The FIA v Damon Hill

[flemke]

It seems to take very little these days to impel the FIA to attempt to defend the indefensible: itself.

The following (from www.autosport.com) is today's exchange between a world champion and a bunch of politicians:



Hill: latest spy saga could damage F1

By Jonathan Noble Friday, November 9th 2007, 09:47 GMT


Former world champion Damon Hill fears that the latest development in Formula One's spy saga, with Renault being summoned to appear before an FIA hearing, could damage the sport.

Renault will have to attend a hearing of the World Motor Sport Council next month to answer charges that they had in their possession intellectual property belonging to McLaren.

On the back of the controversy surrounding McLaren's own spy trial, which ended in them being handed a $100 million (USD) fine and exclusion from the constructors' championship, Hill feels the latest matter could be negative if people feel that justice is not being handed out evenly.

"Why were Ferrari just given a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again after winning the first race with a device [a flexible floor] that was illegal?" Hill told The Daily Telegraph on Friday. "This brings about a lot of the problems relating to justice and consistency.

"In this country we are quite sophisticated sport and political spectators. If things don't stack up, and continue to fly in the face of what we regard as being just and fair, then the danger is people will just walk away. It's a problem that has existed for a long time in this sport, not knowing whether to believe things or not.

"I'm not a lone voice here. There are a lot of people who love this sport and have got a lot out of it, who want it to be a healthy sport and to attract people to it. When there are episodes like we had in the last season our hearts sink because we think that they're not doing it any good.

"Last season was the best in F1 for a long time, most notably because there were four drivers who could have been world champion. That brought about a massive amount of interest in the sport for the right reasons. It did not need any more controversy or sideshows."

Hill says he still does not understand certain aspects of why McLaren were treated so harshly.

"I would like to understand how the Ferrari-Toyota case [former Ferrari engineers in the employ of Toyota guilty of industrial espionage], which ended in court, did not lead to the same outcome as the Ferrari-McLaren case? Why was there no punishment of the team [Toyota]?" Hill explained.

"There was an uncomfortable feeling that there was something more to the McLaren outcome than the issue being investigated. The way that justice was meted out raised some questions about the way the FIA handle these breaches.

"If breaches occur then those things should be investigated and dealt with sensibly and appropriately. But in that case there were lots of questions about what really happened that went unanswered."

The FIA did not act on the Toyota spy saga because there was no complaint from a rival team. Ferrari informed the FIA about McLaren's possession of their documents earlier this year, while McLaren notified the FIA about Renault having their own information.



Hill's forthrightness and indifference to intimidation speak for themselves.

The reply:



FIA hits back at Hill's claims

By Jonathan Noble Friday, November 9th 2007, 17:14 GMT


Motor racing's governing body has hit back at Damon Hill's claims that the latest spy controversy could prove damaging for Formula One.

Hill told The Daily Telegraph this morning that he feared F1 could suffer if it was felt the FIA did not treat Renault in the same manner as McLaren over the spying matter.

The former world champion cited his concerns on the back of what he felt were inconsistencies in the governance of the sport in the past.

He said he did not understand why Ferrari were allowed to race with a questionable floor design at the Australian Grand Prix, or why Toyota were not punished over their involvement in a spying controversy several years ago.

"In this country we are quite sophisticated sport and political spectators," Hill said. "If things don't stack up, and continue to fly in the face of what we regard as being just and fair, then the danger is people will just walk away.

"It's a problem that has existed for a long time in this sport, not knowing whether to believe things or not."

Hill's comments have prompted a critical response from the FIA, however, which feels that Hill's criticisms are unfounded and not based on the truth.

An FIA spokesman told autosport.com: "The FIA would not normally respond to the comments attributed to Damon Hill but unfortunately they have appeared in various news reports as statements of fact.

"The FIA would not take issue with the expression of informed opinion but regrettably these latest comments are based on a fundamental misunderstanding not only of the facts but also the rules of F1."

