You would be forgiven for wondering if Niki Lauda is in the pay of the British Grand Prix promoters. He says statements regarding Lewis Hamilton allegedly smashing up an office, and speculation on the Englishman's relationship with Nico Rosberg, were due to 'a misunderstanding.'
Maybe so. The stable door may have been bolted but the horse, known as a 'nice little runner' in media terms, has long since bolted to the motor sport websites and galloped on from there to the wild blue yonder. In the light of the 'misunderstanding', these same media outlets are hardly likely to say: 'Oh, I would no longer bother with the British Grand Prix if I were you. Nothing going on there. Let's go watch a tennis player smashing his racquet or a footballer tripping over a blade of grass.'
Sports editors have already tasked their correspondents with finding F1 stories, preferably about the home hero if he's got a chance of winning. Hamilton fits the bill perfectly, thanks to tales of his rearranging the furniture in Baku and that controversial finish in Austria last weekend. It's manna from Heaven or, in this case, from the Mercedes motorhome. This stuff is a sports writer's dream. Some people may disapprove of the resulting hype, but that's the way of the media - and always has been.
In 1996, Damon Hill was the main man. Having won the British Grand Prix for Williams in 1994, only to lose the championship a few months later to Michael Schumacher in that controversial incident in Adelaide and then collide with the Benetton at Silverstone in 1995, Damon came to his home race a year later having just won the French Grand Prix. If he repeated such an easy victory at home, he would be three wins clear of Williams team-mate Jacques Villeneuve in their fight for the 1996 title.
The papers were blithely saying that Hill was a shoo-in for the championship. When he put his Williams-Renault on pole, a sixth win of the season seemed certain. If anything, the British Grand Prix backstory was almost too nice. Searching for colour and drama, a tabloid newspaper discovered that German flags had been ripped from a caravan belonging to a group of Schumacher fans. Neither officials nor the police knew anything of the incident but Hill was reported to be quick in distancing himself from the actions of his alleged supporters.
Such a mature and mellow attitude was typical of the atmosphere that year. Villeneuve and Hill got on well; there was harmony within Williams (unlike in 1995, when Frank publically referred to Damon as 'a bit of a prat'). But, as we know, motor racing is not that simple. Hill, mysteriously never in the reckoning in this race, eventually spun off at Copse thanks to a seized wheel bearing. Villeneuve won. By Monday morning, the newspapers had changed their tune. Was Hill ever going to win this title?
There had been a similar theme ten years before at Brands Hatch when Nigel Mansell appeared to be fighting his Williams-Honda team-mate, Nelson Piquet, just as much as Ayrton Senna in the Lotus-Renault and McLaren's Alain Prost. There was additional media emotion attached to Frank Williams making his first public appearance since his near-fatal accident four months before. Similar to Hill 10 years later, Mansell had answered British sports writers' prayers by winning the previous race in France, only to add spice to the British Grand Prix by failing to beat Piquet to pole - but then hammering the Brazilian in the race.
And yet all of this was tame compared to forty years ago. On a scorching afternoon at Brands Hatch, the crowd went into riot mode when it seemed James Hunt would be barred from taking the restart after his McLaren had been damaged in a first-corner shunt. The fact that the pile-up had been caused by the dastardly Ferrari drivers hitting each other added further heat to an already tense season which exploded in very un-British terms as beer cans rained onto the track. Hunt was eventually allowed to start, went on to beat Niki Lauda's Ferrari and score a hugely emotional win -- only to be disqualified at a later date and heap even more controversy onto a season in which the 1976 British Grand Prix had played a significant part. The F1 media was in seventh heaven.
Twenty years before that, sports reportage had been a more gentle affair in which the only noise generated by F1 writers was the clacking of their portable typewriters. It was as if they had become attuned to not expecting a British driver to win the championship. Ever.
Even though Stirling Moss had produced an immaculate win at Monaco, the 1956 title seemed to be going the way of Juan Manuel Fangio for the fourth time (the championship had only been running for seven seasons).
The British Grand Prix at Silverstone would sum up Moss's luck. Driving a works Maserati, Moss claimed pole and led every lap until the fuel tank split (dealt with, would you believe, by stopping for more fuel!) and he finally succumbed to a broken rear axle, but not before setting fastest lap (worth one point). Fangio's Lancia-Ferrari took the win but the humble Argentinean was quick to pay tribute to the Englishman 18 years his junior.
The respect was mutual. Moss and Fangio had been teammates at Mercedes the previous year. And there were, on occasions, team orders laid down by the legendary Alfred Neubauer. This was a colossus of a man who ran the team like clockwork, personally organising everything from quiet hotel rooms for his drivers to how they would run their races, assuming they were in front. Which they usually were.
We could do with Herr Neubauer in the pits today. Not so much to control Hamilton and Rosberg but to scare the living daylights out of inventive journalists salivating over what Lewis might or might not have done behind closed doors.