Formula 1 nuttiness - Mclaren stripped of 2007 points
 

McLaren hit by constructors' ban
Lewis Hamilton attended the hearing in Paris
Lewis Hamilton and team-mate Fernando Alonso keep their points
McLaren have been stripped of their points in the 2007 Formula One constructors' championship after the outcome of the 'spygate' row.

The team was also hit with a record $100m (£49.2m) fine but drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso will be allowed to keep their points.

The team must also prove there is no Ferrari 'intellectual property' in its cars next eyar before they can race.

The decision means Ferrari, who are currently second in the constructors' championship, 57 points ahead of third-placed BMW Sauber are almost certain to be crowned champions.

When he left the hearing, FIA president Max Mosley was asked if justice had been done, and replied "Yes."

McLaren team chief Ron Dennis is due to speak at a 1915 BST news conference.

Full story to follow

I think this is F***ing insane. I am so bloody sick and tired of Ferrari I would rather cheer for any team in any sport than those bunch of wankers.

Every Ferrari car just got a bit uglier.....

Dennis

Wow that is catastrophic. This will be interesting to watch. I was enjoying the Mclaren run so far this year.

I think the folks running F1 are responsible for this... they took the bait and ran with it.

I'm sure McLaren will fight it.. right?

McLaren loses its points, the New England Patriots might lose two to five draft choices - spying doesn't pay. Just ask Valerie Plame.

What's the value to McLaren if they cannot compete for the Constructor's Championship. I would think that matters more to the team then the Driver's Championship. Just my opinion.

You are right and it will bring out the naysayers that Hamilton and Alonso do not deserve the hype they received this year. Mclaren will have to fight it. Now BMW is only 57 points out of first place!

I guess my concern is that I honestly do not believe that Ron Dennis, Mercedes or their management would serious stoop that low. I also believe that if the tables were reversed, neither would Ferrari, BMW and pretty well any of the manufacturer funded teams make blatant and deliberate use of illegally gotten information....there is just too much at stake.

Now, for an individual employee to waltz around the legal line I can believe, but you do not punish the entire organization for the acts of the one...you tell them to stop it, fire the individual and ban him/her from the sport.

It looks to me that this is the vendetta for the manufacturers challenging Moseley....that guy gives scumbags a bad name, even Castro is higher in my esteem....

Dennis

Crazy - do you have a link? F1's website isn't saying anything yet.

Does this mean they're totally eliminated from the constructor's race or what?

Look at the BBC News....best news channel in the world bar none....

It's been well known for years that the FIA and Ferrari are in bed together. This is just further proof if ever you wanted it. I think it's outrageous that this is allowed to happen. An insider at Ferrari is alledged to have given some details to a guy at McLaren but I doubt that guy would announce to anyone within his team that he had the information. If McLaren had any Ferrari technology on their car then I doubt that anyone in the team would have known. I'm still not convinced that the guilty parties are who they appear to be. I've said before that I wouldn't put it past Ferrari to have sent information out themselves to set up their own guy who had fallen from grace and deliver a blow to McLaren at the same time. I just don't trust the team one little bit.

I'm never going to buy a Ferrari now for sure!

I wonder if Ferrari can explain how the McLaren team can manage to make Ferrari technology work better than Ferrari can?

Are they eligible to compete in 2008? Originally that was the possible punishment.

Here you go...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/6991147.stm

Are the drivers eligible to score more points? If so, then Alonso and Hamilton can really duke it out without Ron Dennis worrying about team points. Could actually be really fun to watch.

I can't wait to see both Alonzo & Hamilton run Kimi/Massa off the track on Sunday. Maybe they'll just mount a couple of missiles on the cars and take 'em out that way.

The way it's going, Ferrari could both blow engines on Lap #1 and FIA would still find a way to give 'em the race victory.

In other words, Ferrari gets to peak at McLaren's cars next year. Kinda ironic that they get FIA sanctioning to do exactly what they are accusing McLaren of doing...

