Patronise F1

Max reaches start point

"Dear FOTA, I bet you don't hate my initial plan that much now, do you? All my love, Max Mosley". Was possibly how the "open letter" from Max to the Team's Association should have read ahead of Tuesday's meeting between the FIA and FOTA. On the back of all the hoo-ha about Mosley's plans to introduce spec-engines to Formula One ("ZOMG dat iz stoopid, dis isn't Formula Ford Max u n00b"), his devious plan for their future of F1 was outlined in the letter. And lo and behold, in reference to the next set of engine regs, Max proposes three options, two a variation on the spec engine idea, and a third which would see "a proposal from FOTA...for the supply of complete power trains to independent teams for less than €5 million per team per season to include 30,000 km of testing and all on-track assistance". This was Mosley's initial idea back in the day, but it got far less media coverage due to it's sensibleness. And so, we once again come full circle, and what Max wants, Max will get, via what Max never wanted in the first place.

FOTA reach end point

Unsurprisingly, the meeting seems to have resulted in this mysterious option three being taken up. A joint statement from all involved in the Geneva discussions was cagey at best when it came to details but Autosport hypothesised that the points agreed on included the idea that "Manufacturers must be prepared to make 25 engine units available, at a cost of 10 million Euros, to customer teams" and "Engine life will be increased from two to three races from 2009". Rumours of a smug smile on Mosley's face were unconfirmed. Along with a load of dull stuff about KERS and the like, the other point of interest was the point that there would be a further meeting after Brazil to discuss, among other things, "the continuation of the use of customer chassis in the future". Which would be just dandy.

Oh, Canada

The fallout from the dropping of the Canadian Grand Prix from the calendar continues, as the organisers of the race hit back at Bernie Ecclestone's prior insinuations. That sentence contained six "the"s. After Bernie had inferred that the Montreal event was shuftied off the calendar for non-payment of bills over the past three years, Paul Wilson, an important part of the track organisers team somewhere down the line, claims that "It is totally untrue to suggest that our organisation has defaulted on payments owed for the past three years...it is true that we have a commercial disagreement regarding our monetary obligations, but only for 2008". He said that this clarification was necessary to ensure the integrity of the Grand Prix du Canada...[is not] called into question". NJ eagerly awaits Bernie's counter-punch.

PF1 misses the point

"The Stewards Remain Consistent In Their Inconsistency" trumpeted a paragraph in Planet Hamilton's conclusions from the Chinese Grand Prix, as they continued their post-Belgium efforts to ridicule every penalty handed out to any driver ever. On this particular subject, namely the "three place grid penalty" given to Nick Heidfeld for blocking David Coulthard in quali, they were close to actually having a point. But sadly, contrasting the incident in China with the punishment meted out to Hamilton and Kovalainen in Malaysia earlier in the year was the wrong thing to do. Those penalties were assigned after the McLaren pair were found dithering on the racing line at around 20mph which nearly caused the mother of all crashes when Heidfeld came across them on his final flyer, and as such weren't really comparable to the more generic blocking incident involving Ickle and DC in any way.

Of course, what they could have done if they wanted to take issue with stewarding inconsistencies would have been to compare Heidfeld's penalty with the one given to Sebastien Bourdais in Hungary for, ironically, blocking Heidfeld himself. This one was indeed five places, unlike the one this weekend. But in order for them to have done that, they would have lost the "conspiracy against Hamilton" angle, and we can't be having that now, can we?

Seabass not on Flav's menu

Any remaining rumours that Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais might me making a surprising move to Renault for 2009 have been well and truly quashed by Flavio Briatore, who reckons that the 29 year old is simply far too old to be of any use to him, according to an interview with him in L'Equipe. More worryingly for Bourdais, and perhaps a sign of how lowly he is rated by his own team, "[Helmut] Marko would like to see Sebastien Buemi line-up alongside Force India test driver and former Toro Rosso driver Tonio Liuzzi in 2009 [in STR]". When you're rated lower than the pie man, you know you're in trouble. In better news for Bourdais, he does at least have Gerhard Berger on his side, "He has had several good races even when he always did not score points. His potential is good but we are not yet ready to make a decision," the German admitted, adding that Bourdais was at the 'top of the list'. Please, anything to keep Liuzzi out of F1.

Nico talks himself down

Nico Rosberg controversially reckons that trundling about in 15th place for most of the weekend ends up making you look a bit rubbish. "A certain danger exists, because the quality of the driver, in the eyes of others, is closely connected with the achievement of the car," he cryptically moaned to a German paper this weekend, adding that "At the beginning of the year it looked very good...we were better than Renault. But we have probably just done a bad job". Never mind Nico, News Junkie is certain that in one small corner of the internet, views on your quality have not been diminished.