Wednesday, June 8, 2011

FIA Embarrasses Itself

I was surprised when the FIA restored the Bahrain Grand Prix onto the calender. The political situation in the country is anything but stable. It is just not making the headlines.

An even bigger surprise was that the FIA did it without consulting the teams, which goes against its own sporting code. Apparently, even the Ferrari team boss, Stefano Domenicali, who sits on the FIA world council, voted to restore the race. Why would they make such a glaring mistake?

Perhaps the "mistake" was intentional. The world council knew that the teams would protest and, given the decision was invalid, would be under no obligation to compete in the event. Effectively, the race has been removed from the calender but the FIA can still say to the Bahraini race organizers, "Hey, we tried."

Of course, if it was intentional, it was an embarrassingly ham-fisted plan. What were they thinking?

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