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.

Attempting to discuss things about Monaco has proved a frustrating experience. I am accustomed to being in discussions and even arguments about contentious bits of the race. I am not accustomed to major events happening in a race with seemingly only me noticing. 

Firstly, the crash that caused the red flag. It has been established that it was a complicated mess, but what sparked it? I've seen blame put on several people, primarily Adrian Sutil. What none of those blaming Adrian seem to have noticed was that he took damage in a collision three laps earlier with Kamui Kobayashi. This is clearly demonstrated in Adrian suddenly falling into the clutches of the midfield pack that was in process of being lapped.

He was one second than usual on lap 65 (the lap of the pass - note that all lap numbers on the graph are transposed by one lap), became 3 seconds slower than usual on lap 66 (the lap after Kamui passed him) and 4 seconds slower than usual on laps 67 and 68. On laps 69 and 70, Adrian is 20 seconds a lap slower than usual - but both include pit stop time for replacing tyres. This indicates progressive damage. Given that Kobayashi hit the right rear tyre and it was this tyre that ended up in need of a replacement, it is perfectly reasonable to consider that a weakness in the tyre (underinflation from a slow puncture would be most likely) contributed to Adrian's crash.

I cannot begrudge Kamui his 5th because he was overdue one, but I do not feel that this exempts him from having his race properly analysed.

Secondly, the whole raft of complaints about being able to change tyres/wings/springs on the grid and Pastor Maldonado's removal from the results by Lewis Hamilton. While I see a point to the complaints about the Lewis/Pastor crash in particular, all three debates have missed the most important point - that Article 18 of the General Prescriptions prevented the restart from happening in the first place.

Article 18 of the General Prescriptions (link in PDF) has three cases concerning red flags. Initially I'd thought this was in the International Sporting Code, but it appears this particular rulebook also applies to every international racing series (Article 1). Article 18 describes mid-race stoppages using Cases A, Case B and Case C. These will be familiar to those who recall the contents of 2003-era F1 Sporting Regulations documents. For the people who haven't done so, the cases refer to when the red flag is flown and determine what happens thereafter.

Case A is for when the red flag flies within the first 2 laps. Basically, the race is treated as if it never began.

Case B is for when the red flag flies between 2 laps and 75%. The race is restarted on a 10-minute procedure when possible and the running resumes from the lap where it ended.

Case C is for when the red flag flies between 75% and the end of the race. The race result is called then and there. No restart is attempted even if it would be easy to do so. The race is deemed to have finished when the red flag flies, though there is a countback rule.

72 laps out of 78 is 92.307% of the race, which is considerably more than 75%. Clearly this is a Case C situation.

The inclusion of the General Prescriptions in the list of regulations applicable to F1 on the FIA's website means that the document must be taken seriously. Nonetheless, the General Prescriptions is overruled by the F1 Sporting Regulatoins and the International Sporting Code if there are contradictory clauses.

However, no such clauses exist in either document on the question of Case C restarts. There is nothing in either the International Sporting Code or the F1 Sporting Regulations that allows for a red flag beyond the 75% mark to be interpreted as anything other than the end of the race.

Even Article 41 of the F1 Sporting Regulations (the regulation most often cited as justifying the restart) doesn't do that because Article 18 of the General Prescriptions says the race ends when the red flag is flown in Case C situations. Article 41 doesn't mention anything about the definition of a red flag or end-of-race signal changing. Therefore a Case C situation falls under Article 43 (the regulations for finishing). The lack of mention of Cases A, B and C in the F1 Sporting Regulations (they was removed in 2005) does not suffice to negate the power of General Prescriptions Article 18. Article 1 of the General Prescriptions specifically says that precedence only applies in the case of contradictory regulations.

So a lot of the arguments of yesterday should have been null and void. There should have been no argument over tyre or wing changes because there shouldn't have been any laps in which to use them. Pastor and Lewis shouldn't have crashed because there shouldn't have been any time for them to crash in.

Pity the powers-that-be didn't care about their own regulations - again. Double pity that even people like Ted Kravitz (in BBC TV's coverage of the race (iPlayer link; expires 5 June 2011)) and Joe Saward presented Article 41 as if it was the only relevant item, even though it proved not to be especially relevant. When none of the people at the circuit appear to care, how can anyone else be expected to do so (other than stubborn people like me)?