Credits go to BusinessF1, October 05 issue. Just recently Rubython had to go to court to retract anything he said about Charlie Whiting (which wasn't that much to begin with), but it still leaves a LOT of questions unanswered about those particular crash tests. The ways in which the cars fell apart around the drivers in the two accidents are testimony to that.
Might be too late if it is true, that they really went belly up. I never knew much about this magazine and I have read a lot of other magazines before and was never really happy with any of them. Then this summer the hotel I stayed in for the USGP (used to be Schumacher's hotel in his early Ferrari years) handed out complimentary copies of the magazine. I was stunned: I have never seen such a comprehensive and detailed magazine about F1 and all the stuff going on behind the scenes and outside of the races. I don't want a magazine that covers the races, I can see those for myself on TV. I need something that covers the whole rest of it. After all F1 is primarily an engineering exercise driven by financial means. All things being equal the races should merely drive that point home. Which luckily they often don't.
http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/1242468.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19390335F8FA9CA92A60997FE62CD2F93CB9930FDCFC4C15FBB http://www.viewimages.com/Search.aspx?mid=1242470&epmid=2&partner=Google
I think the circumstances are identical, infact probably more damning for Renault than it was previously for McLaren. The big problem for McLaren was that they said it was one rogue employee, but it turned out Whitmarsh knew of the documents, and Alonso and DLR knew too, so it became at least 4 employees. With Renault, it appears that its 12 or 15 employees, going right to the top. Max/the FIA stated it does not matter if there is proof the info was used, mere posession of it is enough, and thats what they based the fine on. The whole rest of it (secret collaboration between Coughlan/Stepney) was not given as part of the reason for the penalty. If the FIA does not impose the same penalty on Renault (assuming the accusations are true as presented), then they have just exposed the whole sport as a complete joke. I am 99% sure Renault will not suffer any penalty, or if they do it will be trivial. The reasons for that are: 1) Max doesnt have a hard-on to get Flavio 2) The season is over and Max doesn't want to be flamed again for being on a witch hunt 3) He wouldn't want to hit Renault with a fine that could mean their departure from F1 Right now Max is cooking up some "explanation" that he will expect people to buy into. The folks that dislike McLaren and dont dislike Renault will belive it. The rest will will see it for what it is, favoritism (or more correctly, a vendetta).
Correct me if i'm wrong, but the penalty was based on Alonso and De La Rosas testimonies and emails that the information had been used. In the first hearing, Mclaren was found to be guilty of possesion, but that alone did not give them a punishment.
I think at that point in time the 1st hearing they were biding time to find a solution for the best of everyones interest, keeping the WDC alive by letting the drivers of the hook for providing info was there solution. The massive fine was to show it was a serious matter. Max wanted to punish RD Bernie wanted them racing.. people watching, it worked. Trouble with this is it's set a precendent. If Mclaren had been kicked out for 2007 and 2008 which is what was stated then Renault if guilty and whoever else that crawls out the woodwork should get kicked out the whole thing could collaspe. If personal indifferences get in the way when dealing out fines this is the result. IMO The FIA needs a independant leader with consistant rules and fines not one that punishes teams on the amount of money they have got and making it up as they go along.
after this renault thing is sorted i think they need to declare an amnesty and sit everyone down and tell them something along the lines of "we know youve all done it in the past, but from today it stops - if you have any data from another team then destroy it now as after 31st december any team found in possession of any other teams IP will be fined and dissmissed from the championship, do not pass go, do not collect £200, do not expect your deposits back"
I would be very surprised if Flavio desires the position...but if so, be prepared for Macchiavelli type of decisions. There has been some speculation in the past that JT is interested and of course Marco P also is a candidate since he is second in command at FIA. Ferrari definetly would be pushing for the latter two. Stoddard may not have the political pull...but I could be mistaken.
First link doesn't work for me. Anyhow, BusinessF1 has more revealing pictures of the Barcelona crash (plus a lot of other stuff like the printout graphs from the nosecone impact test etc).
