[Troll]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

That guy isn't Alonso's engineer but Alonso's italian fisio, and that reaction came cause someone thought that italian guy was letting Alonso know about how much he could delay his pit stop.

Yes quite, Ron Dennis suspected that the physio was working with Alonso to block Hamilton. That's why he charged over to the guy and gave him a talking to. My point with this is that your story that "Alonso was told by his team to hold on," is clearly absolute rubbish. If Ron Dennis (who is the boss of Alonso's team) had instructed Alonso to wait or had heard, on his radio, discussions with Alonso's engineers telling him to wait, then Dennis would not have gone over to the physio and Alonso to reprimand them. The only explanation for Dennis' actions is that the team did NOT instruct Alonso to wait.

Now the problem for McLaren is that they knew that they risked losing points so when they went to the steward's meeting, they had to have some sort of story explaining what happened. Ron Dennis could not go to that meeting and tell the truth because he knew that the punishment for that was having his driver lose positions - just like Schumacher did at Monaco last year. So Dennis went along with one of the two different versions of events that Alonso had told - namely the radio discussion about tyres. The stewards said, "Fine, if he was discussing tyres over the radio, let's have a listen to the radio recordings." They found that McLaren's story wasn't supported by the evidence. At which point they decided that McLaren as a team had been dishonest and implicated themselves in Alonso's blocking and therefore they decided to punish the team as well. They were collaborating in rigging the outcome and bringing the sport into disrepute so they were sanctioned. If Dennis had gone to the meeting and said that Alonso had acted on his own, only Alonso would have been punished.

Originally Posted by angelmb 

Your comparison is not fair, neither true. Even when Alonso did it on purpose, there is not infringement of the rules.

It is an infringement of the rules and I quoted the rule for you. Here it is again:

31.7 Any driver taking part in any practice session who, in the opinion of the stewards, stops unnecessarily on the circuit or unnecessarily impedes another driver shall be subject to the penalties referred to in Article 31.6.

This is precisely the same rule that was used against Schumacher. Schumacher was held to have unnecessarily impeded Alonso at Monaco. Exactly the same circumstances only it was less obvious in Schumacher's case.

Alonso impeded Hamilton. That much is clear. The question then is whether, in the opinion of the stewards (whose finding is not subject to appeal) that impeding was unnecessary. It is completely irrelevant whether Alonso did it on purpose or not. All that is relevant is whether it was "necessary". The stewards found, having listened to McLaren's story, that it was unnecessary and I wholeheartedly agree. It was not NECESSARY for Alonso to block Hamilton while he talked about tyres. Do you think it would have been okay for Alonso to sit there discussing the dinner menu with the team? "I would like to request that we have fish for dinner tonight and I'm not moving until you promise me that there will be fish ... and chips ... and that creamy sauce my mama makes." Would that be necessary?

There was no time for the engineers to go back into the garage, get another set of tyres and put them on before sending Alonso off so talking to them for another 10 seconds wasn't going to change anything. It was a completely unnecessary discussion. One that he could have had with them during his out lap or when he got back from his qualifying lap. I remind you that there was obviously nothing wrong with those tyres as he went out and set the fastest lap of qualifying with them.

Originally Posted by angelmb 

Exactly, McLaren have always given equal opportunity policy to their drivers, Senna, Prost, Mika, David, Kimi, Juan Pablo could speak about it. E.G. there was a gentlemen agreement between Mika and David where the first guy at the first or second corner of the track would win the race when the Mac was clearly the best car on the track. None of them break such agreement, Mika was so superior to David, like Kimi was to Juan Pablo… it seems like Lewis did break it this weekend.

I don't know if you watched qualifying but I think it's clear what happened there. Alonso had Raikkonen just behind him on the out lap. Lewis knew that if he slowed down to let Alonso through, he would probably have to let Raikkonen through too and that would mess up his qualifying lap. Alonso knew this too.

