TJ13 believes that Formula One fans should have a voice and does so by way of the ‘Voice of the Fans’ articles.

The views expressed in these articles are not necessarily those of TJ13.

Here is the latest offering from our favourite large land mammal – Enjoy

If there is an institution that is less flexible than the catholic church, it’s F1, because the effing toad refuses to do the decent thing and die. He’s worse than a cockroach – even a nuclear blast can’t rid us off him.

What F1 needs is a counterpart to Jorge Mario Bergoglio – someone who says ‘f*** y’all, I’m going to do it my way!’. Granted, Bernie has done that for ages, it just happens that ‘his way’ is the way of Satan.

For hundreds of years the catholic church had engaged in senseless skullduggery that left an atheist like me utterly bewildered. That was until an Argentinian came along and after being crowned the last totalitarian monarch in the world, he waddled out on the balcony and said ‘buona sera’ – as opposed to ‘occupy Poland’ or ‘must exterminate humanity’.

Just to get the idea – The pope is the last absolutist monarch in the world. Questioning him is a crime, or at least a sin or whatever the catholics use as an excuse to torture people. Oh wait… that was the USA, B-but I digress.

Granted, his power is limited to the 0.44 square kilometres of the Vatican – the world’s smallest sovereign state – but nonetheless, on paper he has more power than any other leader in the world. What did he do with it? He introduced common sense – holy sh*t!

He could have the whole Apostolic Palace to himself, but he decided to live in the rather spartan Vatican guest house. After being crowned pope they wanted to cart him off in a limo, but brother Jorge decided to join the other cardinals and went home by bus. Can you imagine the dwarf from Suffolk get on a bus? Not unless it is made by Maybach and he’s the only passenger.

While the Catholiban – after only two thousand years of trying – have finally elected a leader, who deserves the adjective ‘blessed’ (note to Lewis: That man is blessed, your meal is not), F1 is still ruled by Beelzebub. Ecclestone is everything that the church warns its worshippers about – greedy, selfish and he certainly don’t love thy enemy, only himself – as weird a fetish that might be.

What F1 needs is someone like Jorge Mario Bergoglio – someone to come in and do the exact opposite of what was expected of him. Someone who wonders ‘Y’know what? Why don’t we give all the money we make to the teams in equal shares?’ Or someone who says ‘F*** the strategy group, I’ll go with what the fans want.’

Like the catholic church, F1 is about to lose its relevance. While the holy men were once all about grace of charity and a life of decency, it is now all about molesting children and acquiring riches. And while there are (thankfully) no reports of Bernie doing unspeakable things to under-age boys, the greed part is very much prevalent in modern day F1 and – like the church – it is threatening to kill itself off.

Do not delude yourself – the world does not need F1, neither does it need the catholic church. Both of these institutions are there merely because there are people, who like them. But both of them need to be relevant to survive. The church currently does rediscover its relevance, because it has found a leader, who *gasp* talks about things that make sense. F1 meanwhile tries to exterminate itself by ignoring common sense.

In a bid to ‘lower costs’, it introduced an engine formula that quadrupled the costs. Yeah – that makes about as much sense as Idi Amin holding the opening speech at a human rights conference or George W. Bush being elected the new leader of Amnesty international. The people involved in running F1 are simply detached from a thing called ‘reality’. They don’t know anymore what it once set out to do – much like the church.

F1 once started as a racing series in which everyone tried to build the best car possible and tried to find people good at moving these cars as quickly as possible around circular tracks around the world. That went jolly well until lentil eating lesbians came along saying that ‘losing is not cool, you know…’.

When a certain team, which had assembled a group of congenial talent and a tyre supplier, who fulfilled their every wish, started reaping the rewards – five times in a row – things started falling apart. The rules were changed to punish success and reward the mediocre. The bright kid was told to tone it down and the stupid kid was lied to and told it is doing well. To cement that, the rules were changed to nobble the bright kid and make it easier for the kid, whose biggest achievement is not to drool on his shirt. And it went all downhill from there.

For the last decade F1 has endlessly meddled with the rules to punish success and breed mediocrity and as a result we get mediocrity – surprise! To make it appear relevant, we are told the sport has to ‘go green’ and appeal to the masses, except it doesn’t. The engines are sh*t, they sound sh*t and we get gormless teenagers on the grid, but they still haven’t managed to give a woman a fair shot at it. F1 is the catholic church – all talk, but when it comes to put it in practice, they fail. At least the church is open about it – they have it in the rules that women are verboten.

So, F1 soldiers on, advertising the Neanderthal, the hybrid engine, as the next best thing as if people couldn’t see that it is not the solution. The series should decide – either it goes back to the roots, which means building the fastest cars possible by whatever means possible – and I hazard a guess, the hybrid engine isn’t part of that – or if it wants to be ‘green’, there was a fairly good demonstration of that at Punta del Este, Uruguay on Dec. 13th.

What F1 needs is a new absolute monarch. Someone who makes way too much sense to be installed, so I blow up white smoke and declare – Habemus Papam. Make Giancarlo Minardi boss of F1.