What is it with Flavio Briatore? As if he didn't have enough trouble on his plate he is now had a pop at Formula One legend Michael Schumacher.

The disgraced flamboyant Italian billionaire, it seems, revels in being the centrepiece of controversy with actions and deeds of thoughtless ineptitude.

You would have imagined with his ongoing problems he would have preferred to dodge the glare of discontent at his activities and outbursts and keep his head down.

His Queens Park Rangers football club in London is on a slide. He meddles with management changes, orders team substitutions by phone, usually while aboard his massive yacht, Force Blue, and wallows in a lifetime ban from Formula One for his alleged part in ordering his Renault driver Nelson Piquet to crash his car in the Singapore Grand Prix.

Added to his either ill-judged or dodgy F1 dealings when he was the Benetton team boss, Briatore, offloaded as the Renault Formula One mastermind, stands behind a tainted reputation.

One would have believed all that was enough to keep him occupied in seeking a low profile. But no. And here he goes again... underpinning his appearance as a figure of scoff.

He has branded the seven-time German champion's comeback with Mercedes GP as an "inelegant betrayal".

Talk about double standards. He was the figurehead at Benetton when Schumacher was making his sensational debut with the Jordan Grand Prix outfit — and he wasted little time in poaching him for the Italian team. It triggered Ron Dennis's famous remark to Jordan: "Welcome to the piranha club."

"Schumacher wanted to return with Ferrari, but he did not have the chance," says Briatori. "It then came to this inelegant betrayal. He is just like any other — he talks, but when it comes to actions it is according to his personal interests.

"If he is not competitive it will be a disaster. It is not his 41 years, but the three years he has been away from F1. You don't race any faster if you colour your hair."

Schumacher dismisses Briatore's talk of betrayal with, "I know him well, his strengths and his weaknesses,and we all make mistakes. If he learns from Singapore I would have no problem if he came back."

The writer is a motor sport expert based in England.