MAY 12, 2005

A week is a long time in politics

What a difference a week makes. On Thursday last week Nick Fry of BAR Honda was complaining that the team was "appalled" by the decision of the FIA International Court of Appeal and that it was "contrary to all the evidence heard" and calling the penalty "wholly and grossly disproportionate".

Seven days later BAR Honda issued an amazing press statement says exactly the opposite and accepts the decision of the FIA Court of Appeal "as fair in the circumstances and recognise that the judges in this, as in other cases, are fully independent, being lawyers and professional judges of high standing who give their service on a voluntary basis".

How and why the team has come to this extraordinary switch of opinions is a question that is now being asked in F1 circles, a world where cynicism has gone beyond art and has become a philosophy.

It is, in some ways, not unlike what happened in December last year when BMW and Honda met with FIA President Max Mosley in Monte Carlo to discuss their plan to take the FIA to arbitration over the question of the 2006 engine regulations. Both companies came away from that meeting saying that they would not be going to arbitration and were utterly willing to accept V8s.

The only conclusion that one can draw from all this is that we are all fortunate that Mosley does not run a car dealership as we would all be going home with things we did not wish to buy.

Either that or he has hitherto unknown skills as a hypnotist.