McLaren not to appeal Ruling
Discussion
because the cant afford a bigger fine IF they loose.
bit like someone who accepts a NIP for speeding... thinking they cant afford to go to court and risk getting hit with costs + court issued fine + expert witness costs + own scolicitor because the odds are stacked against them.
bit like someone who accepts a NIP for speeding... thinking they cant afford to go to court and risk getting hit with costs + court issued fine + expert witness costs + own scolicitor because the odds are stacked against them.
Edited by lord summerisle on Friday 21st September 15:53
130R said:
because they are guilty ...
Guilty of being honest and expecting a governing body to have similarly high standards.
It is only Ron Dennis that has been displaying any dignity throughout this. The FIA nd Ferrari have been whingebags of the highest order. RD knows full well that if he appealed there would be zero chance of success, and the penalty would be made harsher.
If I were him I would wait until the end of the season and then bring the FIA to justice in a court of law for extortion, blackmail and anti-competition, amongst other things.
Heebeegeetee said:
I do find it very hard to understand, that if a team beleived it was innocent and felt that it hadn't time to prove its innocence, it then goes on to accept this punishment.
Nobody would go for 'closure' if they were innocent.
Yes, they were "guilty" of something - as they themselves accept.Nobody would go for 'closure' if they were innocent.
They were guilty of the same thing that every other F1 team is "guilty" of - having had someone somewhere within their organisation who has the IP of another team.
The issue is not whether this occured.
The issues are whether the process by which they should have been allowed to try to demonstrate their innocence as an organisation was fair, whether the punishment that the FIA ultimately imposed was even remotely appropriate, and why the FIA manifested a massive double standard in its treatment of Toyota v its treatment of McLaren.
M3ax said:
Teams have been warned previously that if they appeal a decision they are likely to get a harsher punishment. McLaren probably figure they could do without being exluded from F1 next year........
This is true, but in this case the punishment is so high that this could hardly be possible.I find it hard to believe that if McLaren are as innocent as everyone is proclaiming, and its all such a stitch up as everyone is saying, that they won't appeal.
When you've been labelled a liar and a cheat, you don't just accept that for 'closure'. I can't understand Ron not appealing.
The truth will out eventually:
From here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula...
Was the McLaren spy verdict wrong?
By Andrew Benson
It was the second time in seven hours that McLaren boss Ron Dennis had tried to explain to the Formula One media why his team had done nothing wrong in the sport's spy scandal, but he still found time for a joke.
Speaking at McLaren's regular Saturday afternoon "Meet the team" session, he said it should be renamed "Beat the team".
Dennis has been adamant throughout the two months of this scandal that McLaren had not been "infected" by the confidential Ferrari information found at the home of their chief designer Mike Coughlan.
His problem following the decision to exclude the team from the constructors' championship and fine them £49.2m was that it did not look that way.
The full verdict released by governing body the FIA last Friday looked quite incriminating - particularly to the eyes of those not hugely familiar with the workings of F1.
The way it was presented in the FIA's news release, the exchange of e-mails and text messages between Coughlan, McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa, and world champion Fernando Alonso did not look good.
Arguably the most damning section was De la Rosa asking Coughlan if he knew the weight distribution of the Ferrari because he wanted to test it in McLaren's simulator.
Dennis has always maintained that no other senior personnel at McLaren knew about the Ferrari information.
But, in the context of the FIA document, that looked like a difficult position to sustain.
So I asked Dennis how a driver could test a new weight distribution in the simulator without a) discussing the fact he was doing it with his engineers; and b) telling them why.
It was a rhetorical question, as Dennis well understood. He simply said: "Read the full transcript, and make up your own mind."
That transcript was released on Wednesday. It runs to 115 pages and it takes a while to get through it.
But now I have. And I cannot get away from the thought that McLaren have been the victims of an injustice.
As is often the case, the devil is in the detail.
Left out of the initial FIA release were the explanations provided by various McLaren personnel for their actions. And that is where things start to get less clear-cut.
Yes, De la Rosa said, he had asked Coughlan about the Ferrari's weight distribution, and he knew the information was coming from Stepney.
But he absolutely did not know about the Ferrari documents. He asked Coughlan because they were friends, dating back to the days when De la Rosa drove for Arrows and Coughlan was their designer.
He knew Coughlan was friends with Stepney, a relationship dating back more than a decade.
Finding out as much as possible about rival teams is an every day occurrence in F1. Drivers constantly talk about what other teams are doing - including with members, and drivers, of those teams. And this was no more than that.
And when he discovered the weight distribution was completely different from McLaren's, he realised testing it would be pointless.
Not only that, De la Rosa said, but the e-mails provided to the FIA were his only communications on this subject.
