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.

Just after lunch today, Dad, my brother and I went to the Kurburgring in Sutton-in-Ashfield. Never mind the punny title - it was the first time I'd karted in a while and as a bonus I would get to compete against my brother! He has had some road car driving experience but between the sessions I've done at Elk Karting and the one at Amen Corner, I've got slightly more experience of karts.

The reception was nice, with race-themed chairs and friendly staff. Our luck was in because it turned out that Thursday afternoon is "happy hour", so there was a discount on the karting. One downside became apparent immediately; it was noisy, largely because there were petrol karts on an indoor track. This was an issue for me as I have sensitive hearing. I'd brought earplugs but the staff provided some as well.  The other issue with using petrol karts indoors is ventilation, though the place didn't have much in the way of fumes in the air.

The briefing was not the usual set-up of someone standing at the front of the classroom going through the rules. It started that way, with a staff member pointing out the basics as well as briefly explaining circuit-specific things like where different rooms were and the evacuation procedure, but then we were left watching a video with the rules on there. If I'd been a first-timer, I do wonder what would have happened if I hadn't understood the video properly, but fortunately I've karted before and the rules were only slightly different for the Kurburgring. The big circuit-specific rule was that the banked Karusell Corner/Turn 2 was a half-speed corner with no overtaking permitted.

This banked corner was the big "selling point" of the Kurburgring; a square hairpin with a very uneven surface unlike the rest of the track surface. The bank was steep enough that it was impossible to see what was on it from the spectator area, but there was a marshal position inside the corner in the (likely) case of someone getting it wrong.

The corner was important but it wasn't the most important one on the circuit. That was the double-apex Turn 6, which had a deceptive amount of run-off and invites two major faults - excessively early turn-in and excessive entry speed. I found the early turn-in issue to be quite a fault in my driving during the early stages, resulting in two small crashes. Once I got myself out but the other time I had to wave a marshall over to help me.

The excessive entry speed problem was more noticeable in the group that raced before my family descended upon the track. Two karters in particular had a tendency to try going full-pelt through the first apex, slam on the brakes, skid, barely make it through the second apex... ...and get passed by the karter who'd gone wide and let them make their mistake. Apart from the times the karter who'd gone in too fast simply found the barriers and had to get help.

The karts in question have 270 cc, which is as much as a single-engine arrive-and-drive kart can be expected to do. The circuit is also fairly new, so we're talking about karts in a reasonable state. For the first five laps, I also missed the barriers. With that in mind, note this:

• The Kurburgring is 450 metres.
• My first lap was 62.343 seconds.  
• This is a rather stately 16.147 mph. 

  My first lap round the track may be the slowest one of the day (and certainly was as of the time I left the track).  My next three laps were nothing special either because I was still learning the track. This involved nearly stopping the kart at each corner because I was figuring out apexes and braking points. I even had to apply the brakes a little on the flat-out Devil's Elbow/Turn 1. My brother was long gone, having passed me halfway round the first lap.

Apparently Dad, on the sidelines, was getting worried that I might not be enjoying myself. Admittedly, the point in the opening lap where I got cramp in my right foot was no fun at all, but it wore off (the cramp not the foot) and fun started to creep in. Then I suddenly went 4 seconds faster than my previous lap - and 27 seconds faster than my first one - to put in a respectable 35.932 second lap. That was more like it :) This gave me more confidence - perhaps more than was warranted. Next lap, I spun at the second of three hairpin corners called "Mirabeau" (or Turn 8). There was no Monaco-esque crane, only the need to wave over an ever-willing marshal. My brother crashed at the same corner later in the lap, which made me feel better and got me within half a lap of him.

I'd almost caught my brother again when I had the first of my crashes at Turn 6, followed by another crash in the second Mirabeau hairpin two laps later. So much for getting a rhythm and now my brother was threatening to pass me again.

Fortunately, something had clicked in my head. I pulled out a string of laps in the high-35 to low-37 second range, gradually getting better until lap 23. Then I had another breakthrough and did 7 of the next 8 laps within a second of one another, the fastest at 34.008. The one lap that wasn't was the lap I caught my brother. He was beginning to get tired and make mistakes. I spent much of one lap following him (his basic technique was good) but when he made an error of concentration at Turn 3 of the following lap, I cut to the inside and overtook him. He retired 3 laps later due to tiredness and spent the rest of the session with Dad, watching me.

I was worried for a time that I'd missed the chequered flag signal because I didn't see any indicator that proved I should be the only kart on track. It was only when I saw Dad and my brother not waving their arms round trying to get me to notice them that I worked out everything was OK. Whereupon I crashed at the double-apexed Turn 6. Oops.

