The Circus Is Coming, Come One, Come All!
Written by George Katinger · August 9, 2007
No, not Ringling Brother’s Barnum & Bailey, but ring master Max Mosley’s one ring clown show. And everyone’s invited!
grandprix.com: Appeal date is September 13
speedtv.com: F1: McLaren/Ferrari Court Date Set for September
The ICA has set the appeal hearing for the Ferrari-McLaren-Stepneygate affair for September 16, in Paris.
As expected the Ferrari act will feature chief clown Luca di Montezemolo and his understudy Jean Todt. And no doubt, a supporting cast of Ferrari buffoons cleverly disguised as lawyers, scribes and paid witnesses of all sorts.
What I find truly outrageous is the ICA has invited all of the teams to attend and or submit evidence or testimony on the matter. I can’t wait to see the suit that Flavio Briatore wears, without a circus setting his sartorial selections border on clown wear anyway.
All of the bluster and bellowing will be duly recorded by the press, as they too have an open invitation to sit and watch the show. They will have to provide their own popcorn and cotton candy. At the least we will all have a chance at reading some what accurate reporting of the shows highs and lows. And finally maybe clear undistorted or spun facts surrounding the affair.
Ron has gone off on a much needed vacation, and I hope he uses the time to revisit every past insult, protest, driver theft, or scorn dealt to his competitors over the years. Because this circus will provide these ethically driven people the chance to pay back. Briatore especially. I just can’t imagine what he’ll have to add, and if anyone will take him seriously.
In my heart of hearts here’s the verdict I’d dearly love to hear. Not only are McLaren not to be docked any points, the guilty verdict issued by the WMSC is hereby overturned due to a lack of facts and evidence.
So gather up the kiddies, put on your best clown face, and get ready, the circus is coming to town.
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The fact that all are invited & the press get a front row to the proceedings is not an accident. Talk about doing F1’s dirty laundry in public!
Max is making the most of this opportunity to humiliate Ron in front of his peers. Even if acquitted, the public process will be a uncomfortable ordeal for anybody to go through. This is Max’s version of death by a thousand cuts.
Were it not for Ron’s attempt to b/s the stewards at Hungary he would have my sympathy.
I wonder if Max has “Cultural Revolution” type punishments in mind. I could just see him wanting to parade Ron in the paddock, with a dunces hat, whilst others denounce him.
Ron, Max, and Ferrari’s Little Red Book! Better than a circus, shoulda thought of that myself!!
Deep down inside, I feel like McLaren needs punishment, but… the more I think about it, taking away points really doesn’t taste that good. This is, indeed, a circus. I feel like I’m watching this through a funhouse mirror. Everything is distorted and frightening. And the thought of Flavio in a clown costume isn’t helping my sanity any. (I have a bit of phobia about clowns that probably stems from my being on the Bozo the Clown Show when I was a kid.)
Anywho, my psycho-analysis aside, what is a Ferrari fan to do, when any victory is going to taste like so many ashes in my mouth if McLaren is excluded from this season.
How about an eye for eye type punishment, McLaren has to give Ferrari’s chief designer 780 pages of similar documents to look at for a few months? He just won’t be allowed to “show” anyone the docs, but he can tell them he has them. Sounds fair to me. Come on everybody, get on this bandwagon!
I left out any comments about McLaren’s contribution to the circus as I expect some comments that would fill in that missing tidbit. Ron Dennis has a clown face without any makeup!
Do you really want to eliminate F1 espionage? ALL the teams make their car documents available to any one who wants them. One week prior to the first race. No one will tempted to cheat (flex floors) and there will be no incentive to “whistleblow” details to other teams.
Your comment about Bozo sends shudders down my spine. I couldn’t watch the program on TV, in hindsight he came across as sinister and evil. And I thought I was the only one!
Whistle Blowers??? Wistle Blowers???, Since when does anyone on any team ever come out and say their team is cheating. NEVER. There is no whistle blowing in racing. That would have been a good defense for the secretary at Coke who tride to steal trade secrets for a new products and sell them to Pepsi and is now in jail. Because no money changed hands yet does not mean that promises were not made. This is the equivilant to having someone steal a coaches play book, haveing the defensive coach look at it and then say he never intended to use it. I used to love McLaren. Huge Mika fan for years, than Kimi. For some reason I love the Finns personality. It is such a pleasant change from the drama queens we get from Europe and South America. Charming and Fast. Hated the Micheal era of Ferrari but thought I might keep rooting for Kimi while he wore red, but this is am intersting year because I have also been waiting for Lewis to hit F1 since I first saw him on the cover of F1 or Racer magazine (cant remember) when he was 16 and Ron was saying how good he could be. So this is tough for me. I dont like ferrari but I like their driver. I love Mercedes and Mclaren. But the fact is McLaren has to be punished and the origional thief has to go to jail for this. THey should handle it like the NCAA would. Stick it too them next year. Dock the points before the season starts so it is harder for them to keep their drivers. They have to do something. We are not China. The western world respects intelectual property rights. F1 has to insist the teams do as well.
