No. Think industrial size washing machine. As in really big. I dont have a picture of it, but it is big. In my Army days I was part of a ground to air missile firing group and the guidance computer was all tubes. It was the size of a school bus. 20 years later they replaced it with a PC. True story.
Thats cool I love old retro mchines I have quite a few old synthesizers and early music samplers. The first phrase sample was used by a band called YES on the track "owner of a lonely heart" It was a called a Fairlight cost 40k sterling now same thing I can do on a moble phone. Back on track... Alonso seems to communicate with Briatore he is his boss yes?. Renault will be more competitive next year and FA will say again that he has brought 0,6 secs. ? if he ends up there that is.. I can see Spyker as WCC with all this Spying..
Replaced that with a PC and Sony had to change the PS2 because the original with a little work had the capability to be converted to guidance systems for cruise missiles. Gotta love technology!
After the way Flavio came down on McL, he better be clean. Otherwise mad Max will stick it to him IMVHO.
PARIS, France (AP) -- A day after being accused of possessing confidential information belonging to rival team McLaren, Renault have acknowledged that they suspended an engineer in September. Renault said Friday they suspended Phil Mackereth on September 6 when officials learned of the leak. Renault said they alerted McLaren and FIA -- motor sport's governing body -- even though none of the information was used. On Thursday, FIA summoned Renault officials to a hearing of the World Motor Sport Council in Monte Carlo on December 6, to answer a charge of having "unauthorized possession of documents and confidential information" of McLaren cars between September 2006 and October 2007. Mackereth, who joined Renault from McLaren in September 2006, brought engineering drawings and technical spreadsheets from McLaren that were added into Renault's database. "Witness statements from the engineers involved have categorically stated that having been briefly shown these drawings, none of this information was used to influence design decisions relating to the Renault car," Renault said in a statement Friday. The information included drawings of the four basic systems as used by McLaren: the internal layout of the fuel tank, the basic layout of the gear clusters, a tuned mass damper and a suspension damper. "This information was loaded at the request of Mr. Mackereth onto his personal directory," Renault said. "This was done without the knowledge of anyone in authority in the team. "Our formal investigation showed that early in his employment with Renault, Mr. Mackereth made some of our engineers aware of parts of this information." It's an added twist to a spy scandal involving McLaren that overshadowed much of the last F1 season. McLaren was fined a record $100 million by the World Motor Sport Council on September 13 after FIA found the team guilty of using leaked secret data from Ferrari
Trouble with all this spying/moving round of data or whatever being headline news is that it's turning F1 into a big farce. FIA rules and penalties IMO seem to be inconsistent that make matters worse, and I blame Max for that. Doesn't he want closer racing and homologated parts on the cars, he wants the cars to be similar yet fines the teams when there are.. .
not sure how many will agree but just the points listed below should be enought to hang the renault team out to dry they had the cd's for over a year (i find it hard to believe they're old fashioned floppys) the data was loaded onto the renault F1 team computer network some of this data was shared with other engineers early in the guys employment (who had to have known these were from another team) - so basically around the time the next yrs car would be being designed. they didnt suspend the guy till he'd been there a year - despite him sharing the stolen data early in his employment
Thing is Nick how much more damage can be done this year to the sport. Max went for RD because its personal (100 mil) worth stupid IMO .If Flav spouted of he hasn't cheated and it's proved he has then the punishment should be the same, loss of WCC points, the fine £ should fit the crime. If Renault have used Mc ideas on there car and the FIA does nothing well it really will be a joke..and RD should just punch Max in the face and retire..
true......if Renault are found guilty(of the same violation as McLaren) then the punishment and fine should be exactly the same; no WCC points and $100mill fine. question, who oversees the FIA and what are their limitations??.....Max is running it like a mafia and it seems that noone can stop him....
Actually the punishment should be dependant on the case. I can't imagine we will have exactly the same kind of circumstances in any other case. And from what Renault has been talking about, it looks like it is almost a non issue to begin with. Also remember the punishment the FIA gave to McLaren was largely based on the fact that they couldn't touch the drivers because they already gave them immunity to testify. If you don't need to pressure the drivers to testify (or don't need their testimony in the first place), then a penalty could and most likely should include docking their points. The 100 million was chosen to hurt McLaren because they couldn't do it through drivers' points. So it all depends. Nobody. They control the FIA sanctioned events. Stoddart took the FIA to court in Melbourne before the Australian GP and would have won the case, but he took it back because the FIA threatened to cancel all FIA motorsports events in Australia. So legally a country's court has more authority than the FIA, but by its power the FIA rules globally. And before anybody wants to get rid of the FIA: We need a sanctioning body and I was never a fan of GPMA. The sport would end up like the IRL/CART split or the split in boxing where you never really know who is the world champion. But the FIA does need a new president.
I remember one of my early jobs was with a computer that was the size of a small home (about 30 by 40 feet), and used punch cards to do the computing! (Circa 1967)
Wasn't there a new plan for an organization to be run by the car makers involved in F1 a few years ago?
My current computer (a 10 year old Dell) still has 3 auxillary drives; one for soft floppys, one for hard floppys, and one for CD-Roms (which I added later)... I still have data on old soft floppy discs that I never converted to CD Rom! USB? What is a USB?
Yes, that was GPMA (manufacturers association). Luckily that went nowhere. Once Ferrari "sold its soul" for 100 millions USD the whole deal collapsed, which goes to show, that Ferrari is where the attraction of F1 lies. There is much wrong with the FIA, but the sport needs an authority. And only one. A new president like Flavio, Stoddart or Todt could turn things around. When Mosley came to power I liked the fact that he was independent (well sortof, not withstanding the mess he made with Simtek, which ultimately resulted in Ratzenberger's death), but in recent years he has fallen off the deep end. Running F1 isn't an easy job, but you don't have to screw up every decision you can take.
