathed," Brundle wrote in last weekend's Sunday Times in London.

"The McLaren judgment is about negativity and suspicion of possible use of Ferrari information, but no real show-stopper I could see.

"The Renault decision is one of an understanding and supportive nature and one only of occasional 'strong disapproval' despite clear and confirmed evidence that information was loaded on to their mainframe IT system, including drawings of McLaren's shock absorber, fuel system, mass damper and seamless shift transmission.

"Some drawings were printed off and idly laid on a key desk before being handed back after a disinterested glance, said the verdict.

"I laughed out loud on that one. It was deemed that, as with McLaren, it could not be proven Renault benefited.

"It seems the actual proof of information within the Renault team was significantly more damning."

Although Brundle never won a GP, he has an abundance of credibility -- including having driven for both McLaren and Benetton, nee Renault, and having been a teammate of Michael Schumacher.

He now fears that his accreditation will be made difficult in 2008 and that there will be efforts to discredit him, despite the string of awards he has won for his commentary.

What an amazing situation this is: a commentator/driver of Brundle's standing is sued for having an opinion, yet other critics are not.

And Mosley thought nothing some weeks ago of branding Sir Jackie Stewart "a certified half-wit" for daring to have an opinion.

As a triple world champion, highly-sought corporate spokesman and former F1 team owner -- indeed the owner of a team that did what many others have failed to do: win a GP within three years -- Stewart is held in very high public esteem.

Much higher esteem, we would think, than Mosley, although he does not have the latter's brilliant legal mind.

And perhaps much higher than Ecclestone, although wee Jackie does not have wee Bernie's billions of dollars.

Mosley and Ecclestone might be very pleased with themselves that the fuss of recent times is keeping F1 in the spotlight in the off-season.

"I don't think it has done any damage -- in fact, it has raised public awareness," Mosley has said.

In Australia, though, it has hardly created a ripple -- and it is here that the next F1 race is, with the start of the new season in just three months.

The never-ending controversy is causing many within F1 or who follow it to question their passion and commitment, and to ask -- mostly in hushed tones - whether Mosley should remain in his position, or at least for how much longer.

We haven't seen it said in quite these terms elsewhere, but despite our admiration for Ecclestone and Mosley, and the managerial skills of perhaps the third most powerful figure in F1, Renault team boss Flavio Briatore, we wonder now at the wisdom of this global sport, business and supposed entertainment package being in the hands of a man nudging 80 (Ecclestone), another approaching 70 (Mosley), while the third is a heavy smoker and is now approaching 60 -- although he has the powerful Ecclestone's ear, and indeed is in partnership with him now in the ownership of soccer club Queens Park Rangers.

How much confidence would we have in the future of a public company if that was the aged line-up it offered its shareholders?

Sir Jackie Stewart has said: 'There must be the removal of any concern over genuine independence and impartiality in the governance of sport by the FIA."

In the case of McLaren he said there had been "an extraordinary  imbalance between the magnitude of the penalty and the crime alleged to have been committed".

And, like many, he asked: "What was the evidence?"

'The sport should be headed by a chief executive, a captain of industry, someone who is not from within the FIA," Stewart said.

"It is not the job for a retired racing driver (a sarcastic reference to Mosley's modest racing record in Formula 2 in the 1960s).

"It is necessary to ensure the very survival of the sport and the long-term future. I can see clouds on the horizon that could affect the future prosperity of the sport. The time has come to take stock."

We won't attempt here today to address the many issues about F1 or the spying saga.

For anyone keen on that detail we recommend perusing grandprix.com and The Times and Sunday Times of London.

What we will say is that, as much as it would have been best for F1 to have closure on the whole espionage business by now, there won't be such closure until at least a month before next season starts in Melbourne in March.

The FIA has scheduled a hearing for February 14 at which the other 10 teams will examine information about McLaren's 2008 F1 car.

Indeed, all teams will be allowed to make "considered representations". What's all this mean? What will the teams will get to consider?

The Times has already called it a potential "Valentine's Day massacre" for Lewis Hamilton's 2008 steed.

McLaren's Whitmarsh has said: "We are confident our car has not been tainted by the intellectual property of any other team."

But might it be that Ferrari, and perhaps the other teams, get to see the detailed drawings of the next McLaren as part of a process of ensuring it does not contain any Ferrari intellectual property that may have originated from the infamous 780-page "Stepneygate" dossier?

It's starting to sound like a strip search at a security check! Yet there will be no similar scrutiny of the 2008 Renault.

