Once again, the FIA (Ferarri International Assistance) have shown the world where there true allegience lies.

At yesterday’s Belgian Grand Prix, the stewards decided to impose a 25 second penalty on Lewis Hamilton after ruling that he “gained an advantage by short-cutting the circuit.”

I was watching the race live, and saw the incident in question, and one thing I can tell you for certain is that Hamilton did indeed gain an advantage, but that he immediately backed off and returned the lead of the race to Raikkonen.  In fact, in order to pass him at the next corner, Hamilton went around the back of the Finn’s car in a perfectly legal manouvre.  I’m sure you can find the footage on YouTube by now to see for yourself.

What really get’s me wound up is the fact that Raikkonen managed to get in front of Hamilton again just a few laps later, and the win for Hamilton only came as a result of Raikkonen losibng control of his car on the wet track and spinning into the wall.  Hamilton can’t have gained that big an advantage then, can he?

So my message to the FIA is this.  This kind of activity is what we call “racing”.  This is different from the official view of motor racing, which in recent years seems to have been defined as ’20 cars driving in procession around a track for 90 minutes’.  Restricting the cars for the sake of it is not in the spirit of the sport.  Penalising drivers because they happen to not drive for Ferrari is not in the spirit of the sport.  Failing to apply rules on safety (Massa’s unsafe release from the pits in Spain) is not in the spirit of the sport.

It’s no wonder that so many people are giving up on the sport.  I am not going to continue to watch a corrupt sham, and I am not alone in that opinion.

note : all views expressed in this post are my personal opinion, and should not be miscontrued as fact.