You Would Never Guess How Many Women Named “Monaco Glamour” There Are Out There!

I must confess to already having developed something of a love-hate relationship with the Monaco Grand Prix. Sitting comfortably on the “love” side of the scale, there’s the circuit itself. Is there anything more thrilling that Monaco on-board footage? Is there anything better than this?

No, I mean actually anything better. How can anyone watch that and then not say, “Holy crap! I clearly need to spend every waking moment contemplating this amazing sport, where people actually drive like that on streets that are more like Midtown Manhattan at rush hour than a race track!” The circuit, the challenge it has presented drivers historically and still presents — how could that fail to be compelling?

Ah, but the other side of the scale. Well, that includes…almost everything else. The flaunting of obscene wealth, the prominence given to visits from vapid celebrities who care precisely jack about Formula 1, the…wait, did I mention the obscene, revolting, ostentatious displays of wealth? Not to mention the obscene, revolting, ostentatious displays of Flavio Briatore, who always seems to be around during Monaco GP weekend. There’s absolutely nothing attractive to me about any of that. I’m told I really ought to visit Monaco, because it’s so amazing. Other than the actual racing that takes place there, it’s hard for me to think of a single reason why I’d want to. I don’t even think the weather sounds inviting.

Of course, of course, I realize this makes me both a Philistine and a freak in the eyes of most. And possibly a socialist to boot. I’m at least partly guilty on all charges, I imagine.

All that said, I enjoyed nearly every minute of the race weekend that didn’t involve something terrifying or a photo of a woman with the caption “Monaco glamour,” as though that were her name or her reason for being. On the subject of things that were terrifying, my happiness at Sergio Perez’s relative well-being after an 80-G meeting between his car and the wall at the Nouveau Chicane cannot be overstated. He seems to be feeling more motivated than ever and can’t wait to get back in the car, and my fingers are crossed that he will pass his FIA physical with flying colors and be back in full effect in Montreal.

As for the race itself, those who know me might find this difficult to swallow, but I speak the truth when I say that even I was disappointed at the red flag and subsequent changing of the tires. Yes, I am a Vettel fan — but that’s the thing. I wanted to see what he could do on those geriatric tires he’d been using for more than half the race. I was literally at the edge of my very seat waiting to see this. And even if, in the end, Fernando Alonso were able to overtake him, I knew with every fiber of my being that it would not be easy for him and that people would be saying, “Wow, that was pretty amazing. I can’t believe Vettel defended that position for that long on those tires.”

But no — in the end, everything turned out much differently. I still think Seb accomplished something special, but it wasn’t what it could have been.

Oddly enough, when I first started writing this post, it was almost entirely about what happened with Lewis Hamilton both during and after the race. Now that this much time has passed, it feels like everything worth saying — and a hell of a lot of other crap besides — has already been said. Do I have anything useful to add? Almost certainly not.

Here’s what I keep thinking, though: Lord knows I have a terrible temper. If someone came and stuck a microphone in my face when I was really pissed off and started asking me questions, it curls my hair to think of the kinds of things that might end up recorded for posterity. I suppose the point I want to make is one a lot of other people have made: Cut Lewis Hamilton some slack. Please allow me to direct you to what David Coulthard and Maurice Hamilton have to say about the whole mess, if you haven’t read it already. They address his during-the-race maneuvers and his post-race comments more knowledgeably than I could, especially considering my own perhaps overly simplistic admiration of both aggressive racing and unguarded speech.

After watching video of Hamilton’s moves on Massa and Maldonado roughly a million times, I was still unable to decide who was definitively at fault. Lucky thing I’m not a steward, right? On balance, it’s hard for me not to conclude that Hamilton’s penalties were overly harsh, as I almost always would in such a situation. At the same time, though, I also acknowledge that I’m not out there in a car racing against him, in which case I might feel a bit differently. I just don’t know. I can speak only as a fan — a fan who relishes very aggressive driving, as many fans do. I don’t want Lewis Hamilton to change the kind of racer he is. Luckily, he seems to have no intention of doing that anytime soon, despite all the flak and penalties.

