I've had a bit of a creative dry spell recently. That changed this evening when I saw WTF1's entry about the Formula 1 Wikipedia game. This is a game where you have to try to get from a random Wikipedia page to the "Formula 1" page in 6 clicks or fewer using only links in the pages themselves. It's based upon the "six degrees of separation" concept and it helps if you can make broad associational links... ...while allowing for certain weaknesses in Wikipedia's articles.

Take my first successful attempt, for example. The "Random Article" button placed me at Omak Airport (an airport in Washington used in World War II). You might initially think such an article was about as helpful as Lake Tanganyika Stadium (where I started the previous - and first - time). However, the article mentions certain trivia about the airport, including the airstrip construction material... ...Asphalt.

Now asphalt is used in all sorts of roads. Sadly, there was no mention of motor racing of any kind in Wikipedia's asphalt article despite 85% of the USA's asphalt being used in road construction. That said, in 1835 - the early days of European asphalt usage - the largest project involving the new material had 24,000 square yards of ground was covered for easy access around the... ...Place de la Concorde.

When I saw that I thought, "Wow! This will be easy - the FIA lives at the Place de la Concorde and the FIA article surely mentions Formula 1 among its activities!" Not so fast! Pretty much every other significant feature of the Place de la Concorde is mentioned (it features, among other things, 8 statues representing major French cities, the French National Assembly and the American embassy), but no mention of the FIA offices that are also there. Oh well, at least France does have a long and storied history in Formula 1...

which isn't mentioned in the France article. There is a lengthy sports section which describes a great variety of sporting activities in France. There's even a motor racing bit. Which talks about the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The article on the 24 Hours of Le Mans is lengthy. It turns out that in that length, there's a part about Peugeot introducing KERS for the 2009 event which mentions its similarity to the Formula 1 version, but I missed it because I thought I'd seen the perfect link in the "Purpose" section. The first line read, "At a time when Grand Prix racing was the dominant form of motorsport throughout Europe"

I thought "2 clicks and home in the 6 required!" and for once I was right. Grands Prix were the original form of motor racing and many of the series that followed adopted the terminology for their individual events. Formula 1 is the most famous of these. In the article, it mentions that motor racing was started in France, but France's accomplishments with regards to sports are so extensive that this didn't even warrant a mention in the France entry.

Some of my Wikipedia wanderings were a bit shorter. One of them started me at Way Out West (jazz group), which includes West African drums, a dan tranh (a Vietnamese zither) and dan bau (a Vietnamese one-stringed sound box). It has performed in several notable Canadian festivals but is based in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.

Melbourne is the second-biggest city in Australia, originally founded by settlers from Van Diemen's Land. Whether this has any non-coincidental connection to the Van Diemen single-seater car manufacturer is unknown. What is known is that it hosts the Australian Grand Prix (Formula One). So that particular wiki walk was completed in a mere two clicks. Maybe Way Out West should be invited to the 2012 F1 Rocks, seeing as the next F1 Rocks concert has such noted non-rock musicians as David Guetta, Taio Cruz and the Sugababes...

Amusingly, the next and final F1 Wikipedia attempt I did started in a motor sport article: the 2009 Formula Lista Junior season. It is a Formula BMW series running from April to September that started in 2000 and is still happening. Most of the drivers and all but one of the teams are Swiss, but the law in Switzerland means they cannot race in their home country. Instead, they race in France (including two visits to Dijon), Germany and Italy, benefiting from a rule allowing national-level racers from anywhere in the EU or a limited number of other countries reciprocal access to appropriate series in any country involved in that agreement.

That said, the 2009 title was not won by a Swiss driver, but an Italian one - Kevin Giovesi. He won 5 races out of the 12 and scored nearly 50% more points than the second-placed Sven Ackermann (who was the first in a cluster of six Swiss drivers). Some progression is clearly possible because even fifth-placed Sandro Zeller competed in three different F3 championships during 2010. Kevin Giovesi went into Italian F3 but came only 15th while Sven appears to have fallen off the radar completely.

Returning to the wiki walk, the final round happened at Monza.  Needless to say, the Monza article casually mentions the fact that it hosts Formula 1 once... ...or twice... ...or 27 times (admittedly including reference lists). So that wiki walk got me to the destination in 2 clicks, but in a very interesting way for a motor sports fan. It's always nice to discover a previously-unknown racing series :)

This weekend, Viva F1 has organised the third Blogger's Swap Shop. It is a fantastic idea where 15 motorsports bloggers write for each other's blogs. An entry from me will appear at The Formula 1 & Motorsports Archive today. La Canta Magnifico Blog is honoured to host a guest entry by Maverick of Viva F1 (please ignore the entry by-line as I haven't figured out how to get it to change yet).

