Trekman

I love it! lol

Nola

You should read today's FIA release with all the juicy details. I really don't see Alonso as the wistle blower... just a witness.

Trekman

dam Pedro is real stupid!

hatem

i think mclaren should consider themselves lucky, atleast they are still involved in 1 championship and they can participate next year. if anyone thinks that the constructors title is boring they should point the finger at mclaren.

Trekman

if I was the pitt guys I would put extra wing on alonso car and maybe give him some balled tires.

I hope BMW honda and toyota would be better than ferrari next year

ash-c32

100 mil is nothing for Mclaren, the comapny is debt free, the woking factory cost £250 million and is all paid off.

F1 and "cheating" have gone hand in hand, thw whole episode is a shame aand hopefully this will stop others from doing the same.

BTW MB only owns 40% of McLaren

MiamiAMG

chutia

Spirited discussion; some insightful comments. Here's my $0.02:

competition and cheating and all that is grea talk, but you have to understand the risks you take and think through.. Before the s--t hits the fan...what you are willing to lose if you get caught. Being in mergers and acquisitions/capital markets, the risks of using stolen/unauthorized/deemed confidential data are VERY REAL every day. Do what you gotta do, but understand, if you get caught, you may have nasty, uncontrollable and dire consequences.
Here, we have a case where 2 of MM's drivers, certainly de la Rosa, is clearly complicit and f'g stupid. Alonso only slightly behind. What is the purpose of their self-serving statements (which sound like complete BS) that they only were going to use the data stolen from Ferrari for their own purposes?! That's just nonsense and not credible. How does such ill-gotten data get into their cars or MM w/o a bunch of other MM personnel NOT knowing anything about it or where it came from? What?!! are we to believe that the test driver and the WC just pop up w/ highly technical data and recommendations(which frankly, most of them probably may not even understand except the effects of) that the team engineers and bosses are just *****-nilly going to incorporate into such highly advanced cars as F1 cars are?? Utter BS, IMHO. That then further suggests that senior guys (Dennis??) have to have known and continued to use such ill-gotten data. Like I've said before, even if Dennis denies using it, the second he found out or got it in his hands, he s/ have called Ferrari and turned it over to them. This is like the Clinton denial re smoking marijuana: "I smoked, but never inhaled it." Yeah, right!

And the WCC does matter a lot to the sponsors and advertisers, don't underestimate it.

Finally, Vodafone is he main financial sponsor behind MM, but they were probably compelled by a subpoena or court order to disgorge or provide the SMS/mobile phone data and had little choice in it. Also, can you see if they simply refused to do it BECAUSE they were the MM sponsor: a de facto admission of aiding and abetting the alleged perpetration of the Ferrari claims?

Tough choices: well made by all??? Time will tell. One thing is for sure: there is whole hell of a lot more to this story then we know or meets the eye.

Just my 0.02.

kchristos

First I have to say that I am a Mercedes enthusiast and was a McLaren fan since I can remember, I always supporting Mika Hakkinen, Kimi etc. Even though, I can’t help it not to speculate what really happened after reading what was published by the press. This is only my humble opinion and it is based on what has been published by the press.

I believe that the last few years it has become the status kqo that if you don’t cheat you can't go ahead in the F1. Look at Super Aguri, everyone knows that they are using last years Honda chassis and they haven’t being penalized yet! That is totally not fair to teams like Williams that spend so much money to develop their own technology. FIA has probably decided to put a stop to all this by giving an example.

Now on the facts…I totally agree with you, the whole MM story was BS from the beginning (that Coughlan kept the data only for himself, and after changed it to; Couhlan only sharing that info with Pedro and Alonso!!!) I don't think he went into the trouble to get the info just to fill an empty spot in his library and certainly not to selectively give that info only to 2 drivers and none else!!! Also if a test driver (Pedro) was acquiring details regarding the Ferrari’s braking system, weight balance, air used to inflate the tires etc, to me it is straight forward to realize that Couhlan was providing that info to everybody else or to say the least to a lot more other people in the team i.e. THE ACTUAL DESIGN ENGINEERS !!!!!!