Does racial bias have anything at all to do with how often Lewis Hamilton is penalized by the stewards? I don’t have nearly enough information to even begin to address that question. That being said, it seems a major factor in his frequent penalization might be his particular style of racing, a style that many people at least claim to want to see more of but that is likely to end up in more contact and crashes than others. It’s possible that, with time, he’ll be able to set his anger and frustration aside more effectively in situations like that in Monaco, but I would not want him to change his basic approach for anything.

Well, That Was…Terrifying

During the red flagged portion of today’s qualifying, when no news was available about Sergio Perez’s condition and while all manner of terrifying scenarios were running through everyone’s minds, I thought I would at least make an attempt at completing some meaningless yet necessary tasks to pass the agonizing time. I gave that up in a hurry, though, when I tried writing my landlord’s address on an envelope and couldn’t even form letters, my hands were shaking so hard.

I know I was far from alone there. The only acceptable sequence of events that includes a crash goes like this: (1) a crash happens; (2) the disgruntled driver removes the steering wheel and jumps out of the car. When minutes tick by without step 2 happening, when the ambulance arrives and screens are put up to hide what is going on, and when there isn’t radio communication with the driver confirming he’s okay, it’s hard not to have the worst-case scenario at least nudge its way into the back of your mind. This, after all, was where Karl Wendlinger crashed back in the terrible year of 1994, and this was the crash that people, during morning practice, had been sighing sighs of relief over Nico Rosberg not having.

To learn that Perez has nothing more than a mild concussion and a bruised thigh was both a massive relief and an illustration of how safe F1 cars are these days. In fact, I read that if it were up to him, he’d be racing tomorrow. Of course, his doctors have other ideas! No Monaco Grand Prix for him this year. Regardless, he seems to be in good spirits, if his posts on Twitter are any indication.

Before that shunt, Perez was having a great day of qualifying, making it into Q3 for the first time. Monaco seems to be a good circuit for him — he won there last year in GP2 — and it’s really unfortunate he won’t be able to race there this year. But he’ll have next year to show what he can do in Monaco, and he’ll have the remainder of this year, for that matter, to show what else he can do — and if that same crash had happened twenty years ago, what are the odds that would have been the case?

Formula 1 TV Series? YES PLEASE.

Last week’s issue of New York magazine featured a series of articles on television. In one of them, an article about the US cable channel AMC, an upcoming (well, hopefully it’s still upcoming) series about “an American who enters the Formula 1 scene” in 1960s Italy is briefly mentioned. The article also says a “current racer” was brought in to help pitch the idea.

I know I read about this series a while back, but I can’t remember many details, and I definitely don’t remember a current racer being involved. Any idea who it was? This would have been sometime during the period March 7–9. The article didn’t actually specify that it was a current F1 racer, so I suppose it could have been just about anyone. In fact, come to think of it, this would have coincided with preseason testing in Barcelona, so it almost certainly wasn’t a current F1 driver.

In any case, I REALLY hope this series ends up getting made and aired. AMC series tend to be held in very high regard here (think Mad Men), and something like this has the potential to get a lot of people interested in the sport. Fingers crossed…

Haters Gonna…Well, You Know.

If I were looking for an example of how things Sebastian Vettel actually does in real life make absolutely no difference to the haters out there, I could not have dreamt up a more perfect one than some of the reactions to qualifying today. Smiling, waving, shaking Mark’s hand, stating in the press conference that Mark “deserved pole” and “did a better job today” — exactly what else do people want? Well, the fact is, that’s an utterly useless question to ask. There’s nothing those people want, really. Vettel could have draped a congratulatory wreath of flowers over Mark’s shoulders, and it would not have made one iota of difference. Such people would still describe him as “petulant” and “throwing his toys out of the pram.” (And can I just say, as a brief side note, that I could not possibly be more tired of that expression? I don’t care who it’s describing. Oh my GOD. Please, I beg of you, come up with a new metaphor for this phenomenon.)