The above mentioned could be pretty baised, I think you do need a independant person ideally. I'am sure it is hard to find someone that knows what goes on the shop floor as in been there and done it, but without having some favour to one or more teams. I think you could make a good job of it slot car career and no favourites
can you explain what you mean pls Andreas. im no fan of Mad Max but even i havent seen any way to blame him for Ratzenbergers death - in fact as i recall wasnt he the only high ranking FIA/F1 person to attend the funeral (everyone else at Sennas funeral)
your right the sport def needs an authority and the FIA is (and should be) that authority - however of the 3 named people the only one i feel could remain unbiased as president is Stoddart.
Yep could go with that Nick, I have flown on his airplanes to the Spanish GP and it was great service unlike his F1 car it got there on time So I like him
here's a good read from planetf1... "Renault Facing Up To $100m Fine Saturday 10th November 2007 Having been forced into the barriers at an Indycar race, Al Unser Junior famously said of Nigel Mansell - "What goes around, comes around." Meaning that sooner or later he was going to pay Nigel back. The same can now be said of Flavio Briatore and his Renault team. At the time of the Stepneygate revelations this summer Flavio said some very angry things directed at McLaren and Mike Coughlan's acquisition of Ferrari data. Explaining why he should be present at the first World Motor Sport council hearing, very prophetically he said: "This story involves everybody sooner or later and I want to know exactly what is going on because it is part of our job." After the first hearing in Paris when the FIA's World Motor Sport Council found McLaren guilty of unauthorised possession of Ferrari documents, but failed to punish them because there was insufficient evidence that it had been used - i.e. they could find no Ferrari technology adapted to the McLaren car, Briatore was livid. However, the WMSC refused to punish the Woking team, claiming there was iinsufficient evidence to suggest they had made use of the information. "I'm not a judge," he told Autosport when asked what McLaren's punishment should be. But, he added: "Just read the regulations: for intellectual property theft the punishment is exclusion." Oh, what a difference four floppy disks make. Though in the second hearing McLaren were fined $100m the FIA still couldn't point to one particular use of Ferrari technology that had been copied. Max Mosley went on to say that this wasn't the point - the point was that Ferrari's rivals had had a good look at their car and this would give them an unfair advantage. Fast forward to the Renaultgate saga and it turns out that Renault had technical data on the 2006 and the 2007 McLaren, as well as information on fuel tanks, suspension systems and drawings of the car. All supplied on four floppy disks courtesy of a former McLaren engineer. Further to that it has been revealed that 15 Renault engineers have signed witness statements and admitted to looking at the McLaren data/drawings. So it seems that the McLaren intellectual property (IP) was at least as widely distributed in the Renault team as the Ferrari IP was in the McLaren team, and probably more. What all this means is that the Renault team will have to perform one of the greatest feats of escapology if they're not to suffer a similar $100m fine. Given that Flavio Briatore is co-owner of QPR football club with Bernie Ecclestone, the FIA will have to be extra careful in how they handle the matter. Even though the parent company are making profits under Carlos Ghosn, the F1 team are in less of a position to pay it than McLaren-Mercedes team. However Max Mosley's dogged pursuit of the truth for "sporting fairness" purposes has meant that the tariff for such a crime is $100m. And you can't tailor a fine against the ability to pay. This means that should one of the lesser teams, such as Spyker, Super Aguri, or Toro Rosso be caught with someone else's data, they'll go out of business. What's more, the fact that Renault had McLaren IP at the end of the 2006 season means that Fernando Alonso's second World Championship finale may have been aided by McLaren technology. Thanks largely to Alonso's outburst at the Hungarian GP, and his subsequent failure to attend the FIA hearing in Paris, McLaren got hit with an obscene fine. McLaren decided enough was enough and that if they had to go on trial for industrial espionage, then the people who did it to them should face the music too. It would be ironic that as a result of Fernando's intervention that the team he wanted to move to should be crippled financially as a consequence, and that his own 2006 World Champion's credentials should be put under scrutiny. Even now I can see a PF1 forum topic - Michael Schumacher 8 times World Champion...? And all without leaving the comfort of Vufflens le Chateau. "
As I have said time and time again it has always gone on, but now the FIA is losing control over the situation. This could end up spoiling 2008 season, F1 is becoming a farce and this is going to wreck the sport if it carrys on. I can see Mclaren's point of view, a precedent has been set by the FIA so if guilty big fine loss of WCC. I see Max has been quite on the matter though Also It does worry me that FA is involved in all this if he ends up at Renault its going to look real dodgy now if there car is flying. A real ironic twist..
Mosley was a co founder of Simtek. He sold his financial interest as he took over as FIA president, but he didn't sever his friendship with the team and its head Wirth, who designed the ill fated F1 car. The chassis was way too flimsy and had a very hard time to pass the crash tests. Miraculously however it did pass those tests just days before they had to leave for the first flyaway GP. Rumors have it, that Mosley heavily leaned on the FIA inspectors to make sure the car passed the tests. True or not, we know the rest of the story: The car had a structural front wing failure at Imola causing the accident of Ratzenberger. On impact the car had a further structural failure in that the "survival cell" broke in half killing Ratzenberger. A few weeks later the second Simtek driver had a frontal impact in Barcelona and immediately the chassis broke apart again exposing the legs of the driver and causing some foot insuries. Thereafter the rumors about the tests really flared up and ever since people refuse to reveal the details of those tests.
