F1 - GP (General Purpose)

There's not much "plain English" interpretation of the rulings and their impacts in he news reports, so this is my "good faith effort" at boiling it down to the bullet points:

British High Court has ruled that Felipe Massa's law suit based on the 2008 WDC may go ahead, but with conditions.

#1. The court affirmed that the (6 year) statute of limitations on Massa's case began when Ecclestone shot off his mouth in a 2023 interview with F1 Insider magazine, as Massa claims, not when the events occurred, as was the defendants' claim.

#2 The Court won't entertain the motion to overturn the outcome of the 2008 WDC because any conspiracy involved in Piquet Jr's crash equally impacted Hambone, so there's no justice in taking the WDC away from him on the basis of the conspiracy just to give it to Massa. The Court ruling otherwise, they said, would come dangerously close to ruling that the FIA was not entitled to run its own sport.

#3, Massa can't hold the FIA liable for breach of duty or breach of contract because the FIA's diligence in those matters was only due to its members, not to Massa personally.

If I'm following all this correctly, all that's left of Massa's suit is the claim that the there was an "unlawful means conspiracy" that resulted in a loss of income, so his claim of damages on that basis can go ahead against Ecclestone, the FIA and Formula One Management.

And if British court is anything like American court, Ecclestone, whose 95th birthday was three weeks ago, will long since have joined Max Moseley in the Choir Eternal before the discovery phase is done, much less the trial proper.

And as far as loss of earnings goes, the only "damage" I can see is that he's unable to fetch the same sponsorship and promotional fees as he might have if he'd won a WDC. Which, again, comes down to a "difficult-to-prove" claim that if the FIA had simply disqualified the whole of the 2008 Singapore event, he'd have won the WDC. Which I see as by far the hardest claim of all to prove, and the least likely to be resolved in Massa's favor.

I hate to see him put himself through this because I'd bet a large stack of Dead Presidents that's he's going to be nothing but disappointed in the outcome. And in the end, nobody will be entirely happy except the lawyers.

I've not included any links because the articles posted on the sports sites all are reporting in dribs and drabs, and the ones on business and legal websites are all written in gobbledygook. If you're interested, just search on "felipe massa" and "high court" and read to your heart's content.

Ralf Schumacher is saying the quiet part out loud. They need to fire Hambone and hire Ollie Bearman while he's still on the market.

"...[Hamilton] makes a lot of mistakes, his speed is just okay, but not better....I see a young Bearman working wonders with the Haas. He costs only a fraction of what Hamilton earns...."

"...“I wonder if Ferrari is saying, 'this has been like this for a year now, Hamilton has basically stood still'”... “'He did get a little closer, but we'd rather spend the money differently' 'We'd rather bring in Bearman: a young, fresh driver who drives the brand forward and who we can build something with toward the regulations of the future....'"

Robert Doornbos: “[Ferrari] are happy to transfer 2.5 million (pounds sterling) to Hamilton every weekend, but he doesn’t deliver anything for it."

F1 commentator Davide Valsecchi said, "Hamilton spent three years with [George] Russell at Mercedes. Twice out of three times, he lost the comparison...He comes to Ferrari, he’s a year older, and he’s been destroyed by Leclerc. If you say to me, ‘Next year we’re betting on Hamilton,’ I say, ‘Think again,'”

2025 Season Thus Far:

Ferrari hired Hambone thinking he'd displace Leclerc (who is paid less that half what Hambone gets) as their #1. Now they're throwing bad money after good.

In fairness, in the latter half of the season, Hambone's qualifying deficit has come down to about 0.1 secs on a 5-race rolling average. However, these days the difference between pole and outside first row is often a hundredth or less. A tenth puts you three rows back.

To keep Hambone on for 2026 is to gamble the start of an entirely new era on him, aged 41, being able to shake off whatever as-yet unidentified ailment has made him mostly irrelevant for the last 3.8 seasons.

On the other hand, Ollie Bearman is the hottest commodity in F1. The top teams in F1 will offer him more than he's worth, not just to have him driving for them but also to keep him from driving against them.

And here's the tricky bit I've not read anybody else talking about. Ollie Bearman was only two years old the last time the Scuderia had a driver win the F1 title. And since he was five, the only teams whose driver has won a WDC are Red Bull and Mercedes.

There's only so long Ferrari can trade on past glories, and considering the era he's grown up in, I'm not so sure Bearman is 'eat up' with the thought of driving for Ferrari just because they're the team with a horsie painted on their car. How much is the Ferrari mystique going to mean to him if he gets a ride next season with a team that puts him in the chase for a WDC while Ferrari is still dreaming of getting on the podium once in a while?

To cut to the chase, if Ferrari doesn't get Bearman now, they might never.

Hambone thinks he has an unbreakable contract through 2027, but in 2025 F1, there's no such thing as "unbreakable." In 2009, Ferrari gave Kimi Räikkönen a "large severance package" to buzz off so they could hire Fernando Alonso. In 2022, McLaren paid Daniel Ricciardo nearly £24m to break his contract so they could sign Oscar Piastri. And just this season, Red Bull paid Christian Horner £80m to go away.

According to Bild.de, there's been a rumour up and down the paddock for some time that the same fate awaits Hambone.

Which makes all the sense in the world to me.

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