06/09/2010
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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In my last piece, I dared to speak against Ferrari and the result was predictable. I got the anonymous abusive mail, and as for some of the others, you will get more sense from talking to a Jehovah's Witness.
Microsoft is missing a trick. There should be a program which recreates illiterate rants in block capitals in purple crayon. Crayon because they are not allowed near sharp objects.
Not to look at Ferrari through rose-tinted glasses is like telling someone that their baby is ugly even though it has two heads. A typical line they take is 'we all know that that team orders occur.' In fact, we do not know. We may suspect and, let's face it, Formula One has been involved in so many dodgy moves that anyone can be forgiven for being suspicious.
Suspicion is not the same as fact and therefore it cannot be entered as part of an argument. Red Bull was among the teams fingered, strange then that Webber and Vettel collided while contesting the lead in Turkey. The tifosi live in a little world of their own. It is not connected to reality. They probably believe that the Tele-Tubbies are real people.
Some people thought that Ferrari's mistake was to get caught, and their point would be...? If you are arraigned on a murder rap, it is no defence to say that there are unsolved crimes. Oi, that Jack the Ripper has never been brought to book.
Believe me, you have never known idiocy until you have dared to question Ferrari or to even mention that it has actually been fined to the limit of stewards' power after Hockenheim. What bothers me is that these people are allowed to vote and reproduce. They move among us and some look normal, sort of.
The British scandal sheet, The News of The World, has conducted a sting operation. Readers outside of the UK may care to be reminded that it was the News of the Screws which entrapped Max Mosley. Max was entrapped and has won damages against the rag for invasion of privacy in a landmark case.
The Screws's sting followed the exact pattern that I suggested in my last piece and that, in turn, came from a PhD thesis to which I had prior access. The author, Declan Hill, received his doctorate, from Oxford, and his thesis has been published as 'The Fix: Soccer and Organised Crime'.
You might like to consider why I, of all the motoring hacks in the world, was given access to an Oxford D.Phil thesis under construction. I might be doing something right, not popular, but right.
Declan's book is recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the corruption of sport. Note, 'Organised Crime' in the title, this is something that should give pause for thought.
Organised crime means getting your children, and your grandchildren, hooked on crack cocaine and selling the girls into slavery. It is not just about having a flutter on a horse.
The sting involved a cricket match between England and Pakistan. For a fee of £150,000, undercover reporters, it is alleged, were given prior information about three no balls delivered in a game. Remember, I said that betting syndicates did not necessarily bet on overall results. In fact, I suggested it could be a mechanic fumbling a wheel change so that one backmarker got by another backmarker.
Dr. Anton Zimmerman, a contributor to Pitpass, and a pal, says most of us bet on wins, but this is betting on failure and that is where real corruption begins. You cannot pay someone to win, but you can pay someone to lose.
The allegations are currently just that, allegations, though conversations were recorded on audio and visual and the International Cricket Council has suspended three players prior to further investigation.
In cricket, a no ball is when a bowler infringes the laws relating to a delivery. The easiest way of doing this on purpose is if the bowler places a foot beyond a marked line, the crease, because the umpire is more likely to see the infringement and this is what happened.
Some British newspapers are accusing the players of match fixing, but they did not fix matches. It is an example of how low the print medium has sunk. If proven, what the players did was to conspire to defraud bookies by spot betting. It is not the same as rigging a result, as Ferrari did at Hockenheim.
A bowler who delivers a no ball concedes one run to the opposition, but cricket scores are tallied in hundreds. A batsman cannot be out on receiving a no ball, but he can score off one. He could, for example, hit a six. Bowling a no ball is not match fixing and, in every case in the alleged misdemeanours, no further runs were scored.
Three no balls, three runs conceded, there was no match fixing, as there has been in motor racing. There was, however, betting-inspired malpractice, or so it is alleged. The latest issue of the News of the Screws is awash with further allegations about Pakistan's players. It demotes England football star, Wayne Rooney, and the hooker, to second place. Footballer and hooker, that is why we call it News of the Screws.
One thing that I omitted from my previous piece, but which I knew, is that that the betting syndicates which have corrupted sport are mainly based in the Far East, in this case, it is alleged, in Malaysia. I knew that I was going to get idiot mail, and I did not want to add racism to the charges against me. The fact is that the betting syndicates are mainly East of Suez and many are illegal in the countries where they operate. This means that they cannot complain to the authorities, they have to obtain retribution in the way that organised crime does. Use your imagination.
Gambling is used to launder money and, among the charges, following the arrests made by Scotland Yard, is money laundering. Some may reckon that defrauding a bookmaker is fair game, but the accused players could be charged with conspiracy. Their alleged crime was committed in England and, under English law, conspiracy is virtually open-ended.
The fee handed to the alleged middle man in the sting was 150,000 quid and that is not small change in anyone's money. It would not be enough to influence a current top driver in F1, but there is that mechanic with the wheel gun and the mortgage. These syndicates do not bet as you or I bet, a fiver to win on Big Girl's Blouse in the 2.30 at Lingfield Park, they bet on failure.