I also believe that Ron Dennis brought all this to himself, the whole story started when he intimidated Alonso in the Hungarian race. According to Max Mosley, Alonso threatened that he will give information that they are cheating to the FIA and Dennis told him to go ahead!!!. If I had to guess the conversation I would think that Dennis was pissed on Alonso for delaying Hamilton and causing the incident (Alonso probably thought that he wasn't that mad on Hami for not letting him pass by on the fuel burning laps) drove him crazy (in his mind was not being treated fairly) and threatened to give out the info. Dennis instead of pretending to be the macho guy that doesn’t care if he presents the data to FIA, should have tried to calm him down and avoid this whole situation.

I don't think that Pedro is as stupid as it looks like, Alonso's emails were directed to him (many email software such as Outlook save both send and received emails so he probably had proof of all the conversations with Pedro anyways). Pedro by denying it, it wouldn’t serve anything, just loose his super license as it was announced by the FIA.

I too believe that the penalty was somewhat fair to the team and most certainly lenient to their drivers because (1): The manufacturer points they have already worth some ~$70million plus the points they are going to get until the end of the season, so at the end McLaren will probably end up paying some ~$20-30mil which is nothing for them (Dennis said that their operation runs about $400-500 mill/year). Probably the R&D expenditures to acquire the info they got from Ferrari costs more than that. (2): Luis and Alonso knew Ferraris fuel/pit stop strategy (proven in Australia) and most likely in a bunch of other races too and also were and will still be running with cars influenced by their competitor’s info (falsely claimed by the press that the cars will from now on be stripped from Ferrari technology—There isn’t such a thing, they can’t redesign the car overnight neither McLaren specified which parts were designed influenced by that info neither that story was officially accepted by McLaren) and are not getting penalized at all !!! Everybody knows that the WDC has a lot to do with the car you are driving. If McLaren's car wasn't performing the way it did, they wouldn't be leading the WDC. One can argue that a handful of other drivers such as Nick Heidfield, Nico Rosberg etc could have been leading the points if they were driving a McLaren car so the minute that its proven that the car has intellectual property from other team the points acquired are not valid. Probably the FIA made a deal with Alonso not to strip their points if he goes ahead and gives them the email conversations. (3): Since it is proven that McLaren were getting info from Stephney prior to the beginning of the season, one has to wonder whether they have or haven’t ask the $100mil question: "HOW TO DESIGN THE CAR TO WORK WITH THE BRIDGESTONE TIRES???!!!" In my opinion, it is very likely that the did! How unfair is that to teams like Renault?!!! They are loosing a truckload of money because they haven't figured out how to cope with the new tires. (4): Alonso in his emails admitted that him and Pedro were doing several tests to evaluate the competitive advantage between them and Ferrari essentially admitting that he violated the sporting regulation himself!!!

Finally, if it was truly only Couhlan & Stephney involved I would have agreed that McLaren & drivers shouldn’t be penalized at all. Teams cannot be held responsible for the indecent behavior of a single man, but so many people in a team are involved, I think that it is absolutely fair to hand in a hefty fine!

I believe that the FIA will announce the spy hearing transcripts tomorrow. I could be wrong but lets see if that’s what happened.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/180920...published.html

Just my 2c…

chutia

kchristos-
fine analysis. Affirmative that!!
Again, while I love the MM cars and the results speak for themselves, while many folks don't pay attention to the WDC rankings themselves, they are terribly important, just as you have pointed out. Hell, the diff between the top 5-6 pole sitters many times is < 0.5 SECONDS!! That tells you that any of the top 5-6 drivers is capable of a pole position on a given day; it's the total car package making the diff.

So, apart from other things, stolen/illegal tech can make the diff for sure. Doesn't mean they all don't do it, but like they say of politicians: "the only honest one is one who is dead or just hasn't gotten caught yet."

the drama continues>>>>>>>

Saprissa

is it just me, or is the source of this entire scandal getting away scott-free ???

the infamous Mr. Stepney !!??!

Trekman

yup and he might be back with ferrari soon.... I dont get it

Saprissa

in my line of work, this whole thing smells of a DECEPTIVE OPERATION.

Ferrari plants the seed (Stepney) to work with Coughlan, and the rest is history. End result: McLaren-Mercedes is fined $100,000,000 and looses run on Constructor's Championship.

let the conspiracy theories begin........