How is Bernie and the FIA going to help Clifford now?

Ask McLaren.

 

How much does a litre of gas weigh?
How much time is gained by dropping that weight?

 

They simply ****ed up. No conspiracy.

I'll agree that one does look a little sketchy - But the lunatic was still running the asylum of course.....

The stewards declared it legal, but the Court of Appeals begged to differ. Further, there's lots of ways aero can be influenced by stuff that's not in the airstream. For sure, it had a big effect on the cars aerodynamics, and it was certainly moveable. From Wiki, my emphasis added;

Cheers,
Ian

 

When the lawyers get involved its never good.

 

Bingo...!

Not consumption though just a problem with the car full stop.

 

Full stop.
A poetic and ironic turn of phrase.
Nice.

Again the penalty may have saved Seb's race.

 

Yes, I really believe they were not in the least worried about starting at the back, they know only to well how good there car is, yes SC played into there hands, the only guy they could or would have not matched was Ham, yet again Vet got lucky again.

 

While its better to be lucky than good being both is trumps.

 

The Bull guys have got it sewn up clever bastrd's.

 

Exactly, no need for any scripting you cannot script luck bad or good.

 

I think that'd depend how this question is answered: Is a member of the team present when fuel is drawn out of the car, and can he be sure there's nothing left? If yes, then a 'fix' is not possible without bribing/threatening the team member, which is extremely unlikely. If not, then it's absolutely possible.

As far as manipulating races, it can happen in many ways, from turning a blind eye to regulations, to being unfair with penalties. But it happens in the best of sports, so as long as it's subtle, and not blatant favoritism/bias, it's all part of the show IMO. That means Ferrari could be helped win the championship, but better be pretty close to it. And by the same token, you can't prevent RB from winning it. You can derail them, like it happened at the beginning of the season by banning the blown difusser, but if they rise up to the challenge, it wouldn't be smart to attack them a la Mosley IMO.

 

This thing is far from sewn up IMO.

 

I see the "grassy knoll and area 51" crowd are out in force

In this day and age with all the twitter, social media, etc available it is impossible to form a conspiracy (Flavio in Singapore got found out , McLunken being in possession of Ferrari documentation got found out .....)

A LOT of people have to be sworn to secrecy for a conspiracy to be carried out and it only takes ONE person to fold and the house of cards comes down.

Having said that, the successful conspiracies we don't know about are the ones we haven't heard of

 

Maybe, but they always seem that one step ahead, this last race just showed that, when everyone thought they would be on the back foot they turned it around, by playing the rules getting the edge, all good stuff, the cans are showing the Horse and Maccy how to do it,at the min.

 

It's RB's to lose.
Which is not the same as having it sewn up.

 

Then again, if there really is a BIG conspiracy going on, the teams may be required to play along, no matter what happens


I too think that RB simply f***ed up. Either they underfilled so much that they didn't have any chance to make it anyway, or their safety margin was too small, or they had enough in theory, but used too much (ie using an engine mapping with increased injection quantities).

No matter what, I can't imagine they were either trying to cheat or intentionally wanting to start from the back of the grid in order to be able to change the car (EDIT: for performance reasons, changing to a faster race setup - not for repairs).
Cheating would be a desperate measure, and the position they're currently in calls for hedging their bets, collecting points, playing it safe, but not for desperate measures. Even if Vettel had lost one or two spots due to a slower laptime by the excess weight of the fuel (which is absurd as we're talking about what, 150ml?), it wouldn't have been a desaster.
Starting from the back of the grid - they could have had that easier. Just say "we'd like to start from the back", and there you go. No reason for messing around with fuel loads.

 

+1

10 point gap with 50 to play for and a couple circuits that should suit the F2012 better? It's not over yet although I will completely agree that RB is the team to beat at the moment. Who could argue with that?

 

Yes ok, now can I stitch you up with 10 x 8 ..

 

I can it makes sense, the car was not quite right and IMO they/RB knew that< I don't mean cheat but play with that rule, take advantage of it.

 

I wonder how many more times you're going to have to say it?

 

You're of course right Steve, see my edit above!

 

Now I need a 8x10 instead.

 

Gotta ok..

I only got 10 x 8s.