That was my last major error of the session. I turned in a series of reasonably consistent laps. There was a lap in the high-35 seconds, two in the low-36 seconds and then 8 of the last 9 laps were within half-a-second of one another, in the high-34 seconds and very-low-35 seconds. 

There was something a little bit different about the other lap, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I was still very happy as the chequered flag was waved, though - I can't see times from the kart but I could feel a pattern beginning to settle into my muscles. I cruised round one last time, parked the kart and scrambled over the barrier separating kart from staff. The staff member who met me (who'd also initiated my safety briefing) told me I'd done very well. I assumed she meant I'd behaved well and not been a complete embarrassment to anyone, so I said "thank you" and went to Dad and my brother.

Who then pointed me to the timing screen. It's a good system that clearly indicates best times, recent times by everyone on track and a leaderboard of times for the day. I'd beaten my brother (whose time of 34.408 seconds was itself very respectable), which was hardly a surprise given I'd had the unfair advantage of 16 more laps. The odd thing was that I had the fastest time of anyone who'd come to the track today. Especially odd when the staff member who'd said I'd done well observed that a lot of the others had previously visited.

That lap which felt a little bit different? It was 33.755 seconds, beating the next-fastest time by 0.289 seconds. Turned out that it was fast enough to get onto one of the leaderboards. I am officially the 15th-fastest woman at the Kurburgring in terms of fastest laps - all of those with better times having set them on second or subsequent visits. Yippee!

On discovering this, we collected our timesheets, returned the borrowed kit and left to tell Grandma what had happened. She said she never wanted to be my passenger in a road car. That's fine by me as it is unlikely I will even have a road licence any time soon ;)

I very much want to go again - and hopefully this time warm up a little quicker! Until then, my brother has the consolation of having a faster average time than me... 

Contents

In Article 28, "Homologated parts" has been dropped from the title after being added in 2010. Seems quite odd, since I had expected there to be some homologated parts.

Article 16

The stewards have been granted wider-ranging powers under Article 16.2. Stewards may now issue post-race time penalties of any length for an incident under Article 16.2 c). Reprimands, exclusion from results and one-race suspension have also been included, though all three of these powers were already granted to the stewards under the International Sporting Code. The reprimands in particular were already commonly used. However, the one-race suspension has to be for the next event, which was not previously the case (before the suspension could be applied at any time, which was useful because it allowed time for teams to appeal against unfair uses of the power).

The only completely new power is the ability to issue post-race time penalties of any length. However, the new specifics of the suspension power worry me.

Article 20

A dramatic number of additions have been made to Article 20. In 2010, there was only one sentence: "The driver must drive the car alone and unaided". Now there are four paragraphs. Therefore the following actions have been formally banned:

- Actions that could hinder other drivers
- More than one blocking move per straight
- Leaving the circuit boundaries (defined as four wheels beyond the track edges, kerbs being outside the edges)
- Rejoining the track in a dangerous manner
- Rejoining the track having gained an advantage from leaving it
- Ignoring blue flags

Those of you who have been following F1 for a while will notice that all of those things were already prohibited. This is because they are in the International Sporting Code, with the exception of defining kerbs as not being part of the circuit (it's left to the interpretation of individual series). The additions strike me as pointless repetition.

Article 22

It has been decided that "chequered flag procedures must be respected" in testing. Technically speaking, testing isn't subject to the International Sporting Code, but red flag procedures already had to be respected. It's a sensible addition, but not one that's likely to change anything.

Article 23

There have been several changes of wording in Article 23.1 a) - "shall" has been changed to "will", the first "is" becomes the grammatically-improved "will be" and the second "is" also becomes "will be", which not only corrects the tense but also the number. Pedants everywhere will rejoice.

More importantly, Article 23.1 a) now says the "fast lane" in the pits cannot be more than 3.5 metres. In wider pit lanes, this will give the mechanics considerably more room in which to work.

Article 23.1 d) has a paragraph for the order in which cars should queue up out of the pits. They must queue up in the "fast lane" only, in the order they got there, and leave in the same order unless a car is delayed. It does not clearly answer the question of what happens if someone chooses to do a practise start.

The reference for the circumstances in which equipment can be left in the pit lane has been corrected in Article 23.1 h). It's permitted only if a car has to go to the pits between the pit lane closing and the start of the race.

An important change has been made to Article 23.1 j). Teams must provide a way of knowing when a car was released from a pit stop. This must be visible from the front of the car (implying that both the driver and the on-board camera must be able to spot this indicator). As a result, expect many fewer near-collisions in the pits and less work for the stewards to do when it comes to deciding who was wrong in the remaining cases.

