Renault – the fall from grace
Formula 1's latest fall guy
With this weekend’s upcoming Singapore Grand Prix, it seems almost appropriate to write something about my beloved sport.
Like many Formula 1 fans I watched in sadness this week, almost unable to believe that yet another scandal was rocking the sport. First we had the whole McLaren/Ferrari theft saga, shortly followed by allegations of “liberal rule interpretation” by Brawn (later cleared, and rightly so), followed by McLaren telling Lewis to let Jarno overtake him on yellow flags and now this… I see most of the drivers don’t feel any sympathy for Nelson,as Jenson Button said yesterday, how can you feel sorry for someone who deliberately crashes his car?
I too find myself wondering why, when absolutely every button you push, every setting you change, every radio message you send is recorded, would you try and do something as stupid as cheat? I mean, literally terrabytes of information are recorded at every Grand Prix – if you do something (or don’t do something), they’re gonna find out – it’s only a matter of time. The only way I can think of where you can’t get found out is if the driver themselves is smart enough to figure out what needs to be done, and then just do it. A classic case would be Michael Schumacher May 27, 2006 at Monaco… he crashed. Some say he did it on purpose, he says it was just a mistake. Now, it depends who you believe – as tifosi, I choose to believe it was accidental. But the point is this – whatever happened, only 1 person truly knows – and there is no proof either which way =)
Here’s the thing – I do feel sorry for Nelson… not because he screwed up (which he clearly did), but because I feel he has been targeted by the world media. I mean come on, in every sport, at every level, people cheat (or at least try to)… steroids, blood doping and a whole barrage of other options are available to people in the other sports. Yes, he crashed a multi-million dollar piece of equipment, but it was at a relatively low speed, and seemed relatively “safe” (if crashing a car can ever be thought of as safe)
But what makes me sad is the fact that his superior, his boss, told him to crash. Now, aside from the fact that he should have been strong enough to say ‘no’, I think we’ve all been in the position where a boss, parent or teacher has told you to do something you didn’t feel completely comfortable with. You find yourself in an odd position – to disobey would be gross misconduct, but to follow through would be wrong… so what do you do? Lose your job but keep your principles or lose your principles and keep your job?