McLaren espionage hearing

It's not official yet,kekekeke, and the website also changed, so it's probably not true...
 
5 live are reporting that they're excluded from this years constructors championship (but drivers not excluded) - a $100M fine (OUCH!) and the '08 car to be very carefully examined before running
 
Good enough, they earned it. My congratilations to Ferrari, the winner or 2007 F1 Constructors champio.
It's not the Full version of the verdict, i think there will be something about the car, or "parts" etc.
 
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What a joke. How Ferrari and the FIA can get away with this is beyond belief. Toyota got off with slapped wrists after they completely carbon copied the 2003 Ferrari! The 07 McLaren was designed in April last year so there is no way it would be affected by this supposed leak! It's purely sour grapes on the side of Ferrari. They're loosing and the selfish little children can't deal with it so they've gone crying to Mummy and Daddy (read Ecclestone and Mosely) to get their opposition thrown out. A hollow, hollow victory for Ferrari. I hope the whole crowd boos and jears every time they see the Ferraris at Spa. Dispicible behaviour!
 
Sort of reminds me of the whole tire debacle a few years back when Ferrari supposedly withheld information about the legality of the Michelin tires until a point in time that it would benefit them. But in this case, I do believe Ferrari are justified in going after McLaren because information was taken from them and given to a rival team. Whether or not that information was used I feel is irrelevant and McLaren should be punished. $100 million is a little excessive though.

As for Ferrari's behavior, I think they should have pressed the issue, but I also think it's time now to sort of let it go and move on. The fact that they're continually investigating this on the Italian side tells me that they're moving into bully territory.
 
ArosaMike said:
What a joke. How Ferrari and the FIA can get away with this is beyond belief. Toyota got off with slapped wrists after they completely carbon copied the 2003 Ferrari! The 07 McLaren was designed in April last year so there is no way it would be affected by this supposed leak! It's purely sour grapes on the side of Ferrari. They're loosing and the selfish little children can't deal with it so they've gone crying to Mummy and Daddy (read Ecclestone and Mosely) to get their opposition thrown out. A hollow, hollow victory for Ferrari. I hope the whole crowd boos and jears every time they see the Ferraris at Spa. Dispicible behaviour!
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Receiving stolen property is crime. Like I said, the punishment is fairly reasonable. Let's just move on.
 
Hmm, Ferrari has always been good with strategy, so I guess this is fine then... I'm a Ferrari supporter anyway, but I still agree with Ron Dennis: No races on the green table, but only on the track.
 
Will McLaren race the last few races? Will both the driver WANT to win the WDC considering how tainted it will be? I would prefer Hamilton not to win his first WDC in this manner. This punishment reeks. I would have been more happier with the 07 and 08 ban.
 
Mclaren will lose over 200mil$ (100 penalty, another 100 - Fia TV bonuses for 1st place) , wonder if it will affect em in 2008?
 
ViperVX said:
Mclaren will lose over 200mil$ (100 penalty, another 100 - Fia TV bonuses for 1st place) , wonder if it will affect em in 2008?
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of course it will. on top of that ever part of the 2008 car will be rigorously checked which means they cant be free with modifying it as they wish lest they independently come up with something that resembles a part of the ferrari car.
 
Like Ron Dennis, I think the punishment is unjust, as they did not use any Ferrari information. Thank God the drivers are OK though....

Full statement from Ron Dennis:
"The most important thing is that we will be going motor racing this weekend, the rest of the season and every season. This means that our drivers can continue to compete for the World Championship. However having been at the hearing today I do not accept that we deserved to be penalised in this way.

"Today's evidence given to the FIA by our drivers, engineers and staff clearly demonstrated that we did not use any leaked information to gain a competitive advantage.

"Much has been made in the press and at the hearing today of emails and text messages to and from our drivers. The World Motorsport Council 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 had not passed any confidential data to the team.

"The entire engineering team in excess of 140 people provided statements to the FIA affirming that they had never received or used the Ferrari information.

"We have never denied that the information from Ferrari was in the personal possession of one of our employees at his home. The issue is: was this information used by McLaren? This is not the case and has not been proven today.

"We are also continually asked if McLaren didn't use the information, what was the reason for Stepney and Coughlan collecting all this data about Ferrari? We can only speculate as neither Coughlan nor Stepney gave evidence at today's hearing, but we do know that they were both seeking employment with other teams, as already confirmed by both Honda and Toyota.

"There will be no issue for the 2008 season as we have not at any stage used any intellectual property of any other team.

"We have got the best drivers and the best car and we intend to win the World Championship."
 
The only thing need to happen now is, Ferrari getting a lot more luck & winning drivers championship aswell.

Dennis's words worth prety much the same as everyone else's words. We can only judge by the "butter", that's on top of the bread, what the bread was made of, we'll never know.
 
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ViperVX said:
Dennis's words worth prety much the same as everyone else's words. We can only judge by the "butter", that's on top of the bread, what the bread was made of, we'll never know.
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We'll know a bit more tomorrow:
ITV-F1 said:
The FIA has said that it will release more details of the evidence at the centre of the case tomorrow.
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ViperVX said:
Mclaren will lose over 200mil$ (100 penalty, another 100 - Fia TV bonuses for 1st place) , wonder if it will affect em in 2008?
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The $100 mil penalty is off set by whatever prize money they would have won. So let's say that McLaren places 1-2 for the rest of the season. They would've won the 100 FIA TV bonus, so that offsets the total 100 mil penalty. So on and so forth.


Though I notice a trend: Ferrari fans find this a just and acceptable punishment. Everyone else thinks this is too harsh and smells bad.

I can understand cutting points, and a reasonable fine; but to issue what is the largest fine ever levied in a case that is not very cut-and-dry seems to be a huge overreaction by the council. Disquallification should've only been levied if it had been proven that their car's design "borrowed" from Ferrari. The fact that the FIA/WMSC has not banned the use of McLaren's current car, is proof enough that this is not the case. Otherwise Ferrari wouldn't be "happy."

Who and at what time in McLaren were documents possessed is not something I think we can speculate very well on, and that is the issue.
 
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