Ferrari will NOT make a complaint. Not because it's too late: the official terms expire today, Friday 30, so there would still be time. Only because, even in the event of an appeal to the FIA (the international federation) against the result of the last Grand Prix of the season, Sunday in Brazil, the national sports authority, the Aci-Csai, will have to present it. To protect, of course, a Ferrari largely suspended on the hypothesis of whether to appeal to the judges or not, regarding that overtaking by the new three-time world champion Sebastian Vettel against the French Vergne and in a suspicious climate of yellow flags, or prohibition to carry out overtaking maneuvers unless there is a sensational slowdown from the driver in front.
The facts are those just summarized. Under yellow flags, confirmed not only by signals along the track but also by a warning light of the same color on the Red Bull dashboard, Vettel unquestionably completed that overtaking. At the moment, no one has pointed out any irregularities. But the merciless electronic eye that spies on all of us has reconstructed the phases of the maneuver and capillarized them up and down the planet via the web, so that in the middle of the week the bomb exploded. The hunt for detail, for still images, for enlargements that actually show increasingly grainy fragments of images open to different interpretations has begun. But the vivisection of the frames also revealed a green flag waved by a marshal on the left of the circuit after the fast Curva do Sol which follows the chicane just after the pits. This flag, points out the race direction called into question for the facts, absolves Vettel, de facto meaning a stronger directive, perhaps because it is more up-to-date, compared to the famous yellow flags. But the green flag was displayed much further than the point where Vettel overtook - others claim - so the correctness of the maneuver is at least dubious.
So far the facts, and also a first level of technical interpretation. Let's not go any further, because it would be going into the codes and codicils of a regulation that isn't exactly solar, and we'd risk getting confused. But in fact, arriving to sanction overtaking when time expired (compared to the end of the race), Vettel's 6th place finish in the Grand Prix would be weighed down by a 20-second penalty and would become 8th. The relative 4 points less would slip the world title out of Vettel's pockets, handing it over to Fernando Alonso, beaten by 3 in the current world standings and today busy licking his wounds.
Will this official complaint come or not? It's hard to say, but it would still cause damage: to Ferrari if the appeal were rejected; to the credibility of F.1 if it were to happen if the world champion were to change his name a week after the last checkered flag. Not that such a fact is an absolute novelty: in 2003, still in Brazil, a storm much more ruinous than last Sunday's decreed the early end of the GP and the assignment of the victory to Raikkonen on McLaren; then a more in-depth examination of the rev counter showed that the interruption had come when the Renault of Giancarlo Fisichella had just gone to the lead, to whom success was returned with a lot of ceremony at the following race at Imola. But that year Brazil ran at the end of the season, and the impact on the final standings was non-existent. Vettel's is another story.
And let's not forget what was hissed by Bernie Ecclestone, patron of this multi-billion-dollar F.1 (in Euros) and that a reversal of the 2012 world championship reality would seriously embarrass sponsors and world stock exchanges, as well as emirs and prime ministers of emerging countries which are the true lifeblood of today's Circus. “Ferrari didn't behave well - Bernie would have thrown out alluding to the very cautious request for explanations made so far by Maranello-. If we go back and see how many they have combined…”. To open Ecclestone's book of memories, one always risks a lot…
