Sometimes you catch a wonderful moment on television which you know you weren’t meant to see.

Less than half an hour into first practice for the Belgian Grand Prix on Friday morning, Ted Kravitz, the BBC’s pit lane reporter, picked up the fact that there was someone standing in the Ferrari pit garage, directly behind Luca Badoer’s car, paying a lot of attention to what was going on.

The person in question was 20-year-old Jules Bianchi, who is the runaway leader of the Euro F3 Series and likely to wrap up the title at the next round. And bear in mind that Sebastian Vettel was the last driver to move from Euro F3 direct to Formula One.

Is this him?

Standing next to Bianchi was Nicholas Todt, who is not only his manager but also the son of former Ferrari team boss Jean Todt. The message was clear - here is the person who is most likely to replace the beleaguered Badoer at the next Grand Prix at Monza in a fortnight’s time.

To compound the evidence, Bianchi was then seen being introduced to Rob Smedley, Felipe Massa’s race engineer and the person would be working most closely with Bianchi should he join the team.
At this point, the television cameras also picked up the figures in the garage who were then joined by an animated Luca Colajanni, the Ferrari press officer, who proceeded to tear a strip of both Todt and the member of the Ferrari team who had allowed him and Bianchi access to the pit garage. Bianchi was told to leave and Todt was seen to be standing, arms folder, looking very sheepish.

Ferrari messing up? That

It was the perfect example of how to mismanage a situation. Badoer is clearly out of his depth and will be replaced after Spa. There is much speculation in the media as to who will drive the No. 3 Ferrari now that Michael Schumacher’s much-heralded return to the cockpit has been knocked on the head.

Hiring Bianchi, who is on a roll at the moment in his career, makes a lot of sense and given Todt’s connections to the team it wouldn’t be at all surprising if he wasn’t pushing his protégé to the fore. What was appalling was that it was all done so publicly. Poor Badoer was sitting in his car, waiting to go out on track, with members of his team standing directly behind him talking to the person most likely to replace him. Talk about rubbing your nose in it.

Apart from anything else, it was just such bad PR. The humour of it, to the outside world, was to see how livid Colajanni was and how he, also in full view of the cameras, dismissed Bianchi from the garage and tore verbally into Todt. It made for wonderful television.