McLaren Stripped of all 2007 points, fined $100 mil

[G.Irish]

^^^ Awesome ^^^

Turns out that Ron Dennis was in fact the one who tipped off the FIA about the PDLR and Alonso emails. Absolutely insane. Now that doesn't rule out the possibility that Ron knew about the cheating but it goes a long way towards clearing his name.

Of course the alternate possibility is that Ron knew about the cheating and would've kept quiet but once faced with one of his drivers blackmailing him he decided that the risk of getting caught was too great and turned himself in.

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If it really is true that Alonso blackmailed him I wouldn't be surprised to see him replaced before the end of the season or in 2008. Alonso could easily sit him on the bench for 08 and bring another driver in to replace him. But who could replace Alonso? Buttongate 3 maybe?

[Evan]

:?:


Mclaren got the better end of this deal. Like I posted above, its basically a non-penalty for something that should be penalized. If FIA wanted to suck on Ferraris starfish so bad they would have stripped the mclaren drivers points and/or made them sit out races thus giving Ferr the champeenship

[.RJ]

:?:

I just found it t3h funny - McMerc benefited from this mess, but Ferrari's employees are running off sharing information with other teams. If the FIA was so concerned about maintaining integrity in the sport instead of fueling the media circus both teams would be under scrutiny.

[Evan]

I was trying to figure out what the Ferr engineer's motivation was. He doesnt appear to have been paid. Swinging his engineering dick around? Trying to get a job ?

[.RJ]

Trying to get a job ?

Maybe, but he could have just left Ferrari and gotten a job with any team and wouldnt need to bribe them with technical documents. After 10 years there, its probably all in his head anyways.

[.RJ]

w0wsers hock:

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One of the key submissions to the World Motor Sport Council on Thursday came from Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen, we can reveal.

The Ferrari driver stated in writing that while he was at McLaren from 2002 until 2006 the team systematically listened to FerrariÔÇÖs radio transmissions, which are supposed to be scrambled.

This was put to Ron Dennis in Paris on Thursday, and reportedly a long silence followed before he came up with a reply.

Intriguingly, the Kimi evidence was not part of the report released by the FIA today, and thus has not reached the public domain until now.

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This is the most interesting aspect of the story for me. On one level I think Alonso, having been shown to have been involved with the illicit material, is lucky to keep his driversÔÇÖ championship points.
What condemned McLaren was the email traffic between him and de la Rosa (as well as a report from the Italian communication police regarding the volume and timing of email, phone and text traffic between Stepney and Coughlan).

The $100 million question all week has been, ÔÇ£How did the emails come to the FIAÔÇÖs attention?ÔÇØ

Dennis has now confirmed that once he learned of the emails, from Alonso on the morning of the Hungarian GP, he himself told Mosley about them, because he did not want it to come from anyone else.
But what was Alonso trying to achieve by confronting Ron with the emails on that Sunday morning?

Apparently Dennis explained to the WMSC that Alonso had some demands, which are not hard to imagine, but Dennis refused to satisfy them. When this all comes out next week, it will probably look quite bad for Alonso.

I think Ron comes out of it quite well, albeit that it shows he did not have the control over his team on which he prided himself.
He is determined to win the driversÔÇÖ championship and all the signs are that despite AlonsoÔÇÖs behaviour he will be given an equal chance to win the title, like Lewis.

McLaren has a precedent here; in 1989 Dennis and Alain Prost fell out, but Prost was still given a winning car and beat his team-mate Ayrton Senna to the title before leaving for Ferrari the next year. Not many teams would behave like that.

Crucially, history will show that AlonsoÔÇÖs meeting with Dennis came after the qualifying episode in Hungary, where first Lewis disobeyed team orders and then Alonso blocked him at the end of the session and was penalised.

That brought things to a head between Alonso and Dennis.
AlonsoÔÇÖs relationship with the team has now totally broken down and it is impossible to imagine him driving a McLaren next year.
He may move back to Renault, or propose some sort of mega-deal to Toyota. BMW seems closed off and although certain top men at Ferrari would like to hire him to replace Massa, Todt is on the record as saying he will never drive a Ferrari after he snubbed Todt and signed up with Renault and Briatore in 2001.