In the FIA transcripts, Max basically said that they didnt believe McLaren didnt use the Ferrari info in testing, and went on to say that posession is enough and that would make them in breach, and the information doesnt need to be used. I don't think the Alonso/DLR emails proved that the info had been used, and Ron (IMO correctly) maintained all along that hadn't been. It seems the same as Renault, to me. Flavio's defense is that the info was not used to design the car however Max very clearly said it does not necessarily need to have been used to make them guilty of breaching the appropriate section of the sporting code.
The problem with possessing stolen information is that it casts a shadow over the sport and fair play. Hard to prove whether an idea effects your performance or not. Penalties must be imposed to protect the sport. That's why it was curious that nothing was done when McL was first found guilty. A strange way to do things indeed IMVHO.
Sunday, 11, November, 2007, 13:34 Renault team principal Flavio Briatore says he is confident his team will not be punished when it appears before the FIA's World Motor Sport Council next month to answer charges that it has possessed confidential McLaren design information for the past year. In an interview with The Sunday Times the Italian insisted that the circumstances were not comparable to those of McLaren, which was fined up to $US100m and had its 2007 constructors' points revoked for holding confidential Ferrari documentation. Briatore told the newspaper that rather than this being a flow of information as in the case of McLaren, his team found itself in possession of the material because - unknown to senior staff - former McLaren engineer Phil Mackereth brought with him the propriatary information on floppy disks when he joined the team in September 2006. When we found out in September [2007], we talked with this guy [Mackereth], we started an investigation and immediately suspended the guy and then immediately we informed McLaren and the FIA, said Briatore, adding that Mackereth would be dismissed. We gave to [FIA president Max] Mosley all the correspondence and the evidence and a statement from our engineers making clear we never used any McLaren system in our car. The information was in the computer, it was in the disks that this guy brought. It was very simple. It was a drawing of a few systems, it was part of a drawing of the gearbox and was part of a drawing of a mass-damper. "I am confident the information was not used and not only me." Reports in the press suggest that as many as 15 Renault engineers may have seen the drawings but Briatore remains adamant that none of the information found its way on to either the 2006 or 2007 Renault F1 cars. "We have witness statements from every engineer that was involved and, categorically, everybody says that there was no influence of any of these things on the design of our car, he said. Briatore also questioned why it took so long for McLaren to request an FIA hearing on the matter [which it did last week] when it had indicated during the September 'Spy-gate' hearings that it knew about Renault's possession of the information. We were happy to let them inspect our computer," said Briatore of the inpedendant investigators Kroll, hired by McLaren to look into the situation. "We wanted to give McLaren the opportunity to check that there was no influence on the design of our car, but they never took up the offer." If Flavio is speaking the truth I see no problem, but it only came to his attention in Sept 07 and it was in Sept 06 Mackereth joined them with his disk's yeh ok
Similarly, will folks on this site be getting apoplectic about Renault's cheating? I saw a lot of comments here about taking the moral high ground. We'll see if folks were sincere or merely hypocrites. Renault should be hit with the exact same penalties as McLaren.
what - load it on the pc network, show it to 15 engineers and then tell everyone you have it when you worry that the sh*t might hit the fan ?
And yet nobody could interpret and apply the information in such a way that made the Renault any faster. That will probably be Flav's excuse right there.
LOL Yeh great excuse. I keep wondering why Flav stuck his nose in when Mclaren where in the firing line. What goes around comes around..
Agree 100%. Renault should get the same punishment as McLaren. If they get anything less, McLaren should be refunded the difference and it should come from Max's bank account!
No the only proper solution is to UNDO the penatlies against McLaren, otherwise F1 is toast. Max and the FIA fncked up with the case against McLaren, should have been instantly dismissed. There is no place in F1 for intellectual property laws, heck you don't design and build a F1 race car to sell it. Basically many on this site were blinded into foolish comments about how McLaren had done something awful and against the spirit of motorsport when they hadn't ... all because their beloved Ferrari team MIGHT have lost this year. Pete
