Yesterday, the FIA entry list came out. There were a few surprises, but not very many.

The gaps are:

- 1 at Renault (Kubica's team-mate)

- 2 at Force India (even though I thought Liuzzi had a contract and it sounded like he did too)

- 1 at Williams (GP2 champion Maldonado will be Barrichello's team-mate)

- 2 at Toro Rosso (should be Buemi and Alguersuari, but Ricciardo may end up breaking that duo earlier than Toro Rosso was initially thinking he would)

- 2 at Hispania (if the team survives, it'll be Rich and Wealthy 1 and 2)

- 2 at Virgin (expect Timo Glock to stay, but not be announced until the team knows who the new team-mate will be)

If I had to predict, I'd suggest the seats will be filled like this:

- Renault by Vitaly Petrov (he's probably still bringing in a decent amount of money and is occasionally brilliant)

- Force India by Adrian Sutil (they need a leader and Adrian wants to stay in lieu of alternatives) and Paul di Resta (he's clearly been groomed for the role of Force India racer and the non-confirmation of Liuzzi suggests his time has come). di Resta's reserve seat would most likely be taken by Karun Chandhok.

- Toro Rosso by Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari (they've done the same thing as 2009 - leave confirmation as late as possible as part of a pressure tactic to see who their tester (Daniel Ricciardo) should replace).

- Hispania (assuming survival) by Nico Hulkenburg (Williams probably sending some of Maldonado's sponsorship over there in support) and Bruno Senna (who seems to have reliable funding and wasn't too slow last year). Testing to be done by Yamamoto/Klien/whoever has cash this week.

- Virgin by Timo Glock (they need a leader and Timo is showing himself to be a good one) and Jerome d'Ambrosio (backed by Gravity Management, has some money behind him and was some good in GP2). Reserve driver to be Mikhael Aleshkin (he's likely to bring in money and is Russian, which will please new partner Marussia).

[ Currently: Reading F1 Racing (August 2010 edition) ]
The WMSC made several decisions on Wednesday. Easily the most controversial of these was the one against Ferrari concerning team orders.

F1 Fanatic pointed out that using only a fine to penalise Ferrari effectively said that a point is worth $14,285. This values the 400 points I estimate are necessary for the constructor's championship at $5.714 million - well below the budget of even the most shoe-stringed of teams. Sakon Yamamoto probably brings more money to Hispania than that...

According to the FIA's version of events, Ferrari stood accused of two charges - the commission of team orders (Article 39.1, Sporting Regulations) and bringing the sport into disrepute (Article 151c). For those penalties, the full range of penalties from reprimand to exclusion is available.

Ferrari attempted to defend itself on the first of those charges by saying that the now-infamous phrase "Fernando is faster than you" was a factual statement. The analysis I conducted at the time indicates otherwise. Rob Smedley is a talented enough engineer that he would have seen this for himself using the information the FIA sends to every position on the pitwall. That the WMSC appear to have accepted Ferrri's incorrect statement without contest shows that the FIA did not do the most basic analysis of the situation. Given that, how can it expect anyone to take its viewpoint on the race seriously?

It is also impossible to take seriously the suggestion that it is safer to let another driver through than to hold station, unless Alonso's temper has increased to the point that it poses a safety risk!

So the only part of Ferrari's factual response that had any legitimacy was the distinction between team strategy and team orders. While technically any codified team strategy must constitute team orders, things would get very silly very quickly if a prosecution was formed on that basis...

However, team strategies are not supposed to be based upon giving inaccurate information. It is legal, albeit rather foolish, to do so. What is not legal is requiring another driver to obey the dictates of a strategy, especially if inaccurate information was involved. Codifying an order such that the literal transmission is only a trigger phrase or implied concept still leaves the order as an order. If any bad consequences would have attached to Felipe had he held his ground, then the order was an order whatever wrapping was placed upon it by Ferrari. I'm sure Nelson Piquet Jr. had the "discretion" to not do the Defence at Singapore and not have his contract renewed at the end of 2008.

Even Ferrari, in its legal response, included the "or even an indication of what the team might like the driver to do" when it might have stuck to "that is not the same as giving a driver information". That implies to me that even under Ferrari's viewpoint, the order was meant to indicate a response that should be followed... ...ooh look, we have an implied team order!

"Interference with the race result" is obvious. Without the incident, Massa would have beaten Alonso, barring a significant mistake. With it, Alonso beat Massa. Simply because Ferrari got the same points (and thus gained no direct benefit as a team) does not mean that no interference occurred. Quite why Ferrari didn't work out that one for itself is a mystery - I expected it to defend itself, but not to regard the charge as baffling in any way.

Ferrari also appears to believe that Article 151c cannot be applied without an offence elsewhere in the regulations being committed. This is foolish. While vaguely-worded regulations like it are open to power abuse, the fact that it is a regulation of equal standing to the other 200 or so regulations in the International Sporting Code means it can certainly be used as a standalone charge.

In summary, Ferrari does not appear to have even understood the regulations it is charged with breaching, let alone defended itself well. It should have been easy to get a guilty verdict and a significant additional penalty.

Apparently not.

I will look at the FIA's response in detail next blog entry. For now, my conclusion is that Ferrari left an open goal and the FIA still didn't score.