Last weekend the manufacturers' division of the World Touring Car Championship was settled (in favour of SEAT), with the outcome of the drivers' to be decided within three weeks in Macau. This weekend Formula One will crown its winning driver and constructor in Brazil, while the World Rally Championship's two categories, too, could be decided in Japan.
All in, the world's motorsport headlines should be shrieking news about the closeness of the FIA's trio of premier championships, the specialist media packed with permutations and analyses of the respective seasons to date.
Yet, inserting 'FIA' into Google shows nothing of the sort. In fact, when not referring to the 'Financial Intermediaries Association' or India's Federal Investigation Agency, the search engine [at the time of clicking] mainly linked the abbreviation for the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile to 'standardised engines/transmissions', with no word said about the upcoming deciders.
![]() The FIA motorhome in the paddock © LAT |
Said power units had, of course, been a hot topic of discussion in the Asian paddocks after Bernie Ecclestone suggested in the run-up to the Japanese Grand Prix that they were under discussion at World Motor Sport Council level. A meeting with the recently-formed Formula One Teams' Association [FOTA] was called by the FIA for October 21 in Switzerland, and the F1 world and its mega-million fan base held its collective breath.