Why Is Everyone Against the FIA?

I have read recently that there are a lot of people not entirely happy with how the FIA are “treating” certain teams in the paddock and how they are giving some teams preferred treatment. This is just not true.

The FIA are made up of a group of people that are unbiased towards any team. If a team or driver commits a rule break of any kind, then they are punished in a way that the FIA sees fit to punish them.

OK, yes, I am a Ferrari fan, but I am also British and in a conflict of interests in my own head, of course I want Massa to win the championship, but I also want Hamilton to win.

There have been certain events this year which have made people annoyed and defensive over a driver who, from what I can see, is not allowed out of the house without his father. The British press undermine Lewis every race by speaking to his father, but that is something that we can’t stop.

Anyway I digress, as we all know the teams in the Formula One pit ALL try to push rules, regulations and finances to the limit and occasionally they do go over. But the FIA ruling on these infringements is justified, what happened to “the referees decision is final”? I have read a couple of articles written by you good people about certain things.

For example; the Spa incident this year which I have already written about. The Valencia incident, people think that Massa should have been punished for this? Why?

The driver can’t see a thing in the wing mirrors when sitting in the pit lane, the team let him go and off he went, a driver is never going to be asked twice to go, as we have all seen in the past when a premature “lolly-pop man” lifts up too early and the driver takes half the refuelling rig with them.

If Massa hadn’t have lifted off, it would have caused a crash, but he did, hence why only the team were punished.

OK then rolling back a couple of years at Imola, when Montoya was on the outside at the hairpin, many people said at the time that Ferrari should have been punished by this, again, why?

I daresay that many of you have all experienced motor racing in some way shape or form (if you haven’t try it, you’ll love it!) and knowing what I know about going into a tight hairpin, nobody in their right mind would try and overtake someone on the outside of a hairpin; it’s the long way round and you are going to be squeezed out because of the racing line.

There have been a few people slagging Ferrari off for taking someone out behind the safety car, granted a stupid mistake but its not the first time someone has done it.

Again, think back to Montoya smashing into the back of Schumi’s Ferrari in Monaco when he was heating his brakes in the tunnel. People blamed Ferrari for this. Again, why?

If someone smashes into the back of you driving down a road, you don’t blame the person that got hit; the person who hit you who is to blame.

Most of these incidents are racing incidents and I have seen them time and again in F1, Touring car, and racing rally cross myself, when you are in the car there is only one person on the track and that is you.

If the FIA deem an incident is illegal, they will punish you accordingly. If they feel the infringement is not that bad, they won’t give you punishments.

The other matter at hand here which a lot of people are overlooking a lot of the time is that McLaren are VERY lucky to be racing this season, because of the infringement last year of McLaren having information about Ferrari.

Ron Dennis (who, by the way, deserves a lot of respect for the way he handled it all) didn’t know anything about the information and neither did Lewis Hamilton. This is the only reason that they have been allowed to race this season.

If Ron Dennis knew about it and kept it quiet, then they wouldn’t be racing. Many of the FIA and the race stewards in the many countries believe that McLaren shouldn’t be here in 2008.

If McLaren hadn’t have been here, the season wouldn’t have been as exciting as it has been.