Hamilton decided that the best thing to do would be to pull out a gap between Alonso and Raikkonen so that he could let Alonso by and still do a quick lap unimpeded. So he did fast first and second sectors expecting Alonso who had less fuel and should be quicker, to keep with him. Alonso decided not to follow and so when they came to the last sector, Alonso was far behind Hamilton. If you read what Hamilton said, he kept saying that he was surprised that Alonso had not kept up with him - meaning, "He was deliberately slowing down because he knew that I would be forced to let him through." What Alonso did is called sandbagging. He knew that the team would force Hamilton to pull over so he hung back keeping Kimi with him so that they would both pass Hamilton and mess up his lap. Hamilton obviously worked out the game and decided to disobey team orders. I'm not a Hamilton fan mostly because I don't know much about him but I do think that the problem he faced was being in a team with a whining ninny who constantly demanded that McLaren give him preferential treatment. Alonso sees himself as the number 1 driver and expects Hamilton to sacrifice his own championship for Alonso. Hamilton is winning the WDC and we're quite late into the championship. Hamilton should not have to sacrifice anything for Alonso. Hamilton had to draw the line somewhere and let the team and Alonso know that he is the leader of the WDC and he is not going to cave in to Alonso every time.

In any event, what Lewis did was to break team orders, which is not the same as breaking the rules.

Originally Posted by angelmb 

A spaniard FIA steward, Joaquim Verdegay read the resolution and he was unable to find a single mention for Alonso's punishment.

What nationality did you say he was again?

Originally Posted by angelmb 

is that a delayed punish due to the spy issue?

The spy issue is one that the FIA has with McLaren. Again, the FIA did not punish Alonso and McLaren - the Hungarian race stewards did. And there is no appeal against their finding. It's all there in the rules. I do feel sorry for you though being exposed to the Spanish press on this issue. Not even the British press are as biased as the Spanish press is! It's really unbelievable the way they are reporting on F1.

[angelmb]

While I agree that the image of Ron Dennis talking to Alonso's physiotherapist (that italian guy seemed to be yelling not guilty even before Ron approached him) and later (to Alonso) and Alonso refusing even to look at Ron's eyes drive me nuts and worries me, the rest is just subject to personal interpretation, what is black for you is white (or silver for that matter) for me.

Yes, I understand that steward being spaniard is not of help, but hey, the Italian Federation backed Ferrari on the spy issue, it seems a legit behavior, no one over here did the same for Alonso so I guess the media feel like they can be 'heroes for a weekend'

And don't worry, I don't read the media, spanish media doesn't have a clue about F1, this F1 Alonso thing is just a way to fill more pages and make more money from spanish sponsors like Santander and MM (Mutua Madrileña), it is like a fashion which is gonna to fade once Alonso is gone, then they will wonder again about the sucky soccer national team

Too bad tele5 the guys who have the rights to broadcast F1 are the most biased folks you can think about, they are not even bad pros, they are just Alonso fans who love to blame everything but Alonso and… Ferrari, the scuderia, that is, they have great fun giving Kimi and Massa some names… I guess they will match nirvana if Alonso goes to Ferrari

