Just a note to say I won't be updating either the blog or Twitter this weekend. This is because I am leaving tomorrow morning for a triathlon relay in Grafham (the competition is 8 am on Sunday). I'm doing the swimming component - 1.5 km, doing 2 laps of a course in a reservoir. Two team-mates will cycle 43 km and run 10 km respectively. It's the first time I've ever done a triathlon relay. It is going to be hard work and I will update you on how it went upon my return.

Have a lovely weekend! 

It's been a difficult few months for writing. Some of the reasons are mundane, some exciting - but I don't want to explain any of them tonight. Instead, I'm going to write about the problems of having a compulsory budget cap, inspired by the "We can do Cost-Cutting better than the FIA" Thread at F1 Rejects.

A mandatory budget cap is completely unworkable if you want the champion to be known within 12 months of the last race of the season concerned, because nations generally want to have the figures first and some allow 12 months for the figures to come in. Attempting to circumvent this by demanding the figures before the team's nation's deadline is likely to result in the EU courts banning the entire budget-cap concept because the FIA promised in 2000 to have nothing to do with the commercial side of the sport in order to save its regulatory function. There is only one team whose base of operations (as opposed to its FIA registration) is outside the EU, so such a ruling would either kill off F1 or bring it back to its pre-budget cap square one.

If the FIA decided to wait until teams are permitted to send it the relevant information, the 12-month window would mean there'd be huge amounts of time to hide income (meaning costs go up as there is no incentive for teams to even try sticking to the limit) and any attempts to punish offenders would be meaningless - who, other than the most devoted of F1 fans, is going to remember that the championship Dodgy Accountants Racing won in 2014 was disallowed in mid-2016 for RRA contraventions and that the real winner was Happily Compliant Grand Prix? Not to mention there's a rule that all FIA championships have to be irrevocably awarded in the final meeting of the year in which they are completed. Even if F1's last race of the season was on New Year's Day, there wouldn't be enough time to get all the paperwork in to ensure compliance before the closing date for protests to be activated.

If, on the other hand, the FIA chose to insist on early paperwork and the EU ignored the situation, teams would probably have to guess their expenditure, and certainly wouldn't be able to prove all of it with documents normally used for the purpose. It would have to come down to faxing a ton of receipts and invoices (originals can't be used because they'd be needed to prove finances for the tax inspectors). How easy would it be to, let's say, misplace some of the receipts and invoices, and then argue later? Such an argument would likely succeed in this instance because the FIA is not authorised by the EU to judge commercial matters, so an EU court would have to decide. The EU is not likely to take an attempt to know a team's precise financial status before it reasonably could know itself very seriously. After all, at that stage the teams cannot know their full financial standing, especially given that these are not single traders we are discussing.

Then there's the whole currency conversion issue - are you going to use the conversion for some specific date (in which case teams will violate the rules simply because they were spending in the wrong currency and don't possess a crystal ball), for the date in which the money was spent (in which case the FIA would be opening another can of worms, as the EU would probably ban proof of that type on data privacy grounds) or the date on which the invoice/receipt was made (meaning a lesser version of the "accidental violation" problem plus it'll take an age to get all the conversions done)?

In short, any kind of compulsory spending cap is not possible, at least in the EU. The current system only works because it's optional. Those who stick to it know what they're doing, why they're doing it, and have peer pressure and honour to defend. Some take to that sort of discipline better than others, but the ones who choose to reject RRA will be known to the other teams and thought lesser for doing so. If the FIA takes control, nothing except the amount of money possessed limits expenditure. It would be like the early 2000s but with extra fakery involved. 

The F1 circus going to Bahrain on the FIA's orders despite this contravening the FIA's own Statutes (more detail in the "UniFacepalm" entry) for those who are interested) and then being further in breach due to one of Force India's hire cars being attacked despite safety reassurances from the FIA. This means the event technically doesn't meet Article 17 of the International Sporting Code any more. This in turn means that F1 cars can no longer partake of the race, if Article 5.2 of the Sporting Regulations is anything to go by. As such, there are two very good regulatory reasons why F1 cannot race in Bahrain.

