Formula One Features — January 2003

Formula 1 is a world which is never without issues and never without drama. But in recent times too many of the issues and too much of the drama has been taking place in the paddock and not enough of it happened on the race track. The sport suffered as a result but it did not suffer as much as some people would have you believe.

Patrick Faure is the boss of Renault Sport, the man to whom Flavio Briatore reports and the team's representative at the highest level within Renault and as one of the men behind the GPWC.

Max Mosley has always been an impressive politician and this week he gave evidence of that once again as he presented the Formula 1 team bosses with a new set of Formula 1 regulations - without changing the rules. This little piece of magic was achieved by taking the existing rules and simply re-interpreting what they meant. It was the work of a fertile legal brain and left the team bosses with little room to maneuver.

Spare a thought for the poor Formula 1 freelance journalists at this time of year. Money from last season has now stopped trickling in and this is the moment when we poor artistic individuals have to spend a fortune, booking all our flights for the coming season. They say that necessity breeds invention and in the finest tradition of starving poets, this is the time of year when many of us do our most colorful and creative writing: otherwise known as our tax returns.