Diverted: BMW Sauber

Rationalising the decision, Theissen went over BMW’s ambitious system of “target-setting” for each year of competition. “In 2006 we wanted to score points. We did that. In 2007 we wanted to finish on the podium. We did that. In 2008 we wanted to win our first race. We did that.

“For 2009 we have also achieved our target, which was to finish last and last-but-one in a race.”

“No it wasn’t,” one reporter volunteered, before being forcibly removed by burly Swiss security guards and never seen or heard from again.

BMW are obviously taking a lesson from Brawn GP, who as Honda diverted most of their resources to developing their 2009 car early in 2008 when they realised they were going to be uncompetitive. Theissen, however, has obviously decided that spending five-and-a-half years developing their 2015 car will pay massive dividends when that season comes.

Sceptics have expressed doubts about BMW’s plans, given that the 2015 technical regulations are not due to be finalised until June 2014, more than five years away, but Theissen believes that this will not be a problem. “We will design the car as best we can, then incorporate new elements into the design when they are introduced into the rule book. It’s a flawless plan.”

Top BMW driver Robert Kubica has already expressed frustration with the plans, and was seen knocking on the door of the Ferrari motorhome in Barcelona yesterday.

Similar strategies have previously been pursued elsewhere in motorsport, with David Richards spending nearly two years gathering support and funding for his Prodrive team, due to launch in 2008, before realising a few months before the season started that he had forgotten to build a car.

Serious: Swiss police in high-speed chase

Reports suggest that office staff in the facility were using their computers to share comedic websites when they should have been working, including a motorsports blog billed as being “Genauer als Planet-F1.”

An unnamed whistleblower within the company alerted authorities last week when he heard noises that sounded “suspiciously similar to laughter” emanating from the Human Resources office. Further investigation determined that staff had been “unreasonably amused” by Internet material “undoubtedly intended for the purposes of humour and satire.”

Humour has been illegal in Switzerland since 1998, when a man in Grindelwald laughed surprisingly loudly at an episode of Freunden on the television. The sound of his merriment triggered an avalanche, which buried a small village.

“We take these allegations extremely seriously,” one Zurich police spokesman told the media. “Not only did the tragic and unnecessary events of 1998 show how dangerous humour can be, in these times of economic hardship it is doubly damaging as it contributes significantly towards inefficiency. Given how BMW Sauber are performing at the moment, you’d think they’d be working twice as hard.”

Nationalist groups within Switzerland have already called for the confederation to withdraw from the Schengen Treaty, which allows passport-free travel between European countries, after allegations that “mischievous Germans” from the Bavarian contingent of BMW could have been taking advantage of relaxed border checks by smuggling jokes into the country.

Attempting to import humour into Switzerland can carry a maximum of ten years’ furrowed brows and condescending looks from strangers, whereas actually using humorous material within the country is punished with a stern talking-to and a polite request not to commit the offence again.

BMW boss Mario Thiessen admitted that he found the case “quite amusing,” before hastily requesting that reporters “don’t tell the Swiss I said that.”

Sandy: Bahrain, last week

Thiessen was quoted in the press a few weeks ago as saying that other teams’ decisions not to follow his outfit to Bahrain with Ferrari and Toyota was “very silly,” and that “the rain in Europe means that they will get practically no useful running. We expect to uncover a huge advantage by testing in the heat and dry conditions in Bahrain.”

However, BMW’s initial optimism turned out to be unfounded, as though the rain stayed away, the Bahrain test was hit by sandstorms, meaning that testing at the desert venue was curtailed on several days.

“Having reflected on the situation for a few days,” Thiessen told journalists, “we have decided that our early feelings on the advantages of the Bahrain test may have been somewhat inaccurate. It seems that we had failed to take into account the significant damage to schedules that can be caused by errant sand blowing all over the place.

“The teams at Jerez obviously had no such troubles, which causes us to gloomily forecast that we may not have such a great advantage in Melbourne as we had previously hoped.”

The other two teams at the Bahrain test last week, Ferrari and Toyota, appeared to be unmoved by the unfavourable conditions, with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen offering a bemused grunt as a comment on the situation.

Angry: BMW boss Mario Thiessen

In a news conference last week, FIA President Max Mosley insisted that Formula One had to “meet the needs of the road car manufacturer” in order to stay financially viable, which included the introduction of lights, horns and other features onto the F1 cars of the future.

Dr. Mario Thiessen, team principal of BMW Sauber, was particularly scathing about the new rules: “They are a joke,” he told assembled journalists outside the team’s factory in Switzerland. “BMW have been constructing cars without functioning indicators for decades now, and suddenly the FIA have decided that they want to introduce expensive and irrelevant indicator technology into a sport that has always relied on manufacturer ingenuity rather than overbearing rulemaking. BMW has no interest in investing huge amounts of resources into these so-called ’safety features’ that will never make it onto our road cars anyway, and even if they did, they wouldn’t get used by the average BMW driver.”

Red Bull Technologies’ Adrian Newey was unavailable for comment, though it is understood that he is concerned about the aerodynamic impact the new mandatory fuzzy dice and novelty air fresheners will have on the cars.