04/12/2009
NEWS STORY
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Over the past month accusations of bias in the FIA's World Council have been thick in the air following it handing a lifetime ban from F1 to Flavio Briatore. The accusations are nothing new and similar sentiments have been widely reported in the press many times before. However, this time an unprecedented step has been taken as in recent days Briatore has been challenging his ban in a French court. No one has ever attacked the FIA in an independent court with such strong allegations and having been gifted a ban by the FIA itself, Briatore has nothing to lose. If he wins it will almost certainly mark a watershed in the history of F1 because of the possibility of a spate of copycat cases against the FIA. Make no mistake; the very fabric of F1 is at stake.
The slanging match began soon after Briatore was banned by the WMSC in September but it was a time bomb which had been ticking for some time. Briatore had been accused of fixing the result of last year's Singapore Grand Prix by allowing Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately crash. Piquet blew the whistle on this after he was sacked by Renault and it followed a series of outbursts he made against Briatore. As if this situation wasn't strained enough, the ban was handed out by Max Mosley, the then-FIA president who, earlier in the year, had accused Briatore of being associated with "loonies" over his work with FOTA. Clearly there would be a backlash from Briatore after the ban and he didn't disappoint.
According to leaked extracts of his pleadings, Briatore argues that the ban was not imposed by an impartial judge because of his strained relationship with Mosley. "Briatore had, in the constructors' names, in fact threatened the FIA... to instigate a parallel competition, organised without the FIA," the statement reportedly says adding that there had been "some extremely violent disputes" between Briatore and Mosley. As a result, Briatore has reportedly accused Mosley of being "clearly blinded by an excessive desire for personal revenge."
However, reports have revealed perhaps the most severe allegations from Briatore's statement which are that Mosley "assumed the roles of complainant, investigator, prosecutor and judge." If true, it could put a question mark over the independence of the WMSC itself which could in turn call into question previous decisions it has made. Adding fuel to this fire, Briatore also reportedly claims that F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone should not have been able to vote at the WMSC hearing due to an apparent conflict of interest.
According to the report, Ecclestone "took part and was able to vote in the deliberations of the World Council, and was a directly interested party in Renault not suffering a sanction that might discourage it from continuing its participation in the Formula One world championship and could, moreover, be hostile to Mr Briatore as a result of stances taken by him during the previous year on behalf of the constructors involved in Formula One." If this allegation is proven to be true it too could put a question mark over the independence of the WMSC itself which could also in turn call into question previous decisions it has made.
Briatore is clearly going in to the court case all guns a blazing. The appeal is his last chance of staying in the sport and maintaining a lifestyle in the limelight to which he has grown accustomed. Naturally the FIA is taking a defensive stance and in response it released a statement saying that it "condemns the selective leaking of extracts from Mr Briatore's pleadings to the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris."
It added that "the FIA rejects the allegations made in these leaks and confirms that the decision to impose a sanction against Mr Briatore was made by an overwhelming majority of the attending World Motor Sport Council members."
Clearly, it could well be irrelevant that the decision was made by a majority if one of the members of the WMSC, which is effectively the jury, had a conflict of interest. However, the FIA chose not to engage on the specifics of Briatore's points only stating that "in respect for the authority of the French Court, it would be entirely inappropriate for the FIA to comment further on this matter in advance of the hearing."
If the French court agrees with Briatore's claims then the core of F1 could ultimately be at risk since it could spark copycat cases from disgruntled recipients of WMSC decisions who thought that the jury or the court's judge had been biased against them. It raises the question of whether the FIA would have sufficient resources to pay out compensation if it were to lose a string of such cases. Heaven knows what would happen if it did not have sufficient funds and the mind boggles at what would happen to its contracts, such as F1's 100 year rights agreement, if the FIA went bankrupt.
Yet despite it marking a possible watershed moment in F1's nearly 60-year history, this is far from the first time that the sport has heard these kinds of claims about WMSC members being biased and its judge not being independent. Indeed, ironically on one memorable occasion Briatore himself was the beneficiary of the way that the WMSC operates.
The year was 1994 and the date 31 July: the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim The picture on the cover of Benetton mechanic Steve Matchett's book 'The Mechanic's Tale' is worth a thousand words. A fireball had just ripped through the Benetton team's pits soon after Jos Verstappen had pulled in and Matchett's book cover shows him staggering through it. Luckily no one lost their lives in the incident but five mechanics, and Verstappen himself, suffered burns - much worse than can be said of the outcome of Piquet's jaunt into the wall at Singapore.
The FIA was soon on the case saying in a statement on 10 August that the fuel spillage, which started the fire, was caused by a valve in its refuelling rig failing to close due to the presence of a "foreign body." Crucially, the FIA added that it believed this foreign body reached the valve because a filter designed to eliminate this risk "had been deliberately removed."