Article 23.2 allows the pit lane to be closed for safety reasons. An example of when this might be done is if a car has broken down in such a way as to block the entire pit entry. Cars can still enter the pits, but only for essential and obvious repair work - perhaps to replace a puncture or a broken front wing. How that would work with the above example is unclear, but the power may still prove useful.

Article 25

Article 25.1 has been updated to indicate that the current tyre manufacturer (Pirelli) will be the sole supplier until the end of 2013.

Tyres will be considered used once they've left the pit lane according to article 25.4. Since that was already being applied in F1 on an informal basis, nothing will change, but codifying informal rules into demonstrable regulations is generally a good idea.

Articles 25.4 a) and b) have been reworded to give the FIA technical director responsibility for allocating tyres to drivers in practise sessions.

A paragraph has been inserted to deal with those situations whereby a race ends prematurely but some drivers haven't used both compounds of dry-weather tyre (assuming that driver also hasn't used a wet-weather tyre). Any driver in that situation will receive a 30-second time penalty, which is the equivalent of a stop/go penalty. Completing a normal-length race while only using one dry-weather compound (and no wet-weather ones) still means exclusion.

Article 26

Cars in Q3 will no longer be weighed during the session due to a modification to Article 26.1 a) 2). It's not clear any cars were ever weighed in the 10-minute version of Q3, but it's a good safeguard.

The reason cars in Q3 definitely won't be weighed is because Article 26.1 a) 5) makes it compulsory for all cars in Q3 to be weighed at the end of the session, either with the driver on board (as per Q1 and Q2 weighings) or separately (as per post-race weighing).

Article 28

Gearboxes must last five races instead of four due to a slight change in the wording of Article 28.6 a).

If a driver cannot start a race, does not have a substitute starting the race for them and the reason is not a penalty from the stewards, that driver is allowed to have a new gearbox next race, just the same as they would have done if they had started but failed to finish. Several parts of Article 28.6 have been modified to account for this, but it is Article 28.6 a) which rules the change in.

Dog rings on gearboxes may be changed if a gearbox changed is required during the first day of practise. This will give a little bit more flexibility to teams in the latter part of the season because they can use different gearboxes for the first day's running that are not part of the main sequence.

Article 28.6 f) will allow one additional change of gearbox outside the permissions granted without penalty. This is similar to the exemption granted for the first engine change in 2007 and could signal a transition to the "X gearboxes a season" system currently in use for engines.

Importantly, Article 28.7 has gone. Teams are now allowed to change their survival cell, wheels and crash structures whenever they like after the first race of the season, subject to normal crash testing if it's a survival cell or crash structure. Hopefully, this will prevent a repeat of the F-duct situation, where the inability to modify the monocoque meant teams were using any old hole anywhere in the cockpit for the devices, to the detriment of usability and potentially safety. Also, large differences in the handling of the wheel specifications should be easy to resolve - Ferrari got an advantage on other teams from having a particularly unusual wheel psuedo-fairing that could not inspire any improved efforts from elsewhere all season.

Article 29

Article 29.3 has had the indent removed for consistency reasons. No difference to anything on track, but much more pleasing to the eye.

Article 30

A new Article 30.3 has been inserted. Unnecessarily slow, erratic and dangerous driving is banned at all times. The International Sporting Code already bans all of the above, but this echoes and emphasises the wording used for the Article 40.5 regulation covering proper driving conduct behind the Safety Car.

More importantly, all driving between the pit exit and pit entry (defined by their respective Safety Car lines) must now be done in 145% of the fastest whole-lap time set in the first day of practise. In practise this will typically mean that nobody can do a lap in more than 150% of the time the fastest driver lapped. This appears to be designed to prevent people from trying to get severely damaged cars to the pits, doing particularly thoughtless mass blocking or doing really slow in- or out-laps (or really slow formation laps, for that matter). Laps in wet-weather running are also affected but the margin is so big that an honest lap that was too slow would indicate the session should be stopped for wet weather reasons. Note that if a slow lap is due to a problem on the main straight or in the pits (such as stalling), that delay wouldn't influence anything because of the pit straight being ignored.

Between 10 and 4 hours before the start of first and third practises, nobody from any of the teams may be at the circuit. Each team is allowed four individual exemptions per year (that is to say, four people can work overnight for one race each, or at one race a four-person squad could be present at night). It is difficult to work on a car with only four people, so all but the most urgent and straightforward all-night shifts for mechanics have now been banned. Finally people associated with teams can (usually) be assured of a half-decent night's sleep!