Explaining what happened with the Ferrari floor, which Hill suggested had been 'illegal', the FIA spokesman said: "This device fully satisfied the tests which were in place up to and including the Australian Grand Prix. It was therefore completely legal at that event.

"On learning how the device functioned, the FIA concluded that although it complied with the letter of the rules, it was outside the spirit. Ferrari were therefore asked to modify it as were McLaren and Red Bull who were running similar devices.

"The Renault mass damper in 2006 was eliminated in the same way as were the 'wide' Michelin tyres in 2005. In the latter cases, the FIA was criticised for insisting on change rather than for failure to exclude cars."

And after Hill questioned why Toyota had not faced investigation over the fact that some of their employees had used Ferrari information, the spokesman explained: "Only if a dispute between teams involves something which affects a motor sport competition can, or should, the FIA become involved.

"It cannot and will not attempt to substitute itself for the ordinary courts or seek to supervise all aspects of teams' conduct. A moment's reflection will show why this has to be the case.

"The FIA has received no complaint and has no reason to believe that anything which took place between Ferrari and Toyota falls within its competence."



The complete lack of balance and graciousness speaks for itself.

[flemke]

35secToNuvolari said:

flemke said:

Ferrari were therefore asked to modify it as were McLaren and Red Bull who were running similar devices.

No comment?

I presume that today's FIA statement was made, or penned, by its President. The statement has as much intellectual credibility as one of Gordon Brown's budget calculations.

As Andyps points out, McLaren would hardly have queried the FIA about a device that they thought was illegal if they themselves were using the same thing.
That is self-evident, although it appears that the author of the FIA statement was hoping that the public would be gullible enough to believe the opposite.
We don't know precisely to what the statement is referring; one suspects that it was intended as another three-card monte(zemelo) trick: make a fuss over here whilst hiding the face card over there.

At the second hearing, there was a similar spurious accusation raised, suggesting that because McLaren too were required to change their floor, that must mean that it had been as illegal as Ferrari's had been. The witness who was challenged about this was Paddy Lowe, who, unlike his two interrogators Mosley and Tozzi, actually understood the engineering issues involved. Lowe would not be bullied by the professional barristers, dealt with the matter lucidly, and made clear the critical difference between what Ferrari had done and what McLaren had done.



Max MOSLEY: I do not think that anyone on the World Council would seriously consider that the Ferrari device was illegal at the time, any more than the Renault mass damper before it was eliminated.

Nigel TOZZI: I am very grateful for that. It was important that this be clear, as these proceedings are apparently going to be made public. McLaren has repeatedly asserted, wrongly, that the Ferrari car was illegal, and it is appropriate that the world knows that it was not.

Patrick LOWE: I find that an extraordinary positioned: that something should be only illegal when it is clarified to be so.

Nigel TOZZI: Mr Lowe may find that extraordinary. You have said what you have said, so it is on the record.

Mr Lowe, what about the interesting question about the McLaren car? You tell us, in Paragraph 26, that when the testing was changed for the Spanish Grand Prix, the concept of McLaren's front floor attachment remained unchanged. Did the detail remain unchanged, Mr Lowe?

Patrick LOWE: The stiffness required by the test was increased.

Nigel TOZZI: You were using buckling stay, were you not?

Patrick LOWE: You clearly have not read my statement.

Nigel TOZZI: Oh, I have read it.

Patrick LOWE: That means you do not believe my statement, where I say that we did not use a buckling stay.

Nigel TOZZI: I have a series of photos - a very interesting series of photos - of your car, which show buckling stay, Mr Lowe.

Patrick LOWE: That is what you assume to be a buckling stay, but you fail to understand the behaviour it has.

Max MOSLEY: Can you help us, because I do not understand and perhaps others do not. If it is not a buckling stay, what is the proper description.

Patrick LOWE: It is a pre-buckled stay. It is already in the buckling mode before the start.

Buckling implies that it is stiff initially, then buckles. This means it would be very rigid at the start, then very soft, which would cynically exploit the behaviours in Article 3.17.

