THE STORY on everybody’s lips in the Formula One paddock is, of course, the plight of Max Mosley, president of the sport’s governing body. The specific detail of the scandal surrounding him is largely irrelevant, in my view. The sporting regulation he has used over the years to keep teams in check relates to bringing the sport into disrepute.

If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Sitting on the fence on this issue for any of us inside the sport is not an option. We must condone or condemn the situation he finds himself in.

Mosley’s position as president is untenable. He would have received much more sympathy and understanding had he tendered his resignation last Monday morning. His stance has inflamed the situation, and he could never now make a keynote speech or force through penalties or regulations with the necessary credibility – with the motoring associations, the teams, the car manufacturers, the sponsors, the fans, the media or the drivers.

Meanwhile, back on the track, an intriguing phenomenon is becoming apparent. We have seen in Bahrain this weekend driver after driver running out of track, including Lewis Hamilton, who suffered a nasty accident on Friday afternoon.

Sebastien Bourdais tells me he went off the track on the first lap of the Malaysian Grand Prix with no throttle on at all, which is highly unusual, especially in dry conditions.

Studying Felipe Massa’s spin later in the same race, once the car began to go, he had absolutely no chance to recover it.

Talking to some of the other drivers and engineers, it’s clear the way the cars have evolved has resulted in aerodynamic and tyre characteristics that suddenly fall off a cliff face once the vehicle gets beyond a certain angle of slide, leaving drivers looking silly.

The teams are generating huge amounts of downforce as the designers search for ways to improve their cars. The various bodywork blades and curves twist and turn the vortices to reattach the air back on to and underneath the car to generate what is referred to as negative lift, or downforce, which is why an F1 car can corner five times harder than the very best road car, but if the airflow stalls from one area, the rest tend to follow at a critical point.

This is having an impact on the racing, too. In Malaysia, Hamilton was on Mark Webber’s gearbox for most of the race despite being seconds faster in free air. Salvation is on the horizon with new, cleaner aerodynamics for 2009, with less downforce but more mechanical grip from slick racing tyres. That is how a proper racing car should look anyway.

As a driver, I would be stepping into these cars with trepidation, as they seem to have caught out world-class drivers such as Massa in two consecutive races.

It has triggered a lot of questions about whether the Brazilian will be replaced at Ferrari. It would be highly unusual for a top-line driver to have a contract where the team could randomly substitute him. The cornerstone of a driver contract is that if the team enters a race, it must also enter that driver in one of the cars. Some of the new boys might be on a race-by-race basis or under performance clauses, but these are notoriously difficult to write in a fair and legally binding way.

Massa is under pressure, which can make every slide of the car an alarm instead of an instinctive correction. Add to that the fact that teammate Kimi Raikkonen is throwing the car around and loving it. Massa could be in a class of his own in Bahrain, virtually unbeatable, in fact, but two errors in qualifying gifted the fastest time to BMW’s Robert Kubica for a maiden pole position.

Massa will start from the sandy side of the front row and will have to watch out for a fast-starting Hamilton too.

The Ferrari still looks like the class act of the field, with better traction, effortless speed and a more caring relationship with its rear tyres on the longer runs. I expect Massa and Raikkonen, starting in fourth, to be the main contenders by mid-race, barring any first-lap mishaps.

Hamilton and Kovalainen can wrestle the more lively McLaren around for a podium slot, but the real excitement will be how much mischief the BMWs of Kubica and Nick Heidfeld can make. Massa must win this race, though, if he is to avoid becoming the supporting Ferrari driver this season.

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