Formula One CEO Bernie Ecclestone Has Another Potentially Harmful Idea

First there was Calamity Jane. Now we have Calamity Bernie.

As awful as my introduction there was, it highlights a point. Formula One expects a leader of integrity, iconic status and most importantly a leader with common sense.

Yet instead we are stuck with a foolish, incoherent and partially insane C.E.O who causes his own sport to succeed in spite of him as opposed to with him.

I myself gave up early on with Ecclestone as I was often left completely confused during his interviews with Martin Brundle and the rest of the British broadcasting team. He simply rarely made any sense.

And the newest decision from Bernie to offend the sport became the idea to move the Malaysian Grand Prix to a later time slot. In doing so it risked the elements and dying light in the hope of gaining a greater world wide audience.

As fate would have it, the first Malaysian Grand Prix under these circumstances was dramatically cut short after scenes that portrayed nothing short of a monsoon. To save cars from aquaplaning across the track and walking on water the race was halted a mere thirty one laps in—a little over fifty percent.

Now I’m all for safety in Formula 1. One of my earliest memories of the sport was of my hero Ayrton Senna’s tragic death due to the lack of cockpit safety. So I was all for the race being red flagged in order to keep the drivers in a secure position.

Forgive me for stating the obvious however, but a reasonably timed start would have meant a full race conclusion as opposed to the fiasco that ensued.

Oddly it is not the early halt to proceedings that made me scream in anger. It was instead the slight injustice caused to certain drivers as a result of the premature finish.

Jenson Button has been handed a silver platter. He has an almighty car beneath him. His demeanour and credentials have shot through the roof. No-one other than Jenson Button could be smiling for such an extended period of time at this moment. He is literally on top of the world.

But as we are all aware, what goes up, almost certainly will at one point come down. It may not necessarily come crashing down, but the likelihood is that there will be some misfortunes ahead, or a turning of the tables that would see him fighting a losing battle.

I can only predict what the rest of the season will behold. But the expectation for the likes of Mclaren, Ferrari and Renault to improve is overwhelming. They will at some point come into their own again and return to the top steps of the podium.

Obviously I would love them not to, but in the inevitability that they do, I see the Malaysian Grand Prix as doing more harm than good to Jenson’s early advantage.

If at any point you are lucky enough to seize an advantage over an opponent, you want that advantage to be as exaggerated as possible.

But instead of Jenson having an eighteen point gap over his countryman and defending champion Lewis Hamilton, instead only has fourteen. A full race finish would have left Hamilton effectively two race wins behind, the half finish meaning a win and a fourth place behind.

For a driver who has stuttered in his career thus far, an early advantage for Jenson of the magnitude that his car has seemingly given him definitely warranted more of a point’s advantage.

And it is for that reason that I shudder at the thought of Bernie Ecclestone agreeing to moving the timeslots of races to the more unpredictable points of wind, rain and impending darkness. He could argue that it increases the chances of excitability on the track, but it also compromises the durational outcome of a racing weekend.

As seen in the Malaysian Grand Prix this can cause drivers in excellent positions to literally gain only half of what they richly deserve.

Imagine if the season concluded and Hamilton, Massa, Raikonnen or Alonso pipped Jenson to the post by the smallest of margins. The uproar would be alarming. Jenson has been disadvantaged; there is no doubt about it. Even the sight of seeing other drivers with half points to their name is somewhat disheartening. It is as if you are saying they are only worth half a point!

So I for one hope that Bernie rethinks his clumsy idea, and allows the sport the time and validity it deserves, and gifts the expecting drivers and teams their hard earned rewards.