Club Arnage

Does anyone else think it's strange thay things perpetually go Ferrari's way?

it's all very sad, as one commentator said last week "they all deserve one another". 
Its a very sad day :-[

This is the pinnacle of the sport?
Fax

Does anyone else think it's strange thay things perpetually go Ferrari's way?

PRESS INFORMATION - STATEMENT FROM RON DENNIS - 13 March 2007


Paris, France, Thursday 13th September 2007

“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.”

- ENDS -

So Ferrari are now top in the constructors championship, 57 points clear of BMW-Sauber, what a hollow victory.  Hardly a ringing endorsement of their technical prowess is it.

Some or all of the above must go on all the time I'd think

Wouldn't it be great if your name was say, ooh I dunno...William Thomas Franklin for instance, and you could sign all your little notes and letters "WTF".
And if you were a bit excited - WTF!!
H

Strange that, just discussing at work this morning - is there actually an example of Ferrari being penalised by the FIA ????

“Furthermore, the team will pay a fine equal to $100m, less the FOM income lost as a result of the points deduction."  So it will still be big, but not $100m.

So, if I understand it correctly, only possession of the documents is a reason for the penalty. That's an interesting thought: apparently you can get a team into trouble easily, by simply sending them the documents. When the possession is proven, they're out of competition.

Raikkonen may feel justifiably aggrieved that, in the event that Alonso or Hamilton wins the title, a probable world title has been stolen from him - the record-books only remember the winner after all.

No doubt the lawyers will be very busy over the winter.

They would have been better advised to sack stepney and stop the flow of info....

....or start feeding them duff info to halt their progress.... ::)

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo

Ferrari’s difficulties gave McLaren a clear run at victory in the rain-drenched race, with Lewis Hamilton ultimately coming out on top and moving to the brink of the world championship.

But the Ferrari president has reiterated his belief that a title victory for the Briton would be tainted by the espionage saga.

“I still think that in the spying affair it was a serious mistake not to disqualify the McLaren drivers as well [as the team],” Montezemolo said.

“It means that if Hamilton were to win the title he will win it partly thanks to Ferrari, because there is a lot of Ferrari in his car.”

and apparently not a single person on the grid pointed it to them that they were starting the race on the incorrect tyres.  I wonder why that might be?

Get rid of mosely

Hamilton's driving to be investigated
Thursday, 04, October, 2007, 12:07 
 
 
Lewis Hamilton is facing a stewards' investigation into his driving while under the safety car in the Japanese Grand Prix.

The officials are understood to be considering whether Hamilton could have contributed to the collision between Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel that took the duo out of second and third places during the second caution period at Fuji.

"New evidence has been brought to the stewards' attention and they are currently investigating the matter," an FIA spokesman told autosport.com.

Vettel said at the time that he had hit Webber while distracted by Hamilton slowing unexpectedly.

“I was exiting turn 13 and looking at Lewis, because all of a sudden he seemed to slow down really much and I thought he had a problem at that stage," Vettel told ITV Sport's Louise Goodman in Japan.

“And by the time I was looking back to the front I was already crashing into Mark’s rear end.”

In today's pre-event press conference at Shanghai, Webber – who had originally pinned the blame for the crash firmly on Vettel – also suggested that Hamilton had been accelerating and braking unexpectedly behind the safety car.

"It definitely contributed to Sebastian hitting me up the back that we were confused at what the other car was doing because he wasn’t doing what you are supposed to do," Webber said.


"I think he did a s*** job behind the safety car.


"He spoke in the drivers' briefing about how good a job he was going to do and then he did the job the opposite way – so we know for next time, it's no problem."


However after winning at Fuji, Hamilton said it had been necessary to brake sharply because of the braking material McLaren had been using – and suggested it was Webber whose driving had been erratic.

"We just needed to keep the heat in the brakes," he said.

"I was running quite a hard compound of brakes, so if I did light braking, I would have glazed the brakes.

"So I was making sure there was a little bit of a gap, maximising the gap that you're allowed and [using] it to my benefit.

"It was tough because Mark behind me was just too close, and all of a sudden he braked really hard and I don't know what happened – someone ran into him.

"I was constantly on the radio to my engineers to tell the Red Bull team to get Mark to make a little more of a gap because I couldn't go any faster because the pace car was in front of me.


"So I was trying to keep the distance with him and then I'd move over because I couldn't see Mark and then he'd just appear alongside me, so he kept outbraking himself.


"I felt something was going to happen, and I guess my instincts told me right."
 

Mosley has had his way as he did at the debacle of the US GP a few years ago.

being the son of a 'blackshirt'.

Was Jean Todt a bit paranoid about identity theft?

His fingers and thumb tips were taped up ???