The lack of the filter increased the fuel flow rate by an estimated 12.5% giving a one-second saving over an eight-second pit stop. Like causing a crash to disrupt rival teams' pit strategies, removing the fuel filter was not a bad way to get an advantage in a race. Indeed, Michael Schumacher, Benetton's star driver, and the sport's great hope following the death of Ayrton Senna earlier in the season, was leading the championship by a massive 27 points by the time of the German GP.
Benetton claimed its innocence in a statement saying that it removed the filter "with the full knowledge and permission of the FIA." Its then boss Briatore added "we have proof and we could prove it in court if we had to."
The FIA denied this saying in a statement on 11 August that "permission was certainly not given" and Benetton was summoned before a WMSC disciplinary hearing. The FIA's statement concluded that Benetton "face sanctions ranging from a reprimand to their disqualification, which would mean their exclusion from Formula One." This was unsurprising since, before the year's racing began Mosley had said "if anybody is found deliberately cheating, as opposed to making a wrong interpretation of the regulations, then draconian penalties would be appropriate." He added "in these circumstances teams can be expected to be stopped from racing."
Mosley was chairman of the WMSC hearing which took place on 7 September and later said of his position "I was in a completely neutral capacity." And quite sensible this is too. However, it's what took place the night before the hearing that staggers.
A letter from Mosley's advisers in June 2003 reveals that Mosley met with Benetton's barrister, George Carman QC, in a hotel bar the night before the hearing and "gave Mr Carman his view that it was best...not to seek to blame any FIA personnel." So much for the neutrality of the WMSC chairman who, of course, just happened to also be the FIA president. You might think that this episode rings bells of Briatore's claim that in the recent WMSC case Mosley "assumed the roles of complainant, investigator, prosecutor and judge," but that's just the start.
In the hearing, the day after Mosley's meeting in the bar, Carman followed Mosley's advice and pleaded guilty saying that a junior Benetton employee was to blame for removing the filter. This time Briatore and Benetton got off without any punishment at all and Mosley attributed this directly to the fact that the team had not blamed the FIA but had pleaded guilty. Just as he had advised Carman the night before the case. "The moment that Benetton pleaded guilty, the situation changed. Instead of being out to [prosecute] Benetton, we listened to what they had to say [in mitigation]," Mosley said after the hearing.
Given that Schumacher ended up winning the World Championship over Damon Hill by just one point, any punishment that the WMSC might have meted out, had they been out to prosecute, could well have led to Hill being crowned world champion. This could have put Hill's Williams team on an even firmer financial footing since turnover, primarily comprised of sponsorship, at Williams increased by just 1% the following year in contrast to a 20% rise at Benetton.
Earlier this year we put the details of the incident to Hill who would not comment on his career but did say that "the FIA should solely be responsible for policing and enforcing the Formula One regulations fairly, transparently and without bias. That's exactly what it should do." Crucially, Hill added "in the past it's been felt that that's been hard to see."
How could this tale get any more surprising? Well, Mosley wasn't alone at the meeting in the bar. Despite Benetton's QC being there, the FIA's own barrister, the part-time racing commentator Ian Titchmarsh, was not. The letter from Mosley's advisers reveals that "it never occurred to Mr Mosley that there was anything improper in agreeing to meet as suggested." That sounds strange given that Mosley is a trained barrister himself of course and it also raises the question of who suggested the meeting.
Carman, who had never before acted in a WMSC disciplinary hearing, wanted to know how it worked. According to the letter, and also according to Carman's son Dominic, George Carman requested the meeting. But he didn't ask Mosley to the meeting. Instead, the letter explains that "Mr Mosley was asked if he would meet Mr Carman by Mr Bernie Ecclestone." The third person present at the meeting was Ecclestone who, of course, also sits on the WMSC as Briatore himself has recently complained.
Former F1 team principal Eddie Jordan has said that Ecclestone "was keen to get a German driver into F1 to bring in TV money from that country." Financial documents released by Ecclestone's company in 1999 point out this relationship in blunt terms: "it is possible to observe a correlation between the popularity of the Championship in the Federal Republic of Germany in recent years and Michael Schumacher's success in the Championship.
F1's multi-year television deal with the German RTL station became one of the biggest-paying in the sport at an estimated £95m and Ecclestone's family trust has made an estimated £650m from stakes in his F1 company being sold to Morgan Grenfell, the investment banking arm of Deutsche Bank, and German media firm EM.TV.
It is easy to see how someone could allege a conflict of interest given that Ecclestone was voting in the same WMSC meeting which could have seen Benetton and Schumacher, thrown out in the first year it won the championship. It is ironic that it has taken Briatore, someone who has worked closely with Ecclestone and Mosley for over two decades, to take these kinds of issues to an independent court. Perhaps it was inevitable that someone would eventually do it. On 5 January we will find out the level of impact it will have but one thing is for sure, this is one case which is unlikely to be settled by a meeting in the bar between the judge and the QC the night before.