Where is it all going to end? By 'it', we mean not just the scrutiny of McLaren but the efforts to humiliate it, and in particular Ron Dennis.

Ultimately, there is the prospect hanging over McLaren of expulsion from next year's world championship.

That would make massive headlines a month out from the start of the championship, and certainly put it in world focus, but at what price to the sport?

F1 is in danger of shooting itself, not just in the foot but through the heart -- if there is one.

As we have pointed out here previously, perhaps it is easier for the FIA to play hard against a team that remains fundamentally privately-owned, with Mercedes-Benz having a 40 per cent stake in McLaren, rather than the wholly manufacturer-owned Renault team.

Carlos Ghosn, Renault's chief executive, is known to be lukewarm at times about his company being in F1 and it is not hard to think that he and Renault might not want to walk away if they copped the rough end of the FIA stick the way McLaren has.

The loss of any manufacturer would be a massive blow for F1. Apart from all that, perhaps there are a couple of other reasons for trying to keep Renault on-side.

It supplies the engines for the GP2 support series which has started to produce F1 drivers -- Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Timo Glock and now Nelson Piquet Junior.

And Renault has been happy to be an engine supplier to another F1 team -- the Red Bull Racing for which Aussie Mark Webber drives.

Indy GP of the year, but no more
If there is not a lot of love around in F1 at the minute, it was interesting to see that the US won the Race Promoters' Trophy for this year, given out by Ecclestone's Formula One Management at the FIA awards gala in Monaco "to the promoter who has proved most helpful, in the most difficult conditions".

Interesting because the US has dropped off the calendar next year, after eight years of staging a GP at Indianapolis. And interesting in the context of the "serve" Ecclestone handed out while there for this year's race.

"They haven't done anything to really get behind it have they?" Ecclestone said when asked, amid speculation about whether a new contract would be agreed, if he was satisfied with the race at "The Brickyard".

"We arrive in town, what do we get? We get banners saying the Indy 500. Not really the way to promote Formula One," Ecclestone said. "They haven't got behind it, full stop."

While Indianapolis Motor Speedway chief Tony George wasn't prepared to meet Ecclestone's demands on the size of the race fee -- nor go asking local, state or federal governments to underwrite the event -- there seems to have been a mellowing on both sides since.

At the time negotiations collapsed Ecclestone made noises about F1 not really needing the US anyway -- a sentiment not shared by partipating motor manufacturers -- but now he says it would be nice to still be there, although for F1 to take root in a country the size of the US he admits it probably needs six or eight races, rather like Europe.

It's a bit of a no-win situation, because the American appetite for F1 diminished from a crowd of around 250,000 for the debut race at Indianapolis in 2000 to around 100,000 this year after the six-car race fiasco of 2005.

Six or eight of those races a year wouldn't do anything positive for F1 in the US!

Still, "The Brickyard" is saying it is still interested in having F1 back, although in the short-term its focus is on its new MotoGP round next year, along with its renowned Indianapolis 500 and the newer but super-successful NASCAR 400.

Alonso back at Renault on megabucks
The F1 driver jigsaw is taking shape now that Fernando Alonso's return to Renault has been confirmed, on what Spanish media say could be a record salary of 35 million Euros a season -- or US$51.3 million, paid for by sponsors rather than the manufacturer, we strongly suspect.

It's for two years -- a compromise between the one-year deal he wanted and the three that Renault wanted.

In any case, it is believed to have performance clauses in it that might allow Alonso to escape if Renault cannot rediscover its 2005 and '06 magic with which it won the constructors' title and Alonso the drivers' crown.

His teammate will be Nelson Piquet, son of Brazilian triple world champion of the same name.

Alonso is being painted very much as the team leader -- after the troubles he had at McLaren sharing equal billing from the team with Lewis Hamilton, and feeling that the rookie was the favored one -- but ambitious rookie Piquet Junior will have other thoughts about that.

While we here might find McLaren's Ron Dennis to be a team principal we would rather deal with than Renault's Flavio Briatore, the latter's track record in driver management bodes well for Alonso's overall happiness in the camp which ought to bring out the best in him again.

To us, he remains the most complete driver in modern F1.

Now that his drive is sorted, and Nico Rosberg has signed a much more generous two-year deal to stay with Toyota-powered Williams, the focus is turned on who will be Hamilton's McLaren teammate.

Increasingly it is looking like the team's test driver, Spanish veteran Pedro de la Rosa, with Finn Heikki Kovalainen -- dislodged from Renault after only one year in a race seat -- the next most obvious option.

