Glyn M Ruck

Alonso is a thinly disguised hood!

Martinsvi

You keep believeing that all you want. Spygate was more than just an mclaren issue. alonso and dela rosa were using the data in the simulator and keeping it from hamilton, that is a known. He also tried to use the fact that mclaren had the data to blackmail dennis into making him get preferential treatment and that was when dennis went to the fia, that is also a known.
Crashgate is portrayed as briatore/symonds/piquet. Where ther is smoke there is fire. 1 time is unfortunate, 2 times is happenstance, three times is a pattern. I am not nearly so naieve as to believe he just is in the wrong place at the wrong time innocently..What is he..the leon spinx of motorracing?
I have watched this sport for over 40yrs and I am sticking by my analysis.

Glyn M Ruck

+1 - and so you should.

whiteongrey

Hats off to RedBull

- they won the constructors when Toyota, Honda, and BMW threw 100s $BN at it for years and had poor overall results.

Nice to see Renault power plants win as well - great power plants and a real show case for French mfg prowess.

Great to see a young German driver win the driver championship!

Next year will be interesting to see who finds the killer design detail in the gray zone of the rule sets.

This has got to be the most competitive and logistically complex sport in the world.

Martinsvi

Other than ferrari. What mfg, has taken over a team and truly been completely competitive for years on end. I know renault had there little spat of competitiveness there in the early mid 2000's, but look at it, Toyota,fail..honda, fail..bmw, fail...and I dont give a lot of hope to mercedes. I also should pay homage to Lotus of the early days, but lets be real, both lotus and ferrari were racing groups that built road cars to finance the racing branch.

If I were the ceo of a major car corporation and someone came to me about f1, I would say to them, build an engine and stay the hell out of the rest of it.

Nola

Do you know why the data would only be fed to Alonso and De la Rosa, but not Hamilton?

Glyn M Ruck

Adrian Newey is a genius. He has won the constuctors championship with 3 different teams. That takes some doing.

Martinsvi

As I remeber this, the guy in mclaren(coughlin?) was giving the info to dela rosa and some of the engineers also had it loaded on their computers, but supposdedly no designs or development was being performed by mclaren using the data. Dela rosa who is friends with alonso(they are both spanish) was settiing up the simulator and getting alsonso involved. There are even a trail of text messages involving them using the data. I dont have this info archived but it was all the talk around turkey 2007 when it all came to a head.. It was less than a month later when dennis and alsonso announced they were parting ways.This is also when mclaren terminated the contract of coughlin. Why hamilton wasnt allowed access is probably because dela rosa was trying to help his pal and hamilton at the time was waxing alonso's ***. Pretty embarassing for a 2 time world champion on the same team to be losing the championship to a rookie/first year f1 driver who shouldnt have been his equal. I am not a hamilton fan at all but he did show that with equal equipment he was the better of the 2. He had no more sseat time in the mclaren than alonso, and he had less track time on some of the tracks than alsonso.

The saddest part was once dennis found out he turn it in to the fia, and mclaren took it hard for brining it out.

Stepney and coughlin tried to use the data again as a bargaining chip to start running another team, I cannot remeber the team at this moment and that was also made public. That team turned them both down as they didnt trust them.
Stepeny was basically made persona non grata in f1 following the event and I believe ferrari was trying to sue him for espinage. I dont know what has happened to the other.

I will also say this again. Once dennis found out what was going on, he made everyone aware, knowing that mclaren would pay a heavy price for it, that is a good indicator of the integrity of the organization he leads, as well as himself. I believe that mclaren is a stronger team and corporation for it.

F1Bobby

IMHO it's a case of follow the money! McLaren was paying Alonso a boatload of cash to be there and I assume they wanted to get what they were paying for... Just sayin!

