Nearly a century ago, the German sociologist Max Weber defined politics as the pursuit of power over the state.
In Politics as a Vocation Weber asserts that "[t]he state is seen as the sole grantor of the 'right' to physical force. Therefore, 'politics' in our case would mean the pursuit for a portion of power or for influencing the division of power whether it is between states, or between groups of people which the state encompasses."
Formula One is a world of its own, and it is one in which the pursuit of a portion of power is as important as the pursuit of pace.
Following the publication of a press release in which the FIA confirmed that Ferrari had exercised its veto over the concept of a cost cap on power unit supply (among other components), the Friday team principals' press conference in Mexico City saw much debate on the fairness of both that decision and of the Scuderia's right to a veto.
There can be no denying that Ferrari's veto power is a legitimate exercise of authority the team was granted over a given territory (that of F1 regulations). But legitimacy and morality are very different, and for those concerned about the health of Formula One as a whole Ferrari's decision to exercise its veto was seen as immoral.
Thanks to the recent flotation of Ferrari on Wall Street, more information on the state of the Scuderia's finances has been made public than ever before. While any F1 fan deserving of the label knows that the Italian team receive historic payments before the prize fund is divided among the teams -- as gratitude for its nearly seven decades of support for the championship -- recent filings have established that Ferrari's financial arrangements effectively allow the manufacturer to run an F1 team for free, as long-serving journalist Joe Saward wrote this week.
As a company, Ferrari are in rude financial health. Stock sales from the IPO valued the Italian automotive giant at $9.8 billion (£6.3 billion), and the brand value - defined as "the financial value of having customers who will pay more for a particular brand" - in 2015 is $4.7 billion, a 16.17 percent increase on 2014's brand value of $4 billion. Ferrari is not a company on a downwards trajectory.
Given that the racing team are hardly in the position of scrabbling between sofa cushions to find the spare change needed to stay afloat - unlike several of their on-track competitors - it was difficult to swallow Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene's press conference comments regarding his use of the veto as a business decision made inevitable by the need to protect the bottom line.
"Concerning the veto, it is quite easy," Arrivabene said. "We exercised our veto in line with our legitimate commercial right to do business as a power train manufacturer. There is nothing else to add."
Asked by this writer how he could morally justify the use of the veto in light of the F1 team's strong financial position, Arrivabene initially avoided the question: "I repeat it. I have to repeat again! The rules are done by the Federation and it's fine but we just exercise our commercial right as a powertrain manufacturer. This is the reason why."
The response was classic Weberian traditional authority, defined as "a form of leadership in which the authority of an organisation or a ruling regime is largely tied to tradition or custom. The main reason for the given state of affairs is that it 'has always been that way'."
When pushed to provide a moral justification given that the Ferrari team principal had not answered the question posed, the former marketing man appeared flustered.
"Why do we have to justify it more? Here we are talking about commercial right. We are not talking about budget, we are not talking about anything else. If somebody, they are asking you, they give you a specification to produce apple, OK you produce apple in line with the specification. That somebody, they're asking you, OK, we want to impose you the price of the apple', what are you going to do? This is the principle. It has nothing to do with the rest."
Later on in the press conference Arrivabene expanded on his position.
"I totally agree with [our use of the] veto," he said. "It is not a position against the other team. It is a decision that is defending a commercial principle. For the rest we are open to finding any other solution. You have in a public company, as we are now, but also in a company as Mercedes is, you have research and development costs that somehow you have to recover. I don't find any commercial entity all around the world that is giving their product out to the market for free - or at cost. So this is the principle."
How easily the Ferrari man could have side-stepped the questioning had he only referred to another extract from Politics as a Vocation: "One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility."