It really is unfortunate. 🫤

When asked for his view of what happened, Albon said he was trying to back off once he realised he was in Ricciardo’s blind spot, but couldn’t help avoiding the contact. “I had a grip advantage [on soft tyres], kind of surprised [with] the grip I had out of [Turn] 2, and was able to pull underneath him and have a good run into 3,” Albon explained. "More about just trying to get him a little bit off line [at Turn] 3 and try and find a way for 4, 5, 6, 7 - to see if I could upset his line a little bit. "Obviously just one of them. He didn’t see me, clearly. I tried to back out of it last minute. "There was a moment where I realised he hadn’t seen me here, the way he’s pulling across, so I hit the brakes and tried to get out of it.

“But I was almost too far alongside him and he still was coming across, I couldn’t avoid it.” With no spare car available until Miami, Williams is continuing to walk on eggshells while its pool of spare parts dwindles. “It’s no secret that we are having a tough time with it at the moment with the parts we’ve got,” Albon acknowledged. This is going to hurt us for sure."

The revelation of an attempt to interfere over the penalty decision is the latest in a series of controversies to embroil Ben Sulayem since being elected in December 2021. Most recently, the FIA launched a compliance inquiry into Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff and his wife Susie on the basis of claims in a magazine of a conflict of interest. The inquiry was withdrawn after just two days, following angry interventions from Mercedes, F1 and the other nine teams, who all said they had not made a complaint. Insiders say that the FIA may face legal action over the Wolffs matter. A series of controversies through 2022, Ben Sulayem’s first year in office, led to widespread concern in F1 about his presidency and calls from senior figures for him to be replaced. After pressure over the winter of 2022-23, Ben Sulayem said he would take a step back from direct involvement in F1, saying it had been his “stated objective to be a non-executive president”. The controversies included but were not limited to: Blocking for six months an agreement between the teams and commercial rights holder to double the number of sprint weekends for 2023 Receiving a “cease-and-desist” letter from F1’s lawyers following his reaction on social media to a story claiming Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund had tried to buy the sport for $20bn The emergence of a historical website that quoted him making misogynistic remarks Ben Sulayem has said his intervention over the sprints was to ensure the FIA had sufficient resources to handle the change; he has not commented on the cease-and-desist letter. He defended historical sexist remarks on his website in an interview with the Press Association last November, saying: "What did I say, if I said it? Let’s assume it was [me]. I tell you exactly what it said. It says: ‘I hate when women think they are smarter than us’. But they hate when men think they are smarter than them. “Did I say we are smarter? No. Did I say they are less smarter? No. For God’s sake, if that is the only thing they have against me, please be my guest, you can do worse than that.” A number of senior figures have resigned from the FIA in recent months. These include Steve Nielsen, who took on the role of sporting director in early 2023 and resigned before he had spent a year in his role; the head of the women’s commission Deborah Mayer; Gerd Ennser, the head of German motorsport’s authority the ADAC, who quit his role as an FIA steward; lawyers Pierre Ketterer and Ed Floyd; and FIA single-seater director Tim Goss. None of these figures have given public explanations for their departure from the FIA. Goss, a former McLaren technical director, took a job as chief technical officer of Red Bull’s RB team.<

“affectation”? Can someone explain to a none anglophone what Geordi meant by that?

Edit: nevermind, apparently I still remember how to use a dictionary… ‘Affectation noun behaviour or speech that is not sincere’