Last but not least, a good read for you all from somewhere at the internets…

Ron Dennis deserves to go on holiday. Come to think of it, most of the F1 circus will benefit from a few days of rest, so that they can return in Turkey in a fresher frame of mind with perhaps a little more perspective on what has been happening in recent months. It may not change Ferrari's determination to try and convince the world that McLaren are cheats; it may not change McLaren's conviction that Ferrari will do absolutely anything necessary to win; it may not alter the distaste that exists between the leading characters in this drama, but hopefully it will make them all think a little more and thus avoid knocking down the walls of the house in which they all have to live.
Sport is an odd world in that rivals on the field must also be able to work together off the field in order to protect the best interests of the sport. It is a contradiction that comes up whenever there is a serious dispute inside F1. What is key in avoiding this is to have a governing body that is always seen to be scrupulously fair and objective. The FIA is allowed to make mistakes - nobody is perfect - but it must be very careful not to be seen to always support one team. The federation is often viewed as being too close to Ferrari and against McLaren. FIA President Max Mosley does not get on with Dennis and likes to take pot shots at him in press conferences. The impression is not helped by the fact that the World Motor Sport Council features an FIA Deputy-President who used to be Ferrari's sporting director and remains on the Ferrari board; an Italian delegate who for 10 years enjoyed the right to put the Ferrari name on the watches he was producing; and Ferrari's F1 boss Jean Todt. This is not to suggest any impropriety, as both Todt and Marco Piccinini (the FIA Deputy President) stood down for the recent Stepneygate meeting, it is simply to point out that perceptions are vitally important given the complex relationships between the players.
The recent decision of the World Council not to punish McLaren over Stepneygate seemed a solid decision. Allowing a Ferrari appeal was similarly a fair thing to do, even if there is no obvious reason why an appeal would create a different result. This was what the federation is there to do.
Then came Hungary.
The details of why McLaren was punished in Hungary are still far too vague but it is necessary to get into detail to see why this is important.
During the first qualifying runs Lewis Hamilton took pole position by 0.352s. A big margin. It was clear that pole was going to be fought out between the two McLarens. Kimi Raikkonen, the only Ferrari in the session, was way behind. According to the F1 timing (hrs, mins, secs), Alonso's McLaren arrived at the team pit at 14:57.46. This meant that there were just over two and a quarter minutes remaining for Fernando to get to the start-finish line and start his final flying lap. He was told that he would be held for 20secs after the tyres had been changed, in order to have a clear run. This would allow the team to estimate where all the remaining cars would be in the final minutes of the session.
The tyres took six seconds and the lollipop then went up at 14.58.12 (on schedule). Alonso did not depart until 14.58.22 (10secs later). This meant that there was one minute and 38 secs remaining in the session.
Working on the times set by Fernando, who finished his pole lap at 15.01.18, one can calculate that a fast warm-up lap from the pit garage to the start-finish line was 1m38s. Hamilton needed six seconds to have his tyres changed and so he departed the pit at 14.58.28 and thus did not have enough time to get to the start-finish line in time.
When the session ended both men went straight to the Media Centre where Fernando said that during the final pit stop "we didn't lose anything" and added that: "I am always monitoring the pit stop by the radio and they do the calculations. They find the gaps and I just drive the car. I am always ready to go. As soon as they put on the tyres I go where I have to go."
The problem was that in this case, he did not go.
The stewards said that Alonso explained his delay as having been caused because "he was enquiring as to whether the correct set of tyres had been fitted to the car" and it was ascertained that it was impossible to have done this prior to that "because the countdown was being given to him".
The stewards rejected this argument.
When one does the sums, without the delay caused by Alonso, there seems to be nothing wrong with what McLaren did.
If Alonso had gone when the lollipop went up at 14.58.12, Hamilton would have arrived, spent six seconds changing his tyres and would have been on his way at 14.58.18, there being no time left by then to worry about track position. That would have meant that he had 1m42s left to do what Alonso had done in 1m38s. In other words he would most likely have made it to the start-finish line and been able to start his last lap. He would even have had a few seconds in hand.
The McLaren statement following the team's penalty, said that Alonso's 20-sec hold did not impede Lewis. The figures bear this out. The team did confirm that Alonso had expressed "concerns" about the tyres, and said that this "undoubtedly contributed to the delay in Fernando's ultimate departure". To explain is not to condone and McLaren is hardly going to criticise its own driver in a press statement, particularly at a time when it is really trying hard to make Alonso feel at home and convince him that the team is giving both drivers equal opportunities. Lewis Hamilton did not help matters by not slowing to let Alonso pass him at the start of Q3. He said that it was his intention to do that and for whatever reason (perhaps because his car was slower) Fernando could not keep up and indeed had Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari behind him. Hamilton reasoned, logically, that pulling over and allowing Alonso to pass might compromise his own chances if Raikkonen took advantage of that situation and scrambled ahead as well. Inevitably some people in the team were upset about this, not least Alonso and his engineers because they felt they had been disadvantaged, and Ron Dennis, because he felt he had been disobeyed and because he knew that it would upset Alonso.
The question is whether or not the team (or members of the team working independently of the senior team management) then colluded with Alonso to punish Hamilton by depriving him of a chance to go for pole position. The decision presented by the FIA Stewards hints at this but does not offer any detail and thus to some the harshness of the penalty seems exaggerated. Not just in terms of the actual penalty but also in the perceptions it has created. The FIA says that it understands the media frenzy which surrounds the sport, but insists that this will have no effect on sporting decisions made by the stewards.
A break will give everyone the chance to stop and think.
It will also, hopefully, give some of the media the chance to cool their headlines and think a little more about what is being written.
This is the best season for of Formula 1 for many a year and there are many in the F1 circus who find it painful that all the positive things are being buried beneath the bad feeling that the Stepneygate Affair and now the Hungarian pitlane adventure have generated.
McLaren's troubles in Hungary may not seem related to Stepneygate but it is all part of the same struggle, at least in the mind of McLaren boss Ron Dennis. He sees himself as the last bastion of old-fashioned sportsmanship in an increasingly vicious commercial world.
The reason that he is supported so passionately by those who know him well is that they know that he is honest and they share his view that the sport must be fair.
If not, there is no point in being involved.