De la Rosa, as Austrian Alexander Wurz was at McLaren and Williams, is not good enough to hold down a drive in a team that, all things being equal, ought to finish first or second in the constructors' championship.

Kovalainen had a rocky start with Renault but showed some signs of stardom later in the year and makes a lot more sense for the McLaren drive.

A wildcard, in our view, is Briton Gary Paffett, who is something of a favored son with McLaren but has had a circuitous route to the verge of F1.

Force India -- previously Spyker and Midland and originally Jordan -- has tested seven drivers, including Ralf Schumacher, who embarrassed himself and finally seems to be coming to terms with the reality that his F1 career is over. Even older brother Michael is telling him that it's time to move on.

Austrian Christian Klien is making a strong play for one Force India seat. Expect an Indian driver to be installed within a year or two -- most likely Narain Karthikeyan or Karun Chandok -- but perhaps not just yet.

Lots of new restrictions in F1
Now to what ought to be most important in F1, other than the quality of the racing -- the rules.

Engine specifications are to be frozen for 10 years from the end of next March, while severe limits are to be introduced on aerodynamics -- or at least on the amount of time teams spend refining them in wind tunnels -- and there is to be a new curb even on the number of people -- that is, crew - teams take to races.

Other restrictions will be placed on rig testing, design and manufacturing, suspension and brakes, hydraulic systems, bodywork, weight distribution and circuit testing -- which will curb tyre development.

The full details of the measures will be given to team bosses at a meeting on January 11.

Not discussed or negotiated, it seems. Just decreed!  Many of these limits seem odd for what is meant to be the frontier for new automotive technology.

Max Mosley has been harping for years -- as have Ecclestone and Briatore - about the need to reduce costs, making the point that much of the technology does nothing to enhance the racing.

That's all well and good, but from the outside a 10-year freeze on engine development appears at odds with being a showcase for cutting-edge technology.

Here's Mosley's latest reasoning on it: "There is no need to develop an F1 engine any further. The engine runs at 19,000 rpm, which is far faster than any comparable engine. It sounds good, it's reliable and amazingly the six partially frozen engines of the current manufacturers are really evenly matched," Mosley told the recent Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco.

And he told The Paddock magazine: "The F1 racing engine is now fully developed. That is to say, there's nothing more you can do to an F1 engine that will enhance F1, make the competition better, or bring any benefit at all.

"What you're trying to do in F1 is have a racing engine that sounds terrific and produces a lot of power. That's already at odds with road car engines.

"Once the F1 engines went past about 9000rpm, they were starting to lose the road car connection.

"Last year they were up to 19,000rpm and, if we hadn't stopped it, by now they could have been at about 22,000rpm.

"Completely irrelevant to the road. Just an utterly pointless engineering exercise."

Mosley wants the money that has traditionally been spent on engines to now be directed into peripheral developments, like Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) -- which store energy from braking and engine heat and return it to the wheels under acceleration.

He may well be right that that can be a far more valuable contribution to road car development than squeezing more revs and more horsepower out of an engine already spinning three times as fast as the one in a family sedan.

Limiting F1 teams to one wind tunnel, and operating it only eight hours a day, could be annoying to teams and manufacturers like McLaren, Williams, Honda and Toyota that have two wind tunnels.

Many teams often use those tunnels 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Now some will be left with a redundant facility which they will find themselves having to lease or sell to try to recoup their investment.

Restrictions will be imposed to prevent teams re-deploying staff from wind tunnels into computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

Making the rules in motor racing is not an easy or popular job, but -- while some of the changes may be welcomed by the participating car manufacturers, more so than the F1 teams -- the way directions change, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that get squandered, is hardly conducive to encouraging manufacturers to compete in the sport.

Extra-special Race of Champions
There might be a fair bit of interest this weekend in the Race of Champions, being held for the first time in Britain -- at the new Wembley stadium, and enticing Michael Schumacher into a competitive comeback.

The Race of Champions was created in 1988 and features a multitude of drivers from various forms of racing, competing two at a time -- against each other and the clock -- in identical machinery on a short, parallel track in a knockout competition to determine a Champion of Champions.

Somewhat amazingly, it has never been won by a current or former F1 driver.

The closest was in 2004, when then almost unknown Heikki Kovalainen took the title, knocking out Michael Schumacher in the semis -- which helped propel him towards his F1 debut this year.

