joemoia

Alonso, Hamilton allowed to continue in driver's championship

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/formulaone/40219/

wtknght1

I can sort of understand the ruling, but considering that both Alonzo and Hamilton (and test driver De La Rosa (sp???)) were driving those cars, I'm really surprised they weren't penalized too.

Think of what an advantage it was to not only have the data and specifications from your cars, but to also have Ferrari's (who used the Bridgestone tires for so long)!!!!! You could theoretically just take "the best" of both and build a monster car...which is basically what they did.

But, to let the drivers off the hook (who I'm convinced knew full well of what was going on - especially Alonzo and Pedro) is pretty absurd. I'm sure if they had excluded them from the championship, the whole team would have probably just packed it in for the season and went fishing. $100M in fines though for McLaren - WOW!!!!!! They'll have to return their 200 ft yacht and just get a 150 ft one.

John Shiels

I doubt the drivers were told anything. They had no need to know so it was probably less of a risk to not tell them. People can't keep their mouth shut. Now than is a good size fine for sure and an embarrassment as well to your sponsors. Who gets the 100 MIL Bernie

To cut the drivers would also lead to a very bad finish for the fans and I bet many would not watch.

Z11409

100K is like junk change to a F1 team.

John Shiels

100m is what 100 million? If so that is not chump change it is 20% of a good F-1 team like Ferrari's yearly budget.


just found this on F1.com

McLaren have been excluded from the 2007 constructors’ championship and fined US$100 million following Thursday’s FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) hearing in Paris. Drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton have not been penalized and are free to continue their fight for the drivers' title.

"The WMSC have stripped Vodafone McLaren Mercedes of all constructor points in the 2007 FIA Formula One world championship and the team can score no points for the remainder of the season,” said an FIA statement.

"Furthermore, the team will pay a fine equal to $100m, less the FOM (Formula One Management) income lost as a result of the points deduction.”

The penalty follows McLaren’s admission that the team was in breach of the International Sporting Code through their possession of confidential technical data belonging to rivals Ferrari, who are now all but assured of the 2007 constructors’ title.

wtknght1

100 MILLION...not thousand.

And the drivers did know about it. Part of the new evidence is/was emails and such between Pedro and Alonzo about the information...so they knew.

John Shiels

In another twist to the 'Stepneygate' saga, McLaren have requested that the FIA scrutinise certain matters relating to their rivals Renault.

The hypothesis swirling around the Formula One fraternity is that McLaren's opening gambit at Thursday's Paris spy hearing will be to implicate other teams.
In a pre-emptive strike, Renault team principal Flavio Briatore told the Italian media that there was no problem with his team, despite the rumour that they were about to be dragged into the affair.

The nature of McLaren's complaint regarding the current world constructors' champions has not been disclosed.

It is not thought to relate to the spying controversy surrounding McLaren and Ferrari, although sources have mooted that the focus will be around a technical element on Renault's R27 challenger.

F1's governing body confirmed that McLaren's legal representatives had approached them about the Renault matter.

However, the FIA has moved quickly to counter the McLaren strategy, by reiterating that the matters pertaining to the Enstone-based team will have no relevance to the World Motor Sport Council meeting this Thursday.

An FIA spokesman told Autosport: "We have noted the speculation and we can confirm that McLaren lawyers have recently brought to our attention certain matters regarding Renault F1.

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"But we can also confirm that the team (Renault) does not form any part of our investigations into McLaren's alleged breach of Article 151C of the International Sporting Code.

"The FIA has reminded McLaren that the World Council hearing in Paris on Thursday will focus solely on the new evidence in that investigation.

"To the extent required, any other matters will be dealt with as part of an entirely separate process. Renault F1 are aware of this and are happy to co-operate fully."

John Shiels

Mercedes-Benz motorsport director Norbert Haug was the first of McLaren’s top echelon to state his reaction regarding today’s decision by the World Motor Sport Council, which has excluded McLaren-Mercedes from the 2007 Formula 1 constructor’s championship in the wake of the “Stepneygate” spy scandal – and also applied a $100m fine to the team, and determined that its ’08 car comes under scrutiny before racing next year to make sure it doesn’t benefit from Ferrari intellectual property.

“This judgment comes as an extreme shock for all team members and, as demonstrated by the reactions of large parts of the public, the media and Formula
1 viewers, is a shock for large segments of the public as well,” Haug said.

“We will now fight with all our resolve in order to give a proper response on the circuit, as we last did in Monza, and to get justice before the court.“

McLaren can still contest the decision in the FIA’s International Court of Appeal.





and LG thought the SCCA was bad

joemoia

I read that the '07 McLaren F1 budget is about 380M euros which converts to about 400M USD. That means that the 100M USD fine represents 25% of McLarens budget. In addition McLaren will not receive any of the '07 constructors championship prize $$$$, which is awarded based on final point standings. I haven't found a reference as to how much $$$ this represents, but I would suspect that McLaren is taking a pretty big hit in the wallet.

joemoia

From Motorports.com

"It was reported that de la Rosa and Alonso had exchanged emails in which de la Rosa allegedly talked about Ferrari set up data that he had been given by Coughlan."

