If you read your entire post you would have seen the part where the stewards stated that they did not know if the entire matter was deliberate. Yes, this thread is eye opening, many people will jump to condemn not based on fact, but on their own bias. I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that MS did this on purpose. Neither have you.
It is a sport, you will never find conclusive evidence. Same goes for any kind of foul in other sports, be that baseball, soccer, whatever. When a soccer player takes a dive in the penalty area to get a free penalty and the ref calls it deliberate deception, the guy gets the red card and is thrown out. He will forever say it was a stumble or he has been fouled, there is never proof. The best indication of what really happened is looking at the overall picture: Pretty much everybody thinks he is guilty. It is really only a handful of diehard fans who think otherwise. Anybody who is involved with the sport (stewards, current drivers, past drivers, other racers, journalists and long time fans) has come to the same conclusion. That is not proof, but very telling. Ultimately it is not even necessary to have proof: If most people think that was deliberate and therefore drop their support fully or partially, MS' reputation and fame takes a beating. He'll probably lead forever all the F1 statistics, but the number of people willing to call him the greatest driver based on that has decreased. PS: The part that irks me the most is that now I'm having conversations with some of my friends who were indecisive in their support of F1 and now use this as the perfect example of how degenerate F1 has become. USGP 05 didn't help and neither does this. Perfect excuse to bash the entire sport. And in that sense Keke Rosberg was right when he said that MS' actions will harm F1's reputation.
You know, I might be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, if it weren't for Adelaide 1994. And Jerez in 1997. Not to mention things like Silverstone 1994. He may well be the most accomplished driver to grace F1, just as Ben Johnson was the fastest man on two feet in 1988. Both of them cheated though, and it does a great disservice to MS's accomplishments that he falls back to this default position of unsportsmanlike conduct.
The problem with this issue is that people who think he's guilty assume that everyone who disagrees is a "diehard fan", and people who thinks he's not guilty assume that everyone else are blind haters. As for the "The majority are always sane" (Ringworld) argument: There was a time when "everyone knew" that the earth was flat. That didn't make it flat. (And it wasn't everyone, either. When Columbus was denied an expedition by the advisors in Portugal, it wasn't because they thought the earth was flat. Most of the general population thought so, but the advisors not only knew it was round, but had a pretty accurate estimate of its circumference (derived by the ancient greeks from seasonal sun angle changes). Europe to Asia was way out of range of 15th century ships. Columbus had his numbers wrong. So when he got lucky and found Puerto Rico, he thought he was in India. (thus: "Indians")) The issue here is that nobody can be sure either way. But without proof of ill intent, why was Michael stuffed to the back, instead of to P9? It's equally impossible to "prove" that Fisi didn't intend to block DC. For my part, I'm curious whether there's something other than personal bias to explain why others didn't see the driver error on corner entry that I saw: lack of video resolution, not looking early enough on a replay, lack of experience pushing a car at its limits, or more experience with open wheel cars at the limits. But I suspect that the volume and temperature on this issue is going to defeat any systematic examination. I think we're going to have to just drop this and move on. After the next race we'll have something new to hash over. I guess whether you're talking about F1 or discovering a new continent, it's better to be lucky than smart.
The rules state that when you do such a thing, you loose all your session times. Qualifying is seen as one session. Now divided into three parts, but still one session, hence he lost all times and was sent to the back. My own thoughts are now along the lines of soccer (since it starts next Friday, can't wait!): Fisi committed a foul, that gets the yellow card, which is down ten spots or whatever is appropriate. MS tried to deceive the ref, that normally gets the red card, expulsion from the event with no chance of backfill. The FIA was actually somewhat mild in its verdict by only relegating him to the end of the grid (although in Monaco that's normally almost the same as expulsion). They could have been more harsh as they were to him in 94 when he got banned for several races. Of course that would have ultimately destroyed the race for the title and nobody wants to see that. As for having something new to discuss after Silverstone: Something really big would have to happen to make the world forget what happened in Monaco. We might not talk about it anymore (good thing!), but trust me, the historians and journalists will forever refer to this event when they summarize MS' achievements. Whether that's fair (or even true) or not is another question, but this one is on the record. Just as people will cite the Hill and Villeneuve bumps forever. PS: In regards to bias etc: Apart from folks on here I haven't found a single person who strongly believes he is innocent.