To set up the sting, the Screws must have had prior knowledge, as it had with the Mosley affair. You do not target just anyone and put highly-paid journalists and surveillance experts on the job. You have to be fairly sure that the subject of the sting has past form. In this case, the agent boasted that Pakistan had deliberately thrown a game against Australia earlier in the year.
That is on audio record, but it remains only a boast. The trouble is that Pakistan cricket has a history of dubious ethics. Most Pakistanis in Britain are law-abiding citizens and they do not need this. We have our share of neo-Nazi thugs and nobody except for racist crazies needs this. Your average Pakistani running a shop, open all hours, so he can do right by his children, does not need hugely rewarded sportsmen shitting from above.
A reader, who is a consultant to the European gaming industry has told me, 'We in the betting industry are well f****d off with F1. We would love to run more interesting bets on the 'sport' but given all the problems, we just steer clear... this is due to its politics, team orders, disqualifications and internal claims of general skulduggery.
'The fiasco in Germany led many punters coming to shops demanding a refund - and some bookies duly obliged.'
Please note, that I quote from an expert on gaming who is also a follower of Formula One. Some bookies accepted that Germany, 2010, was a rigged result. How often have you heard of bookies returning stakes?
Something like it has happened before. Sweden's mainstream gambling is state-run, by Svenska Spel. After the 2002 Austrian GP, run on the great Tilke-free A-ring, Svenska Spel paid out on Barrichello in second place, as though he had won. Rubens had led almost to the line and then he was told to let Michael Schumacher take the win.
Back then we had the same excuses as we had after Hockenheim when Ferrari rigged the result yet again. In 2002, there was international outrage, not least in the Italian and German press.
Jean Todt was then Ferrari's man in the pitlane, but he was guided by another, who also intervened at Hockenheim, and that person is Luca Di Montezemolo.
Ferrari rigged results in 2002 and Michael Schumacher was booed at the next race, Montreal. He tried to stage a dead-heat at Indianapolis, and failed. He remains the only driver to have been excluded from a World Championship. I look forward to the mail I shall get having pointed out that fact.
The Ferrari farce in 2002 was the reason why the FIA introduced the no team order rule, which Ferrari broke at Hockenheim. The person behind both examples of race-rigging is Luca di Montezemolo. If you watched the 2010 German GP on BBC, you will know that Ted Kravitz, who is brilliant in the pitlane, followed the phone calls between Stefano Domenicali and Luca.
For some reason di Montezemolo is thought to be beyond criticism. He is even credited with the success of Italy's staging of the World Cup, though given the excellence of Italian football, leaving aside the referee fixing, you or I could have done that. The infrastructure was in place, it was not like what South Africa had to do to host the tournament this year. How difficult can it be to stage football in Italy?
Di Montezemolo only has to fart to gain credit. He is of the Fiat dynasty, which is better than being born royal in Italy. He is handsome, charismatic, multilingual and utterly ruthless. Let's get the guy into perspective, he has not found a cure for cancer, he is a car salesman and there is one in every showroom. Di Montezemolo is only a car salesman, he is good at what he does, but a car salesman is all he is.
Di Montezemolo is also a car salesman with a few problems. One is that Audi has taken Lamborghini in hand and has done certain non-Lambo things, like making doors that fit. Then there is the problem of the McLaren MP4-12C which negates any reason for buying a Ferrari. The revived Aston Martin brand has eliminated most of the excuses, the new McLaren does for the rest. There is now no reason to buy a Ferrari and Luca di Montezemolo is one desperate car salesman.
Eddie Jordan was incandescent after Hockenheim. As Pitpass's editor, our Great and Glorious Leader, has pointed out EJ has since been in back-pedal mode. That is up to Eddie, for whatever reason, but Pitpass does not cave in.
On a personal note, I laughed out loud when Alonso executed an unprompted spin at Spa and stalled the engine. It is supposed to be well nigh impossible to stall an engine in F1. Once, I was a huge fan of Alonso, but he went to the Dark Side in 2007 when he could not rig results against Lewis Hamilton.
Alonso thought that he could rig results. That is the bottom line. I am trying to remember the last time a World Champion retired from a race through an unforced spin. Apparently, Ferrari pays him 30 million euros a year, nearly double what McLaren pays Hamilton. Ferrari lives in la-la land.
Alonso rigs results, he is not part of my world. I do not admit people like that into my world.
An expert consultant to the gaming industry tells me that motor racing is too corrupt for legitimate, state-regulated, bookmakers to be involved at more than a superficial level. Having devoted a fair chunk of my life to motor racing, I cannot say that is the best message I have ever received.
I do not gamble beyond the odd raffle ticket. I have been in casinos and thought them cheap and tawdry, sprayed-on glitz, they are not my thing.
Motor racing has to get its house in order and that can begin with the WMSC throwing the book at Ferrari. Of course, I will get the illiterate hate mail because I do not worship the prancing horse. So far as I am concerned, Ferrari is just another team and I am tired of its antics. I want to see Ferrari treated like any other team found breaking the rules. Is that too much to ask for?
Mike Lawrence
mike.lawrence@pitpass.com
To check out previous features from Mike, click here