I’ve seen people — more than one — allude to Vettel’s “body language” after qualifying, rather than citing any instance of specific behavior. Wow. Seriously? What sort of body language were you expecting, exactly? Was he supposed to leap for joy and extend his loathed #1 finger when he lost pole to his teammate, after a streak that seemed as though it could have been headed toward a new record? Come to think of it, if memory serves, his body language resembled that of many other drivers I’ve seen in..well, not precisely the same situation (after all, that doesn’t happen too often), but similar ones: gracious, sportsmanlike, yet smiling perhaps a bit halfheartedly. Slightly subdued.

I realize Vettel has not always behaved this way in similar situations in the past. I’m talking about what happened today. If we’d like to start delving into the behavior of last season, perhaps we might hearken back to some of the instances in which the tables were turned and Mark lost out on pole position to Seb. Because if that wasn’t sullen “pouting” on Mark’s part after quali for, say, the European Grand Prix last year, I’m not sure I know the meaning of those words. (Hey, maybe I don’t! It would explain a lot of my confusion today, that’s for sure.)

I had hoped for a good weekend for Mark, and it looks like so far he’s getting just that. What I hadn’t anticipated was this blood-pressure-increasing illustration of what I’ve been arguing for a while now: the widespread, vicious dislike of Vettel among fans has little to do with any of the things people say it has to do with. He’s young, he’s German, and he’s dominating the sport, and if people feel more comfortable seeing him as a petulant loser “throwing his toys out of the pram,” then that’s what they’re going to see, regardless of whether it has any basis in reality.

“He Gets Out of the Ruddy Car!”

Each day, it’s almost as though I can hear the clamoring of the literally five or six spambots who read this blog: “Organic opinion-expressing unit designated ‘Robyn’: explain lack of blog posts for commenting on with special deals. FREE Penis Enlargement Sample – get your hard long one today!”

So, to all you hardworking spambots (and anyone else who might check this blog occasionally), my apologies. The lack of posting has been partially a result of my having to spend a lot of my free time doing stuff I actually get paid for, partially a result of general laziness, and partially brought about by deep antipathy related to quite a bit of my blog content mysteriously disappearing not too long ago. (According to WordPress, I was the one who deleted it — but unless I did it in my sleep, I have to respectfully disagree!) Trying to get back in the habit of regular posting now, though, so please bear with me, faithful bots!

That was some race in Turkey, which of course by now has been covered to death by everyone everywhere. After Sebastian Vettel’s crash in Friday practice, I said in an e-mail exchange with a couple friends that I. . .wait, let me quote: I didn’t “. . .know how this [would] affect Seb’s confidence level.” I had to concede that there was every chance it might not affect it, because, after all “he’s a pretty ridiculously confident guy — but he’s also very superstitious. . . .” And considering what happened at that circuit last year, I couldn’t help but wonder about his emotional and mental state going into qualifying on Saturday.

Well, as we know now, he showed there had never been anything to worry about. Never anything at all. If anything, he and the team displayed more confidence than usual. Sure, okay, they apparently had talked about that qualifying strategy even before Seb’s crash — but in order for it to have really been feasible, they had to lay down some serious fast laps in Q3. Yes, I get that it’s possible to claw your way up the field these days, a la Mark Webber in China, especially if your tire situation is good — but is that something anyone really wants to have to put themselves through if they don’t have to? I find it almost impossible to believe being in that position is going to be anyone’s first choice. What they did took balls, is what I’m saying. The title of this post comes from David Hobbs, on SpeedTV’s coverage of qualifying, talking about the effect that strategy would have on other teams’ states of mind, as Seb and Mark chilled out in the garage while others were frantically trying to beat their last lap times.