My question is how much of an advantage would this be for the McLaren drivers since the McLaren and Ferrari are different designs/engines etc. Would getting Scotty B White's Viper set-up data provide an unfair advantage to corvette drivers running in T1?

VetteDrmr

From Thatsracin.com:

It'll be interesting if Alonso refused to "provide evidence" to FIA; could he be excluded from the championship as well???

A quarter of McLarens' budget; now THAT's a penalty!

wtknght1

As a driver, the more info I have, the better. Now, Scotty's Viper and my car are/were about as different as two cars could be, but it would certainly be a good starting point for such things as:

tire pressures for the Kumhos (since I run them)
Basic shock adjustments (since I now run the Motons)
ACTUAL horsepower/tq numbers and what they did to get those numbers
ACTUAL lap times at certain tracks and testing
etc, etc, etc.

Since McLaren and Ferrari are similar (open wheel, rear engine, wings, etc) McLaren could easily figure out good starting points for pressures(since they hadn't run Bridgestones before), camber, toe, suspension travel, wing degrees and a billion other things that these guys know.

It would also show the weaknesses of the car too - fuel capacity, low downforce vs. high downforce, wheel base - long vs. short and so on. These engineers are so good, I'm sure they could read somebody else's spec sheet like a good novel and come out with tons of stuff to try. How else do you think McLaren knew about Ferrari's flexible undertray???

xsiveone

Most everything that is on a Corvette and Viper is common knowledge. All the competition has to do is go buy the competitors car and dismantle it to find out secrets. When a manufacturer spends countless hours and money developing a car and then someone utilizes that technology, that could be a huge advantage.

It seems kind of fishy to me that McLaren all of a sudden dominated Ferrari when they were battling for third best last season. Hamilton and Alonso are good, but not that good.

John Shiels

The confusion was triggered because even though the FIA did recommend that McLaren be banned, the actual verdict is cast only after the WMSC's 26 members have deliberated and voted.



that would have been worse. Guess they would have laid off hundreds of employee's. Black eye for MB and phone rates will be going up

xsiveone

I bet you that JPM is having a good laugh over this.

Zee916

I will wait to see the transcript from the WMSC hearing.

"For the drivers we have made an exception because they have supplied evidence" - Max Mosley.

"The WMSC received statements from Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Pedro de la Rosa stating categorically that no Ferrari information had been used by McLaren, and that they have not passed any confidential data to the team" - Ron Dennis.

I mean look at this. Both of these men were there and they are offering TOTALLY different statements about what has been issued as "evidence" to the new case for the WMSC.

No question that McLaren, well Mike Coughlin, had the Ferrari documents. But I wanna see in print, email, whatever...... distinct reference to Ferrari technical data, parts, setup etc. or else this whole thing is well, .

People are saying that Alonso and De La Rosa gave the evidence to the WMSC, then we should all be able to see it in writing in a formal document transcripting the things that took place at the hearing.

In an interview with Whitmarsh, CEO McLaren F1, Ron Dennis stated that the new evidence WAS email traffic between members of the team but that it showed no evidence to McLaren using any Ferrari technical data, or at least to him.

I fail to see how there can be this much non-conformity over a seemingly simple case of reading an email and deciding what the contents pertained to.

The whole thing really has ruined the rest of the season for me. A McLaren driver will still win the WDC, which is what matters to people, but in a supposed "illegal" car if the WMSC claims that McLaren had a technical advantage over the rest of the challengers. Just completely ridiculous.

Sorry for the long post, but I follow F1 quite closely. I'm a big McLaren fan, and BIG Alonso fan and it burns me to think that a WDC would be tarnished because of this.

Z

VetteDrmr

Supposedly De La Rosa submitted email traffic to FIA between him and Alonso.

Sure hope Alonso cooperated with FIA.

Zee916

There has been alot said about who was sending and recieving the emails.

One report had linked Paddy Lowe to sending the emails as well, UNOFFICIALLY. For those that don't know, Lowe is the head of Engineering at McLaren and basically responsible for the development of the car during the season.

They just need to issue all the info publicly because this whole this is getting way out of hand. If the truth is there then lets see it.

tcmc5

So who gets the 100 mill.? Bernie? Ferarri?

joemoia

The FIA is supposed to issue the reasons for its decision tomorrow.

There should be a lively discussion (and hopefully some insight) during SPEED's F1 Spa coverage stating tomorrow