Formula One has more than its fair share of rules. There's not even a single rule book - please refer to the International Sporting code, F1 Sporting Regulations and F1 Technical Regulations as well as all the attached appendices while not forgetting the Rules of the FIA International Court of Appeal [and the Concorde Agreement - ed]. Undoubtedly the vaguest of all the rules, and quite deliberately so, is Article 151c which concerns "any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally." In other words, ‘bringing the sport into disrepute’.

The ‘disrepute clause’ gives rise to concerns not only about its ill-defined and wide-reaching nature but also about its potential for abuse. So vague is the clause, who is to define what is and what isn't against the interests of the sport? Furthermore, having lost the case, while there is scope to challenge the decision in the Court of Appeal how can you possibly argue that it didn't bring the sport into disrepute? It's an immeasurable concept. Taking a case even further, with notable exceptions, the courts are generally reluctant to intervene in the internal disputes of voluntary associations and not inclined to review the decisions of tribunals.

Last month, the FIA scrapped the team orders rule but with the caveat that "any actions liable to bring the sport into disrepute are dealt with under Article 151c of the International Sporting Code and any other relevant provisions". So are team orders banned? Ferrari's decision to manipulate Michael Schumacher past Rubens Barrichello on the last lap of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix induced boos from the watching spectators and widespread condemnation from the media. It ultimately led to the banning of team orders, but how would it be dealt with today? It clearly sounds like a case of bringing the 'sport into into disrepute' but at the time, the WMSC "recognised the long-standing and traditional right of a team to decree the finishing order of its drivers in what it believes to be the best interest of its attempt to win both world championships" and hence took no action. Does tradition trump public opinion?

Moving onto 2010 and Hockenheim and this time it was Felipe Massa who was giving way for Fernando Alonso. The stewards acted by issuing the maximum fine allowed to them but the WMSC chose to not extend the penalty, instead going as far as recommending that the ban on team orders be abolished, which it subsequently was. However, what about bringing the sport into disrepute? There was uproar amongst groups of fans and the media, so was there a case for turning to Article 151c? The trouble is that while large parts of the media were unhappy (the Brazilian castigation of Massa being particularly venomous) it certainly wasn't the case everywhere. The Italian media sided with Ferrari, the Spanish media sided with Alonso and the German media, seemingly conditioned by the Schumacher-years, coolly seemed to think that it was business as usual - which in reality it probably was.

Another example from 2010, which might have resulted in Article 151c being brandished in anger, was Ferrari's and Alonso's claims that the European Grand Prix was fixed. If this was football there would have been repercussions - earlier this week, Liverpool's Ryan Babel picked up a £10,000 fine for retweeting a link to a mocked-up picture of referee Howard Webb in a Manchester United shirt after Liverpool lost 1-0 to their rivals. The stewards may have done a poor job that weekend but for drivers and teams at the centre of it all to suggest bias at the FIA could easily be seen as damaging to Formula One.

On the other hand, others may suggest that it was the actual stewarding that was damaging - which begs the question of whether the FIA themselves should be able to be found guilty of ‘bringing the sport into disrepute’? While many fans have been suggesting that for years, the nearest anyone on the inside has come to suggesting such a thing in recent years is in 2008, when Mark Webber accused Max Mosley of damaging the sport following allegations about his private life.

In the end, the Hockenheim result is forgotten largely thanks to a combination of a close-fought Championship and the fact that Alonso didn't take the title thanks to those points gained in Germany. How might the issue have rumbled on down the years if 'Alonso's title' had been questioned by some? Of course, one whole problem with the question of ‘bringing the sport into disrepute’ is that public exposure is central to the accusation and yet, by simply pursuing an issue, the FIA can generate even more publicity for a case, causing further damage. Yet, does it all really matter?

Formula One thrives on controversy, the politics is as much a part of the drama as the racing - an ongoing soap opera. Admittedly, the politics occasionally takes too much precedence over what is happening on the track (Max Mosley and FOTA's wranglings at the end of his reign being a prime example). Yet has any of it really damaged F1's reputation? Renault were found guilty of manipulating a race but fans never stayed away from the subsequent Singapore Grand Prix. McLaren were found guilty of stealing Ferrari information but Formula One is still seen as a glamorous sport. In short, the concept of the ‘disrepute clause’ seems like a misnomer as far as Formula One is concerned. Perhaps it comes down to that image of glamour - a bit of palace intrigue is expected to be part and parcel of the show?

But then maybe Bernie Ecclestone already knows that - a man who could probably earn himself three or four disrepute charges a year.