Drivers are eligible to score points. No McLaren representative allowed on podium. No Constructor points for 2007. Car to be scrutineered by FIA in 2008.

$100M fine less FOM losses(?) resulting from decision.

Rumor that RD was requested to resign in lieu of fine.

An absolutely ridiculous verdict. By all accounts the only benefit McLaren received from this information was data to show Ferrari were cheating.

Heck if I were Ron I'd take that little weasel Bernie outside and beat the living ***** out of him. Then go after Mosley with a club.

The FIA has made a mountain out of a molehill and seriously diminished the sport. What BS.

:D :D :D

Yep. I'm just about done with F1. First no U.S. Grand Prix (a big FU America from the FIA), now this.

I just can't imagine how this will work. What happens if Mclaren comes up with the same idea as Ferrari? Is it automatically presumed that they stole it from Ferrari? What happens if Ferrari challenges some aspect, do they get to look at the whole car just to prove their idea is not embedded?

Who does the fine enrich? Will it be divvied up amongst the teams, with Ferrari being the major beneficiary or is this just more cash for Max and Bernie?

Personally, if i were Ron, I would be telling the team that this is the time to beat the living crap out of Ferrari....let's go for a Mclaren 1-2 at all the remaining races. Beat them on the track.....

D.

Exactly!

Why all the Ferrari hating going on here?

Anyone else find it ironic that as F1 drivers are moving to NASCAR F1 is becoming more like NASCAR?

In the future all racing will be NASCAR... :D

Uh... isn't that kind of like the idea?

OR you protest by holding the team out of the races. They have nothing to gain as a team. I am with Chris as the FIA is ruining the sport and Bernie is a pompous you know what. I went to the USGP this year for the first time with my son and we had a blast, little did I know it would be the last (for now) in the US.

During the last race, the anouncers were saying the McLaren drivers were discussing the Ferrari setups during testing, so it wasn't just one McLaren employee using the info.

It sounds like the fine is $100M minus what McLaren loses by not having constructor points. Since they keep award payments very secret, we don't know what that is, but I suspect it's a good portion of the $100M.

Mclaren got caight with their hand in the cookie jar stealling cookies that ferrari spent millions developing.
Not only should the be banned from the sport for 5 years, those responsible should be thrown in prison for industrial espionage.

Hamiltion and alonso should be stripped off all points earned while driving a car developed through stealing and cheating. They didn't earn any of those points, they stole them.

Don't any of the "more emotional types" out there think it's strange that Mclaren went from a distand third last year to total dominance this year?
Heck of a coincidence. More likely cheating.

It is....but like any sort of endeavour, there is the one where you want to win really badly....

...and then there is the one where you put all your energy and soul into just beating the other guy...

I am hoping for the latter....

D.

Not sure what the outrage is about.

If Airbus was found in possession of a 780 page Confidential Boeing performance manual what would your view be?

This appears to be theft of intellectual property and corporate espionage - plain and simple.

Ahhh, your proof is? Please present proof of the above then its worth looking at...

Yeah, Mclaren has never been a contender....i mean, they and Spyker/Jordan always were the same sort of pace, come on....

And as for total dominance, how many wins does Massa/Raikkonen have this year....seems like about half....

I respectfully disagree...having been involved with corporate information for a while.

Stuff gets exchanged all the time, one guy knows another and they talk. People move jobs and take things they shouldn't take....and use them. It happens.

The job of management is to deal with it as soon as they become aware that this belongs to someone else.

Return the documents to the owner.
Fire the offending guys.
Get back to work

Seems to me that is what RD did....and Formula 1 is notorious for checking out the other guy as far as possible. All the spy cameras, timing, radio monitoring....not necessarily IP if you can hear about it or see it....

D.