Did you notice that the 2 Ferrari's didn't have the white stripe on their left front tyres? Given that the stripe is in the groove and there seemed to be quite a bit of tread left it seemed strange that no white at all  was visible. Brundell was saying, that due to the nature of the track, left front tyres degrade a lot faster that the right.
 I didn't notice it when they first changed to dry tyres and only picked up on it from a later in car shot.

Were Ferrari running with 2 different rubber compounds to counteract the wear on the left?
If they were is it legal?

Must check it out on the rerun.

Apologies if I've missed earlier comment on this - but I'm sure they mentioned the Spyker team is being sold to an Indian businessman. Rather a short lived life in F1 wasn't it...

Hamilton 'may be negative for F1'  
 
Hamilton has been a phenomenon in his first season in F1
Motorsport boss Max Mosley has said Lewis Hamilton could have a negative effect on Formula One if he is as successful next year as he was in 2007.
"If he does the same thing next season as he's done this season, it will certainly have a big effect," he said.

"It will start to be negative because we'll get the Schumacher effect where people start writing to me saying can't you do something to slow him down."

Mosley added that Hamilton's role in revitalising F1 had been exaggerated.

 606: DEBATE
What do you think of Mosley's remarks? 
"He has certainly helped enormously in the UK," said Mosley, the president of governing body the FIA, in an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk programme.

"He's also got a lot of interest worldwide because he's come manifestly not from a rich background. He's just made it.

"There is always somebody new. If it wasn't him it would be either [Nico] Rosberg or [Robert] Kubica or one of the other new stars, a [Sebastian] Vettel, would suddenly be the big one.

 
It would be surprising if Hamilton didn't know something of what was going on [in spy-gate], but I've got absolutely no evidence that he had

Max Mosley (above)
"So I think there is a tendency to exaggerate the importance of Lewis Hamilton."

Mosley added that it was "very unlikely" that Hamilton would be installed as champion following a hearing next month into the results of the season-closing Brazilian Grand Prix.

McLaren have appealed against the decision not to punish the Williams and BMW Sauber teams for having fuel that was too cold.

If McLaren are successful in having their three points-scoring drivers excluded, Hamilton could be moved up in the results to fourth, giving him enough points to displace Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen as world champion.

But Mosley said: "It could happen, absolutely, because this will go to a court of appeal.

"It consists of very senior lawyers who are not connected with any of the countries involved in the events, so not Britain, not Italy and so on. It's an independent court. It can decide.

"That said, it's very unlikely, because even if they excluded those cars they are not obliged to reclassify Hamilton. There's absolutely no need, if they don't wish to, to change the position that Hamilton was in."

Mosley described the 2007 season as "very positive, on the whole", despite the controversies that plagued the sport, because "although the behind-the-scenes stuff was annoying for us and the people concerned, for the public it really adds to the general interest".

 
There was a thrilling three-way title climax this season
One of those controversies was the "spy-gate" saga, when Hamilton's McLaren team were fined $100m (£49.2m) and thrown out of the constructors' championship after being found guilty of possessing confidential Ferrari technical information.

Mosley said McLaren's 2008 car would be closely scrutinised by the FIA to ensure the team had not included any Ferrari ideas on it.

"That [Ferrari data] was in the hands of the chief designer at precisely the moment he was designing the 2008 McLaren," Mosley said.

"The difficulty we have is that you're not going to find on the McLaren a part that was designed by Ferrari.

"What you may find are ideas and at this level of technology at this level of motorsport, if the idea is given to the chief designer he will make a component utilising that idea which bears no relation at all to the component perhaps being used by the other car.

"So we will be looking for the ideas. The investigation will be thorough, it will use outside experts and we will do everything we possibly can to make sure that either of the McLarens has no element of Ferrari intellectual property in it or if it does we will then have to consider taking some sort of action.

"That would not necessarily be preventing them from running. It would be more likely that they would be given a negative point allocation.

"Finding something will not be easy. On the other hand, there are sources we are going to deploy who will give us as good a chance as its possible to have to find it."

Asked if he thought Hamilton had known more about the Ferrari information being in McLaren's possession than has come out in public, Mosley said: "He's not a known quantity to me.

"It would be surprising if he didn't know something of what was going on, but I've got absolutely no evidence that he had. On that basis it would be wrong of me to suggest that he had."

 

big girls blouse, **ck off and good riddance, with a bit of luck no team will won't to sign up the bloody whining Pedro.  Hope his other Spanish bum chum goes with him as well.

Hi Andy, I don't loose it that often, well not a lot and certainly not as much as I use too, blame the drugs.

The main reason that I'm annoyed with Sancho Panza is that he was involved with Alonso with the so called 'spy scandal' he and Don Quixote were the ones texting and chatting with Stepney and co.

Irrational I know, but there you are.

How is it over your way?

I'm out with 22 chums tonight down the pub and a mass curry afterwards!!

Hasn't Todt been moved as well?

Mario Andretti said that in the pitlane at Zolder in 1978 they had to pull a very illustrious designer right out from under their car.