Ah gary, a dose of rational thinking at a circus is not what I want to read about!
Just kidding, my honest feeling is that Stepney and Coughlan have nothing to do with McLaren or Ferrari. Two greedy selfish bastards looking to step up their careers on the bones of both Ferrari and McLaren. Terminate both their F1 employment possibilities, effective immediately and permanently. Ferrari can prosecute Stepney and Coughlan into prison terms if possible. Me thinks Ferrari’s cries of protest are based on their own skuldugerous (Is that a word??) past and present practices.
I don’t think McLaren should have been declared “guilty” of anything based on the PROVEABLE facts. If that changes, than there is a reason to dock their team points. If true, forfeit this years points, not next years. And hold off announcing the decision until after the season is over, let them race their hearts off for the benefit of the fans. We deserve better than this!
Is it just me, (I suffer from having more hair than memory) or do I recall Ferrarri pulling out the rulebook 3 maybe 4 years ago when things weren’t going very well for them. For some reason, I can’t help but feel that this is another subterfuge by the red team to help themselves in the standings. Not that McLaren wouldn’t read up on priviledged information…
Sadly skulduggerous is not a word, but it really should be. It describes the actions of these two men quite well. And I would be willing to let this whole thing go with just punishing them if I could get past the thought that Ron probably used the flexi-floor information gleened from the correspondence between those two asses to lodge a protest against Ferrari. I think that’s what’s sticking in my craw the most right now.
Honestly, if McLaren fired Coughlin AND Dennis, I think a LOT of people would be happy. And this talk of exlusion for next season is absolutely moronic.
What is illegal about McLaren using info about an illegal device passed on by a competitors disgruntled employee?
Forget the 781 pages for a moment. If someone inside BMW called any other team with a tip about an illegal design on BMW’s car, it wouldn’t get protested??
Why should this information not be used? The fault isn’t with the team using the information, the fault lies with the rat in the other team. How can you expect loyalty from team members when you treat them like crap? Stepney should have folded his tent and left, not turned rat. No doubt it was brought on by Todt’s short sightedness, even though we can now see it clearly with 20-20 hindsight.
Regardless, it’s all Todt’s fault, and I’m stickin’ to that story!!!:)
Because, if Ron Dennis was willing to use that info in such a way, what else was he willing to use? The man is simply a liar. Which makes McLaren as an entity, a liar.
The moment Dennis found out about the passage of info from Stepney to Coughlin, HE should have blown the whistle. Just think how this would have played out if McLaren had gone to the FIA in the first place with ALL the info. They would have exposed a couple of rats, gotten the Ferrari flexi-floor banned and come out looking like heros.
But no, they had to play cover-up, possibly to keep from sullying the McLaren name because of Coughlin, use the info about the Ferrari floor to ask for a clarification from the FIA, thus making it look like an innocent question. Not one based on ILLEGAL information.
McLaren’s hands are NOT clean on this by any stretch of the imagination. The question is how dirty are they?
Now, to be fair, I blame Ferrari for using this to beat a dead horse. They are repeatedly kicking McLaren while they’re down, and mudying the waters as much as they can. That’s why I’m not just blindly drinking their brand of kool-aid. I’ve lost a lot of faith in them over how they’ve handled this.
Is anyone going to be happy with the outcome once everybody’s hands are played out? Absolutely not. There will be crying on both sides. Bitterness will rule the land, and F1 will lose fans.
Excuse me, I recognize your attempting to cast this mess in an objective ratioanal manner Tim, but I don’t think it works that way.
Has ANY team owner EVER notified the FIA that there was a disgruntled member of another team in contact with them? Attempting to do whatever? Where and how do you draw that line in the sand? In theory, maybe, but the reality I think is much more difficult. If we could scratch below the surface of this incident I think we’d find many potential contacts of this type, unreported but fully exploited.
Not to mention every time someone moves from team to team, they bring their knowledge and experience of their former team with them. Regardless of any sabbatical length or so called gardening leaves.
We need to PROVE McLaren’s involvement with the documents and Coughlan. Allegations not accepted anymore, thank you very much.