And last year they had engine and mechanical issues not aero issue. Also they had JPM who was pretty good at wrecking both himself and anyone close by be it Mclaren driver or whoever.
Mclaren made a jump up because Renault have not adjusted to the tire change (they loved Michelin's remember) and Mclaren have 2 pretty good drivers while Renualt and Ferrari had to reload with the drivers. And rememebr at the beginning of the year no one was that happy with Kimi at Ferrari.
So you can not paint it as Mclaren cheated and now they are a front runner.
I meant to post the entire qoute so I agree with Dennis.

But a 780 page Confidential Ferrari Performance Manual??? That goes beyond taking a peek, spy cameras or radio monitoring.

Of course much depends on how the manual was obtained - but judging from the severity of the penalty it seems clear that McLaren was very proactive in obtaining the manual. In other words the severity of the penalty clearly points to some serious espionage and theft of proprietary information.

I did find it odd the McLaren suddenly became so dominate this season... however Renault just fell off the map so I could just be coincidence.

Did Ferrari, Renault, and Mclaren all start with new cars this season?

BMW seems to be gaining some momentum, it would be nice to see another manufacturer in the fight to win some races.

Proof? How about Team Mclaren's own admissions?
I suppose they were lying when they admitted they had the stolen information.
Now why in the world would they say that if it weren't true?

And I suppose, having all that stolen information about their #1 competitor's cars and set-up, they might choose not to use it. Sure.......

On this planet in this universe, they were guilty as charged. Maybe in the bizzaro universe it happened the other way around.

"The offence must be considerably larger than has been projected either by the governing body or the media "

Sir Jackie Stewart
-------
Absolutely.
I'd bet that there were significant usages of Ferrari data in the McLaren car, and/or knowledge by the drivers/team that the data was being used.
Who knows if we will ever learn 100% of the things learned....
*******
In a way, the penalty may be a bit weak. The drivers can still win the title "for McLaren".
What an out. IMO the drivers' championship carries more weight than the constructor's, anyway.
But I can see the avoidance of penalizing the drivers -

"However, due to the exceptional circumstances in which the FIA gave the team's drivers an immunity in return for providing evidence, there is no penalty in regards to drivers' points."


Sooooooo, Hammy and Alonso dropped a dime on their own team members to save their points? that'll go over big ;)


One thing is for sure, we will not see Hamilton or Alonso on the podium again this year.
cool.

F1 needs more cow bell and a scandal of this magnitude serves that purpose well. It´s completely blown out of proportion, not least by speculating media of all sort.

Pity for the drivers and team mates who are into it for the sake of the sport, not only for the money and publicity.

We used to use a paraphrase of a magazine article to refer to Ron as "The Hardest Bastard if F1" - this might be quite fitting. You would not want to mess with the guy IMO.
(Hard - meaning tough and uncompromising in this instance)

In reference to sammyg's comments, it isn't as if McLaren stole the information from Ferrari, it was handed to them by a memeber of the accusing team. If you were Ferrari and wanted to get at your main rival and, to be honest, only serious threat to dominance then what better way to do it than to send something to them then accuse them of having it. It all seems a bit too convinient to me.
If you honestly think that Ferrari are totally innocent then you are insane. You would only need to ask around a F1 paddock to hear stories of engines that disappear overnight from Ferrari's rivals at Italian races only to reappear the following morning with signs of disassembly. Or fuel being unloaded behind the Ferrari garage AFTER the FIA had taken fuel samples from the teams supply. The list of stories would be endless. They are guilty as hell, but get preferential treatment from the governing body. EVERYONE within F1 is sure of this, it isn't as if it's secret.

I must be insane then. Yopu are talking about rumors and stories and they are exactly that. Made up, BS and F1 urban legends. No truth to them no matter how much you wish they were true.

Are you really suggesting that ferrari gave Mclaren the infomation so that they could frame Mclaren?
LOL, that's good. real good. Sounds like something George Costanza would come up with.
Go ahead and twist it any way that makes you feel better.