Mad Max

When you heard earlier in the year that Max Mosley was, amongst many other surreal, daft and outright barking things, suggesting age limits on drivers did it suggest any related bright idea to you too?

Yes, absolutely spot on: Age limits on FIA Presidents. It's surely the only way to stop the madness...

The constant battle between the teams and the authorities (it was Jean Marie Ballestre's FISA before the FIA) seems to have gone on forever. It's an epic battle for the soul of the sport: good versus evil, or at the very least basically nice versus profoundly stupid.

And there's still no sign of it stopping, even with the GPMA breakaway series threatened by the manufacturers apparently over and done with; Mad Max always apparently issues edicts at random to open up old wounds or start fresh battles whenever peace looks like breaking out.

It's not random of course: Max isn't thick. Just because pretty much everything he does in rewriting sporting and technical regulations appears to suggest he should get the Queen's medal for contributions to thickness, it's not that simple.

Everything has a purpose and as often as not many pronouncements may have more to do with calling bluffs, shifting the ground on which other battles are being fought, than they do on any superficial level.

And let's not suggest the teams are blameless in all this either - they have their own plans for the future (that now includes Renault, who had originally suggested the baffling idea of trying to run and plan a team on a year-by-year basis) and so does Bernie.

He'll have bags of ideas about where he wants the sport to go - both idealogically and geographically. I would hope in those plans is a section about bringing back his Bernievision multi-screen digital TV channel - an idea once ahead of its time, but now surely an absolute winner.

Still, one of the best bits of F1 news so far this year is Max confirming this is his last mandate as President. It does come tinged with sadness though, as he says he has "a substitute ready..." My guess is that it (sadly) isn't going to be Paul Stoddart.

If I'm correct, there was talk a while back of Jean Todt ending up succeeding Max; a legacy that would confirm to many that the FIA and Ferrari have an unhealthy relationship. But it might be just the kind of deliberately inflammatory (or plain mad) parting gesture one ought to expect...