16/10/2007
NEWS STORY
The appointment of a 'fair play tsar' to the McLaren team for the Brazilian Grand Prix to ensure that neither driver has an advantage over the other has turned up several irregularities. For instance, he found that one driver has been using different tyre pressures to the other, and at one point, he noted that Lewis Hamilton was given more fuel than Fernando Alonso. Several hundred square miles of Brazilian rain forest have been cut down to provide the paper for his report and its publication in the press.
Meanwhile, several other teams and drivers have actually asked the FIA to appoint a fair play tsar to ensure that both their drivers are given equal treatment.
Honda's fair play tsar has been trying to measure the respective smiles of Nick Fry and Yasuhiro Wada to see if either has some unfair advantage over the other, but has to confess that he still can't understand why either of them is smiling at all.
Renault's fair play tsar was appointed just in time for last weekend's rugby semi-final for which he blagged tickets in order to see how the French and British react 'on a level playing field' given that the Renault team includes both nationalities. When he reported back on Tuesday to say that one of them appeared to have some advantage over the other, he found Place de la Concorde deserted.
He has also noted that one of the drivers and the team principal speak the same language although he has ruled that he doesn't think this is an advantage.
BMW Sauber's tsar has noted that one of their drivers has a beard and the other hasn't. As the one with the beard has more World Championship points than the one without, he has ordered Robert Kubica to grow a beard in double-quick time. The Pole is using fertiliser which apparently works particularly well on potatoes.
Scuderia Toro Rosso have been surprised to find that their tsar is an American and looks suspiciously like Scott Speed. He has been stomping around the garage shouting 'it's not fair' but hasn't actually consulted any team member yet nor explained his findings.
Meanwhile, Ferrari have been surprised to find that they had a fair play tsar all along. He was found in the back of a cupboard in Maranello, his hair and beard at least a meter long, and muttering something about Nigel Mansell. He has been dusted off and his first adjudication concerned the amount of information passing from the drivers to the engineers, particularly considering the volume of traffic. But while this clearly favoured one driver over the other, it was thought that the amount of actual information was probably similar.
The FIA have taken tremendous pains to find a suitable tsar for the Spyker team. Eventually they found a former bank worker from Dublin, of Russian-Canadian parents, now living in Bucharest, married to a Dutch girl whose father was German. Unfortunately, they can't understand a word he says.
The tsar in charge of the Super Aguri team has noted that Takuma Sato has a height advantage over Anthony Davidson - but then he noted that everyone has a height advantage over Anthony Davidson. He has since banned Anthony Davidson for being too short.
Over at Toyota, a blonde man with a beatific smile is attempting - well, not really - to maintain fair play between the two drivers in the team but John Howett has refused to allow Ove Andersson to actually enter the garage.
The tsar at Red Bull Racing is pleased to note that both drivers have strong national accents, and so may be equally incomprehensible to some members of the team. He also points out that they're both 'getting on a bit' and given they both have strong jaws, thinks they might actually be one and the same and that he doesn't have a job at all. However, he is then dismayed to find that one has out-qualified the other 14-2. "I might ask Mark Webber to 'slow down a bit,'" he suggests.
Finally, Frank Williams has refused to have a fair play tsar at all, maintaining that Formula One was never meant to be fair anyway. Old timers remember Ken Tyrrell's similar take on fair play. Julian Bailey was driving for Ken at Hockenheim, and Bailey suggested that if he straightlined the corner into the stadium, he could get a better run through the final corner at the start of a flying lap. "Why didn't you do it," asked Ken? "I didn't think it was fair," replied Bailey. "Fair? FAIR?" roared Ken, emitting his customary mouthy typhoon. "Get outside this motorhome and see if you can see anything that is remotely fair!"