Nola

I see your point and I've considered it myself before... but it is only sustainable if you believe that Alonso broke the news to RD in Hungary in August. If you accept this, you must also consider that in July, Ferrari accused McLaren, the FIA investigated, McLaren fired Coughlan, and Coughlan's sworn affidavit revealed that he had passed information to many employees in McLaren. At the time, McLaren denied this and said it was limited to Coughlan, which of course was later revealed to be false.

So, if you believe Ron Dennis only found out about this in August from Alonso, but a thorough investigation was done in July, then what kind of investigation did he conduct? How did he protect McLaren when its integrity was questioned? Maybe you will say he has integrity, but is pretty naive. And if you believe that he did not find out anything in the July investigation, then the only conclusion is that the team in general withheld all this from Ron Dennis. How is that an indicator of the integrity of the team? And by integrity I mean ethical behavior.... the team built several systems in the car around the data, yet somehow they denied it to the FIA. The public reason that the 2008 car was not banned is that McLaren apologized. The 2008 McLaren gave Hamilton his WDC.

And I'm not even bringing up how McLaren (Ron Dennis really) got the tip to "seek clarification" of Ferrari's floor early in the season.

My conclusion then has to be that Ron Dennis did know about the whole thing, and Alonso's powerplay in Hungary was about revealing the coverup, not the espionage. So I don't buy into the premise that Ron Dennis is so clean that he gave up his team in the name of integrity. What I still don't understand is if Ron Dennis called Max Mosley to disarm Alonso and prevent a coup d'etat of sorts, or if he called as a way to gain some goodwill before the impending storm. It is clear that it would have been worse for McLaren if Ron Dennis had not called and Alonso had blown the whistle.

Glyn M Ruck

My experience of Ron is that his integrity is beyond reproach. And remember that Mosely has hated him personally for years. Look at the size fine that was imposed - no other team has ever been hit like that. Ferrari would have done it's usual BS & threatened to withdraw from F1 & had the FIA running after them as usual. Teams have been playing spy games for years. Williams used to go scratching through opposition teams bins. Ferrari was always trying to steal Lotus ground effects in the Chapman days & so on.

Nola

So if you accept that Ron Dennis behaved ethically then you must admit he was naive in managing Spygate, and that McLaren in general behaved unethically during Spygate. Even McLaren admits this. Don't see what bearing Mosley would have on that... but a more fitting punishment would have been to ban the 2008 car.

But I agree that F1 is F1... they all play spy games. McLaren did go too far.

Martinsvi

Nola, The one constant I have always heard and read where rd is concerned is he is a man of great integrity. Thru all the things that happened in 2007, no one ever questioned rd's integrity. Nor have they since
I dont believe for 1 minute that rd is an alter boy or naieve, but if your employees found out you where trying to find out who/why/how this info came into the possesion of their computer programs, you might would disavow info on the grounds it could get you terminated.
At some point rd found out what was going on, and then he and the rest of the management of mclaren had to make some choices. They could deny, and that concieveably could be the end of it, as the proof could have been removed from the servers and all tracks covered. There is also the fact of alonso and dela rosa using it in the simulator, without hamilton having the privy of the info. Even at this point mclaren could deny as the tracks again could be covered.
Alonso using the info as a bargaining chip is what at that point made dennis go to the fia. And Glyn, you are correct that dennis and mosely have a love hate relationship. They both love hating each other. Dennis trying to break away with a new series did nothing to improve this position either. So going to mosely and telling him was the last thing that mclaren would have wanted as they all knew mosely wanted mclaren on a pike.
I was never a alonso fan but I wasnt a alonso detractor either until the crashgate event occured. This is why I made the statement I did, 1 time is an occurence, 2 times is happenstance and 3 times is a pattern. There is a trail of inpropriety that follows this guy wherever he roams. I just dont believe he is the innocent person he makes out to be. If for any reason next year massa comes out the gate and is out performing alonso consistently, watch what starts to happen, he will get mistical failures he has never had, pit stops will be botched and there will be other termoil behind the scenes trying to get into his head.
Fisichella had these complaints while he was with renault. The renault mechanics loved fisi..I dont know if they would say that of alonso
Hamilton didnt have to endure it because he was beating the guy and mclaren doesnt play the 1 machine being better than the other
Piquet sold his sole because he wanted to keep the seat so bad and was pressured..I wont ever believe that alonso was out of the loop on this
I wonder what the feeling at ferrari is between he and massa, and what it will be as time goes on.
If he is innocent of everything here then he has fooled alot of people other than just me.