Peter Windsor has written that, on Seb’s pole lap, he had DRS activated before the third apex of Turn 8. This is not something someone does when they’re a bit lacking in confidence after a big crash the day before. You should just go read what Peter Windsor has to say about all that, because he, unlike me, actually knows what he’s talking about. Not that his description of Seb’s “astonishing feel for grip and harmony at the daunting Turn 8 corner” is going to change any of the haters’ minds or make them stop thinking pretty much any idiot could be driving the RB7 and laying down almost record-breaking laps — but, if it were up to me, they’d all read that post anyway.

As Karun Chandhok put it in his most recent column, Seb is “. . . just driving in an unbeatable zone of self-confidence and belief.” There are plenty of people doubting Sebastian Vettel’s abilities right now, but, thankfully, Sebastian Vettel is not one of them.

As for the race itself, there has been much talk about how overtaking was artificial/too easy/boring, about DRS being the work of the devil, etcetera. I can see both sides, and some of those overtakes weren’t exactly edge-of-your-seat thrilling maneuvers, I’d agree. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say DRS is ruining the racing for me as a spectator. To me, it seems like a bit of fine tuning with regard to where the DRS zones are designated at each circuit is probably a good idea, but it doesn’t seem like an insoluble problem. The drivers’ opinions about DRS certainly do seem to vary widely, with Rosberg, Hamilton, and Alonso saying they’re cool with it and Heidfeld, Barrichello, and Webber not seeming quite so enamored. Webber was presumably even less enamored of the news that teams will be free to use DRS in Monaco, a situation he argued posed potential safety risks.

Finally, in the aftermath of the race, a lot of discussion has centered around Michael Schumacher, especially in light of his comments that this season has not been one of “big joy” for him. I began to write about this — and write and write and write, until I realized that’s going to need to be an entirely separate post. So spambots, start your engines! You’ll have yet another post to comment on soon.

I Got Very Close to an F1 Car and Didn’t Break It

There aren’t many things that would motivate me to drag my sorry ass out of bed on a Saturday morning and trek out into the rain.

Worth getting out of bed for.
(Note: I've noticed a lot of people finding this blog by Googling "RB7." Let me save you some trouble by telling you this car is not the RB7. See below!)

When I first arrived at the Javits Center for the New York International Auto Show, I had some trouble finding the one thing I’d come to see: the Red Bull RB7 (or what was being called the RB7, anyway — see notes added below). This can be chalked up to (a) my abysmal sense of direction (the Javits Center is big, okay?) and (b) the fact that the signs reading “Red Bull Race Cars” directed me to an exhibit that definitely did not include the RB7. Instead, there was a drifting car and a drifting. . . er, driver (drifter?) whom I almost asked for directions to the RB7 because I thought he was just some dude who worked there. (Wow. I am so glad I didn’t actually do that. SO GLAD.) The dudes who actually did work there had heard nothing about there being any F1 car anywhere at the Auto Show — and, they assured me, they would totally know if there actually was one.

“But. . . I saw a picture! On the internet!”

“Wait — you actually saw it? Where?”

“Infiniti posted it! On Twitter!”

“So you actually saw a picture of it?” I think this guy might have thought I was a little tetched in the head (who could blame him?), although he was very nice about it all. He asked me to please come back and let him know if I managed to find what I’m sure he thought had to be a figment of my imagination.

I then guessed, correctly, that the RB7 might be located in the Infiniti section, which I am proud to say I eventually found once I paid $5 for the program, which had a map. When I finally spotted the nose of the car off in the distance, it was all I could do not to tackle everyone in my way to get to it.

So gorgeous. So much smaller than it seems like it ought to be. How Mark Webber folds his tall self into such a vehicle is beyond me. I was so awestruck and so completely vibrating with excitement that the Infiniti guy working there offered to let me inside the barrier onto the rotating platform and took a couple pictures of me kneeling right next to the car! (You won’t be seeing those. ;-)) And then, apparently, tales of my complete dorkitude were told to everyone who came to see the car after me. Such is the story of my life.

