Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile

... provided it doesn't cost Bernie anything.

Improved competition adds to revenue -- the ends justify the means.

 

Did you hold the same opinion when they let Ferrari's points stand after finding the cars had illegal bodywork in 1999? What about when the only penalty Schumi got at Monaco that year was a back-of-the-grid penalty when he tried to cheat and sabotage qualifying? Surely, since the employee IS the team, Ferrari trying to sabotage qualifying to get an advantage should be punishable by at least a points deduction or a DQ or three? What about Indy in 2002 where Ferrari manipulated the race result - they were not penalized but a "team orders" rule was introduced. Many were calling for them to be found bringing the sport into disrepute - but the FIA gave them a pass.

So suddenly the FIA is a big evil empire out to get Ferrari? Puhleaze!

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This time it didn't go Ferraris way, many times before, it did. Thats the game - some you win, some you lose. It's no more of a conspiracy now than it was when it went in Ferraris favor.

 

there is a big difference between pushing the edges of the formula by trying questionable bodywork and taking possession of a mountain of your chief competetors technical info and using it against them. teams are found every year to be doing something illegal with their bodywork and suspension. I'm not sure what your point is about monaco. bumping the best driver in the race back from p1 or p2 to starting in the pits is about as severe a penalty as you can dole out short of tossing him from the race. and you have to understand they had less than a day to investigate and come up with a punishment. he was punished severely. and he showed a lot of class fighting his way back thorough the grid on a track that is almost impossible to pass on. the bottom line is, the fia found mclaren GUILTY and imposed no sanction. they should have at least given them some token penalty like take away the constructor's points for one race. finding someone guilty of something and then not punishing them in even the most token way is a slap in the face to all the other competitors, especially the damaged party-ferrari. they said they would ban them for up to 2 years if they find any info makes it's way onto the car? that would be an incredibly harsh punishment. But they don't do squat for them receiving the documents and info and using it against ferrari? come on.

 

You made my point. You are falling back on the "bottom line is they are guilty and should have been punished". I say in retort - so was Ferrari in 1999 and they were not punished. If you want to say guilty is guilty and demands a response, when we should penalize McLaren and also retroactively take away Ferraris points (WDC and WCC) for 1999 considering they were also found guilty of running an illegal car.

Before you say "but, but" and add mitigating circumstances, I will say I am all for mitigating circumstances... the mitigator in 1999 was that the cars, while illegal, just suffered from a manufacturing flaw and some draconian penalty would have been too harsh. I also say that Coughlan IS NOT McLaren, just an employee. McLaren told him to ditch the info and did not use it for their car. Anything else is speculation (that they Did use the info, or they had the tire setup info that they used, or strategy into that they used), and you cannot penalize them based on what some people think they could have done, rather only on what they did do. The extent of their transgression apparently was not to call the FIA and not to suspend Coughlan. Anything else is speculation, period.

Maybe we should also put Ferrari under a microscope considering they apparently had documented evidence that their cars floorboards were illegal until the FIA put a stop to it? Maybe we ought to retroactively DQ them from the races where they ran an illegal car? And to be fair we will also penalize McLaren and take away 2 races worth of WCC/WDC points - is that fair?

 

Re last sentence: exacty, thus how is the FIA supposed to rule against McLaren when it is NOT covered directly under the FIA rules.

Thank you for making that point clearer. Thus the FIA did the right thing, and Ferrari now needs to sue Stepney and maybe McLaren for IP law issues ... which is OUTSIDE the sport.
Pete

 

You are very naive of motorsport mate. Ferrari even started THIS very season with a car that debatebly was not legal, ie. the moving floor. Yes Ferrari's intepretation (sp?) of the rules meant that they thought it could bend up ... but clarification once protested had it thrown out.

So yes ALL competitive teams are ALWAYS trying to push the boundaries of the rules, that is called THINKING and being clever. It is the engineers job to look for loop holes in the rules and to find a competitive advantage.

Best
Pete

 

Two wrongs don't make a right. Three wrongs don't make a right. Four wrongs don't make a right. Etc.

In 1994 when Schumi was driving for Benneton they found traction control on his car but was not penalized because they couldn't prove he used it. Same BS. The software was a violation. Posession and knowledge of Ferrari secrets undermines the sport.

One of the reasons I gave up auto racing competitively was because you can do everything right but some psycho-bozo can wreck your race, may hurt you and may cost you your life. Now add the other guy knows your setup. He knows where you are going to be fast and where you are going to be slow and plans his strategy accordingly. Of course, I am not aware of this, but wonder...this guy has never been faster than me and now he passes me on a regular basis. Then I find out that the people who run the race knew about this situation but refused to do anything about it because they couldn't prove that the knowledge was used to beat me. I am not going to give them my entrance money and I'm not going to risk my life with them in charge. Very simple decision for me. Thankfully, I am not dependent on racing for a living.

