18/01/2010
NEWS STORY
Who would ever have thought it? After years of Ron Dennis and, occasionally Luca di Montezemolo, threatening the FIA with rival series and arbitration, it has taken Flavio Briatore, one of Bernie Ecclestone's staunchest allies, to legally challenge the FIA and win.
As Pitpass reported earlier today, Briatore is following up his first court victory with another lawsuit for damages which he claims his management business suffered due to it losing drivers when the FIA's World Council banned them from getting superlicenses. The FIA is expected to appeal the court result which overturned Briatore's own ban from the sport but, remarkably, even this decision may not be legal. It makes one wonder whether the FIA can do anything right.
"The decision to appeal is a decision that should have been taken by the World Council but we haven't had a World Council meeting," one disgruntled World Council member recently told Pitpass' business editor Chris Sylt. However, it doesn't stop there. In light of Briatore's court result, the FIA confirmed it will allow his drivers to have superlicenses. Even Briatore was stunned by this U-turn and he is the beneficiary.
"There were two FIA press releases, one very strong, surely with Max's involvement. That was the first one. In the second one they authorised all the drivers in our management company to have a superlicense. Basically this is against the World Council," said Briatore.
According to an FIA statement the decision to allow Briatore's drivers to get superlicenses was taken by "the FIA President and FIA Senate" which is as clear evidence as any that the federation's new boss Jean Todt had a hand in it. Crucially, allowing the drivers to get superlicenses overturns the decision of the World Council which was chaired by his predecessor Max Mosley.
If the World Council decision was watertight then you wouldn't have thought that it would have needed to be overturned because of Briatore's court result. This doesn't seem to make the FIA's chances of appeal look good and Sylt's source on the World Council also questions the validity of the decision to allow Briatore's drivers to have superlicenses.
"As far as I can see, is as there is an appeal in force so the decisions that were made must stay," says the Council member adding "all the decisions of the World Council must stay pending the appeal. Now, how is it possible for the FIA to change what the World Council said? They can't. One person, whoever said that, could not do that without the approval of the World Council."
The FIA seems to be up that proverbial creek and and, if this doesn't look bad enough, it apparently needs a complete overhaul just to regain credibility, let alone correct possible errors with recent decisions.
As Pitpass also reported earlier today, the straw that broke the FIA's back in court was the fact that its president launched the enquiry into Briatore's activities and also handed out the punishment as chairman of the World Council. In a nutshell, no one person should be judge, jury and executioner and Briatore's lawyer Philippe Ouakrat explains that "it is against French and international laws for an organism to be jury, procedural body and investigating body at the same time."
The upshot, according to Briatore, is that "in the last 15 years, everything is illegal...every decision made by the World Council was illegal," he said, adding "every decision with McLaren, with the drivers, with everything." Ouch!
However, it looks like the FIA's new boss may be riding to its rescue since the federation has confirmed that "in his election campaign last summer, FIA President Jean Todt and his team announced that new measures for constructive change, including a disciplinary procedure, would be introduced. Work on this is well advanced. Once in place, this will address the issues in the Court's judgement."
This only seems to add fuel to Flavio's fire as it looks like it acknowledges that the issues raised in the court judgement were valid otherwise the FIA would presumably not need to make changes to address them. Todt seems to be making a name for himself and time will tell whether it is enough to save the FIA.