Equally, McLaren engineering director Paddy Lowe spent a great deal of time explaining how he had traced back what he called "the DNA" of every single McLaren development since before the first contact between Coughlan and Stepney, and was absolutely sure they were all original ideas.
McLaren also employed an independent computer firm to trawl back through their electronic records, and it could find no evidence incriminating them either.
And 140 McLaren engineers signed a letter to say they were sure no Ferrari ideas were on their car.
Ferrari's legal counsel Nigel Tozzi did an impressive job trying to draw inferences and generate suspicion about what McLaren might have been up to.
But, reading the transcript, you keep coming back to the words of McLaren counsel Ian Mill. There was no evidence of McLaren using the confidential Ferrari technical information. The only actual evidence - as opposed to suspicion - is that they did not.
The members of the world motorsport council clearly did not believe everything the McLaren witnesses said. They concluded that "some degree of sporting advantage was obtained, though it may forever be impossible to quantify that advantage in concrete terms".
But even that verdict, like much of Ferrari's argument against McLaren, contained supposition.
I do not know Lowe, so I cannot vouch for him. But I know De la Rosa extremely well. He won the first race I covered as a motorsport journalist, back in 1992, and our paths have crossed consistently ever since.
He is one of the most honest men you will find in motor racing, or anywhere else.
In evidence that runs over 14 pages of the transcript, De la Rosa provides perfectly justifiable explanations as to what was going on, and why it was not what it might look like if you saw only the words of the e-mails and text messages in isolation.
And I simply do not believe that he told the world council anything other than the whole truth.
That is not to say McLaren did nothing wrong. They probably should accept responsibility for the actions of Coughlan - he was their employee, after all.
The McLaren counsel argued that, by the same token, Ferrari should accept responsibility for the actions of Stepney. And there have been whispers in F1 that Ferrari might even have a case to argue in civil law on "entrapment".
Be that as it may, the punishment seems harsh in the extreme when weighed against the fact that there was no concrete evidence that McLaren benefited from the Ferrari information, which is what was at the centre of the case.
Equally, it is worth pointing out that when two Toyota employees were convicted and sent to jail for stealing Ferrari technical information, the FIA did not get involved, despite the obvious similarity between the 2002 Ferrari and 2003 Toyota.
So why get involved this time? It is this sort of inconsistency that infuriates F1 teams.
The verdict after McLaren's first appearance before the world council on the spying charge was that there was insufficient evidence they had gained any advantage from Coughlan having the Ferrari documents.
They were not punished, but were warned that they faced a ban if any proof emerged in the future that they had gained an advantage from the data.
But the much vaunted "new evidence" provided by De la Rosa's e-mails and texts did not provide a smoking gun. And it is difficult to see on the face of it what had changed. The first verdict could - and arguably should - have stood at the second world council hearing last week.
With the deadline for an appeal approaching, McLaren announced that they would not challenge the decision. The feeling was that McLaren wanted to put the whole affair behind them and did not want to risk a greater punishment, not that they believed justice had been done.
McLaren have talked about feeling that they have been subjected to a witch hunt. Whether that is true or not is difficult to say.
But it is hard to escape the feeling that, on the evidence, the FIA may have got this one wrong.
From here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula...
Was the McLaren spy verdict wrong?
By Andrew Benson
It was the second time in seven hours that McLaren boss Ron Dennis had tried to explain to the Formula One media why his team had done nothing wrong in the sport's spy scandal, but he still found time for a joke.
Speaking at McLaren's regular Saturday afternoon "Meet the team" session, he said it should be renamed "Beat the team".
Dennis has been adamant throughout the two months of this scandal that McLaren had not been "infected" by the confidential Ferrari information found at the home of their chief designer Mike Coughlan.
His problem following the decision to exclude the team from the constructors' championship and fine them £49.2m was that it did not look that way.
The full verdict released by governing body the FIA last Friday looked quite incriminating - particularly to the eyes of those not hugely familiar with the workings of F1.
The way it was presented in the FIA's news release, the exchange of e-mails and text messages between Coughlan, McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa, and world champion Fernando Alonso did not look good.
Arguably the most damning section was De la Rosa asking Coughlan if he knew the weight distribution of the Ferrari because he wanted to test it in McLaren's simulator.
Dennis has always maintained that no other senior personnel at McLaren knew about the Ferrari information.
But, in the context of the FIA document, that looked like a difficult position to sustain.
So I asked Dennis how a driver could test a new weight distribution in the simulator without a) discussing the fact he was doing it with his engineers; and b) telling them why.
It was a rhetorical question, as Dennis well understood. He simply said: "Read the full transcript, and make up your own mind."
That transcript was released on Wednesday. It runs to 115 pages and it takes a while to get through it.
But now I have. And I cannot get away from the thought that McLaren have been the victims of an injustice.
As is often the case, the devil is in the detail.