whiteongrey

That's F1 - boundaries will be pushed, although in terms of prof sports it is probably the cleanest and best regulated / controlled sport on the planet.

The intellect, technology, and level of professionalism is simply unparalleled by any other sport.

Controversy is part of the entertainment proposition.

Glyn M Ruck

We were sponsors at McLaren at one time & Ron is neither naive or a crook. Information gathering on other teams has been part of the sport since inception. You make out that it is such a crime. McLaren's problem is that it leaked & Ron being the gentleman that he is fell on his sword. All the teams do it & some will pay big money for it. That was not the case at McLaren. Sometimes Chief Executives have to take the knock for dumb staff.

Who ended up at the FIA in Paris to face the fire. Ron supported by Lewis at Lewis' insistance - good man for something he had nothing to do with.

Only in the recent era have the FIA even bothered about Information Protection.

Remember that Ron backed out as race team principal for the sake of the team in the end due to bad blood with Mosely.

It's great to see him in the back of the garage these days providing advice. His relationship with Jean Todt is excellent & he & Luca di Montezemolo get on very well - it's a friendship that goes back a long way. They even had dinner together in Abu Dhabi

Nola

Except for Max Mosley, Jean Todt and Fernando Alonso. The one guy I think is less questioned is Whitmarsh.

This is what doesn't jive because it is about company culture... RD always projected an image for McLaren of intense self control, transparency, equality, attention to detail and great integrity. We all know these to be McLaren values. If McLaren was unable to uncover the extent of the spying in its first investigation in July, and employees were afraid, then that image stops at Ron Dennis. It could also be that he naively got defensive in July, and just wasn't very thorough, but again he is deceived by his own organization. This is where there are only 2 choices: He either covered it up and the whole image of the super ethical organization is destroyed, or his employees covered it up, and the whole image of the super ethical organization is destroyed. How sad is it that instead of finding out from a loyal employee as part of his due diligence, he had to find out from the evil outsider?

I really don't see another alternative, unless you blame evil outsider Fernando Alonso as the mastermind behind the coverup as well. But this opens an even bigger problem: If Alonso was so able to manipulate McLaren, why didn't he simply keep manipulating to his advantage? I mean, if he could get people to do all sorts of illegal stuff behind the back of his boss and his team mate, surely he could do the same with many other things for an even greater advantage.

Agreed at some point he found out... if before Hungary, he had to be part of the coverup, if after Hungary, he was deceived by his organization. The existance of these 2 possible scenarios is what drove me to be a McLaren detractor. Lie gate sealed the deal not much later.

Martinsvi

Of the 3 you mention who would question his credibility, only 1 of them has any himself, that is Jean Todt. and there are many who would argue against that. I dont believe alot about todt, other than when he was at ferrari he faught for ferrari.

Mosley has been a lie and cheat his entire life, and as bad as things were with Balestere, they got worse with mosley.

I am not even going to rehash about this pathetic spanish taxi driver. I will rstate, he has a trail of inpropriety that follows him and his associations arent the best either(Briatore/symonds)

I believe a better ruler of what credibilty he still has is the paddocks at the races and the sponsors they continue to bring in. They may have lost santander to ferrari with alsonso going there but they will replace them with someone even better.

