We prefer our villains to be foreign, or at least born outside of England: Hitler, Pol Pot, Cliff Richard, Gordon Brown - they all fit neatly with the stereotype of being bad and not being English. It comes as quite a shock therefore to discover that being underhand and conniving isn't always down to Johnny Foreigner, sometimes (and whisper this quietly if you are in Woking) the villain is English.
Ferrari were the victims of an act of theft by a disgruntled employee, some of their intellectual property was stolen and passed onto their leading rivals in Formula One, the McLaren team. McLaren used this information, or at least parts of it, to improve their cars for the 2007 F1 season, a season that has so far seen Lewis Hamilton take the motor racing world by storm even leaving the current World Champion, and team mate, Fernando Alonso in his wake.
At this weeks hearing in Paris McLaren were fined an unprecedented $100 million and made to forfeit all their constructors points in this seasons championship for their part in the affair but bizarrely Hamilton and Alonso were allowed to keep their points in the World Championship. The FIA, in one of its strangest pronouncements in recent years, seemed to follow the same line as the Premier League when they decided not to deduct any points from West Ham in the Tevez affair. They said that in the interests of the Championship, and the fans following all over the world, the drivers should not be penalised. This despite the fact that both Pedro De La Rosa, the McLaren test driver, and Fernando Alonso were shown to be guilty of exchanging e-mails which contained explicit references to the stolen data. De La Rosa is responsible for making sure the cars are set-up correctly during pre season testing so that when the season starts the two drivers in the team have less to think about.
Lewis Hamilton is supposedly innocent in all of this, presumably he didn't ask De La Rosa why his car was suddenly handling better, why it was cornering better, why it was going faster in a straight line. He no doubt put it down to the conjunction of the Moon and Neptune in the spring equinox. This is of course all conjecture as the WMSC said in its ruling that they did not seek to prove that the stolen technological details were put into practice.
But all of this isn't McLaren's fault is it. No of course not, it can't be the British team's fault it must be Ferrari's. Ferrari have the money, the lawyers, the friends in high places. They have a history of bullying the FIA. Max Moseley doesn't like Ron Dennis. Dennis is a working class oik whose crimes against humanity include working his way up from the position of lowly mechanic to head of an organisation with an annual income of over $500 million. Max Moseley feels that he has been wronged against all his life because of his father, he wanted to be a politician but quickly realised that the country wouldn't accept a right-wing candidate whose father was public enemy number one during the thirties. So, when confronted with the evidence, Moseley was bound to decide it wasn't the victims fault (Ferrari), it was the perps (McLaren).
McLaren weren't just caught holding a smoking gun, they had the bullets, the holster and the permit for the weapon. They couldn't have been any more guilty if they had tippexed out the word Ferrari on the top of each page and written McLaren on it in biro. And I say this as somebody who has been a supporter of the McLaren team since I started watching Formula One more than thirty odd years ago.
You do wonder sometimes if the English media have any sense of fair play left in their sleaze encrusted marrow at all. Or perhaps it's just me.
No comments:
Post a Comment