Kovalainen is again among the 16 drivers listed for this weekend, along with Schumacher, David Coulthard, Jenson Button, Britain's triple world touring car champion Andy Priaulx, NASCAR's back-to-back champion Jimmie Johnson, two-time world rally champion Marcus Gronholm and seven-time Le Mans 24-hour winner Tom Kristensen.

Organisers are hoping that Lewis Hamilton may yet show up and drive, which could produce the much-anticipated race against Schumacher.

A range of cars will be used, from the Aston Martin V8 Vantage N24 sports coupe to the ROC Car, a lightweight special built specifically for the Race of Champions.

Competing drivers will also all try their hands in rally cars from Fiat and Ford, as well as a specialist touring car called the Solution F.

A crowd of 80,000 is expected to pack Wembley.

A batch of amazing NASCAR numbers
NASCAR has wound up its year, with some massive cheques being handed out.

Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson collected US$15,313,920, comprising prizemoney plus US$7,646,421 from the season points fund. His total was just short of the US$15,770,125 he earned, before endorsements, last year.

Johnson's career earnings are now US$59,531,336. He won 10 of the 36 Cup races this year -- twice as many as last year, and including four in a row during the Chase at the end of the season -- had 20 top 5 finishes (7 more than last year) and 24 top 10 finishes.

Johnson gave team owner Rick Hendrick his seventh Cup title and in his six seasons in the series Johnson has never finished worse than fifth. Next season he will be trying to match the record of three straight titles of Cale Yarborough from 1976-78.

The top 10 NASCAR drivers this year collectively took US$24,068,732 from the points fund.

Jeff Gordon, runner-up to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Johnson but a four-time champion, collected US$10,926,687 this year, including US$3,280,915 from the points fund, and raised his all-time leading earnings total to US$93,300,213. Gordon had a record 30 top 10 finishes this season.

Kevin Harvick, who won the Daytona 500 but finished 10th in the championship, took away US$8,861,128.

In the secondary Busch series in which Aussie Marcos Ambrose raced, champion Carl Edwards earned US$2,485,582 -- roughly half in prizemoney and the other half from the points fund.

Every race in the Busch series had a purse of more than US$1 million. And 15 drivers, including Ambrose, earned US$1 million or more for the season.

There has been a lot of debate in recent days about whether full-time Cup drivers should be allowed to score championship points, or even compete, in the second-tier series.

Cup stars won 33 of the 35 races this year, while rookie Stephen Leicht beat a sparse field of big-names at Kentucky in June and Jason Leffler won at Indianapolis in July.

Ambrose, who finished eighth in his rookie season in the series and will compete again next year as well as drive 12 Cup races in a Ford, said before flying home this week for a family holiday that he wants the Cup drivers in the second-tier races to help him gauge his progress.

But he sympathised with teams struggling to compete against the big-money Cup operations.

"A lot of Busch teams that only run Busch are closing their doors and that's a worrying sign when you've got teams not being able to survive, let alone compete against these Cup deals," Ambrose said.

"The Cup teams have a lot of sponsors they can hand down, technology and Cup drivers.

"It's an uphill battle for the rest of us, but we all enjoy the challenge. Enjoy the chase. Those guys are our benchmark."

V8 snapshot
After all that, we haven't even touched on V8 Supercars yet.

There has been a bit happening on the driver merry-go-round, most of it fully anticipated, and a lot of fuss in Adelaide over the South Australian government bowing to the city council by not proceeding with the planned $55 million redevelopment -- including a big new permanent grandstand -- at Victoria Park, venue for the Clipsal 500, and instead settling for a $20 million temporary grandstand.

We had hoped to take a look at the TV figures for the Phillip Island finale. Unfortunately time has not allowed, but it's something we will keep in mind for the future -- and perhaps a broader perspective.

In short, we hear that the five-city -- that is the five mainland capitals -- total for the 7 Network's Island telecast peaked at 692,000 viewers, with 210,000 in Melbourne, 177,000 in Sydney, 157,000 in Brisbane, 90,000 in Adelaide and 58,000 in Perth.

Our snouts tell us that they are very respectable numbers, although there is some surprise that 7 and V8 Supercars Australia have not been shouting the figures from the rooftops.

We hear that V8 Supercars boss Tony Cochrane is claiming a 36 per cent increase in TV viewers on 7 this year over the number who watched on the 10 network last year.

Our snouts suggest the increase may be closer to 15 per cent and on some days little different.

Any gain would be something to crow about, particularly after the disappointment, even resentment, that was felt when the announcement was made of the V8s moving from 10 to 7.

We'll keep our ear to the ground for anything we can glean on the subject.