In light of the above, the F1 race, by the FIA's own regulations, should not be happening at all. Therefore I intend to ignore all sporting aspects of the Bahrain weekend. There will be no live-commenting on Twitter or the Fisichella Forum (as I normally provide), nor will I comment on any aspect of any driver's on-track performance.

Discussions of non-sporting aspects of F1, and of non-F1 events, will continue as normal and appropriate.

I hope this is OK with everyone and apologise to anyone who is inconvenienced by this service interruption/boycott. Non-F1 items are unaffected by this boycott, and I intend to resume live-commenting F1 events in Spain and (possibly) the Mugello test beforehand, subject to the FIA not breaking any regulations in the course of going there.

First of all, sorry for the long absence. I've had a lengthy spell where everything I've wanted to write has been either live-commenting or small enough to fit in a tweet or two. Neither fits my blogging style. I'll try not to let 10-week absences happen again.

Fury ignited this entry. It's the ongoing situation in Bahrain. Up until now, it's been a matter of ethics and safety whether F1 goes or not. Thanks to the Bahrain organiser's actions, it's become a matter of regulations.

I speak of the "UniF1ed" campaign - something which apparently has been happening for a while but only came to my attention last night.  The organisers of the race may or may not have originated the campaign, but they are enthusiastically participating in it. Little do they appear to realise that they have endangered their race by doing so.

I draw your attention to the tagline "One Nation in Celebration". The pedants among you will deem this false - F1 is a worldwide event so, barring disaster, "Many Nations In Celebration" would be more accurate. The font used for it on the poster is difficult to read, but that's even more nit-picky. The big problem, however, is that it expresses a link between F1 and national unity. 

Linking F1 and national unity probably doesn't seem that big a problem. It may even seem close enough to pro-social and "sport is good" themes to be helpful. I can only assume that was what the organisers thought when they decided to go down that path. Unfortunately for them, Article 1 of the FIA Statutes (PDF), in wording combined with its application and the reason for its existence, indicates otherwise.

Article 1 of the FIA Statutes says, among other things:

"The FIA shall refrain from manifesting racial, political or religious discrimination in the course of its activities and from taking any action in this respect."

Many thanks to the Midweek Motorsports Listener Collective on Facebook, particularly with regard to finding an ad in the campaign that further demonstrates the link the organisers are making between F1 and politics.

You may be wondering why I am using "linking F1 and politics" as synonymous with the "racial, political and religious discrimination" actually mentioned in Article 1 of the FIA Statutes. This is down to two things: the way Article 1 has been implemented and the reason Article 1 is required to exist.

The most recent use of Article 1  was to convict the Turkish GP organisers (TOSFED) of using the 2006 podium ceremony for political gain. Mehmet Ali Talat presented one of the trophies. This in and of itself wasn't a breach of Article 1. Had he been described as the regional governor of Turkish Cyprus, everything would have been fine (except for possible grumblings within Cyprus and Turkey). However, he was described as the head of state of the Republic of Cyprus, a state not recognised by the UN but is recognised by Turkey. That was deemed a breach of Article 1 of the FIA Statutes and of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code. This was for a one-off incident that was relatively subtle in its political aims and, importantly, did not connote political discrimination, only express a controversial political point. 

Yes, part of the fine was for Article 151c, but a more significant breach of Article 1 would be sufficient for any penalty the FIA has to be levied. The "UniF1ed" campaign is clearly not a casual breach, nor is it a question of tick-boxing. Article 35 b) specifically mentions that any club not acting according to the expectations of the FIA (including by breaking any of the Statutes) can be struck off the roll. That is to say, the entire club and all associated activities can be dissolved. Obviously, this would include the very Grand Prix Bahrain was attempting to protect.

There is nothing in the Statute that requires a political statement to be true or demonstrable in order for it to be usable. Technically speaking, even explicit FIA approval wouldn't work, unless the message was specifically against racial, political or religious discrimination. "UniF1ed" isn't. Instead it is a message suggesting political unity already exists, which doesn't meet the exemption requirement. 