Article 34

Under Article 34.1, wheel fasteners may be attached and removed in parc fermé. Pitot tubes may be covered and uncovered in parc ferme but only if a change in the weather has been declared.

Article 35

The compulsory autograph signing session is now at a time and place determined by each individual promoter and does not have to happen on the first day of practise. Procedures will also be determined locally. It will be interesting to see what is done with the new freedoms.

Article 36

The 107% rule in qualifying can be found in Article 36.3. Drivers whose fastest qualifying lap is more than 107% off the fastest time set in Q1 will only be allowed to start at the discretion of the stewards and no appeals (either way) will be permitted. The stewards are at liberty to decide the order if multiple people miss the 107% benchmark and get re-admitted in the same race.

Article 38

Drivers on their formation lap will have to keep to the pit lane speed limit until they pass the pole position slot, according to Article 38.6. It's not entirely clear to me why - wasn't "greatly-reduced speed" precise enough?

An entire paragraph has been removed from Article 38.8. Cars delayed on leaving the grid may now overtake at any time prior to the pit entry in order to resume their original starting position.

Article 40

Article 40.5, which used to ban slow, erratic and dangerous driving behind the Safety Car, has been re-worded... ...but is still redundant in the face of the new Article 30.3 (and, technically speaking, the International Sporting Code that preceded both). The only difference is that behaviour that "could be deemed" dangerous is banned behind the Safety Car, while at other times only driving that is dangerous is banned.

Article 40.7 has had a couple of clauses reworded with no apparent change to their effects on the racing.

The phrase in Article 40.9 requiring the Safety Car formation to be kept as tight as possible after the Safety Car has left the scene has been deleted. This may be due to the massive pile-up in China.

Article 40.11 continues to have the clause whereby last-lap Safety Cars are not followed by green flags for the last few metres of the race.

The last two paragraphs of Article 40.14 have been modified to account for drivers being allowed to resume their previous positions on formation laps (and condensed into one paragraph in the process).

Article 42

The second paragraph of Article 42.6 has been modified to take into account the new permission to resume previous position on formation laps.

Conclusions

Most of the changes made this year are minor and repeating what already exists in the International Sporting Code. However, some important changes are hidden among them. Wider pit lanes will be nice but the mechanics will be happier with the fact that most of them won't have a single "all-nighter" all year.

Methods of identifying when a release was done should increase pit lane safety. Minimum lap speeds on track through all sessions could get interesting. However, the change I like the most this year is that the horrible homologated survival cell regulation has been thrown away.

Hopefully future years will feature less cosmetic alteration and more of the type of red-tape paring seen with the removal of certain homologated components.

Warning! Long entry alert!

I've been thinking what to write for this for most of the week. Normally F1 tackles politics by avoiding it with a 10-foot bargepole; Bernie focuses on the almighty [insert currency here] and the FIA is apolitical by statute.

The events of the past week in the Middle East have prevented the possibility of solution through ignorance.

First of all, some background. The chain of events that led to the current FCO travel advice not to go to Bahrain unless strictly necessary started in December 2010 over in Tunisia. The recession, poor living conditions, corruption and dissatisfaction with a lack of political freedoms resulted in a population ripe for turning into a mob.

The eventual spark that ignited the fire of rebelliousness was caused by a dispute over a vegetable cart licence. Cart owner Mohamed Bouazizi, after apparently being assaulted by a police officer and unsuccessfully attempting to get the local police station to hear his complaint, set himself on fire in protest. The people, for the most part, sided with the cart owner. Initial protests concerning his treatment by the police were met with tear gas, obstructionism and a "quasi-curfew".

The people increased their demands in response, eventually demanding the removal from government of the entire ruling party (RCD) and release of political prisoners. Even a reformation of the government with a reduced number of RCD members did nothing to quell the uprising. Eventually the army sided with the protesters and mass resignations followed.

This Sidi Bouzid Revolt triggered a chain reaction across the Middle East. Most of the world is currently in recession, but many if not most countries in the Middle East are characterised with various types of authoritarian regime. While the majority have democratic layers, there have been as many ways of implementing them as there are countries.

Authoritarian regimes tend to be associated with corruption and generate nations of layered societies.As Frank Herbert correctly noted, "The layered society is an invitation to violence". This is because each layer tends to envy, covet and/or despise the other layers, resulting in rampant power abuse. In turn, a desire is created to take what rightfully belongs to others, which remains undisclosed and unsatisfied due to fear of said power abuse and the lack of incentive for the powerful to enable uncontrolled social movement.