Nola

The point is that you say no one questions his integrity... I mention 3 who do. You say McLaren and Ron Dennis are the picture of integrity... I prove that at least one of those is not. You say Alonso was the evil behind all of McLarens troubles from Spygate, I prove to you that they brought it on themselves, and so on. Regardless of my personal opinion, these facts are just that, facts. Don't be fooled by the McLaren / British media PR machine.

Glyn M Ruck

Sponsors do due dilligence to a degree that you are not able. McLaren is an organisation that is a sponsors dream. RD is the man that built this envious reputation for McLaren.

Nola

Don't get me wrong... McLaren is not Enron of course, and Ron Dennis is a highly successful individual. McLaren already got their punishment for bringing the sport into disrepute. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't blindly affirm that McLaren's collective actions during Spygate are testament to their integrity, which is precisely what Martinsville said (later he backtracked bit). He also said that no one ever questioned Ron Dennis' integrity, or has since, and he also backtracked on that. I don't make this stuff up you know.

Glyn M Ruck

I'm not suggesting you make things up - I am suggesting that you over blow issues.

In a sponsors eyes - Ferrari have done more to bring the sport into disrepute than most teams.

Nola

No contest there! although the FIA thought this issue was worth 100 mill, and McLaren thought it was worth a formal apology and Ferrari's legal fees, so perhaps I'm not the only one.

Btw, wanted to add that sponsors go in with open eyes...

Martinsvi

I havent backtracked on any of this. You brought up those who would question his credibility and I said that of those 1 might could but the other 2 have a questionable credibility themselves. I will not consider moseley or alonso a equal of dennis in any respect.

You can read into my post whatever you wish, but I said I stand by my accessment of the situation and the statements.

Dont turn into hkmb and start parsing out each sentence or this conversation will go south in a hurry.

Nola

Really you don't see it? You say "No one ever questioned his integrity in 2007, and no one has since"... I just gave you 3 examples of those who did off the top of my head. You've been watching for 40 years, so surely you watched while pretty much EVERYONE in F1 took sides. There are plenty of Ron Dennis detractors. Now you change your argument saying no one you consider worthy questioned him. Perhaps what you should really say is "No one I accept had any questions to his integrity in 2007, and haven't since".

But leaving the questioning aside... thick skin, talk is cheap and all that. How do you resolve that BOTH honest Ron and McLaren in general behaved beyond reproach during spygate? You also changed your tune there by saying that employees fearing retribution from honest Ron covered it up. A cover up is a cover up, and organizations that cover things up cannot be considered beyond reproach.

But I do concede that perhaps I am misunderstanding what you write... not so easy to read through your HS dropout grammar (sorry but it is the truth. Maybe you don't have enough time to check things, but it is HS dropout level).

I will finally say again that F1 is F1... they are all wolves from the same pack. If the FIA, Max and Ferrari hated RD and McLaren so much, they would have gone for the kill and scrutinize the heck out of that 2008 car. Remember this is the organization that sent in officials to make sure Alonso was given fair treatment (totally unnecessary imo). But a simple letter of apology from Martin Whitmarsh was all it took to cancel the hearings scheduled for February 2008 and consider everything water under the bridge. The cynical view is that F1 needed a new champion, and they did not want to impede Lewis. Rest assured all sorts of deals were done behind closed doors.... and deals are not made when one is beyond reproach.

Glyn M Ruck

Nobody in the sport thought the McLaren punishment fair but rather a reflection of their relationship with the FIA under Mosely - pervert, thug, gangster. The FIA has been a screwup forever. It's probably at it's most stable at the moment under Todt. They could learn a lot from the FIM. If McLaren deserved a 100 million fine then Ferrari have deserved a similar one frequently but have always had a cosy relationship with the FIA or have simply threatened to withdraw from F1. Then Bernie has a conniption fit. They know how to play the FIA perfectly. (One bunch of hoods understanding another bunch of hoods)

Sponsors fully understand what they are in for. Only Briatore's Crashgate has had sponsors running for the hills & I suspect they were looking for a reason to get out because of the financial climate.