[Troll]

Yowsers, it turns out the whole McLaren team was in on the act including Alonso and De la Rosa! Looks like Hamilton is perhaps the only honest one among them! Email between them discussing confidential Ferrari information and how McLaren was copying wings, braking systems, inflation techniques! Drivers asking for information on Ferrari's weight distribution and getting it back. Drivers discussing how McLaren knew when Ferrari's cars would be pitting. Unbelievable.

So McLaren gets no constructors points for this year and they get a $100m fine. That's gotta hurt although why Fernando Alonso isn't disqualified I don't know. No Formula 1 driver has ever been proven to have cheated so blatantly.

So, McLaren fans among us, after the moral stands you've taken on far more minor incidents of cheating, are you burning your paraphenalia and cancelling your membership of the fan club?

[Dakarʒ]

I just saw this on another forum. I don't follow F1 like I used to but wow. Could someone explain to me how the they were discovered to be cheating. I heard a book was discovered in a McLaren employees home, but I don't understand by whom.

Still absolutely shocking.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

Could someone explain to me how the they were discovered to be cheating. I heard a book was discovered in a McLaren employees home, but I don't understand by whom.

The wife of the McLaren chief designer went to a copy shop to have 800 pages of Ferrari documents transfered to CD. The copy shop employee informed Ferrari about this.

[Dakarʒ]

Ahahaha!

Thanks TETENAL

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by Troll 

So, McLaren fans among us, after the moral stands you've taken on far more minor incidents of cheating, are you burning your paraphenalia and cancelling your membership of the fan club?

haha you wish it's not 'fan club', it's being official team member, how dare you to say I am not proud of it just cause an freaking italian watchmaker cried until the FIAt gave his beloved team the 2007 Championship??

Please, don't act like a 'I have never heard of F1 until today' journalist… would you bet that any info McLaren 'could' have had about the reds would be also in another teams hands?, everyone -you included if I don't recall wrong- are telling, 'oh spy game… makes sense, McLaren didn't suffer the move from Michelin to Bs…' so what about BMW Sauber?? I guess not all teams were that linked to Michelin like Renault did

I wonder you have forgotten about 'certain' team paying for Renault's engine blueprints. Actually it was not one but two teams, one since they needed to move from its 'broom broom' sucky V12 living in the past and the another one due to its 'we are in F1 to stay and to win' statement was translated to 'please could the cars start the race on reverse so ours are one & two' I know you can name them.

