Far be it for me to leap to Todt's defense but it should be remembered that he is the head of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobiles, a premier governing body of motorsport worldwide and representative body for the majority of road transport organisations across the planet. Whilst we may think that all he does is focus on and command the activities of Formula One this is far from the case. One of his strengths has been to devolve regulation of F1 to the officers of the FIA in their respective responsibilities and this is shown by his apparent absence from the day to day operations.
Further, regardless of how we feel about the EBD debacle the ultimate responsibility for how this has turned out is to do with the scrutineers, stewardship and, ultimately Charlie Whiting's guidance, or perhaps lack of, with respect to the actions or inactions of those officials. In concert with that are the actions of the teams with regard to their exploitation of apparent loopholes in the regulations and their vociferous lobbying of the regulators in order to keep the technology. When you cut through to the detail it is clear that the engineers have been circumventing, at the very least, the spirit of the rules, which is why the teams have had to capitulate to the ruling that was made in the run up to Valencia and revert to the edict laid down with regard to changing engine maps under Parc Ferme conditions.
There has been a lot said about the FIA changing the regulations mid-season. In fact it transpires that the FIA had in fact failed to enforce existing regulations due to that old favourite "lack of clarity". The fact that this became a rather undesirable distraction from what was otherwise an entertaining and eventful weekends racing was unfortunate but nothing like the demoralising and depressing political crapshoots under Mosely. The arguments over the past few weeks have been of a technical nature rather than political so Todt has not been overtly involved, if at all.
In addition to all that I think we should be grateful, also, to the measured and considerably more consistent Stewardship that we have witnessed under Todt's leadership. The Stewards room no longer represents the political arm of a dictatorial presidency and (regardless of how we feel when our favourite driver has been penalised for something) the introduction of an experienced racecar driver has thus far been reasonably successful.
I voted for Ari, by the way, as I perceived Todt to be a Mosley quizzling. Until he does something to upset me, I am happy to say that I was wrong since, to date, he has acted precisely as he said he would ... and again I urge folk's to remember, F1 is only one part of the FIA empire.
