IN A PARIS courtroom this week, the curtain will rise and the second act of a high-octane drama will unfold as the World Motor Sport Council sit in judgment on McLaren for the second time in 18 months. Whether the proceedings are a tragedy or a farce depends on your viewpoint, but one thing that everyone can agree on is that it's a story unlikely to have a happy ending.
At stake is the reputation of the sport's world champion and most marketable commodity. Also at great risk is the future of one of the most successful teams the sport has ever seen. There's even the spectre of major sponsors pulling out of the sport
if they perceive the outcome to be too harsh.
For those who take just a passing interest in these things, a quick recap might be helpful. At the Melbourne grand prix, McLaren driver and reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton lied to the stewards when he told them, not once but twice, that no order had been given to allow Toyota's Jarno Trulli to pass him when all the drivers were running behind the safety car.
On the basis of information supplied by Hamilton, Trulli was temporarily removed from his third-place finish, which Hamilton assumed. However, it soon became clear from the conversations between the pits and Hamilton, which are routinely recorded and which were quickly retrieved, that Hamilton was the guilty party. Even when it became obvious that the stewards knew that all was not well, Hamilton and McLaren sporting director Dave Ryan, who accompanied him, stuck doggedly to a version of events that was later damningly described as "deliberately misleading" by stewards.
The fallout from the episode has been cataclysmic for McLaren and Hamilton. In the short term, the world champion and team-mate Heikki Kovalainen were disqualified, Trulli was reinstated and Ryan summarily sacked. Yet the short-term is the least of McLaren's problems. Far more problematic for Hamilton in particular is the context, which is the $100m fine levied on his team 18 months ago when they were found guilty of spying through the acquisition of a dossier including all of Ferrari's technical data. That time Hamilton was able to assume the role of wounded party: the rookie driver protested that he knew nothing of his team's nefarious activities and was given the benefit of the doubt.
This time, however, Hamilton has no such defence. Even if recordings of his conversations with his team had not existed, his post-race media interviews directly contradicted the version of events he subsequently gave race stewards. He was, in common parlance, bang to rights and was viewed as consciously having tried to get a fellow driver docked points that had been rightfully earned.
Hamilton had little choice but to once again cite his youth and inexperience and throw himself on the mercy of the court. That's what he did in a humble, emotional statement in which the blame was implicitly shifted on to Ryan for pressurising Hamilton into toeing the company line. There was, it's fair to say, widespread scepticism, not least from the other drivers, many of whom are none too fond of the English prodigy.
If a chastened Hamilton has been badly damaged by the affair, McLaren's reputation – once so squeaky clean – has been sullied almost beyond redemption. Indeed, the fallout from this second appearance before the most powerful body in motorsport's ruling organisation, the FIA, has been so toxic that even the company's main sponsors, all of whom remained steadfastly loyal through the "spygate" saga, have been revisiting their relationship with the Formula One team.
An intermediary representing several sponsors who fear a "disproportionately large" punishment has even written to the FIA and lobbied F1 commercial rights owner Bernie Ecclestone to plead for leniency, explicitly raising the spectre of the team being forced out of F1. While the sponsors say that the punishment must fit the crime if a prima facie case of bringing the sport into disrepute is proved, they also fired a warning shot across the bows of FIA president Max Mosley, whose long-running feud with McLaren boss Ron Dennis exacerbated the tensions around the charges of spying.
"I think we all know the subtext here," said the sponsors' representative. "The FIA wanted to oust Ron Dennis. I believe the governing body have allowed this situation to escalate and it is doing no one any good – not McLaren, not the FIA and certainly not the sport. Apart from anything else, it is dissuading other potential sponsors from entering Formula One."
If McLaren's sponsors are trying – and, it is generally accepted, succeeding – in putting the team's case, the possibility of avoiding sanctions altogether is nil. A fine is probable, although nothing of the magnitude of the $100m penalty is expected. Neither McLaren nor Hamilton are likely to be thrown out of either the drivers' or constructors' championships but on the basis that BAR were banned for two races in 2005 when concealed fuel tanks were found in Jenson Button's car, McLaren can expect a similar punishment. For their sponsors, such an outcome could barely come at a worse time. The next two races are in Monaco, the commercial jewel in the sport's calendar, and Barcelona, which is of particular interest to Banco de Santander, one of McLaren's main sponsors. Other sponsors, such as Vodafone and Johnnie Walker, are understood to have break clauses that could be activated in the event of a swingeing punishment on any of the five charges McLaren face.
The team, it has to be said, are doing everything in their power to avoid that sort of outcome. They have sacked sporting director Ryan, and both Hamilton and the team itself have issued full apologies, McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh accepting that the team violated rule 151c of the International Sporting Code which relates to fraudulent conduct or act prejudicial to the sport.
Even more significantly, McLaren have offered up the prize scalp which Mosley has sought for so long: that of team principal Ron Dennis. After 25 years at the head of the Woking outfit, the man Mosley once derided as "not perhaps the sharpest knife in the box" has now retired from all involvement in Formula One.
Yet there is a determination among the members of the WMSC to find out exactly how far the deception ran within the team. The other teams are also adamant that McLaren should be punished for the deception, with Red Bull and Toyota particularly irked. Weighed against that will be the need to keep sponsors and fans of Hamilton on board.
There's also a sense that McLaren may be so down on their luck that it would be unseemly to carry on kicking them. After all, by the end of practice in Bahrain on Friday, Hamilton was an unseemly 11th, four places below Force India's Adrian Sutil. Kovalainen was in even worse shape, finishing the session 19th fastest out of 20 drivers.
For a driver as haughty as Hamilton and a team as used to success as McLaren, such a reversal of fortunes will be as bad as anything the blazers in Paris can throw at them. Or so they hope.
TRULLI TAKES POLE POSITION IN BAHRAINITALIAN Jarno Trulli seized pole position for the Bahrain grand prix yesterday with Toyota team-mate Timo Glock qualifying in second place for the team's first front-row sweep.
Red Bull's young German Sebastian Vettel, winner in the wet in China last weekend, will start today's race in third place with championship leader Jenson Button alongside in his Mercedes-powered Brawn GP.
The pole was the fourth of Trulli's Formula One career and first since Indianapolis in 2005, a race he did not start and which turned into a six-car fiasco after problems with the Michelin tyres. Toyota have yet to win a race in 126 attempts since their debut in 2002 but, depending on the drivers' respective fuel levels, today could represent their best chance yet of ending that run.
The driver starting on pole position has won the last five grands prix.
McLaren's world champion Lewis Hamilton qualified a strong fifth, a big improvement on Friday's practice. Champions Ferrari, still without a point and in danger of slumping to their worst-ever start to a season, had Brazilian Felipe Massa eighth and Kimi Raikkonen 10th.
The biggest disappointment of the afternoon was suffered by Red Bull's Mark Webber, with the Australian due to start on the back row after being blocked in the first session by Force India's Adrian Sutil.
"You don't usually get caught out in traffic and that was the worst corner to get blocked. Absolute disaster... my race is screwed," Webber told BBC television.
"I didn't know Mark Webber was on a flying lap. I was trying to leave space for Alonso. I think there was a little misunderstanding. We will have to wait and see what happens," said Sutil.