As for why Article 1 of the FIA Statutes exists, it's mandatory for non-political organisations registered in France. This is because anti-discrimination and apolitical approaches are considered key elements in the sorts of groups France allows to be registered with them. If the FIA overlooks a breach of Article 1, it is under serious risk of being sent to the French civil courts and penalised. Dissolution is entirely possible, as is a large fine and (at least partial) loss of its autonomy over judging its own motorsports events.

That would open the door to everything from pitlane speeders to technical flouters to use the civil courts to challenge every single decision the FIA makes. Motorsport would grind to a halt. That assumes a lack of dissolution - that scenario would obviously have a serious deletrious effect on every branch of motorsport, including ones that never in a million years considered going to Bahrain.

Clearly none of this is in any motorsport fan's interest. It certainly doesn't help Bahrain organisers any! 

There is no longer any need to reference political strife or anyone's safety to justify not going to Bahrain. Regulations now demand refusal to race - and refusal to support the race. Many have suggested this be done in the form of a boycott.

Thanks to the combined efforts of Sky (inaccessible, unaffordable and unethical) and BBC Radio (unintelligible in the races), I won't have a choice about watching the race. The most I'd have been able to do was follow it on Twitter. Having already had the difficult bit taken out of my hands, I am quite happy to boycott the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix completely. The powers-that-be have already demonstrated they don't care about viewer figures due to sending the UK live rights to Sky, so I doubt the boycott will achieve anything. 

For that matter, I'm not convinced the situation is safe enough to enable a viable attempt to hold the 2012 Bahrain GP. If inviability makes for a race cancellation on force majuere (which incidentally has to be done by the FIA if there is to be a Bahrain 2013), that would be helpful in the short term.

The breach of Statute would make the validity of copyright use of "F1" within "UniF1ed" questionable too. The licence the organisers have to include F1 in their marketing would surely not include uses in materials breaching the regulations, particularly ones underpinned by law. Some of the cases Bernie has lost on the topic mean there is not sufficient evidence for certainty in either direction. Even so, that wouldn't be Bahrain's biggest likely problem.

Its biggest problem in that scenario is that Bahrain would likely lose the race... ...on account of there being no viable authority to contract the race from in the first place. 

For these reasons, it is wrong to support a race that's being used to support political strife in contravention of Article 1 of the FIA Statutes. As in, it's such a big contravention that, at minimum, the FIA will lose its ability to be the first and final place of judgment for matters involving its own series (everything would have to be made subject to the French civil courts). The French courts are rather sensitive about the whole "no politics" thing for non-political organisations. The moment Bahrain's organisers issued the "UniF1ed" ad campaign, it was in contravention of the regulations. That the FIA has (so far) let that campaign go ahead without comment is contemptible and puts the FIA - and every single series it runs, including those who'd never have gone to Bahrain in a million years - in a very vulnerable position.

It's in F1's and the FIA's interest not to wait for force majuere to come into effect, but to protect themselves by cancelling on the grounds of FIA Statute Article 1 breaches.

Until then... ...I don't see why I should have to applaud or condone the FIA's attempted self-destruction.

- Snacks (several bars of chocolate and a flapjack) ready

- Support gear (Fisichella/Force India T-shirt, Force India wristband, Jordan hat, Force India/Jordan lanyard) on

- Reading material (lots of it...) to hand

- Drink (litre of orange squash) next to my computer

- White earphones applied to speaker and ears

- Computer activated

- Unnecessary software turned off

- Paint activated in case anything screenshot-worthy happens 

- Main browser open with 2 instances of Twitter, 2 instances of Fisichella Forum, LCMB, Radio Le Mans, translation software and a few spare browser windows

- Secondary browser open with 2 instances of Grand-Am (defaulting to live timing)

- Comfy chair with cushion found

- Cleaning cloth ready

- Me ready for 24 hours of fun