Other stuff was seen at the Auto Show, and other things happened ( I got Simona de Silvestro’s and Justin Wilson’s autographs!)– but getting to see an F1 car up close and personal for the first time is not something I’m going to forget anytime soon.

There was some discussion as to exactly which Red Bull car was up there on the rotating podium. It was pointed out, for example, that there was a part of the rear wing where the Bridgestone logo had been painted over, and a few people were pointing out parts of the car that looked different than the RB7. I had assumed that, if they put the RB7 up there for everyone to gawk at and photograph, they would change a few things here and there, just because that’s how F1 teams seem to roll. When I came home and compared, the cars looked pretty similar, although I thought I could see some differences that might or might not be a result of photos being taken at slightly different angles. My photos aren’t exactly perfect, to say the least, and I’m probably not the best person to spot the really important differences anyway. I’ve included a bunch more pictures below; let me know what you think. (Disclaimer: I’m the worst photographer ever.)

Note:  I should mention that, even though it wasn’t an RB7, it was unequivocally labeled as one on the sign.

However,  Smart people on Facebook have identified it as an RB6. The shark fin is hard to see in my photos, but that’s definitely different from the RB7…

On Champions and Underdogs

Most people like a winner, but they don’t like consistent winners. . . . When people perceive you as an underdog, they are very supportive. Then when you’re on top, they turn you from a David into a Goliath and immediately try to tear you down.

(Ron Dennis, quoted in Grand Prix People)

Back in the 1990s, Michael Jordan led some Bulls of a nonracing (but also red!) persuasion to six NBA championships.

For Chicagoans who were basketball fans at that time — including the many Chicagoans he turned into basketball fans — Michael Jordan will always be something akin to a deity. A city with a massive love of sports and yet precious little victory to celebrate so much of the time, Chicago had never seen anything quite like him. Neither had anyone else, for that matter. So immense was his talent that he was able to lead what had been a truly pathetic team out of the depths failure and eventually into the stratosphere, where they dominated pro basketball for the better part of a decade.

Six championships. Three years winning, two years merely making it to the conference semifinals, then three more years winning. And I can tell you as one of those Bulls fans that not a single one of those championships was taken for granted or regarded as simply routine. Each championship was unmitigated joy, like we experienced with the 1985 Bears, except an unbelievable six times.

Of course, that was us. Of course we were happy. We were the ones doing the dominating. The dominated — well, they felt a bit differently about Michael Jordan’s Bulls.

My dad told me a story about when he and my mom traveled to San Antonio during one of those later championship seasons and went on a boat ride with a bunch of other tourists. The boat operator struck up a chummy conversation with everyone about NBA basketball — where the passengers were from, what teams they followed. My dad kept quiet as long as he could; he knew what was coming. When they finally got around to him and my mom and learned they were Bulls fans, my parents became more or less pariahs. No one spoke to them for the rest of the ride.

Never mind the years and years of obscurity. Never mind that, not even ten years earlier, a Bulls championship would have been nearly unthinkable. At this point, people elsewhere hated the Bulls. One championship? Sure, that’s an inspiring story for a team with the Bulls’ dismal history. Two championships? Okay, starting to push it a bit, but I guess you do have Michael Jordan and all. . .  Three championships? No, no, you’ve worn out your welcome — that’s quite enough. You’ve gone from potentially lovable underdog to predictable winner who needs to be brought down several pegs. Four, five, six championships? We hate you, thou epitome of evil!

Surely, the point of transition from underdog to unwelcome habitual winner isn’t set in stone and depends on numerous factors, but I’d venture to guess it often occurs right around the time of the second championship. Yes, often, but not always. Which brings me to the case of Red Bull Racing.