Nigel TOZZI: Your suggestion is that nothing on the pre-buckled stay was changed following the change of test by the FIA.

Patrick LOWE: I did not say that nothing was changed; I said that the concept remained the same. The characteristics were changed, because the stiffness requirement in 3.17 were changed.

Nigel TOZZI: Exactly. When I asked whether the detail had changed, I thought you said no.

Patrick LOWE: I said yes.

Nigel TOZZI: In other words, when the rule changed, it was not only Ferrari that had to change its car; McLaren did too.

Patrick LOWE: We changed the detail, as I stated a minute ago, but we did not change the concept.

Nigel TOZZI: It is the pot calling the kettle black.

Patrick LOWE: Those are your own words, and I think you know how you arrived at them.

[flemke]

rubystone said:

FWIW I think that the FIA is correct in the way it dealt with the illegal floor. Ferrari's interpretation of the regulation was to build a floor that passed the deflection test as specified in the regulations. To my mind, that's no different to building any component in such a way that it "just" passes the regulator's defined tests. As I understood it, BMW also modifed their floor, perhaps the FIA made an error in quoting McLaren as having had to revisit their floor, or were they indeed too running a floor that would have failed the revised deflection test?

I would have to disagree, my friend, although I did not appreciate the argument until I had thought for a while about Lowe's testimony at the second hearing.

Rule 3.15 says that you may not have any moving aerodynamic parts, etc. That is the overarching principle that must be applied to the car.

Rule 3.17.4 gives a specific exception, which is 5mm at 500N.

If there were no 3.15, then you could say that, so long as you passed the test at 500N, anything else was fair game. Because of what 3.15 says, however, nothing else is fair game - unless there is a specific exception.
There was an exception of 5mm at 500N. There was no exception for higher forces.

[flemke]

rubystone said:

flemke said:

[
I would have to disagree, my friend, although I did not appreciate the argument until I had thought for a while about Lowe's testimony at the second hearing.

Rule 3.15 says that you may not have any moving aerodynamic parts, etc. That is the overarching principle that must be applied to the car.

Rule 3.17.4 gives a specific exception, which is 5mm at 500N.

If there were no 3.15, then you could say that, so long as you passed the test at 500N, anything else was fair game. Because of what 3.15 says, however, nothing else is fair game - unless there is a specific exception.
There was an exception of 5mm at 500N. There was no exception for higher forces.

Rule 3.15 has been used several times to nullify developments that give rise to an interpretation of that rule. Wasn't the Mass Damper rejected on the basis that it was a moveable aero device. Even McLaren's Bridge Wing was reviewed under this regulation but found not to move more than might be expected.

I'm sure that every team built compliance into their floor to cope with both the rules you quote and I'm equally sure that the rule was put in place as a "catch-all" and thus any team looking to exploit it must also be aware that at the very least they'll simply be asked to remove their device rather than to face any penalty! Mass dampers, flexi rear wings...all have been banned as a result of 3.15...yet I don't recall any team losing points or being fined....

The mass damper question was not about whether the device moved more than allowed, because, if its function was to influence the aerodynamic performance of the car, it was not allowed to move at all. The question was whether its function was to influence the aerodynamic performance, whether controlling the car's heaving over kerbs could be said to be an aerodynamic function, etc.

Thus that issue was not analogous to the floor issue, in which there was a recognition that a flexible floor would influence the aero performance, but for safety and practical reasons a narrow extent of movement was allowed. The problem there was that the movement that two teams purposefully designed in exceeded the terms of the exception.

As you know, on plenty of occasions teams have been excluded from results when their cars were retrospectively found to have been illegal. Similarly, on plenty of other occasions teams have been forced to abandon a novel device when the rules were tightened or re-written more clearly.
Which of the two regulatory actions happened seemed (usually) to depend on whether the team had found a genuine opportunity within a poorly-drafted rule, or had consciously broken a rule which everyone understood, and then after the fact tried to pervert what the rule obviously said in an effort to defend themselves.