Classic Italian corruption.

As I type, the Italian Grand Prix is in full swing at Monza. Michael Schumacher, in a Ferrari, is trailing Renault driver Fernando Alonso by 12 points in the Drivers' Championship, with every chance of overhauling him if the disparity between the two cars' relative performance remains at present levels. Yesterday, Schumacher qualified second on the grid for the race; Alonso fifth. Qualifying takes place in a time-limited session, but as long as a driver has crossed the line to start a new lap within that time, he may complete the lap and have the time stand even if the session time has meanwhile run out. A flat-out lap at Monza, crossing the line at full speed with tyres at operating temperature, takes roughly 1m 22s, so when Alonso emerged from the pits at 50mph on cold tyres with 1m 30s remaining in the qualifying session, he wasn't going to have to hang around if he was going to cross the line to start his hot lap before the time ran out. So it proved: Alonso posted his fastest sector times of any lap in the 2nd and 3rd sectors of this particular out lap, and in the end he crossed the line to start the clock on his hot lap with barely 2 seconds remaining in the qualifying session. Unfortunately for him, it so happened that some 3- or 400 yards behind him for the duration of his out lap was the second Ferrari driver, Felipe Massa. The Ferrari F1 team is an extremely efficient organisation dedicated to securing as many points as possible, and is certainly not above a spot of bureaucratic wrangling, particularly at its home circuit. A complaint was lodged, breathtaking in its gall and utterly fatuous in its conception, that Alonso has blocked or impeded Massa while on his out lap and that Massa had consequently lost "up to 0.3s". The facts that Massa was never remotely close enough to have been impeded by Alonso and that Alonso was clearly driving absolutely flat-out in order to cross the line in time, which he barely managed to do, clearly weren't going to prevent Ferrari from shamelessly appealing to the (Italian) circuit authorities, who obligingly stripped Alonso of his three fasted qualifying times (an appropriately arbitrary punishment, never before imposed for qualifying infractions real or imagined as far as I can remember), which demoted him to tenth on the grid.

If the Championship ends up being decided in Schumacher's favour by fewer then three or four points, it's a pretty good bet that this piece of partisan manœuvering will have decided the outcome. Still, it won't be the first time Schumacher has won a title in thoroughly questionable circumstances, and I doubt he'll let such sporting considerations trouble him in the slightest.