[Racer Duck]

Why Mosley is happy with the season that had everything | Motor sport | Guardian Unlimited Sport

So, Max Mosley, was that a brilliant formula one season or a brilliant season totally ruined by the great grand prix spy scandal and the eyewatering punishment - a £50m fine and expulsion from the manufacturers' championship - inflicted by your FIA world council on Lewis Hamilton's McLaren team?"

I think it was a brilliant season," the curiously boyish 67-year-old president of motor sport's international governing body said this week. "Fascinating and very exciting right down to the last few laps, which is what it should be."

Back in October, however, it was Mosley who wanted Hamilton and his team-mate Fernando Alonso to share McLaren's fate by suffering expulsion from the drivers' championship. Unusually he seemed unable to get his own way and the McLaren pair went on to finish second and third behind Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. "Legally," he said, "I still think it would have been the right thing to do."