Dodgy Business

It had been a while coming. The great soap opera that is Formula One had gone five months without a controversy. Yes, you had to feel desperately sorry for Lewis Hamilton at Spa last Sunday. He snatched what he saw as an opportunity. Straight afterwards he explained the various incidents lucidly, intelligently and truthfully. But media reaction to the stewards' decision was OTT.

Pundits were openly talking about F1 being 'fixed' or 'corrupt.' I've got no problem with that. Opinion and freedom of speech is to be actively encouraged, especially when the voice in question knows of what it speaks. But in view of what happened to Martin Brundle last winter it was all quite 'brave'...

Driving home from the airport on Monday I was interested to hear Niki Lauda on Radio Five Live. The subject got around to whether the FIA favoured Ferrari or manipulated the results. Niki said that if he'd been asked the question before last weekend he'd have said no, but now he wasn't so sure. It was the worst decision in the history of F1, he thought. I've got to disagree there. For me, that was Fernando Alonso's grid penalty for impeding a Ferrari that was 93m behind him on a qualifying lap at Monza...

Niki Lauda and Bernie Ecclestone © XPB

One of Lauda's points was that Lewis did not gain an advantage by getting into Kimi's slipstream between the final corner and La Source. There was no slipstream involved, he said.

And yet, Lewis's own words in the post-race press conference were: "I was accelerating so that I didn't lose too much ground because I thought that would be unfair. Fortunately I got back in his slipsteam..."

Many times you hear gripes about the inconsistency of race stewards' decisions. There's a body of opinion that says stewards should all be ex-racing drivers with some clue about the situations they are judging, and not a cinema owner from Bombay, or some such.

But here we have a three-time world champion at odds with what Hamilton himself said.

The other thing that gets talked about is whether the stewards reach their decisions entirely independently, or whether there is a phone call to Mr Mosley, sitting at home watching television. The official answer, of course, is that it's the stewards with no outside influence. All my own work, sir, honest...

Even so, I couldn't help thinking that Ron Dennis might have done well not to be looking quite so pleased with himself on the podium last Sunday. Twelve months earlier at Spa, he'd been forced to smile through gritted teeth and shake hands with the president of the organisation that had just fined him $100 million.

McLaren were stripped of their constructors' points and no team member bar the driver was allowed a moment of glory on the podium in front of a watching world for the rest of the season.

Ron did appear to be particularly delighted last weekend, understandably so, but you couldn't help feeling that with an incident still under investigation, the broad beam might be summarily wiped from his fisog. The words red, rag and bull sprung to mind. Obviously, those phone calls aren't made, but if they were, wasn't the goal undefended? Max wouldn't have needed to be Jimmy Greaves.

Lewis too, might just have figuratively pulled out Harry Callahan's .44 Magnum and blown off the other foot. Having explained everything so well, he was asked if he'd be surprised if the stewards decided to punish him.

"Absolutely, absolutely," he replied. "This is motor racing and if there's a penalty, then there's something wrong because I was ahead going into that corner, so I didn't gain an advantage from it. We were still able to race at the next corner, I gave him his spot back, I think it was fair and square, so I think it would be absolutely wrong. But you know what they're like, so we will see..."

Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton fight for position © XPB

Ouch. If he'd left out the last sentence it would have done just fine...

Lewis's point about being ahead going into the corner is an interesting one, and might be key if any McLaren appeal is heard.

This is how Lewis explained the moments leading up to the controversy: "I caught Kimi and I got a good tow from him down the back straight and I was in a good position to dive down the inside at Turn 18. He covered his spot, which was fair, but he braked very, very early, so I was able to outbrake him and go around the outside, which I did. I left him enough room, I didn't close the gap so much that he had to go on a kerb, I left him enough room, yet he accelerated or picked up more pace going into the corner, and drove me as wide as he possibly could. I had no road left."

Kimi was in a bit of an invidious position. On dry tyres, with the rain falling, he had no way of knowing how much grip he would or wouldn't have when he went on the brakes after Blanchimont, one of the fastest parts of the circuit. In-car video shows Lewis closing rapidly through Blanchimont. Kimi will have seen that in his mirrors and instinctively gone to protect the inside.

Had Lewis turned-in, we may well have had a repeat of the Webber/Kovalainen incident early in the race, with the Ferrari sliding into the side of the McLaren this time. And, from helicopter footage, Kimi does appear to either re-accelerate or, more likely, to come off the brakes a bit to get back level with the McLaren.

This, Lewis claimed, was Kimi "driving me as wide as he possibly could."

To which Kimi will say two things.

First, yes, of course I'm going to drive him as wide as I possibly can because I'm a racing driver, I've led the race for the past 80 minutes and I'm not about to let someone drive around the outside of me in a second gear corner with two laps to go.

And second, the reason Lewis 'gave me room' was that, going that much quicker, he didn't have the grip to turn in. I had every right to come back up the inside, take the racing line and hang him out to dry.

The intricacies of all that will decide whether or not Lewis had a legitimate claim to being in front and hence whether he actually needed to let Kimi back ahead at all. He might be asked why, if he believed that to be the case, he did actually let Kimi back through. To which he could reply that the team told him to.

With adrenaline and emotions running high amid all the hullaballoo, it's perhaps understandable that conspiracy theories, corruption and match-fixing were the hot issues of Sunday night/Monday morning. Journalists frantically prepared sidebars on "recent F1 controversies" looking back to '94 Schumacher/Hill or '97 Schumacher/Villeneuve. Relevance, not pictured.

Fernando Alonso attempts to overtake Christian Klien in the chicane during the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix © LAT

Much more pertinent was the Japanese Grand Prix of 2005 at Suzuka, one of the greatest races of all time. Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen had started 16th and 17th due to untimely rain in qualifying and a blown engine respectively. Both were charging back through the field. Alonso passed Christian Klien but outbraked himself into the chicane and had to let the Austrian back through. He tucked straight into the slipstream and immediately did Klien again into Turn 1. He then left him for dead until the FIA decided, some laps later, that Alonso had not made enough of a concession and he had to slow down and let Klien re-pass again.

It totally screwed Alonso's race, one he would probably have won. Everyone remembers Raikkonen's great last lap pass of Fisichella to win but Alonso was mighty that afternoon. He passed Michael Schumacher twice, once around the outside of 130R, he passed Mark Webber on the grass going into Turn 1 and, altogether, pulled off 14 overtaking moves in one race. He deserved 30 points that day never mind 10.

I remember feeling as frustrated for Fernando as Renault clearly did. And all over Christian Klien, for heaven's sake. No disrespect, but he was hardly championship-contending. Wrong attitude, I freely admit, because rules are rules. As they were last Sunday. To suggest that the FIA has taken the rules and applied them only to McLaren, is nonsense. It makes for a good story, but it's rubbish.

So there's precedent. But that doesn't mean McLaren shouldn't have a go at an appeal. But in doing so they could slide down a couple of snakes. First, it might not be admissible on a technicality. You cannot appeal a drive-thru penalty, which is what the 25s added to Lewis's race time substituted.

And second, if an appeal is judged to be frivolous the FIA can actually increase the punishment for effectively wasting everyone's time. Lots of support for a position doesn't make that position right. An appeal court might conclude that in light of the Alonso precedent, McLaren's appeal is actually frivolous.

I'd argue, though, that in this case, the circumstances going into that final corner were significantly different and the issue so charged that, by definition it cannot be frivolous (definition: not serious or sensible). It's worth a stab. But if I was Lewis I wouldn't be holding my breath.