What do I want to watch a sport like F1 where cheaters are not punished? I thought "cheaters never win." It looks like in F1 per your post that "cheaters always win." Who needs it? I've got better things to do with my time.

 

+1

Even Steve Matchett frequently illustrates that bending the rules is the norm in F1. Ferrari has had their fair share of "questionable" incidents - such as illegal barge boards, illegal bodywork, illegal flexing floor, illegal moving front wing, telling drivers to alter the race results, sabotaging qualifying, etc, etc, etc.

If anyone thinks Ferrari are clean and never have tried to put one past the refs, they are naieve. Very naieve.

 

BS, it was NOT illegal !!

it took a request for clarification from information McL received from Stepney to query Ferrari's floor at which point they ruled the floor could not move up or down.

If it had been "debatably illegal" then RD would have pursued it as far as he could

 

I haven't read anywhere here yet where a tifosi has said Ferrari haven't tried to pull a swift one but all the McL apologists are sure as hell making a case for the prince of darkness to have never committed a misdemeanor , what a bunch of ostriches ! talk about naieve (sic) sanctimonious rubbish

 

Ferrari were the masters !
They were sandbagging several recent years in order not to stand out like a sore thumb.

What is so painfully ironic is that Ferrari was the stumbleing block to the other Manufacturers breaking away from the FIA just last year. It was at an impass until Williams ( "my team" ) sold out which broke the dam. PS ; Thanks a lot Frank !
As their reward Ferrari gets the proverbial dagger between the shoulder blades.
Now, more than ever, the teams are at each others throats.
And Bernie sits back, collects the dough. and laughs.

 

John,

It was ruled illegal, and ofcourse RD pursued it because it was "debatable" ... that is why he did and this is why this area is so much fun and interesting .

I'll explain my view a little, I'm not pro-McLaren or pro-Ferrari. I would like Alonso to win, because he is the best driver out there and many people seem to think that he only won because Ferrari built a couple of cr@p cars in a row ... yes they might have but JUST like MS he made the best out of the tools he had. MS and Ferrari most definitely benefited by the English teams have a dip in performance and Renault needing time to get up to full speed.

But what I am most concerned about is the precedent a "SPORT" ruling against McLaren could cause. Could not care less if they were sued for $500 billion by Ferrari but will be upset if the FIA declare it 100% illegal for a team to know anything about another teams car and tactics. Basically that ruling will be the final dagger to the flagging sport of motorsport. I will turn off and never come back, because the "interest" is over.

From then on lawyers will be the only winners and every team will have to have 100+ of them on their staff, poking around looking for a way to solve their poor seasons performance by knobbling another team, ie: "Gee that badge board looks very similar to ours (via fncked up lawyers eyes), they must have cheated ... lets run off to the FIA."

Now I know this situation is different, but only in semantics but the precedent is frightening. Lawyers simply are NOT wanted in sport!!!!!!!, even in life in general (ie. it's gone friggin bad if you need to consult one ...).

Again it is only UNSPORTING to know information about another teams car, but it is part of the very fabric of advancing technology in motorsport and as an ex-almost engineer one of the things that keeps motorsport interesting for me (especially F1) when the actual racing died about 15 years ago.

I also guarantee that Ferrari are only so upset because they are loosing currently. If Ferrari were leading the WDC and teams championship handsomely they wouldn't be making much noise at all. They see this as a great opportunity to steal another championship that they have LOST, because:
1. They hired the wrong drivers, yes they have wasted their time with Massa and Kimi requires unFerrari like motivational support.
2. They took way too long in resetting up their team for the post MS era, heck
3. They hung onto MS and his clonies for too long as I have been saying for the last 3 years.

Basically Ferrari got too cocky with winning easily ... and naively started thinking it was because they were SO bloody good.

Can you imagine the future if the FIA did rules against McLaren?: Every single race result will be decided 6 months later after 20 protests of stolen information because of visual simularities. Can you imagine how it will completely snck for us racing fans; we hardly ever see the cars now but from this ruling on the cars and teams, etc. will live in tents only to pop out for the race. Test sessions will have to be single team events thus throwing costs even more sky high and no spectators allowed with a multitude of security staff ensuring nobody sees the car, etc.

In the end Stepney (and Ferraris lack of security) is the cause of this problem, why should the rest of us suffer because of this one WANKER?
Pete

 

ok, here's my disclaimer, I am very pro-Ferrari, bought the car because I have been following F1 since '60 when my dad kept feeding me books about Brabham and the rest of the madmen who raced then with bugger all safety in mind, and Ferrari was just as exciting then as it is now.

The floor was made illegal AFTER the request for clarification , therefore it was NOT illegal BEFORE this clarification, that is the point I was trying to make, poorly.

This fun and interesting area as you put it is the part that is destroying F1 with this snake in the grass doing this all the time when it suits him, he is a lowlife and an underhanded snake.