The countries of the Middle East have shared a bond with one another since Islam first united their common ideologies. They have also experienced common changes that have made them more vulnerable to a tidal change in popular thinking. The average population has slowly become younger, therefore less likely to think conservatively or in accord with the opinions of their elders. They have been typically better-educated than before; in many of the Middle Eastern countries, agriculture has become less important as more highly-skilled services such as banking and business administration have increased in importance.

Oil, which has slowed the transition from agriculture to service-based industry, is becoming less important as it is increasingly clear the resource is finite. Many of the countries which had oil have diversified successfully, but it has broadened horizons.

Most importantly, many people are engaging with the internet and social media - which are proving more difficult to censor than more traditional communication channels. Newspapers, broadcast channels and even static web sites can easily be influenced by rulers in their home nation should they be so inclined. Trying to influence thousands or even millions of individual connections and accounts across multiple networks, many of which aren't even in the Middle East, has proven vastly more complicated.

The reduced censorship has not only emboldened people but provided easier access in materials on how to voice their complaints. Non-violent manuals easily downloadable (PDF) from the internet have contributed to the ability of protest organisers to make their protests effective. People who have been involved in previous protests can share their expertise.

Furthermore, it is easier for the people to give direct accounts of what they believe to the world and for the world to answer back. Most of the traffic on social networks consists of spam, banter and matters of relatively minor importance (in approximately that order). However, it is also possible for a large number of people to give the same message to those involved in political strife. It reminds those people that the world is watching. It can help people remember that those people have standards and thus utilise peer pressure to modify behaviour. It can demonstrate the failure of censorship and the politics of fear. It can even encourage normally-apathetic people to engage with the issues of the day, thus increasing pressure on the governments not directly involved to state their stance and bring their great powers to bear.

All this provided a highly unstable backdrop; the governments of many Middle Eastern countries simply hadn't adapted to the changes enforced by the passing of time. Protest dominoes suddenly looked likely, just as Gdańsk had become the trigger for the downfall of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and pan-European revolts in the 1840s started with the Chartists in Britain.

Egypt was the next to feel the wrath of a dissatisfied people. Change happened over a period of weeks, as various measures were tried and found wanting by a population wanting wholesale regime change rather than just dismissing the odd minister.

In fact, there had been resistance for years but it took the Tunisian experience to catalyse it into the violent clashes, mass striking and constant demonstrating that eventually ensued. By February 11, even President Mubarak had seen the writing on the wall and resigned. Since then, things appear to have stayed calm (touch wood) pending discussions on how to ensure the reduced repression and application of a stronger democratic structure demanded by the population. Events have demonstrated that the old regimes cannot be replaced like for like and that something new is needed - and not just in Egypt.

15 other countries in the Arab world have featured protests - or more than protests - since Tunisia's revolution began. These had been going on for six weeks before the F1 world noticed, for Bahrain looked to be among the most stable of the Arab nations.

Bahrain has a prosperous economy and has had democratic institutions in its constitution for a decade. The trouble was that many people, particularly among the Shia, had not had their fortunes uplifted in line with those of their nation and the institutions are easily overruled by the King and other members of the royal family. The protestors tried to keep the sectarianism out of the equation but the government still saw a sectarian threat, which increased tensions. There were also complaints about the number of political prisoners in Bahrain. The success of the Egyptian revolt in particular inspired the dissatisfied to action.

The King paid 1000 Bahraini dinars (£615.10) to every citizen in the country on February 14, the 10-year anniversary of the constitution that should have ensured the democratic institutions were powerful. It is rumoured that this was an attempt to head off the demonstrations. If so, it failed. On February 14, there was a mass occupation of the streets across Bahrain. One protester died, but it was his funeral next day that turned the situation from a purely political problem to one that involved the motorsport community.

Police fired at the funeral procession, killing one person, injuring 25 and pushing thousands into believing the powers-that-be had abandoned them. It was into the resulting bloodstained fury that the GP2 Asia circus entered the country. Will Buxton vividly described the situation in the country on the relatively quiet day before first practise was due to begin. The reports from others indicated that increasing amounts of violence were being employed by the police and army, a tactic which never helps calmness of people or encourage stability of government. The official position attempted to reassure foreigners that they were still safe in Bahrain, but increasingly people were having doubts.

Practise itself started with the ART and iSport teams playing football against each other because the medical staff due to support the race's requirements were recalled to Manama to assist the injured. The riot police had started using live bullets in addition to the tear gas and batons used previously. Clearly, it was dangerous for the GP2 Asia people to remain in Manama and there was no prospect of getting the medical staff back in time to run the race anyway. This was sufficient reason for the FIA's Bahrain branch to cancel the race, using Article 1.3 of Appendix O of the International Sporting Code:

"Recommendations regarding the number of personnel should be complied with throughout the event; if it is not possible... ...the programme of the event should be rearranged".

