We’re seeing the worst of it these days:
Formula 1 at its most self-interested, self absorbed and self-centred.
The FIA’s draconian decision against
McLaren last week headlines an odious affair that leaves everyone looking like anything but sportsmen.
Ron Dennis and his team have been made to look like cheaters and prevaricators. The
FIA appears imperious and detached from reality (hardly the first time!) while
Fernando Alonso has been revealed as an ill-tempered, spoiled brat who’s become petulant and vengeful.
His squeeze job on team-mate
Lewis Hamilton exiting the first turn at Spa last weekend clearly demonstrated his ill-will toward Hamilton as well as a lack of any on-track ethics.
Then of course, there’s Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan. It’s deeply ironic that Stepney in effect brought
Ferrari this year’s
F1 constructor’s title by unleashing his greedy game, and of course, nobody can imagine what Coughlan was thinking when he dispatched his wife to a local copy shop to reproduce all the Ferrari drawings.
In the past week I’ve heard from many long-time friends in the sport, people who have built, engineered and/or crewed F1 and Indy cars. To a man these fellows are pragmatic, world wise people, but this latest episode in F1’s soap opera has left them deeply disillusioned.
“This is what happens when you show little men big money and have dorky engineers thinking they can ask for half a million a year,” one of my friends remarked.
“Stepney is the obvious villain, but Coughlan is the complete idiot. Of course, you can always take what’s in your head, but Stepney’s not an engineer and maybe he thought a reference volume would be useful. It would never be mentioned, of course, and all the ideas would be presented as if it came from their own knowledge. But Coughlan couldn’t resist parading his little treasure trove.”
Of course, most people shake their heads over the fact that so much has been made of something that has always gone on in racing.
![FIA Chamber [Pic credit: FIA copyright]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/375638.jpg)