Anyway, that's our 'doesn't matter neither count' opinion, you could have read by now that everyone but Ferrari -obviously- finds the sanction disproportionate… cause they are in the game and really know how it goes…

Last but not least, if I was Ferrari I would be really ashamed if 'someone' was copying to me and actually beats me. You can see how McLaren no longer uses the horns while BMW -who copied them from McLaren- still needs them… maybe cause the car looks much better with the horns…

I wish Apple had this kind of justice when they sued MS over Windows UI… or the F1 itself when Ferrari was disqualified in the second to last race of 1999 giving the championship to Mika and McLaren over Ferrari folks and then the FIAt found appropriate 'nothing happened here today, Ferrari car illegal what?' we still have one race to know the champions, let's the guys fight on the track… which is people want and pay for…

That's of course the reason the FIAt didn't punish the drivers… who the hell was gonna to watch live TV then?, that is all matter for them, right?, but if they appeal they have been advised that the drivers could also get punished… sort of 'you better don't appeal'… Ironically the fine is much like what McLaren gets from TV rights, but that's now gone, like the money teams get by scoring points at the Constructors Champion… what's next, obviously once they study the MP4-22 at the end of the season they are gonna to declare it illegal to race next year

So all in all, I wonder if Alonso is wearing Millionarie denim (you know buying one pair makes Flavio 1000€ richer) yet ready to be back to Flavio's land since Renault was going to announce its 2008 drivers line up last week, but they didn't do it… huh? or are they (the still Marlboro sponsored team against euro normative) gonna fire 'the frog in the jumper'? cause Luca di M. can't stop yelling how much he likes Alonso and spanish media is all of sudden telling how a true Ferrari driver Alonso is while Massa and Kimi just don't fit there, Massa is anything special and Kimi, well, the guy is fast but it is bad luck's definition and most important, he speaks too calmed to be italian and by today standards that makes him not cool, cause you have the YELL like every spaniard journalist to get noticed and fool people as if you were any special. When they told about the news they make it clear: "…as for Alonso which being honest is all we care about…" and "Alonso's friends punished!!" where 'friends' is pure sarcasm… can you imagine that?, a spanish bull all over the Ferrari scudo? that's gonna give 'toro rosso' a rin for its money

I wonder… are gonna spaniards still go to the upcoming races with banners attacking-blaming Ron Dennis asking for equality between Fernando and Lewis?, talk about being biased by the (spanish) media

Enough, I want to enjoy Spa, but if Maranello's cars doesn't perform that good the weekend, don't blame McLaren, that's me, much like past weekend at Ferrari's land… now that hurts.

Damnit… this Keyboard Update keeps adding a 't' letter to certain words accidentally, gonna to sue them cause they are also the 'Macs' !!

[Troll]

I'll take that as a no then! Nothing in the history of F1 compares to this imho. Alonso and McLaren have been bust cheating on a scale never before seen in F1 and rarely seen in any sport.

When you refer to the "Maranello cars" do you mean the Silver ones or the Red ones?

[angelmb]

that's easy to guess dude… (hint)



meh… instead of celebrating F1 coming back to the awesome Spa we are wasting our time talking about politics… nobody cared to talk about not even the Monza race itself but how beautiful the McLaren flat rear wing was -as opposed to the one from the tipi astuti who were wondering about why the Macs' top speed was clearly superior to their beasts all the weekend cause the previous week Monza test had to prove worthless since the McLaren were supposed to be on a light fuel load haha your wish Massa- so after all this stuff I have had enough… as it has been previously stated by myself I am NOT a driver(s) fan, drivers are today here and tomorrow there -hello Kimi-, I back my team, so if they want my team to vanish I am gonna vanish with him…

Have fun, which is what matters… not really. Nowadays F1 is like a rat race, and the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

[Troll]

Not politics, that's for the other forum. We're talking about cheating. What I find ironic is how Alonso was so incensed with Schumacher calling him a cheat for stopping at Monaco and then a few months later, Alonso is part of a team that is knowingly stealing technology and information from Ferrari. And how certain McLaren fans have thrown accusations around left, right and center about other teams cheating when they themselves have been shown to be the biggest cheats of the bunch.

