A tubby little nobody called Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, has grassed on me, it seems. He's a chuckling buffoon well out of his depth: JONATHAN McEVOY

News came from a guy I had never spoken to before. He was the politest, nicest, best-mannered assassin you could ever wish for.His name is Alberto Villarreal, which sounds like a football club, but he is the General Manager of the FIA, Formula One’s governing body, which issues passes to journalists.For 21 years, I held one such pass on a permanent basis while covering F1 for the Daily Mail, as well as taking frequent excursions into other sporting fields, such as the 2012 London Olympics, numerous world championships of various hues and Cheltenham Festivals and the like. And myriad Wimbledons.Alberto told me, in the mildest manner, that my accreditation was being revoked until the end of the year, to be restarted at the start of next season. He further informed me this came with great regret. He said that his president Mohammed Ben Sulayem and F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali liked me. He informed me that the ban was only for three dead-rubbers after Kimi Antonelli, who is just 20 and so talented, tied up the championship two rounds ago.There was a truth to this with regard to Ben Sulayem and Domenicali, and it has been a mutual association of friendship – without illusion.I have known Domenicali since before he became Ferrari team principal and led them to their last world title in 2008. He sang happy birthday to me on my 50th in Monza over a cake with a candle on it that his crew had baked, and that was only a couple of months ago. It seems Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, has grassed on me. He is a chuckling buffoon well out of his depth at the world’s most prestigious team I have covered F1 for 21 years for the Daily Mail, and interviewed top drivers like Lando Norris. Now I've been told my pass has been revoked for the rest of the seasonI didn’t know Villarreal from Adam but he was kind enough as he parcelled his unpalatable news as nicely as he could to say that people said I was a ‘great guy’.Grateful, my new friend!What I had also become was a pawn in a wider Formula One game.Now, let’s get serious, that tubby little nobody called Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, had grassed on me, it seems. A chuckling buffoon well out of his depth at the world’s most prestigious team, he is a prickly character and I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me. He is the only thoroughly rude individual I have met across the nearly 400 grands prix I have attended. I have, as you may have detected, pointed out some of his shortcomings.Well, anyway, I wrote a piece criticising his driver Charles Leclerc for tangling with team-mate Lewis Hamilton in Mexico at the end of last month.By the way, I was more restrained than Hamilton in my comments. Hamilton questioned Leclerc’s ‘mentality’ and accused him of selfishness.We have ‘big, big problems,’ Hamilton opined, calling for talks ‘behind closed doors’.I wrote what I thought was a half-humorous column taking Hamilton’s side (which I haven’t always done, sometimes yes, though I admire his talent beyond belief). I hate quoting myself back but it is relevant in this context, so please forgive me. The move appears to be a response to a column I wrote taking the side of Lewis Hamilton (left, with me in 2008) in his row with Charles Leclerc ‘You couldn't meet a nicer guy: the charming, multilingual, piano-playing, every teenage girl's crush called Charles Leclerc,’ I wrote.‘He dotingly returned to the side of his beautiful wife Alexandra for the birth of their first child, Bianca, in Monaco on Tuesday – almost nine months after their picture-perfect wedding in the principality of his birth.‘They pamper an adorable dog that Alexandra walks around the paddock, a miniature longhaired dachshund named Leo that wins immediate affection. Little Leo has his own VIP pass.‘The sophisticated Charles also happens to be a sneaky little b******.'That contention, written in English idiom, I believe, was at the heart of Hamilton's complaint about the bubbling internecine dispute at Ferrari he laid bare on the first lap of the Mexico City Grand Prix.You could take a poll of 1,000 people and perhaps 500 would agree with my argument. I am not saying I am right. I was just giving my view, albeit containing the half swear word I have never previously committed to print in my own name. Drivers can’t stop their profanities, incidentally…It was neither the best piece nor the worst I ever wrote. But journalism is about freedom of expression. It is the whole point of the trade. You can’t be wrong; only people can disagree with you.And how brittle are they, people like Vasseur, that took exception to a few words, in a joshing column, almost light-hearted, and they react like this? Paid millions for their work, stellar and expert work, and stopped for selfies everywhere they go. But one expression of criticism, spoken tongue-in-cheek, and they squeal this loudly! So much for the freedom of the Press, which has done so much in recent times to unmask Russell Brand and, possibly, David Walliams and at this newspaper famously and unforgettably named and shamed the killers of Stephen Lawrence, a case in which the Daily Mail was totally not only vindicated but entirely extolled for its fearless journalism. With the late, great Murray Walker at his home in the New Forest back in 2006Others whom I respect think Mr Vasseur is a great guy, a wit, and thoroughly the right man to lead the team Enzo Ferrari began. I can tell you others that don’t and without wishing to ascribe to him views he has not publicly expressed Bernie Ecclestone, a man who both knew Enzo and created the modern sport of Formula One, might, I think – and I say this with a certain assurance, believe me – might be closer to my view than otherwise.I have enjoyed very great association with Ferrari over the years. Luca di Montezemolo, who as team boss and later as president, led them to successive championship success – 19 of them – is a close contact. I await his Christmas message, which comes annually.I get on well with Domenicali and Ben Sulayem, but I wonder whether I detect in my temporary banishment another character: Toto Wolff.He once tried to get me banned from the paddock for life when I asked him a question at the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix. Practice had been delayed by a manhole cover flipping. It went into the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz and could have killed him. Wolff went berserk as I asked him about it, losing his usual sang froid.He said that it was ‘completely ridiculous’ to give the ‘sport a black eye’ and that nobody in Europe was watching at that time of the night’.He resented my contribution to the press conference and asked Ben Sulayem to stop me from ever attending another race in my life.The Emirati, a former world rally champion, rang me at the 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a courtesy I shall remember, and said: ‘I don’t think Mr Wolff will be sending you a Christmas card this year.’ He stood by me then, and it was Toto who got a fine for swearing in the Las Vegas press conference. That infuriated him.Is this temporary excommunication his revenge? He may not get on as well these days with Vasseur, but they may have rejoined over a mutual enemy (me). Pure surmise from my side. Over the years, I have enjoyed great friendships in the paddock, not only with journalistic colleagues but with the great and good of the sportOver the years, I have enjoyed great friendships in the paddock, not only with journalistic colleagues but with the great and good of the sport. ‘A great guy,’ you see!I’ll never forget the Sunday Easter morning during lockdown when the phone rang and Lady (Susie) Moss, only widowed for a few hours rang me to tell me that otherwise immortal Stirling had died.She had, in her grief, honoured her word to me that if anything happened to the great man she would let me know first. They read the Mail every day and I had visited him at his death bed when he put his teeth in pronto to look shipshape.It was a privilege I shall never forget, either being with him in his bedroom on the top floor of his Bond-like house of gadgets or the story his wife gave me that brutal morning. We ran it first in the Mail and it later led all BBC news subsequently.Ecclestone and his wife Fabiana are friends. So is Christian Horner. I am close to George Russell and Max Verstappen, bridging his slight antipathy to an Englishman. He thinks they might be slippery. He is a binary Dutchman, my way or no way, and I love him for it. Just as I get on very well with his father Jos. He is almost the only person, possibly, in F1, who has never lied to me.On the subject of Russell, years ago I liked some sunglasses he was wearing. They were made by Taylor Morris – me neither, and he never did a deal with, not enough dough in it – and he said if I wanted them to come to his drivers’ room at Williams and he would hand them over.He couldn’t find the glasses at that precise moment but later handed them over. That was an act of kindness, just as it was when he had changed phone numbers and gave me his new one. A lot of drivers would have ducked out.I could go on. I shan’t bore you further. With George Russell last year. He gave me a pair of his sunglasses after I said I rather liked them - an act of kindnessBut, on more important matters, Formula One is in danger of being a self-serving fiefdom that does not want journalistic ‘interference’. It wants to put out its own narrative and to control it.Netflix, with its long boom microphones, has played its part. A stroke of genius by them, an enterprise by them for their own benefit. Yet, it has transported the sport to new audiences.It has been a masterstroke of Sean Bratches, the US TV executive who moved in when Formula One was bought from Ecclestone in 2017. He was seen as a joke figure. Bratches, who wore bespoke blazers, was a smart chancer I didn’t rate. But I was wrong.In the Netflix docs, the teams have the right to pull any coverage they don’t want. Formula One peddles its own coverage on its own channel.The point is at the end of all this. I can write what I want subject to my proprietor, Lord Rothermere, my Editor and my readers, subject to the law.Whatever Fred Vasseur thinks.Now read the column that got Jonathan McEvoy banned: Forget his charming exterior, Charles Leclerc is a sneaky little b*****d McEvoy is the doyen of F1 correspondents - a free spirit in a sport that is becoming obsessed with control and the massaging of its image: OLIVER HOLT Jonathan McEvoy does not play favourites. He is not a public relations man for a particular team or for a particular driver. Or for the FIA, Formula One’s governing body, which appears to have lost its corporate, control-obsessed, authoritarian mind in the way that it has chosen to treat him.I worked in Formula One for a few years in the 1990s and McEvoy bears comparison with the best and most respected journalists that have graced the sport. I’m biased because I have a lot of respect for those people and so I’m happy to say it’s a high bar. There are many talented people working in the F1 press room and McEvoy is right at the top of the tree.I’m confident in saying there is a consensus about that. McEvoy has covered the sport for more than 20 years and attended close to 400 races. Few go to more races, know more about the politics and the personalities of grand prix racing than him or write about it with more elan and more authority. He is the doyen of F1 correspondents. One of the qualities I have always admired most about him is his refusal to compromise his opinions. His criticism of Lewis Hamilton during periods of Hamilton’s glorious career, for instance, may have made his working life uncomfortable because Hamilton is a British hero. But McEvoy stayed true to himself even if that meant sanctions were visited on him and his access to Hamilton was limited.It is often easy to compromise in situations like that – I have done it many times – but McEvoy has always avoided that trap and remained a free spirit in a sport that is becoming more and more obsessed with control and the massaging of its image through vehicles like ‘Drive to Survive’.That show is entertaining enough but it is a carefully varnished product that does not allow the viewer to look beneath the surface. For that kind of insight, you have to read the work of journalists like McEvoy.That, essentially, is why F1 has chosen to ban him. It appears, in this particular case, that Ferrari took exception to something McEvoy wrote and Ferrari wield a lot of power. They are not used to people writing inconvenient or irreverent opinions about them and their drivers. Because they want to control all narratives. Journalists like Jon refuse to join them in the worship of blandness and the pursuit of glib promotion.That’s why F1’s actions have to be exposed. McEvoy is among the very best at what he does. The more the sport’s governing body tries to quell free speech, the more its pathetic bullying has to be resisted.