How anyone could think he is a decent person after the proposition he put to JT when he knew about the firewall to stop Stepney and the flow of information to McL from Ferrari is beyond me, that is unless Jean Todt is a liar

I'd say he should burn in hell but to him that is just a home-coming

How anyone can blame Ferrari for poor security is also beyond me, I work in firewalling and comms so know how easy it is to get this stuff out , especially if you are part of the "trusted" personnel with the correct clearances and passwords.

The only secure system is one that is in a room with no comms connections and turned OFF, other than that they are all open to abuse and when the personnel with access have high clearances then that just makes it easier. The only way they could have stopped Stepney was to know what he was up to before he did it, so maybe they should hire a clairvoyant but Ferrari have had security even back in the days before all this electronic security, the Gestione has been around for a long time and access has always been hard to get into this area.

 

But this is how it always goes. Ferrari cleverly designed something to their interpretation of the rules, others will think differently. McLaren requestioned that thinking. I personally love seeing the lateral thinking of engineers faced with rules and problems.

Totally agree here as this has definitely upset me, being a Kiwi an all. Bruce would be most pissed.

IMO Ferrari should just have sacked him, not moved him sideways when they decided to rejig the team. Note I am not blaming Ferrari for Stepney's lack of character but we all know what pissed employees are like. Thus sacking was the most sensible decision, maybe with a small bonus, but he needed to be out of Ferrari.

Totally agree. I'd be a complete bastard if I ran a race team. None of the businesses computers would be connected to an internet at all, and none would have CD burners or floppy drives, etc. I'd have my own stand alone network and data storage system ...

The internet is great fun, but a race team does not need to be on it ... unless they want to SHARE information
Pete

 

Pete and SRT Mike excellent posts by both of you guys, and great debate on this issue. Nice to read "debate" instead of verbal attacks, Moretti and Phil Not Hill I really respect the passion in your posts on this subject. Great job.

 

Thank god there is NASCAR

 

I imagine NASCAR is like Aussie v8 supercars where the design of the car(s) are sorted out before the beginning of the season ... am I right?

Thus EVERYBODY knows the other cars general specifics and thus it comes down to who can run the team better really. This is where F1 is heading, and this incident has probably fast tracked that, but F1 then will be another boring spec series .
Pete

 

so do I, loved the ground effects days even though Ferrari couldn't make it work as well for them

Bruce is spinning in his grave mate, it's why they call them the Shaky Isles

"whacked" is spelt with a "wh" not an "s"

you're too soft, make 'em write it all down and leave all the paperwork at the office

 

Yes probably their best option

I wouldn't want to be the next person moved sideways
Pete

 

I am speechless to keep reading things here about the McLarens percieved innocence, or the lies talking about Ferrari's "illegal" wing. The wing wasnt illegal, and McLaren is so blatantly a lying cheating poor sport, I for one will never forget. As for the FIA, its obvious they have no real legitamcy as a racing body, someone else pulls the strings. The French sure arent doing anything to make any friends.

 

I personally have with recent posts moved way past this minor issue. The sake of the future of motorsport is far bigger than just if McLaren cheated.

The FIA must rule thinking about the consequence of their ruling.

Take this example: If the FIA take points of McLaren, and then McLaren and BMW start the next race with completely new front wings. Both front wings look very similar, does this mean that somebody cheated?, obtained design information from the other team?, and who? (yes 95% of us would think it was McLaren ), or was it just a coincidence?, ie. great designers think alike.

What would now happen is that both McLaren and BMW would be forced into running to the FIA declaring the opposite cheated in fear the other team would beat them to it. Even if nobody copied the paddock rumour mill would be going crazy and articles would be printed aledging there is a mole in McLaren or BMW, etc.

The end result of this is that F1 would become a legal mine field and racing would be fncked!


Thus sorry the best result is for the FIA to do as they have: "You naughty RD and McLaren, shame on you", and basically leave all teams to look after their data security as best they see fit. This hurts McLaren's image and sponsorship potentials might back away but leaves the racing untarnished.
Pete

 

Depending on how empassioned you are with the whole situation, Why not consider boycotting products that are associated with teams that have riled you. For example, I'm currently looking for a new sedan. I have now struck off a certain brand (which was on top of my list) from my consideration list - no question! My business mobile phone contracts also run out soon - same deal! What is more, I'm telling people of my decision and telling them why. I might not influence many people, but I then again I might. And I may encourage others do spread the word. Think about it - if every Ferrari owner/ club member/ fan did this, we'd not just have a boycott, we'd have a movement! Food for thought!

 

good point Grahame, I'm avoiding Devil's food cake and little Lucifer fire starters

 

John, does that mean you have to avoid Diablos as well?

 

+1

Mike,

I have been making that same point for weeks but it largely falls on deaf ears, unless it is used to accuse you of being a McLaren apologist.