Left field

Have McLaren been punished enough already?

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh celebrates his 51st birthday on Wednesday and it doesn’t look like being much fun.

You can bet he would rather be anywhere else than appearing before Formula One’s governing body in Paris to take the rap for his team ‘deliberately misleading’ race stewards.

Any naughty schoolboy caught lying to a teacher will know how he will feel.

Whitmarsh has put his hand up, apologised and accepted that he (or his team) has erred. Now all he has to do is step into the headmaster’s study (alone) and take the punishment.

Will it be a metaphorical slap on the wrists, a fine, six of the best (not perhaps the most felicitous of analogies given FIA president Max Mosley’s past involvement in a sado-masochistic orgy) or expulsion?