And then it all went pear-shaped. Lewis Hamilton actually turned out to be Hamiltron, a doomsday mechanoid robot driver sent from the future, and hence a bit too quick for a number two driver. Which didn't make team leader Nando that happy, given that Hamiltron was the golden boy in the team having been under contract to them since his days in Huggies. And then, just as that blue was simmering away nicely, a disgruntled Ferrari staffer photocopied the entire Ferrari blueprints and sent them over to an old mate at McLaren for his perusal. And then the FIA, world motorsport's governing body, found out, and the shit really hit the fan. Slanging matches erupted in the press between Ronzo, his driver(s), his team, the opposition and the rulemakers. Ronzo's team were kicked out of the teams' championship and fined a fucking unbelievable amount of money, one hundred million Amurikan dollars, which on John Birmingham's reckoning is about four hundred shoeboxes stacked full of cold hard foldables. Ronzo himself came within a gnat's pube of a total mental breakdown and his wife of 22 years buggered off with the postman, or someone. This pre-season, in comparison to the last, has been all about how dog-slow the Maccas have been in comparison to their red Italian competition, how the continuing criminal investigation in Italy over the espionage case is still hanging very seriously over Ronzo and the team, how Mercedes have lost all faith in Ronzo and are days to weeks away from leveraging him out and taking over control of the McLaren team themselves, and how much grief McLaren are having trying to fit their ignormous bloody team transporter slash media liaison slash sponsor entertainment facility (a.k.a. the Death Star) down the crappy end of pit lane as befitting the team which (technically) finished stone-cold-motherless in last year's championship.
However, you might have forgiven poor, befuddled Ronzo a wry grin earlier this week. For 'tis the sport to see the engineer foist on his own petard, and all that bollocks. The engineer, if not the executioner, of much of Ronzo's grief in the past 12 months has been his long-term adversary, FIA president Max Mosley, who was rightly accused by the media and by legends such as three time world champ Sir Jackie Stewart of conducting a personal vendetta against Dennis, comparing McLaren's treatment to previous punishments (or lack thereof) handed out in precedent cases of inter-team espionage. To which Mosley's response was to call Sir Jackie a blithering old git and reach for his lawyers. He's that kind of cunt, you see. And given that he's politically twinned with eternal F1 commercial czar Bernie Ecclestone - the same miserable wrinkled old vag that's been petulantly demanding Melbourne move its race to night time so that Euro softies don't have to get up at sparrows' to watch it (diddums) - there doesn't look like there's any getting rid of Mosley anytime soon.
Well, until Fleet Street got involved. Who remain a little snotted off about how Mosley's mission to smudge Ronzo into the dirt (over some historical slight from back in the day when both ran F1 teams, neither of which is prepared to talk about now) largely because it meant the new darling of British sport (i.e. the only bastard who was winning something at the time), Hamiltron, the Ultimate Driving Machine, was being shafted out of his opportunity to be the first rookie ever to win the F1 title. So, after they'd collectively done their best to turn Nando Alonso into British Public Enemy No. 1 (other than Polish immigrants taking peoples' jobs and Islamic types wearing burkhas in schools), the News of the World turned their attention to Max, just to see if there wasn't something newsworthy there that could be brought to light.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
The Screws hit the fucking jackpot. Max Mosley, president of a multi-billion-dollar international sport-industrial complex, in a six-way sadomasochistic clusterfuck with five prostitutes in an underground 'torture chamber' near his Chelsea home, in the best traditions of several British Tory MPs. You can probably write the headlines yourself - FIA CHIEF NAZI SEX SLAVE ROMP (or near offer) - let's face it, it's each and every one of any tabloid subeditor's favourite words used all at once, they must have almost exploded with delight at their workstations.
After being vewy, vewy quiet on the issue in the week or so since the story broke, Mosley has come out (no not like that) and declared himself, while somewhat 'embarrassed' (really?), defiant about the invasion of his privacy and preparing to lawyer-up as we speak. Mosley was particularly unrepentant about the Nazi connotations, declaring these allegations 'entirely false' and adding 'I intend to pursue legal proceedings against the newspaper in the UK and other jurisdictions.'
All of which would be perfectly acceptable and potentially believable, given the UK tabloids' penchant for massive hyperbole and distortion of the truth, and Mosley's reputation as a lawyer, FIA president and an upstanding member of society. Except for the following minor, slightly Nazi-scented elements to the tale:
- Everyone's speaking in German. (To be accurate, everyone's barking orders in German. NEIN! SCHNELL! ACHTUNG! OFFEN MEIN SCHIESSE! and so on. As South Park The Movie observed... dude, what is wrong with German people?)
- Everyone's either dressed in Auschwitz-style prisoner rags or Nazi war uniforms. Hmmm.
- The point of the exercise, which ran to five hours and two and a half grand (according to the Screws) centred around re-enacting concentration camp scenes in which the girls wearing mock death camp uniforms were repeatedly whipped by the girls wearing the Nazi war uniforms. While barking orders in German.
Oh, and one other thing - - Mosley's old man was Oswald Mosley, head of the British Fascists before WW2 and Hitler's man to take over Britain once the blitz brought Blighty to its knees.
And this has no Nazi connotations whatsoever.
Riiiiight.
Screws 1, Screwers 0. And score one for Ronzo and the beleagured McLaren team. They might have been absolutely bent over and reamed by Max (and by the Ferraris in Malaysia last fortnight) but at least the money McLaren paid for the pleasure went to charity, rather to a bunch of German spank merchants. In fact given most of the cash came from McLaren majority owner Mercedes-Benz, that seems oddly appropriate...
Herr Doktor is OUT like Max from his current position. And we don't mean tied to a death camp bedframe and spanked at vast personal expense.
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