The press release was rather less verbose, but it posed a clear message to F1. If Bahrain could not safely host a GP2 race, what chance a F1 test two weeks later - or indeed the F1 race a week after that? Many people on the internet were arguing against going to Bahrain, and not because of the complaints of previous years concerning low overtaking opportunities and general blandness. The violence in the region is ongoing, despite the Crown Prince's pleas for calm and orders for the army to leave Manama having resulted in an entire day without bloodshed.

Insurance for many people in the F1 paddock is currently invalid with respect to travel to Bahrain, and is likely to remain so unless and until the various international travel advisers are assured the current peace is permanent. Sponsors may be reluctant to associate themselves with the country for the time being. Nick Heidfeld, one of the more thoughtful drivers on the F1 grid, has urged sensitivity - a level-headed approach, but is there time between now and the point where visa applications and freight transportation demand an answer?

How can F1 justify sending its people into a country where there is probable danger over and above the inherent danger of racing at over 200 mph? What ethical responsibilities does the sport have, given that ethical expectations have changed across the world as well as in the Middle East? Politically, what can - or should - F1 do to prevent itself from facing similar problems in future? Oh, and is there anything F1's own psuedopolitical structures can learn from the lessons of the Middle East?

I hope to answer these in my next blog entry. Until then, I leave you with a link to a comment I made on F1 Fanatic that may convince you that F1 - whatever it does - cannot be truly apolitical about this.

Warning! Long entry alert!

This blog entry was prompted by TEF20's comment in Formula 1 Blog, which in turn was about Ferrari opposing the 4-cylinder engine concept mooted by the FIA for 2013. About a third of the way through replying, I realised this "comment" was not only too long for a comment (2549 words are too many, even by my reckoning!) but only tangentially relevant to the topic. Therefore, it was moved to my blog.

TEF20 was considering in his comment how reducing the amount wind tunnels are used in F1 could allow more testing to happen, therefore making a lot of fans happier because they can see more of the cars (among several other benefits). It certainly sounded an intriguing idea, so I decided to try mathematically test it - with mixed results.

Firstly, it is true that wind tunnels consume colossal amounts of electricity (thus carbon) whenever they are used. We are not talking hairdryers pushing air through plastic sweet tubes onto miniature models here. The vast and vastly powerful variety used in F1 use enough energy that the electricity companies demand to be told before teams turn them on so that demand can be planned. The two tunnels in Brackley (for Mercedes and Force India) probably consume more electricity than everything else in the 12.848 km between Brackley and Silverstone put together (I have no data to confirm this, but if the steelworks in Sheffield, working at full blast, can consume more electricity than the rest of the city put together, then it is surely reasonable to suggest that two powerful industrial energy-guzzlers can use more electricity than the sum total of a few villages).

Secondly, none of the foregoing means that track tests are minor consumers of carbon either. It takes a lot of equipment to conduct a test.

Test teams take at least three lorries with them, alongside cars or buses capable of carrying 45 staff. The lorries would use 17.082 g/km per ton. If the team went in buses (probably the most ecologically sound way of taking that many people), each bus would use 10.249 g/km per passenger.

The Ecology of Test Travel

If we assume that the lorries are 20 tonnes each including their loads, then that gives us 683.28 g/km for the lorries and 461.205 g/km for the buses - or a total of 1144.485 g/km.

So taking Mercedes as an example, quartered the relatively short 12.848 km away from Silverstone. They would need 29.409 kg of carbon emissions to get to the test and back, assuming the test got rained/frozen off.

If a team like Mercedes wishes to avoid that fate (frozen/rained-off testing being completely useless in terms of data collection), it is likely to go to Spain. That means sending everything through the Eurotunnel, down the length of France and down part of north-east Spain to reach the nearest track (Barcelona). I will assume for the sake of ecological sensitivity that nothing is flown. And then return, of course. The distance is 1752.608 km, therefore the carbon emissions would amount to 4011.667 kg, or 4.012 tonnes. Again, before running or indeed the travelling between hotel(s) and test track/travel routes that would be required to make a road-only test work.

If we assume the team must go to a hotel if they wish to stay overnight in Spain, and that (as is common) they stay at the cheapest nearby hotel (Hotel Ciutat at the moment), they need to travel 17.952 km extra per overnight stay. If this is done in buses, that's another 8.280 kg per night. They also need to stay there before and after each test so that they don't waste the first few hours of testing and/or risk total collapse trying to return to the UK. This makes a typical four-day Spanish test (as generally practised in F1 these days) 4.053 tonnes per team.

