Scandals in the World of F1

Nelsinhogate. The latest scandal to hit the F1 world. With the amount of scandals we’ve had in the last 2 years, F1 is quickly turning into one of those sports where the headlines made off the playing field are of more interest than the on-track action. It’s all very bawdry and unsavoury. Almost “soccer-esque”.

It’s all very hush-hush right now, which is why everyone knows all the gory details. Renault have been accused of asking their rubbish driver to deliberately crash during the Singapore GP in 2008, thereby handing the victory to their prized pony - double world champion – Fernando ‘I’m a whiney git’ Alonso. Deliciously scandalous, with all the juicy trappings of subterfuge, blackmail, deception, machination, dudgeon, temper tantrums, pique(t) and pure deviousness worthy of Dick Dastardly himself.

So now we are poised on the brink of the all-important verdict. September 21st can’t come soon enough – which is when the mighty FIA shall rule on the matter. The barmy old gits in charge of F1 have had more than enough practice in dealing with scandals in the recent past. A quick update follows for the completely clueless.

It all started with Spygate, when McLaren got caught for indulging in a wee bit of peek-a-boo into the Ferrari blueprints. Tsktsk… naughty naughty. That was followed by Stewardsgate which had most genuine fans up in arms over the haphazard and sometimes biased decisions taken by the race stewards, and Spygate 2, where Renault were caught out playing peek-a-boo with McLaren blueprints. The real scandal in that particular event was that the team went unpunished, while McLaren were handed down a record fine of $ 100 million for their indiscretions.

Then the FIA President, Max Mosely, got caught on film in an S&M orgy. In all honesty it’s nobody’s business if Max likes a little bizarre hanky-panky, or in this case, hanky-spanky. But considering that he is the son of the former leader of the British Union of Fascists, and that said orgy was tinged with Nazi themed overtones, it’s no wonder the motorsport community was all er… whipped up into a frenzy, shall we say? Then again, most would agree that Max was a very naughty boy… mucking about with F1 politics and hurling his legendary ego tantrums all over the place. I would even go so far as to say he deserved to be tied up and flogged, except that he’d enjoy it too much. In any case, the sting operation created quite a stir… pun intended.

The beginning of the 2009 season was overcast by Liargate, where McLaren and Lewis Hamilton were pulled up for lying to the stewards about an on-track manoeuvre. Then came Diffusergate which was more a case of sour grapes than any real scandal at all. And now, Nelsinhogate. Perhaps the worst of the lot. In comparison, the corporate espionage of Spygate seems like a mild case of peeking over the hedges to see if the Jones’ are up to a little afternoon delight.

I pause here to distinctly state that I abhor the “mediafication” of the aforementioned events by the addition of the suffix “gate”. Lacks creativity and reeks of laziness if you ask me. Oh well, soldiering on.

The FIA is rabidly opposed to anything they deem “unsporting”, and mete out penalties willy-nilly. They went after McLaren like Pitbulls on steroids, yet Flavio Briatore and the Renault team escaped unscathed from Spygate 2. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Flavio and Bernie are best chums. Yet, I fail to see how Flavio will survive this latest debacle. The team doesn’t seem to be contesting the fact that the accident WAS deliberate. They’re just trying to pass it off as one of Nelson’s ideas. Forgive me for my uncharacteristic rudeness, but it seems to be a case of gross misappropriation of intelligence to Piquet Jr.

Whatever transpired, the fact remains that as a team, Renault have brought the sport into “disrepute”, a favourite catch-phrase of the FIA when they went McLaren hunting. It remains to be seen if the same rules apply here.