Formula One bans Daily Mail veteran Jonathan McEvoy over Leclerc column

Formula One has banned the Daily Mail's award-winning Motor Racing Correspondent Jonathan McEvoy over a column in which he called Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc a "sneaky little b\*\*\*\*d".

The column, which also described Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur as "a tubby little nobody" and "a chuckling buffoon well out of his depth", speculated that the team was heading for civil war. McEvoy says Vasseur then "grassed on" him to Formula One's management, and that the sport's bosses acted because they did not want readers to see the column.

The episode shows how accreditation works in modern sport. A journalist covering a football club can write what he likes and still buy a ticket to the stadium; a journalist covering Formula One cannot report from the paddock without a pass issued by the organisation he is scrutinising. The sanction for offence is not a rebuttal but exclusion. McEvoy has covered the sport for decades and won awards doing it, but his access lasted only as long as his copy stayed within the bounds the teams and the rights-holder found tolerable.

Ferrari and Formula One both have commercial interests in their stars' marketability. Leclerc is one of the sport's most valuable assets; his team principal's standing affects sponsorship negotiations worth hundreds of millions. A columnist calling the driver a name, in a newspaper the teams cannot control, threatens something the paddock's carefully managed media operations exist to protect. There is no appeal body, no press-council complaint process — only the pass, granted and withdrawn.

McEvoy says he intends to keep writing. He can still say anything he likes about Formula One, from outside the gates.