The history of Renault in F1 reads like a company with an addiction it's trying to kick.

They entered the sport as a constructor in 1977, winning a respectable number of races but no championships, then spent one season (1986) as an engine supplier, before pulling out completely at the end of the year.

After going cold turkey for a couple of years, they rejoined the sport as an engine supplier in 1989, winnning five drivers' and six constructors' titles, before quitting again in 1997. By 2000 the itch had to be scratched again, so they bought the Benetton team, although they didn't rebrand it as Renault until the 2002 season.

They have introduced a number of innovations to the sport, including turbo-charged engines (since banned), V10 engines (since banned) and mass-damper systems (since banned). The one thing they seem to have pioneered that hasn't been outlawed is something that actually makes the cars slower: live-feed in-car cameras.

The team persists in building their chassis in Oxfordshire and their engines several hundred miles away, somewhere in france. There is undoubtedly a very good reason for this, although your chronicler admits that any sort of logical explanation eludes him at the moment.

The FIA (or Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile to give it its full, inexplicably french, name) is an ominous association formed to represent motorists and motoring organisations. Its headquarters are at 8 Place de la Concorde, Paris (ring top bell), coincidentally just up the rue from one of the city's best bordellos.

The federation acts as the governing body for a number of motorsport series and championships, mostly in a venal or, if we're feeling charitable, incompetent manner. It should not be confused with the Fédération Internationale de l'Alcosport, which governs Drink-A-Long-A-Grand-Prix almost as badly.

Comprising 222 member organisations, the FIA can also boast a Senate, a Court of Appeal and a General Assembly and it wouldn't take a stretch of the imagination to see its activities as part of a sinister plan to get itself recognised as a sovereign state in its own right. It's not a million miles from how Hitler started, that's all we're saying.

Its decisions have at times left the FIA open to accusations of favouritism and manipulation and its credibility wasn't helped any by revelations that its married president, Max Mosley, was partial to sado-masochistic orgies involving more tarts than you can fit on one hand. Mosley, seeing no incompatibility between his behaviour and his position, failed to tender the resignation that many were keenly anticipating.

They claim to do a lot of work on road safety but we've never knowingly seen any of their campaigns.

Max Mosley is a qualified barrister, president of the FIA and likes his whores five at a time, thank you very much.

His father was Oswald Mosley, the former leader of the British Union of Fascists, his mother was Diana Mitford, of the renowned and, um, eccentric Mitford family, and his wife Jean is either the most understanding woman in the world or the owner of a bollock collection boasting two fresh exhibits.

Mosley spent part of his education in Germany, during which time he became fluent in the language, which comes in very handy at all those S&M parties. For a time he was also a member of the British Territorial Army and he still has the uniform, which comes in very handy at all those S&M parties.

He claims that his most rewarding work at the FIA is centred on road and race safety and during his tenure the FIA has introduced into all its championships the compulsory use of the HANS device, a neck brace that restricts head movement and which comes in very handy at all those S&M parties.

Mosley was the "M" in "March", an F1 team that had some success, and many now claim that he is the "F" in "FIA" and that he was almost certainly the "C" in "FOCA".