By the end of the 2010 F1 season, many fans were talking about Red Bull as though they were already an unwelcome winning dynasty — which is interesting, considering they won their first constructors’ and drivers’ championships in that same season. What is it about Red Bull that got so many people so sick and tired of them so quickly? Is it Sebastian Vettel, the young and emotional yet by all accounts friendly and down-to-earth German driver with a quirky sense of humor, whom people somehow love to hate? Is it Red Bull itself, the “drinks company” run by Austrians with buttloads of cash at its disposal? How much did Mark Webber’s deft use of the press and all the whisperings of favoritism within the team in 2010 have to do with it?

One complaint that was (and is) heard above all others relates to boredom and predictability. How boring that Red Bull is constantly on pole position! How predictable that Vettel wins whenever he’s on pole position! And yet how anyone could call the 2010 season “predictable” or “boring” is beyond me. Did everyone miss the part where the only time Vettel led the championship during the course of the season was when he won the championship in the very last race? Did everyone miss the part where there were five — FIVE — drivers on three teams who were absolutely in contention for the championship toward the end of the season? Yes? Here’s a picture to jog your memory.

Still, it is widely acknowledged that Red Bull has had the fastest car for a couple of years now, a fact that has rubbed many the wrong way and produced a long-term sense of foreboding. The response often takes the form of speculation about how the designers must be cheating, particularly with regard to flexing of the front wing. Frankly, I’m no engineer, and I keep hearing different things about this. The front wing must be entirely rigid, and Red Bull’s clearly isn’t! / It’s impossible for a front wing to be entirely rigid, but Red Bull’s is way more not rigid than it ought to be! / Red Bull’s front wing is totally illegal and evil in every respect, but Adrian Newey has used black magic to make it flex hugely during races and not while being tested by the FIA! Etcetera.

But isn’t that what F1 engineering is all about? Figuring out ways to work around the letter of the regulations to make your car faster than all the others? And another part of F1 engineering, as I understand it, is to try to figure out exactly what your successful competitor is doing to work around the letter of the regulations and then try to copy it as well as you can. These processes have been proceeding apace. All part of the game, right? Teams try to improve their own performance with the goal of beating other teams.

What I find puzzling is the number of fans who are already seemingly so invested in seeing Red Bull taken down by whatever means necessary. People are already talking about the team and Vettel in terms of the Schumacher/Ferrari dynasty that apparently drove so many away from the sport because of the boredom and predictability of being faced with the same team and driver always winning. It amazes me to hear demands that the FIA do whatever they have to to devise a wing flex test that will catch Red Bull out and put an end to their dominance. Really? Is that the way you want to go about it? Do you have so little faith in other teams’ ability to come up with their own solutions? Is leveling the playing field by stamping out design creativity the way you want the sport to proceed? Along similar lines, a couple weeks ago people were fantasizing about punishing Red Bull for “not using KERS correctly.” Again — really? The tone of some of the stuff I read about Red Bull’s imaginary “start-only KERS” made it seem like a mechanism that involved the blood of freshly killed kittens and puppies rather than the simple use of a (nonrequired!) bit of technology at one point in the race but not at others.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to the fact that people want to be entertained and to feel invested — to feel that there’s always sufficient uncertainty about the outcome of a race (or a game) and that their guy will have a chance. Despite the fact that more guys than usual did have a chance at the championship very late in the season last year, people were already feeling threatened by the potential in Red Bull — by the idea that, if the team were able to eliminate some of the car’s reliability issues and Vettel were able to cut down on some of the mistakes he’s prone to make, then there would be nothing to stop them from becoming the next Schumacher-led Ferrari. Never mind their status as still a relatively new team, never mind that they ranked seventh in the constructors’ championship as recently as 2008. Red Bull Racing is no longer any kind of underdog.

I got the impression, back in the 90s, that some might have been happier had Michael Jordan been required to play at least a quarter of every game with one hand tied behind his back. Would that have leveled the playing field sufficiently for everyone’s liking? Similarly, perhaps many F1 fans would be in favor of the FIA prohibiting Adrian Newey from working on car designs when. . .oh, I don’t know, how about when his blood alcohol level is below a certain threshold? Because if you succeed in forcing Red Bull to make their front wing work in just the same way as everyone else’s, Newey is likely to work his genius magic in some other way. Perhaps it’s time to stop this plodding, whack-a-mole approach to eliminating the threat of boring, excessive excellence in F1. Why not go straight to the source and hobble the creative thought process before it has a chance to devise excessive excellence in the first place?

(The graphic in this post was made using light textures by SICKBOYGFX and ROJOdesigns, available at Official PSDs.)

Fun with Rear Wings, Part 1

I think of the rear wing on a Formula 1 car as analogous to the plumage of the male peacock, its primary purpose being to attract female cars as mates.

Oh, I’m joking, obviously. F1 cars don’t really mate. They reproduce asexually! However, the rear wing is still one of the more eye-catching parts of an F1 car, and for a while now I’ve had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to mess around with patterns made from images of rear wings. This afternoon, instead of accomplishing anything remotely useful, I finally began doing that. Here are the first three I’ve come up with. Bet you can guess within two seconds which rear wings they’re based on!

Click for a bigger version.

 

A Walk in the Park

I don’t really like the word dominant at this stage, to be honest, because there is a long, long way to go.

That’s Sebastian Vettel being cautious/diplomatic/sportsmanlike/superstitious/some combination of those adjectives, as I suppose a world champion F1 driver probably must be after winning the first grand prix of the season. So that’s admirable. I, however, am not constrained by any such need, and my victorious finger-jabbing display of trash talking at 4:00 am this morning was truly unseemly.

Seb might not have felt as though the race was a walk in the park, but that’s pretty much what it looked like from where I was — from where most spectators were — sitting. The fact that this truly dominating victory was accomplished without the use of KERS just made it all the more impressive. Or, perhaps, a better word might be “ominous,” as far as his competitors are concerned.

It wasn’t a race of unadulterated happiness for the Red Bull fan, however. Not to take anything away from the impressive race run by Hamilton and Petrov, but Mark Webber ought to have been on that podium with his teammate. He doesn’t seem to know why he wasn’t, Christian Horner didn’t seem to have any post-race insight about that, either, and I think a lot of us are now waiting for some explanation of how Mark managed to be so far behind where he really should have been this weekend. It all reminded me of a few months ago in Abu Dhabi, actually.

Now, though, let’s talk about how I am SO RIGHT. About most things, clearly, but in particular about one Sergio Pérez. Yes, I’ll pause now and let you all marvel at my prescience. He finished SEVENTH, guys, and made only ONE pit stop, and even snagged fastest lap at one point. The fact that a couple millimeters of rear-wing radius has now deprived him of the points he earned does not detract from the greatness of his performance in his very first grand prix (or from my rightness), and I think people are still going to be talking about him as one of the drivers if not the driver of the race.

As a lover of rule following, I’m not necessarily inclined to rant at the stewards in this situation. If the Sauber rear wing violated the rules, then something needed to be done. But wow — this disqualification was gutting. And was disqualification truly the appropriate punishment? Even willful violations of the rules that result in a very clear alteration of a race result have, in the past, been punished with nothing more than a fine. It’s hard not to feverishly grasp at whatever straw might lessen Sauber’s punishment in this situation, because what was the major feel-good story of the race now feels considerably less good. To say the least.

Here’s another question I have that I have not seen answered, although it might have been: What exactly led to this test being performed on the Saubers after the race? Was it performed on all the cars, or was it the Saubers’ performance that led to it being performed on them specifically? Did the request come from one of the other teams? Okay, I suppose that was three questions — but if anyone reading this has answers, I’d love to know them.