Ron Dennis simply has to go though. He must retire. There is no other way for the team to carry on.

Anyway, for Spa, my money is on one of the Ferraris winning - either the silver one or the red one.

[Troll]

Ouch. Transcripts of the meeting are out and it turns out that it was Alonso that brought the whole McLaren team down. After the Hungary incident, he apparently threatened to send copies of his emails to Max Mosley. Ron Dennis decided he had no choice but to do that himself. Apparently they haven't spoken to each other since Hungary.

Since Alonso won the first world championship, he's been getting less and less likable in my books. Whining the whole time like the world owes him something. His arrogance apparently has no bounds as this case shows. This just seals it for me. Frankly, given his involvement in this affair, I'd quite happily see them ban him for the rest of the season.

[cenutrio]

Man get you facts together, the top guys in ML knew about the Ferrari leak and were aware of thestolen data. Or do you think that FA knows how to program the ML simulator to try all the Ferrari info on their car.

This is the reason why FIA has penalized ML. Alonso has been in ML for months and the british media is pretty much accusing him of ML not winning the F1 since 1999.

Cheating is such a child concept. Alonso arrived to ML early this year, the chief engineer tells him he is got the complete Ferrari dossier on how their car was designed and what is supposed FA to do? scream and panic, oh my God these ML-Mercedes guys are cheaters?

No, you use the data ML-Mercedes has and make the best use of it. Period.

FIA got ML-Mercedes fined because this was industrial espionage at all levels.

RD has been covering his ass since then, I would love to check the in/out email folder of LH. Just to see if he told FIA the truth.

[angelmb]

cenutrio, dude, I hope you don't get your facts exclusively from spanish media…

I am not talking about Alonso not deserving being a two times world-championship, I am talking about what surrounds Alonso… you only have to hear Lauda (which I guess gets more credibility than spanish fan-media all together) talking that if Prost was a mad dog, Alonso is even worse…

To summarize it, under spanish media umbrella, Alonso is GOD, he is always right, and Ron Dennis is a f***ing as***le. Anybody surprise though, thanks to Alonso performance the media saw the light letting them know how freaking great F1 was… so there is no way you can get fair facts from spanish media.

So Fernando bye bye, cause you are leaving right?, I wonder if you recovering your old hair style as opposed to the new look you got once arrive at McLaren is a good indication that you are done with McLaren… I hope the team who wanna get your services as soon as next year had to pay McLaren at least those $100.000.000… it would be freaking ironic if the team was this --> <-- 'red'

[ajprice]

Alonso has given more signals than a traffic light factory that he doesn't want to be at McLaren.

Off the top of my head -
He didn't turn up in Paris for the court ruling, DLR and Hamilton did.
Before Paris, he stated he was not interested in the constructor championship, only the drivers title.
Coming back from the 3 week break between races with a beard, knowing that Dennis likes everybody clean shaven, and like angelmb said, he's growing the long hair back.
His comment a few races ago that he is solely responsible for the 6/10 sec of speed has brought to the car this year, ignoring the 1000 people who work for McLaren.
Running LH wide on the first lap at Spa, he is only there in McLaren to get his 3rd drivers title, and couldn't give a crap about his teammate, or his team. Would Dennis have had the same "Oh thats racing for you" brave face if he had run LH into the gravel and ended his race, or ran him into a barrier?

I'm not saying this as a pro McLaren or pro Hamilton, in previous years I've pretty much thought of McLaren as the grey, boring, emotionless team on the grid, there as a business. And Hamilton has had some average races, made some strange decisions in a race (changing to slicks early in the German rainstorm, and losing a bucket of time because of it).

Maybe this is a very twisted way of Ferrari getting Alonso next year. Dennis has said Alonso is technically on a 3 year contract but he's free to leave if he wants. He won't be going to go to Toyota, no matter how much money they throw at him to be there, because Toyota aint gonna win a championship any time soon. If he was to go to another team, Alonso's only preference would be a red car, because BMW (the 3rd best team this year) are keeping their drivers for 2008, any other team would be below him in his own opinion.

