Did they or didn't they?

[schumi]

genghis said:

DonsKing - it's obvious how I voted, I can guess how Subedei voted, therefore you must have voted "yes, a bit". Correct?

Out of interest, can you two see who voted? And don't I get Brownie points for not voting yes, definitely?

Like I said, politics aside, the vote is on whether McLaren cheated. If you don't like that word insert "gained an illegal advantage"

[Genghis]

schumi said:

Out of interest, can you two see who voted? And don't I get Brownie points for not voting yes, definitely?

Like I said, politics aside, the vote is on whether McLaren cheated. If you don't like that word insert "gained an illegal advantage"

I can't, but DonsKing might as he's a mod.

I'm sticking with "No, definitely not". People may have seen information thanks to dipstick Coughlin, but no-one would used it - the consquences would have been too much.

McLaren were going great guns at the START of the season - even before the information became available.

I still wonder if Stepney is a very rich man, via a mystery Ferrari Swiss account. I wouldn't put anything past those bastards.

[donsking]

I don't believe all of that statement from Coughlan on autosport.com, it's too ridiculous for words.

I can't imagine that anyone seriously thinks that given the kind of information it would appear they had their disposal, any organisation wouldn't have found some way to dissect it and use at least a tiny part of it.

The real inconsistancy is, as I said above, this stuff goes on all the time, in fact, people get paid for it in the form of nice big pay rises for moving teams.

McLaren have been made an example of, I'm not entirely sure why, because I think the most damage it does is to the sport.

Going into cynical overdrive, I can only think it was a way of dividing the championships, but it seems a bit of an extreme move.

[Deleted]

I don't think Ron was directly involved in this messy matter, however a member of his staff was and it would appear that McLaren benefitted in some way.

Looking at Coughlan's supposed statement, several senior McLaren people were aware of Stepney's contacts with Coughlan but all they did was to make the FIA aware of Ferrari illegalities, which were actioned and to block Stepney's e-mails. Should McLaren not have looked at Coughlan a little closer and be a little concerned about his contact with Stepney? But then I guess hindsight is always 20:20.

All F1 teams sail close to the letter of the rules, which is one reason they employ teams of lawyers who travel to all races, but I don't think Ron was directly involved, although his team have been deemed to have benefitted and received a rather harsh punishment.

I cannot understand why Ferrari should be punished. If a Ferrari employee steals items from his employer are people suggesting his employer should face action?

As for F1 drivers.... they are all only out for their own career, payday and nothing more. If McLaren had received a punishment along the lines of no driver points for 2008, both drivers would be gone..... Careers and egos rule.

McLaren is a multi million dollar business in racing and road cars, employing hundreds of staff and answerable to huge global financiers. Whatever your bias in this sorry matter, it makes no sense for Ron to have cheated and risk his business and reputation.

No doubt Ron has urgent and difficult meetings ahead with Mansour Oijeh (sp) Vodafone and Johnny Walker executives amongst others in order to explain the bad publicity this had generated and the way forward from here.

[schumi]

genghis said:

People may have seen information thanks to dipstick Coughlin, but no-one would used it - the consquences would have been too much.

What, like a hundred million dollar fine and deduction of points for the season?

Edit: good post jaybee.

[donsking]

The problem with all of this is that it's very difficult to prove plagiarism in F1 design; all the designers are working to the same very strict set of rules, and the chances are they're going to come up with the same solutions to specific problems.

Ever since people started designing race cars from scratch, the solutions have always been the same, except on the odd occasions when people realised there was no rule to cover a radical rethink, and then legislation would come into force to deal with it.

Unless it can be proved that there is some feature of the McLaren cars that should've been unique to Ferrari and would never have been independantly arrived at by the McLaren design team, then I think this is all very contentious, and that's why the punishment is harsh.

The reason I think they are rightly accused of cheating is that all the right people knew what was going on, and yet it seems they did very little about it.

As to whether or not they benefitted from it, I think that would be almost impossible to prove.

As an aside, I remember there was much speculation as to aerodynamic advantage Ferrari gained by fitting external discs to their rear wheels, and to the legality of them; this has obviously been resolved as other teams are now using them, but I haven't seen much debate about the fixed wheelcovers they are now using on the front wheels, which obviously provide yet more aero advantages, and extra brake cooling...............

The one thing I do know is, everything in F1, as with most big money sports, is not all that it appears to be.