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The FIA’s banning of reactive ride systems has greatly relieved the Lotus team who were beginning to wonder if they were ever going to figure out how the ruddy thing worked.

Announcing the ban last Friday, the governing body explained that its hand-picked team of rule-flaunt checkers had acted once it became clear the thing that was designed to deliberately flaunt the rules turned out to be flaunting the rules.

“Following the careful perusal of plans submitted to us a year ago by the team in question [Lotus] describing exactly how they were going to cheat, the FIA has come to the conclusion that this is cheating,” king of the cheat-catchers, Charlie Whiting explained.

Removing handbrake expertise right up there, though

“We would like to apologise for the delay in this adjudication but once it became clear another team were also developing the technology a careful assessment had to be made whether this development was a valid, clever innovation of the existing rulebook, given the investment of both parties.”

“Once it was discovered Ferrari didn’t know how it worked either however, we immediately came to the unanimous conclusion this was obviously a cynical, wasteful interpretation of explicit, unambiguous regulations concerning aerodynamics and suspension and that.”

Despite the last second ban wasting potentially hundreds of hours of valuable Angry Birds practice, Lotus engineers were privately sanguine about the move.

“It’s true we’ve spent a lot of time on this,” engineer, Mickey Spanners told us.

“But frankly, I haven’t got a clue how the bastard works.  And neither does our designer.”

“We’d only have been shitting ourselves we were putting it on upside down for the first test.  Now at least if we’re slow we won’t be tying ourselves in knots trying to explain this suspension stuff.”

“We’ll almost certainly be slow for all the usual reasons which we’re much more comfortable with,” he admitted.

Animals matching a human genetic fingerprint have not been found in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Royal officials have confirmed.

The tiny Gulf State and chief importer of Saudi Arabian thumb screws issued the statement following analysis by the independent commission, Bahrain and the Bahrain Royal Family are Divinity Personified; Any Other Opinion is Heresy and Owners of Such Opinions Will be Shown the Error of this Thinking Away from any Recording Devices.

“Following detailed, in depth analysis by our highly respected team of fully trained, highly respected, fully trained cousins of his Royal Highness Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa we have concluded that – outside of his Majesty, His Majesty’s family and His Majesty’s security advisers – there are no human inhabitants of our magnificent Kingdom which I stress is still open for business and comes complete with pleasant weather, full wi-fi coverage and now largely servile population,” chief Kingdom announcer, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa addressed a rally of cheering cousins.

“Such clever monkeys with their pretty flags: and a nice box to put them in, too”

The investigation was kicked off following allegations bits of what looked like humans were turning up in bin bags, drains and hidden down the back of Bahrain police stations.

Positive identifications could have proved significant as – if true – the pre-fabricated country’s Grand Prix would have been placed in jeopardy and with it, millions of dollars in hotel bookings once the mass murder became too damaging to European car manufacturer sales.

But exhaustive tests proving a complete absence of homo sapiens within the island state have rendered claims of human rights abuses redundant, claim authorities.

“We haven’t found a single one,” the Crown Prince explained; “and believe me we’ve looked everywhere.”

“Ooh look – gold fillings!”

“There were people who claimed they were of course; but just 10 minutes in a room with one of our dedicated staff of investigators and nearly all of them were literally screaming to change their minds.”

“They weren’t even trying very hard.  Some of the ones I saw after questioning didn’t have any thumbs!  I mean come on – at least get the basics right!” he chuckled.

Those choosing to travel to the country for the race in April have been urged by the Foreign Office to get their human status verified, beforehand.

“We’re not saying you’ll definitely be savagely beaten, tear-gassed or shot,” a spokesman explained, “but we are saying pop it on the list of things to do before you go along with getting plenty of sun-block and Alka-Seltzer.”

“You wouldn’t want to have your holiday ruined by having your retinas detached or being unable to lift anything heavier than a paperback for the rest of your agonising, hobbled life,” they told us.

Kamui Kobayashi can only surprise the fuck out of the opposition once without penalty in 2012, the FIA have confirmed.

The Japanese stereotype Grand Prix driver was informed of the new regulation along with the rest of the grid following the FIA’s clarification of rules designed to keep all 22 drivers out of hospital this season.

“I’ve spoken to Kamui-san and though he is obviously disappointed one of the key weapons in his armoury is to be blunted, appreciates that this is at least the same for everyone,” team boss, Peter Sauber said.

Which direction to suddenly veer now harder to figure out

“Rest assured that Kamui will nonetheless be working flat out in 2012 to maximise this one chance of scaring the shit out of his fellow competitors.”

“At this time we see no reason to scale back on our reinforced chassis investment nor trash any of the “Koba-Bashi!” merchandise we have in the warehouse trading on his happy-go-lucky malevolent destructive tactics.”

The FIA issued the clarification of the ‘one move’ rule after it became clear some drivers were still weaving all over the road because they believed the instruction meant, ‘one move at a time.’

“At first we thought, you know: they’re racing drivers, maybe they’re a bit deaf or something?” FIA Head of Coming up With Rules and Stuff, Keith Literature said.

“Then we realised: no, they’re not deaf, just racing drivers.  That’s when we decided to reiterate the instruction in bright red font, 100 feet tall and projected onto a spinning 3D image of Jean Todt’s arse.”

It’s thought that Michael Schumacher needs it engraved on a fucking bullet, loaded into a gun and pointed at his children before he gets the message.