It's been a long time since I blogged about Formula One; the farce of Indianapolis 2005 left a serious dent in the sport's reputation (and of course this year's row over allegations that McLaren made improper use of technical information passed to them by a Ferrari engineer hasn't helped much either).
This year's Japanese Grand Prix at the Fuji circuit was the scene of both brilliant wet-weather driving, and an all-too familiar failure of the sport's governance processes. In discussion with the teams, race director Charlie Whiting agreed to start the race behind the safety car because of the extremely wet conditions. He stipulated that for the same reasons, cars should fitted with the 'extreme wet' tyres - heavily grooved treads to displace the maximum volume of water. As it happened even that turned out not to be enough; in a later period behind the safety car, cars were going off the track even at low speed and with the 'extreme wet' tyres.
Despite this instruction, both Ferrari cars started the race on intermediate tyres. Felipe Massa lost control at safety-car speed and went off the track. He was subsequently given a drive-through penalty for re-taking the place he lost by so doing. Whiting then told Ferrari to bring their cars in and change to the full-wet tyres, or face the 'black and orange' flag which obliges the driver to return to the pits at once and rectify a technical problem. Ferrari did so, but complained that they had not seen the email in which Whiting had stipulated full-wet tyres.
Something here stinks. All the other teams saw and acted on the email; even the ITV commentators had seen it before the race started - yet Ferrari claim they did not. Either they are being pretty brazen about a deliberate decision to ignore it, or there's a fundamental flaw in the processes through which the race director notifies teams of safety issues and requirements.
As both safety car periods clearly showed, conditions were bad enough to make it unsafe to race. There's no doubt that any team running on intermediates was gambling not just with the rules, but with the safety of other drivers on the circuit. I am, frankly, amazed that Ferrari were not penalised for failing to comply with an explicit safety-related instruction from the race director.
There could have been a tragic accident as a result of this. As it is, the tragedy is that brave, skillful and determined performances by many of the drivers (notably Hamilton, Kovalainen, Raikkonen and Sutil) were devalued by poor management of the race and the rules. F1 management needs to get its act together and demonstrate some integrity and transparency. As things stand, it's letting down the teams, the fans... and the drivers who risk their lives in races like today's.
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