The Motorsport Thread (was the F1 thread)

IMO the championship dispute is reduced to two guys: Hamilton and Alonso. Massa and Raikkonen are out. I'll go with Hamilton but the way Alonso drove today is a clear signal he won't give up.

Jim Garten wrote: sleeper wrote: Excellent race today, Alonso was supreme, Hamilton pulled off one of the most ballsy overtaking moves I've ever seen My first ever post on this thread - I have to say, that was the most audacious manoever I've seen for a long time - the smoke coming off the brakes! Guess who should have been checking his mirrors... Incidentally - and this is probably going to sound really dim to those who follow the sport closely - but what have McLaren done? I heard all this yesterday throughout the coverage re Thursday's hearing & the ultimate possibility of an entire season's ban... wha'appen?

Bare with me on this, its not a simple matter.

In April/May this year Ferraris Nigel Stepney (ex chief mechanic, largely responisble for their previously excellent reliability) had several meetings with McLarens chief designer Mike Coughlin and at some point in this Coughlin recieved an 800 page dossier containing the entire technical specs of this years Ferrari, everything from set-up information to specifics about weight distribution, centre of gravity, centre of aero pressure etc to info on their deubeus (sp?) flexi-floor system (moveable aero has been baned since the 60's), most likely from Stepney. As you can imagine, this is rather serious, two Toyota employees were jailed this April for possessing Ferrari secrets and incorperating them (unseccusfully) onto Toyotas 2003 car (shows how long the courts take, and Stepny and Coughlin are being prossecuted, I believe).

The FIA then investigated McLaren over a breach of sporting regulations relating to teams possesing the "interlectual property" of their competitors (Industrial espienage basically). McLaren tried to pleed that they should not be held responsible for the indaviduals actians, especially since he was working on jumping ship to Honda with Stepney (possibly using the document as a "sweetner"). The FIA rejected this and found McLaren guilty of possessing Ferrari documents. However, McLaren was able to prove that at no time had the information in the document been used in the design of any of their cars parts by an audit from a third party security firm on all of thier computer systems and so escaped without punishment. Ferrari felt rather agreived about this, claiming that they had not been given the chance to be heard, so an appeal was set up for September sometime.

Last week, the FIA anounced that, due to the discovery of further evidence, they are reconviening the World Motor Sport Council for another inquest. My guess is that Ferrari gave them something pretty substantial for this hole thing to go back to the start.

If found guilty, McLaren could be given any range of punishments from a fine, to imediat exclusion from this years AND next years F1 championships

Jim Garten wrote: Yeouch - a season's expulsion could feasibly spell the end for McLaren, given the hundreds of millions of dollars corporate sponsorship & advertising they'd lose; still, you get your hand caught in the cookie jar...

It would be pretty nasty for them, concievably the race team itself would go under, though the rest of the TAG McLaren Group would be sold off, my guess at least.

Theres precedent for this as well, Toyotas Celica rally car of 95 was found to have a very illiegel turbo charger and were band for the rest of 95 and all of 96, but returned in 97.

I suspect that McLaren will appeal and rightfully so since in the past that teams have used information from another team to build a car and escaped any form of punishment.  

I'd like to congratulate the FIA for confirming that they are a bunch of prats controlled by FIAT, unless there are some major bombshells in the information due to be released tomorrow I doubt  my opinion of them will change for a very long time. I think that F1 would be a much healthier sport if Ferrari left as it would get rid of most of the politics.

I used to post there, I left as the SCSA forum basically died and the F1 forum is too aggressive to even consider posting in, although the Tifosi there are at times wonderfully delusional.

Rico!

Edited by JJLehto - September 13 2007 at 21:38

JJLehto wrote: Rico!   N Ellingworth  what f1 forum do you mean? I used to post on one F1DB.com   but I thought it was too slow...

the motorsport.com F1 forum.

sleeper wrote: N Ellingworth wrote: JJLehto wrote: Rico!   N Ellingworth  what f1 forum do you mean? I used to post on one F1DB.com   but I thought it was too slow... the motorsport.com F1 forum. Shouldnt that be the motrosportforums.com site, or are we on about different forums?

Yeah that's the one but according to my very fuzzy memory the two sites are run by the same people.

havn't followed much news lately, just heard about McLarens $100 million fine!?

whooo.......not exactly chump chang there

sleeper wrote: JJLehto wrote: havn't followed much news lately, just heard about McLarens $100 million fine!? whooo.......not exactly chump chang there Yeah, they're actually "only" going to have to pay $30million as the rest will be covered by the TV money they would have won, but thats still $70 million off of next years budget.

Which will almost certainly mean that they can't develop a car as well as they did this year, effectively handing next year's title to Ferrari.