So, if Alonso goes to Ferrari next year, does he replace Raikkonen or Massa?

[Troll]

Centurio, I agree with you that the whole team was cheating, but it doesn't look like the FIA would ever have figured that out if those emails hadn't been sent to them. And the emails were only sent to them because Alonso decided he would be a tattle tale. And Alonso only threatened to reveal them because he wanted to get McLaren to put in place team orders (with Alonso at number 1). And he only thought that he deserved to be number 1, because he is an arrogant tosser. As AJP said, Alonso isn't a team player and F1 is a team sport. He's a traitor.

I don't think Ferrari will take him. I doubt they want him there after what he did. I think Ferrari have good drivers already. The only place I can see Alonso going is back to Renault.

[ajprice]

Originally Posted by Troll 

The only place I can see Alonso going is back to Renault.

And risk getting his ass kicked by Kovolainen, after a year with LH ?

[TETENAL]

The Vettel-crash:

F1 Crash Hamilton Webber Vettel FIA Beweis - MyVideo

[Peter]

Great race. Really intense.
I thought Raikkonen deserved it so much. Great guy, really pleased for him.

[angelmb]

Yeah, congrats to Iceman, at least he wasn't crying all the damn season like other guys…

So a year later I wasn't that wrong about all the Ferrari wining is a Michael thing b*llsh*t.

[angelmb]

and neither I was about alonsomania not fitting into McLaren… actually McLaren has to be one of the most hated names here in Spain, people is all over cheering on Hamilton not winning the championship… damnit I better hide all my McLaren stuff, thanks God I drive a Renault

[stevesnj]

seems fate lies with Ferrari and justice after all has been delt to McLaren for spying and have lost the Constructor and Drivers Championship. They deserved to lose it.

[ajprice]

One final fling for the season to go out on - Link

BMW and Williams fuel was cooler than regulations allow (regs = 10 degrees less than ambient temp, cars were between 12 and 14 degrees below). FIA have given no penalty, McLaren are appealing. BMW and Williams cars were 4th, 5th and 6th, Hamilton was 7th. If the 3 cars get withdrawn/diqualified, Hamilton comes 4th, and wins the championship. Actual chances of this happening are slimmer than Kate Moss on laxatives, but after this season, anything goes! lol.

BTW: Cooler fuel = denser fuel = more fuel in a tank + faster refuelling.

[fhoubi]

Originally Posted by stevesnj 

seems fate lies with Ferrari and justice after all has been delt to McLaren for spying and have lost the Constructor and Drivers Championship. They deserved to lose it.

Bollocks. Have you any idea how much teams observe and analyze legally? By sound recordings to dertemine engine revs or irregularies f.e. flexing body parts/wings , timing all pitstops (fuel load), making pictures when a car is in a crane, to figure out the center of gravity. Bet you having Lewis on the Nurburgring still sitting in a non-destroyed car while lifting out of the gravel was a blessing for all other teams... etc. etc.

[ajprice]

Bye bye Fernando

Alonso and McLaren have officially parted company. Where Alonso goes, and who replaces him at McLaren, it yet to be announced. Rumour is that FA slums it for a year at Renault/Red Bull/Williams, or maybe goes to look after the garden for a year, and then goes to Ferrari for 2009.

[angelmb]

bye bye hypocrite moron, how right I was by 2005 F1 thread when I stated than McLaren & 'Alonsomania' wouldn't fit ever… you (& friends) don't have what it takes to be a McLaren driver, that's not only about skills, you lack any style, manners and what not… you better try to learn something from DLR, OK?

Oh, and we are kind of entering into 2008 F1 Thread yet, huh ajprice?

[ajprice]

Looks at date, notes that it isn't 2008 yet...

[angelmb]

I mean… Alonso linked to McLaren is so 2007