Staying on script Formula One's schlocky personal soap opera has become reality

Sad times. Maybe even end times. The vultures are circling. The barbarians are at the gate and everything that was once sacred is being made profane.

Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the president of the FIA, believes recent controversies are beginning to damage the sport. Toto Wolff, the team principal of Mercedes, identifies "a problem for the whole of Formula One". The global head of Ford Performance Motorsport has reminded Red Bull of the "very high standards of behaviour and integrity" that will be expected of their future engine partner. Who else, in this moment of turmoil and tumult, will stand up for the impeccable good name and sound values of the sport Christian Horner described only last year as "the Kardashians on wheels"? Certainly it has been vaguely amusing over the last few weeks to behold some of the moral squeamishness and knotted indignation generated within the paddock by the Horner affair. The apparent surprise that a product packaged and sold as a schlocky personal soap opera has somehow degenerated into a schlocky personal soap opera. The sheer disbelief that a sport owned and run by rich, unaccountable men and held in some of the world's most repressive dictatorships might occasionally be lacking in transparency. The belated discovery that there might actually be such a thing as bad publicity, negative publicity, the kind of publicity that does not emerge fully formed from the editing suite, complete with pumping soundtrack and pre-written storylines.