This mounts up. Each F1 team used 62.5 tonnes on average for fuel in races and tests in 2009. but most of them went to Spain for 4 tests prior to the season beginning and then did 8 local tests in-season. That would be 16.221 tonnes just for the current testing regime (races are more efficient because one Bernie Air plane can take multiple teams' stuff - even though the method of transport is more wasteful per item, less fuel is needed overall due to the airborne equivalent of carpooling).

The Ecology of Wind Tunnel Testing

The entire electricity consumption of the average team for 2009 was 365.412 tonnes. This includes the vast amounts necessary to power the CFD systems currently in place and all the manufacturing equipment as well as the windtunnel situation (teams are only allowed to use one less-than-60%-scale tunnel at a time apart from 16 hours of full-scale tunnel time per year, but there's no rule saying a team can't use one of its tunnels while the other one's going through a maintenance/calibration procedure, for example). If CFD, manufacturing and other non-wind tunnel uses for electricity are assumed to take up 50% of the electricity teams use, that puts wind tunnels on 182.706 tonnes/year. Unfortunately, the data does not exist to tease out how much wind tunnels specifically use.

Provisional Comparison Between Wind Tunnels and Track Tests

Local tests are pretty efficient uses of carbon dioxide. A team could test in its backyard every day for an entire year and not use up half as much carbon dioxide as it would doing one test in Spain. Unfortunately most teams are British and the neighbours would complain.

Testing on the continent when a team is based in England is much more of a problem. Large teams used to do three-day tests every fortnight in-season with a test team that was almost completely separate from the team that went to races, which would clearly be far more expensive than the amount used in factory testing procedures. Even if it were more ecologically efficient, it would not be possible to transfer to such an arrangement in the current climate.

How many four-day long-range tests could a team do with the carbon it would save from relinquishing the right to use a wind tunnel for six months of the year (this would allow the team to still use the tunnel to create its cars, but not to develop them)?

Six months of windtunnel on my back-of-blog calculations would be 91.353 tonnes. Divide that by the 4.053 tonnes each long-range test takes and you get 22.53. Which means that you could do just over twenty-two-and-a-half four-day Spanish tests for the price of having the wind tunnel on for 6 months.

How convenient. That's one for every race of the season with a little bit left over.

Or it would be had FOTA not set themselves a 15% carbon reduction plan to be reached by the end of 2012. So let's take 15% off that and see what we have.

19.15.

Still almost enough for one four-day test after each race of the season. Which would be an interesting idea for enhancing development while massively cutting carbon emissions. CFD-only development would be more efficient than CFD + wind tunnel development in terms of carbon and could be a step towards removing wind tunnels from the equation entirely. Fans would love to see their heroes honing their cars carefully for a relatively low fee, teams and circuit are already set up to accommodate them and it also cuts a lot of the expense connected with travelling because they're already there.

The Villain of the Piece

There is one carbon-related problem though. To test, one must have extra pieces to test. They have to be manufacturered and transported.

There are two forms of carbon source to be considered. In-house consumption of electricity for manufacturing comes from the same 365.412 tonnes of CO2 as the wind tunnel. We've already removed the wind tunnel through a back-of-blog guesstimate of 182.706 tonnes. There are three things using up the rest of that carbon dioxide - CFD, manufacturing and sundry expenses such as lighting and heating. If we say that CFD is 60% (there are some powerful computers used in design work) and the sundry is 10%, that leaves 30% of the non-wind tunnel expenditure - or 15% of the whole - as manufacturing expenditure, making it 54.812 tonnes per team. Materials manfacturing is 613.892 tonnes per year for the average team - just over 50% of the total carbon consumption. So the total carbon used for components per team, on average, is 668.704 tonnes. These do all the races as well as testing and also counts manufacturing errors that never make it to the car in any capacity whatsoever.

That Which Is Obsolete and Useless

Every non-homologated item on the car can be expected to change at least once in a year for those teams that can afford to do so and see some point in the attempt. Some teams' wings changed 10 times in 2010, but that's an extreme. Probably more accurate is to assume for the sake of calculation that everything changes an average of twice a season. When testing enables it, all of these changes will be tested.

Not everything that gets tested makes it onto the car. At the moment, it seems to be accepted that most teams bring along 4-5 major upgrade packages per season to have one of those fail, giving a minimum of 20% failure rate. Extra testing would enable teams to tease out which bit of the package is failing easier, perhaps dropping the failure rate to 10%. The problem comes when one considers the amount that can be tested in a particular test - and therefore rejected.

