Las Vegas: the law is the law in Formula 1, especially for Ferrari

Ferrari and the law have something in common. The Romans used the term, still legally valid today, “dura lex, sed lex,” which we can translate with some freedom as: “The law is the law, even if sometimes unjust.” In the city “born” from sin (not founded by the mafia but transformed into what it is today in the 1930s), where sin is legal (gambling and the like), so much so that Americans (not residents) also call it “Sin City,” Formula 1 under Liberty Media must have admired itself extensively and must have liked what it saw.

In the void of LEDs everywhere, series of slot machines, fake places full of plastic and poor imitations of Europe, Elvis Presley clones, drive-through wedding chapels, and colors so vivid as to be vacuous and a bit unsettling, they may have thought of diluting the sport, making it just a part of the spectacle. Not the show.

Perhaps that’s why they forgot that the city’s manholes might be sucked in by the ground effect of the single-seaters. And perhaps, while complacently reflecting in nothingness, they thought that the drivers, being mere “appendages” of the show, could even do FP2 in the middle of the night. Everything is fine, also because “what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas,” right?

Ferrari: Inherent misfortune hits Carlos Sainz
And so the Ferrari of the innocent Carlos Sainz is hit full on by a manhole cover, Esteban Ocon’s Alpine has other damages, and it becomes logical to think that for once, est modus in rebus, there should be a derogation from the draconian rules of the International Federation because the damage was caused by an external object that should not have been on the track or should not have come off. Well… after a few hours, the FIA is quick to inform us that no, zero, nothing.

Then we learn that Ferrari asked for an exemption but that, indeed, “dura lex sed lex,” the International Federation does not exempt… let’s not joke! And so Carlos Sainz will have a 10-place grid penalty for the battery replacement, damaged along with the chassis of the Spanish driver’s SF-23. Someone on social media rushed to say, more realistic than the king, that after all, there were precedents in Monaco where no exemptions were given for damaged cars.

Others tell us, quite plausible, that some team opposed (imagine which one) to the act of “generosity” because “mors tua vita mea” and goodbye. Well, there are no gentlemen in F1, after all. And this has been known for a long time. But considering that it was something related to safety (lack of it), there was a reason for a unilateral decision by the FIA. And, moreover, the history of F1 is full of rules then violated and re-regulated with exceptions and so on.

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If you add the particularity of the new track, created on a city circuit, with a new asphalt, and so on, you can bet as much as you want, risking being accused of parochialism or even conspiracy (a fatal accusation), that if something had happened to Red Bull or Mercedes, things would have gone differently.

After all, among hydraulic jacks, anonymous helmets, 1000 kilometers of illegal tests, miraculously healed back pain, blown exhausts, and engines with reliability waivers to make them work (still bitterly amusing today), cars with holes, we have seen cute things in these decades… So, what is the unspoken mystery for which Ferrari continues to be trampled, a little red carpet we could call it, laid at the feet of the stepmother FIA and almost eager to be punished in a masochistic attitude?

The allowance it receives, unique among F1 teams, and therefore demanding the usual genuflection for every abuse? Its being, all in all, a foreign object in an international F1 but essentially a subject of His Majesty Charles III? The debt to pay for the mess of the 2019 engine, perhaps rigged, perhaps not, with the most secret agreement of Fort Knox? Or perhaps, more banally, a lost and wavering Ferrari, without a leader, a center, a heart… incapable of shining with its own splendid light and little aware of its uniqueness to weigh properly? We do not know. At least not until today.