Left out of the initial FIA release were the explanations provided by various McLaren personnel for their actions. And that is where things start to get less clear-cut.
Yes, De la Rosa said, he had asked Coughlan about the Ferrari's weight distribution, and he knew the information was coming from Stepney.
But he absolutely did not know about the Ferrari documents. He asked Coughlan because they were friends, dating back to the days when De la Rosa drove for Arrows and Coughlan was their designer.
He knew Coughlan was friends with Stepney, a relationship dating back more than a decade.
Finding out as much as possible about rival teams is an every day occurrence in F1. Drivers constantly talk about what other teams are doing - including with members, and drivers, of those teams. And this was no more than that.
And when he discovered the weight distribution was completely different from McLaren's, he realised testing it would be pointless.
Not only that, De la Rosa said, but the e-mails provided to the FIA were his only communications on this subject.
Equally, McLaren engineering director Paddy Lowe spent a great deal of time explaining how he had traced back what he called "the DNA" of every single McLaren development since before the first contact between Coughlan and Stepney, and was absolutely sure they were all original ideas.
McLaren also employed an independent computer firm to trawl back through their electronic records, and it could find no evidence incriminating them either.
And 140 McLaren engineers signed a letter to say they were sure no Ferrari ideas were on their car.
Ferrari's legal counsel Nigel Tozzi did an impressive job trying to draw inferences and generate suspicion about what McLaren might have been up to.
But, reading the transcript, you keep coming back to the words of McLaren counsel Ian Mill. There was no evidence of McLaren using the confidential Ferrari technical information. The only actual evidence - as opposed to suspicion - is that they did not.
The members of the world motorsport council clearly did not believe everything the McLaren witnesses said. They concluded that "some degree of sporting advantage was obtained, though it may forever be impossible to quantify that advantage in concrete terms".
But even that verdict, like much of Ferrari's argument against McLaren, contained supposition.
I do not know Lowe, so I cannot vouch for him. But I know De la Rosa extremely well. He won the first race I covered as a motorsport journalist, back in 1992, and our paths have crossed consistently ever since.
He is one of the most honest men you will find in motor racing, or anywhere else.
In evidence that runs over 14 pages of the transcript, De la Rosa provides perfectly justifiable explanations as to what was going on, and why it was not what it might look like if you saw only the words of the e-mails and text messages in isolation.
And I simply do not believe that he told the world council anything other than the whole truth.
That is not to say McLaren did nothing wrong. They probably should accept responsibility for the actions of Coughlan - he was their employee, after all.
The McLaren counsel argued that, by the same token, Ferrari should accept responsibility for the actions of Stepney. And there have been whispers in F1 that Ferrari might even have a case to argue in civil law on "entrapment".
Be that as it may, the punishment seems harsh in the extreme when weighed against the fact that there was no concrete evidence that McLaren benefited from the Ferrari information, which is what was at the centre of the case.
Equally, it is worth pointing out that when two Toyota employees were convicted and sent to jail for stealing Ferrari technical information, the FIA did not get involved, despite the obvious similarity between the 2002 Ferrari and 2003 Toyota.
So why get involved this time? It is this sort of inconsistency that infuriates F1 teams.
The verdict after McLaren's first appearance before the world council on the spying charge was that there was insufficient evidence they had gained any advantage from Coughlan having the Ferrari documents.
They were not punished, but were warned that they faced a ban if any proof emerged in the future that they had gained an advantage from the data.
But the much vaunted "new evidence" provided by De la Rosa's e-mails and texts did not provide a smoking gun. And it is difficult to see on the face of it what had changed. The first verdict could - and arguably should - have stood at the second world council hearing last week.
With the deadline for an appeal approaching, McLaren announced that they would not challenge the decision. The feeling was that McLaren wanted to put the whole affair behind them and did not want to risk a greater punishment, not that they believed justice had been done.
McLaren have talked about feeling that they have been subjected to a witch hunt. Whether that is true or not is difficult to say.
But it is hard to escape the feeling that, on the evidence, the FIA may have got this one wrong.
Heebeegeetee said:
M3ax said:
Teams have been warned previously that if they appeal a decision they are likely to get a harsher punishment. McLaren probably figure they could do without being exluded from F1 next year........
This is true, but in this case the punishment is so high that this could hardly be possible.I find it hard to believe that if McLaren are as innocent as everyone is proclaiming, and its all such a stitch up as everyone is saying, that they won't appeal.
When you've been labelled a liar and a cheat, you don't just accept that for 'closure'. I can't understand Ron not appealing.
Heebeegeetee said:
I do find it very hard to understand, that if a team beleived it was innocent and felt that it hadn't time to prove its innocence, it then goes on to accept this punishment.
Nobody would go for 'closure' if they were innocent.