The amount varies massively from test to test because the agenda could be anything from back-to-back testing of a complete new package against the current one - a process that generally results in one package or the other being fully rejected - to incremental honing and systems checks, both of which involve negligible part rejection. In the most through version of the procedures, it takes three back-to-back runs - 9 laps or about 15 minutes excluding analysis and preparation time - to ascertain whether a component worked. Of course the teams do quite a bit of analysis before accepting or rejecting components, but usually other things would be tested during at least part of that analysis. However, there's simply no way round the fact that parts take time to fit and remove, or that the car will need a wipe-down at the very least after each run to maximise data parity. The preparation figure ranges from about 5 minutes if it's simply a wipe-down plus fitting a new front wing to the best part of half a day for certain combinations of internal component (especially if removal requires the fuel tank to be adjusted in any way). Half an hour average preparation is probably a reasonable ballpark figure, with the caveat that it varies massively according to the components involved.

There are about 80,000 components in a F1 car, but that's not the best figure to use for this set of calculations. Some things (like the engine, which accounts for many of the components) are homologated and therefore can't be modified by the teams. Also, some components (such as fuel tanks) couldn't meaningfully be tested by the teams in this way - they'd be tested using other methods, most often by the third-party suppliers who produce such specialised kit. Finally, some components are typically tested in clusters (come on, have you ever heard of a team taking a gearbox, putting in a different 4th-gear dog ring and then running the car again just to see if the new dog ring is an improvement on the last one?)

Time Is Carbon

Taking another angle, if it takes about 45 minutes to do the running and preparing to test a typical component/cluster and a test typically runs for 7 hours (9-5 am excluding an hour of lunch), then it would be possible to test 9 components/clusters in a day, or 36 per 4-day test. 3.6 of these will prove failures (in that they won't be better than the previous versions).

It's not so simple to derive the average carbon cost of a component because it's not clear what proportion of manufactured components don't make it onto a car. However, if a 1% failure rate is assumed for manufacture (probably an underestimate) and it is considered that teams typically use six chassis in a season, replacing an additional component every 20 minutes a car runs, then a rough estimate can be derived.

The six chassis would be 480,000 components. There were 17 races in 2009, 4 four-day "long-range" Spanish tests and 8 one-day local tests. A race consists of 4 hours of practise, 1 of qualifying and up to 2 hours of racing, so it would be fair to say it has the same mileage as a one-day test, just spread over a longer period of time. So that would be 41 days equivalent of running, with 369 components/clusters tested (and therefore 36.9 proving "failures") and 861 components needing replacement - on top of the components already on the cars. That's a minimum of 481,230 components produced per season excluding failures, meaning at least 4812 components which failed at manufacturing. So the total amount of carbon used in manufacturing must take 486,042 components into account.

From this, the average carbon estimate per component is 668.704 / 486,042 = 0.001375815 tonnes/component or 1.376 kg/component. To put this into perspective, each extra component needed for a F1 team is just under a third of the carbon consumed for travelling to a local test.

This is significant.

The Components of (Climate) Change

If you assume that the six chassis and associated extra components were meant to do exactly the 2009 season and no more, then an adjustment to the carbon figure of extra testing becomes possible.

486,042 / 41 = 11854.683 components used per day.

11854.683 * 1.376 kg/component = 16312.044 kg/day = 16.312 tonnes/day.

16.312 + 0.029 = 16.341 tonnes/test (for a local test)

16.312 * 4 (for a 4-day "long-range" test) = 65.248 tonnes/4-day test.

65.248 + 4.053 = 69.201 tonnes/test (for a long-range test)

So how much testing can now be fitted into that six months of wind tunnel time (in terms of carbon emissions)?

91.353 / 69.201 = 1.320 four-day "long-range" tests. Let's call it 1 and a remainder to see if we can get any local tests out of the remainder:

22.152 / 16.341 = 1.355 local tests. That would be another 1.

At this point, converting windtunnel usage into extra testing time ceases to make much ecological sense.

Conclusions

We've established (albeit with rather more back-of-blog calculation than I'm entirely comfortable with doing) that wind tunnel testing is more efficient carbon-wise than track testing and that the reason is not, as one might suppose, travel, but the manufacture of components to enable that testing to occur. The average team, under normal circumstances, surely gets more out of six months of wind tunnel testing than five days of track testing. The question is: do we, the fans, get as much out of those five testing days as out of the six months of wind tunnel work?