The Weekly Grapevine

While there still remains doubt as to who will ultimately be named the 2007 world champion, there exists absolutely zero uncertainty that the season just past served up more twists and turns than a Black Diamond Rattler at its noisiest best.

In fact, in virtually all areas - bar, crucially, those of fatalities - 2007 surpassed that highly controversial 1982 season for on- and off-track drama, politics and polemics, and (il)legalities.

And, just like that season, a hard-charging and hard-partying Finn came from behind to take the title - if, that is, Kimi Raikkonen gets to keep the crown his win in Brazil should have assured him of.

All this was, of course, fertiliser of the best type for Formula One's grapevine, with all rumours, suppositions and paddock tales immediately being countered by opposite reactions of at least equal proportions.

Keke Rosberg © LAT

And, more often than seemed sensible to many, officialdom appeared to take a strange delight in shovelling more of the smelly nutrient around the roots of the flourishing vines.

The year opened with threatened protests over customer cars, with newly-renamed Spyker, which would end the year with yet another change of identity, simultaneously giving notice of arbitration proceedings against satellite teams Scuderia Toro Rosso and Aguri-Honda, both of whom unashamedly admitted to receiving design input and componentry from their respective 'senior' teams via rather imaginative avenues.

The protest was refused by the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix (and thereafter) on the grounds that arbitration proceedings were pending.

The sport is, ten months on, no closer to resolving the thorny issue of customer cars - with Williams' pending legal proceedings against Prodrive's (now pretty much aborted) plans to enter the formula in 2008 using customer chassis acquired from McLaren on a blatantly commercial basis doing little to defuse the situation.

That it will end in tears seems a foregone conclusion, with the only questions being who will shed the drops, in what sort of quantities and when.

This 'are they legal/aren't they' situation is further complicated by the fact that the Concorde Agreement, which governed the sport for ten years from 1998 by binding together the three sets of role players - the teams, commercial rights holder (Formula One Management) and governing body (FIA) - has now all but run its course, with the renewal process, were to be consummated at all, still some way off.

In fact, there exists considerable doubt as to whether the FIA will be party to any future agreement, for the covenant has at times hamstrung the way it would have preferred to go about governance.

It seems likely that the sport will in the future be governed by a series of bipartite agreements entered into by only the affected players in each sphere.

Thus, agreements between FOM and the teams (collectively or even individually) will determine revenue splits, while separate documents - between teams and the governing body - could determine sporting and technical matters, while the century-long obligations of FOM and FIA towards teams were recorded back in 2000.

The rest, though, needs to be thrashed out - with just four months remaining in which to do so...

Tony Teixeira at the Italian Grand Prix © XPB/LAT

This uncertainty would appear to have put a stop, at least temporarily, to A1GP boss Tony Texeira's F1 team ownership aspirations.

Last week a source close to the Portuguese-born African mining magnate indicated that talks to purchase Scuderia Toro Rosso had broken down over precisely this and other issues (in all likelihood the lack of a clear-cut revenue-distribution agreement).

All this, though, pales into total insignificance when compared to the drama created by the fallout from the other Melbourne 'rumble' - namely that over 'movable' floors as used by Ferrari and a multitude other teams, including, allegedly, BMW.

While McLaren continue to aver that Ferrari's floor design was illegal at the time of use, the fact remains that the FIA changed its test parameters in order to test the veracity of McLaren's claim - initiated by those emails and text messages - that Ferrari's floors did, in fact, move at speed.

That a different procedure was adopted must surely prove that the floors were legal to the letter, if not the spirit, of the regulations at the time?

Whatever, without dwelling too much on the 'Gate', the entire scandal would appear to have all but destroyed the three pillars upon which McLaren and company boss Ron Dennis pride themselves so publicly - namely driver equality, sporting integrity, and team ethos.

After a very public spat with Juan Pablo Montoya (who chose NASCAR over F1 as a result), losing Raikkonen to arch-rivals Ferrari, the bitter separation with Fernando Alonso, and the apparent ease with which McLaren's most senior managers seemingly executed their subterfuge undetected (by him) right under his nose must inevitably call into question Dennis's present ability to carry out the most basic of management functions, namely man-management.

And this after the man was voted Manager of the Year back in the nineties when he managed to control Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost (for two years)!

Just how long McLaren's rehabilitation takes, and how the team goes about the entire process, will be a fascinating exercise to observe.

How, though, they justify doing so while continuing to employ en mass the very people whose very activities were instrumental in getting the once highly-respected team into the unsavoury mess they find themselves in, remains the question of 2007, and one which will no doubt continue to monopolise the Grapevine in the new season.

But, if McLaren saw their reputation battered in 2007, so, too, did Ferrari, particularly with regard to IT matters and management.

How the team failed to notice that a certain employee - long-standing and trusted or otherwise - had secretly downloaded 780 pages of classified information from their computer systems is the second-largest of 2007's many mysteries.

Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa at the Japanese Grand Prix © LAT

This is particularly true as the 'theft' occurred precisely while legal proceedings, in which two former Ferrari engineers later convicted of similarly clandestine activities involving the transfer of electronic data to Toyota, were underway 20 kilometres up the SP3 in Modena...

Then, to crown Ferrari's IT blues, in Japan an FIA email (regarding full wet tyres) took exactly an hour longer to arrive at Sporting Director Stefano Domenicali's workstation than on other screens up and down the pitlane and paddock.

All in all, certainly not what is to be expected from a company operating at the cutting edge of technology...

One question that has remained unanswered since the 'Gate' first broke in June was why the FIA homed in on McLaren for inappropriately accessing and applying Ferrari data, yet refused to touch Toyota for what appeared to be, on the surface at least, a similar breach.

Is there a difference? If so, what is it? According to Ove Andersson, who retired from the sport ahead of his 70th birthday, there was a major distinction in that in 'Stepneygate', McLaren's alleged source was an existing employee, whereas in 'Toyotagate' the engineers concerned were no longer consulting to the Italian team, and thus effectively operated as free agents.

Fair point, and, certainly an explanation eminently more feasible than the reason given by Max Mosley when the question was raised. The FIA president indicated that, very simply, in the Toyota case the governing body had not been asked to involve itself.

Given the gravities of both scandals - at least one of which culminated in penal punishment - and the subsequent record-breaking and headline-making fine (in US dollars, rather the Euro currency adopted by the FIA earlier this year, which in turn inflated the figure) handed down in McLaren's case, the FIA surely did not require invitations to involve itself in one case or another?

All year long rumours abounded that Ferrari's head honchos were at loggerheads, and odd (in all senses of the word) comments dropped variously by the company's president Luca di Montezemolo and managing director Jean Todt seemed to indicate that all was not well in the Red Camp.

The extension of Felipe Massa's contract - when none was urgently required, particularly as the driver is managed by Todt's son Nicholas - and the subsequent statement by the Italian nobleman that he had taken the decision to extend the Brazlian's tenure smelt of two things: desperate intra-Ferrari fire-fighting and a sweetener to Massa to toe the team line should push come to shove at Interlagos.

In the end it did, and, tellingly, he did - much, but not as blatantly, as his compatriot Rubens Barrichello moved over for Schumacher at the A1-Ring in 2002 within a week of having his contract extended, so Felipe seemed to oblige Kimi.

How the Montezemolo/Todt dynamic pans out, and its subsequent fallout with respect to driver and other contracts - including the possible return to the paddock of Ross Brawn - will be yet another fascinating 2008 exercise, and bodes well for the new year's Grapevine.

Michael Schumacher drives the F2004 during Ferrari's 60th anniversary celebrations at Fiorano © Ferrari

Will he or won't he? That was the question on most lips on Tuesday. And the question referred to Michael Schumacher and not Max Mosley, whose resignation was called for by veteran journalist (and former Mosley disciple) Alan Henry in the latest edition of F1 Racing on the very day Ferrari announced that Michael Schumacher was to strap himself into an F2007 in Barcelona "half for pleasure, half for technical reasons."

The first part of Ferrari's explanation makes enormous sense, particularly as the German this week straddled a Ducati MotoGP racer at Valencia and far from disgraced himself (roughly equalling Valentino Rossi's efforts when the Italian first went in the opposite direction, from two to four wheels).

But the second part raised some eyebrows, for F2007 delivered two titles, so can hardly be in desperate need of technical input from a driver who has not circulated in anything more powerful than a kart for more than a few months now.

Plus, the car provided Kimi Raikkonen with a race win in his first appearance for the team, and a championship in his first season as a red-clad driver - something not even Niki Lauda or Michael Schumacher managed.

Setting aside, though, the slaps to the faces of the Scuderia's existing drivers (for both must be wondering exactly what skills they lack), let us assume MS finds the experience highly pleasurable, and assuming his technical feedback is of the highest order (both of which are virtually givens), what chance of the 38-year-old seven-time former champion returning to the sport?

According to some paddock folk, pretty damn good. But, according to one or two, not necessarily with the Italian team.

Williams director Patrick Head believes Ron Dennis is eyeing the German as replacement for Fernando Alonso, while others suggest Toyota is planning to go one better in the Schumi stakes: by replacing Ralf with his older brother.

This rumour, though, has rather short legs, and is unlikely to mutate to fact despite the Japanese team having the wherewithal to satisfy any fiscal demands the driver's astute manager may table.

The alternative suggestion, however, has some currency, and even a precedent. Snaring Schumacher would be an absolute coup and do wonders for McLaren's reputation, which took a battering for reasons needing no amplification here.

Plus, Ron Dennis has been there before: in 1982 he enticed a legendary former Ferrari world champion (Lauda) out of retirement at a time when McLaren had not won a title for six years and recently gone through a period of management upheaval.

The result? A series of titles running from 1984 through to 1991 with only one (1987) interruption. However, before the Austrian was strapped into the car, McLaren signed an option on his services. Have Ferrari followed suit? One would imagine so...