Hmm.Nobody would go for 'closure' if they were innocent.
I think there are parallels in history (related to much more important decisions) where people have adopted the same approach.
One has to ask whether, feeling that one is innocent but having no way to prove it if the inquisitors refuse to listen, you masochistically elect to receive further punishment and pass that along to all the people who work for you as well as imperilling the sport that has shaped and sustained your life for a number of decades or you take the hit as graciously as possible and move on.
Let us hope that RD's apparent humiliation along side his partners (seen as that by some quarters no doubt) is not a Neville Chamberlain moment declaring 'Peace in our time.' Unless of course Chamberlain was acutely aware of the potential for catastrophic loss if he challenged at that point and therefore could be seen retrospectively as making a sound decision.
Personally I think that were RD allowed or chose to stand up to Mosley's court he would be very brave indeed. Or rather I would suggest, stupid. He might find it less personally discomfiting to take on Robert Mugabe on behalf of human rights.
I wonder how Massa will do in the next few races?
Could be interesting come the Brazilian GP of KR is in with a shout of the title.
LongQ said:
if the inquisitors refuse to listen
This is the key point. There is absolutely no point in McLaren appealing, as the FIA have already shown they cannot hold a fair hearing. As far as I know, any appeal would also be held in front of the FIA or WMSC, so nothing would be different. Max has made up his mind, and Ron realises that he can't win. If the appeal were to be made to a proper legal independant court things might be very different.jacobyte said:
The truth will out eventually:
I rather think that Benson has read this situation appropriately and produced a very balanced assessment. Not something I often attribute to the BBC.Back in the 'halcyon' days there was plenty of rivalry, many a secret development (until it appeared on the car) and plenty of sharing, whether people, perhaps some technology through mutual suppliers or simply assistance provided with good humour.
Development that worked for you might give an edge for 32 or 3 races until other caught up or maybe longer if the benefits did not accrue to the others by making the same changes. I would guess it is much the same today though with more complex areas to cover.
Often the biggest challenges revolved around how to keep the drivers from being killed compared to staying one step, or one race, ahead of the competition.
Entire teams, including admin roles, were smaller in number of personnel than a pit stop crew is today.
It was probably easier to work out what the competition were doing - if for not other reason than the technology being much simpler, though still advanced for its time.
Even within a small team and with the reasltively less complex technology it was quite possible to to be in a position to be 'everywhere' and involved with 'everything' yet not really see and understand what was happening at the time. It must be much more complex today with so many more people involved and organisational structures to deal with.
Interesting also that McLaren (and presumably Ferrari) are going around dusting off previously developed techologies for the new age. Hence it is no surpricse that McLaren could work out that a lever or whatever had to be related to the braking system in some way and then be able to surmise, from whatever information was available to them, what it might do. Any benefit to be had would almost certainly accrue from such information presenting a 'new to the team' idea about the effects of dynamically adjusted brake balance rather than the way it was delivered. If McLaren had not already worked out 100 ways to obtain the required function, one of which might be close in concept to the method selected by Ferrari from the same 100 options, then I think we should all stop claiming that F1 is the pinnacle of anything, particularly engineering creative thinking and design, and simply focus on the driving aspect.
To that end maybe we could have 2 chassis manufacturers appointed that would supply the whole field on an alternative year basis. Teams could make their own engine and transmission arrangements. Single tyre supplier changing every 3 years.
Run the championship in separate regions - Americas, EMEA and Asia for the first half of the year. Then combine them to a World final series for the last 8 or 10 races.
That should even the playing field. And allow the rules to be more easily and consistently applied.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find Ferrari's statement, issued this evening, in rather poor taste. You would have thought having got their way with the FIA (as usual) they could have, for once, had the decency to shut up and take the constructors title without the gloating and rubbing McClaren's face in it. I think it says everything about how the respective parties have acted through out the whole affair.
R39S1 said:
I don't know about anyone else, but I find Ferrari's statement, issued this evening, in rather poor taste. You would have thought having got their way with the FIA (as usual) they could have, for once, had the decency to shut up and take the constructors title without the gloating and rubbing McClaren's face in it. I think it says everything about how the respective parties have acted through out the whole affair.
Well, at least they are admitting to their drivers that they have not been putting all their effort into winning the championship for them.Bear in mind they may also be having a dig at Vodaphone.
LongQ said:
R39S1 said:
I don't know about anyone else, but I find Ferrari's statement, issued this evening, in rather poor taste. You would have thought having got their way with the FIA (as usual) they could have, for once, had the decency to shut up and take the constructors title without the gloating and rubbing McClaren's face in it. I think it says everything about how the respective parties have acted through out the whole affair.
Well, at least they are admitting to their drivers that they have not been putting all their effort into winning the championship for them.Bear in mind they may also be having a dig at Vodaphone.
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