Update: This ESPNF1 story describes the test as having been “random.”

Updated 3/31: Turns out they tested every car that finished the race.

Thou Shalt Not Inflict Moral Injury

I don’t know if it’s standard legalese or what, but I kind of like this term: moral injury. (In French, préjudice moral.) I read it in Appendix B to the International Sporting Code, released today by the FIA. What Appendix B does is describe the Code of Good Standing, with which senior team members in all international FIA series — not just Formula 1 — must now be in compliance to certified with the FIA.

Specifically, “All FIA Licence-Holders and all Participants in International Events” must, among other things, not

. . .inflict, by words, deeds or writings, any moral injury or loss on the FIA, on its bodies, on its members or on its management, and more generally on the interests of motor sport and on the values defended by the FIA.

By “deeds,” they of course mean such things as race fixing, which those do-gooders at the FIA apparently take exception to. Imagine! This “injury” must relate primarily to general-public perceptions of antiquated concepts like “sportsmanship.” Certainly they have little to do with the concerns of true, hardcore F1 fans, who are far too sophisticated to worry about esoteric concepts with no bearing on the engineering/marketing exercise they follow — one that just happens to be reported on in the sports pages, for whatever reason.

All dripping-with-sarcasm-while-resigned-to-the-fact-that-many-reading-it-would-say-”Yes, now you’re getting it!” joking aside, this new registration scheme was drawn up in response to the Singapore race-fixing scandal, aka “Crashgate,” which I’ve mentioned maybe once or twice in this blog. The French courts overturned the bans on Briatore and Symonds, and my understanding is that the FIA wanted to devise a means by which they would have something tangible to revoke — something even the French courts couldn’t argue with — should a morally injurious debacle like Crashgate happen in the future.

But will Briatore or Symonds receive a certificate from the FIA in the future? It’s hard for me to imagine that Symonds wouldn’t. His original ban was, after all, never a lifetime ban, and in a real way he has already made his return to F1. Briatore, on the other hand? Yeah, I’d love to be able to say “I doubt it,” but then again I kind of don’t. It has nearly stopped being surprising to me, the number of people who seem open to the idea of his return to the sport. Such a colorful character! So beloved by all! Well. . .save some annoyingly puritanical killjoy types. And the Piquet family.

As long as Briatore and Symonds go about whatever shady business they deem necessary to win races and don’t get caught doing it — well, that’s avoiding moral injury to the FIA altogether, isn’t it? No harm, no foul. Both men have surely learned something from the way Crashgate went down and would presumably take steps to avoid having it happen again. Neither would ever again be, as I’ve heard it put many times, “stupid enough to get caught,” which was their primary crime in the eyes of so many.

Not being stupid enough to get caught will obviously also help the two of them keep from running afoul of all the other parts of the Code — most notably, the part about fairness in competition. What — Briatore “. . .behave in an unsportsmanlike manner or attempt to influence the result of a competition in a way that is contrary to sporting ethics”? Wouldn’t dream of it! He’s just sitting there at the pit wall trying to be a team principal. Is it his fault one of his drivers crashed rather suspiciously? Yes, you say? Well, he’d like to see you try to prove it!

From now on, I’m guessing that will be a lot more difficult.

As a side note, I want to mention that the only news sites I’ve seen reporting on this so far are the BBC News F1 site and Autosport.com. (Yahoo! Eurosport UK reproduces the Autosport story. F1SA.com reproduces the FIA press release.) I’m awaiting further reports in a mildly eager way, because one of my new favorite hobbies is comparing reporting on the same story by different F1 news outlets. I’ve noticed some interesting differences, which I’ll go into in detail in a future post. But just comparing the two stories linked above, did you notice that the Autosport story makes no mention of Crashgate whatsoever? (I should mention, though, that neither does the original FIA press release. Not surprisingly.)  I’m looking forward to seeing how other sites frame it.