Chris
Premium
Now I love a good conspiracy theory. Admittedly I've never been one for the "US never went to the moon", or "9/11 was an inside job" theories as they're fairly preposterous, however, I do find the general idea of conspiracy theories an intriguing thought. In the world of Formula One where political power plays an equally important role as being quick on the black stuff, it's not uncommon for Formula One teams to go missing on the FOM coverage occasionally after supposedly angering the higher powers, more specifically: One Bernard Charles Ecclestone; CEO of Formula One Management (FOM). You know, those chaps that control the TV direction of each race with the exception of Monaco.
It's no secret that Ecclestone is a close friend of Red Bulls' team principal Christian Horner, and is therefore by extension quite fond of the Austrian outfit as a whole. Red Bull find themselves in a tough situation with regards to which engine manufacturer will supply them with parity engines for the 2016 Formula One season and beyond. Mercedes are refusing to supply them on the grounds that Red Bull could potentially beat them with a Mercedes donkey in the back, Honda are looking like the weakest option and they've burned all of their bridges with Renault. So, Ferrari remains the only realistic chance of the Milton Keynes-based team receiving an engine, and a competitive one at that.
Bernie Ecclestone has already made his views on these new V6 Turbo engines well known along with his views on the Mercedes-era of domination, so when Ecclestone received word that Mercedes were refusing to play ball with Red Bull, it's not entirely implausible to suggest that he directed the FOM cameramen to avoid the silver cars for a large portion of the race, resulting in minimal coverage of their sponsors.
The lack of coverage of race leader; Lewis Hamilton is understandable as he had largely trounced the field once he exited turn two on the opening lap, so showing the leader is not much use unless he makes a mistake or is being challenged for position of which neither was the case. However, little was shown of Nico Rosberg who was in a race long battle with the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel as the pair were separated by less than 2 seconds for the majority of the second and third stints, instead cutting to shots of fans, random women in the team garages, and a lonely Hulkenberg lapping by himself.
Niki Lauda tried to make light of the situation by placing blame on a more innocent occurrence, stating that:
"Maybe the guy who’s running the show today was replaced by somebody else who never did a grand prix transmission, I don’t know. But this we have to find out. But it’s easy, I'll ask Bernie and he will give me for sure an answer."
Such instances of teams going missing from the TV coverage were seen back in 2012 at the Bahrain grand prix as Force India were mysteriously invisible from the lenses of the cameramen during qualifying. Again, theories arose that they had received minimal coverage as punishment for the team refusing to attend the second free practice session, instead electing to return to their hotel earlier in the evening on safety grounds after being subject to a petrol bomb attack on the previous day.
Do you think Mercedes were intentionally left out of today's Japanese Grand Prix coverage? Or do you think it was nice not getting to see them run away with it yet again?
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