McLaren Excluded

[johnbull]

Which is why I can see McLaren taking this to the courts of law who will in turn make the FIA and it's fashist leader look right dimbos.

This is probably why Ron is not doing anything to geopardise Alonso's race performance at this stage. He still thinks it necessary to collect as many manufacturers championship points as possible. The whole thing could still be overturned.

In fact the way I see it, Ron is keeping remarkably quiet. He must have something up his sleeve.

[Monty]

If Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, et al start to discuss a new series away from F1 it will come as no surprise after the outrageous way FIA Council have handled this situation - talk about 'nobody expects the spanish inquisition' (Monty Python reference for all those too young to understand!).
Businesses 'reverse engineer' competitors products in every industry. If an engineer who is trying to make a name for himself is given a technical file from a competing engineer he is hardly going to say 'oh no thanks I don't need it!'. But that doesn't make the whole team guilty of anything.
In a court of law (or fair play) the accused would be treated as innocent until proven guilty and from what I have heard and read there was no 'evidence' that the team was involved in espionage i.e. they did not take any actions to steal Intelectual Property from anyone (it was given to them, and we all know you can't un-learn something once you have learnt it).
Sorry I'm ranting, but these 'high handed' actions are disproportionate and I'm absolutely sure none of this would have hapened if it was any other team than Ferrari that felt cheated.

[raindancer]

Raindancer: McLaren did not dispute the existence or authenticity of the emails because they, like the WMSC, do not have the authority or knowledge to do so.  If Ron was telling the truth, and I believe he was, he had no idea that there was any evidence of Ferrari data being used at McLaren because, to his knowledge, it had never happened.  He was hardly in a position to argue when the emails were produced.
Exactly

But did anyone question the admissibility of email evidence or its authenticity?  No, because the WMSC is not supplied with the the necessary structure to investigate such things.  They accepted them without question yet you and I know that it is easy to fake emails.  And the Italian police evidence has no bearing on this either; Mosley himself has admitted that they had nothing until the drivers' emails appeared.  If the drivers' emails had been authenticated by the police evidence, the fact would have been shouted from the rooftops, be assured.
Mclaren who should be the first to question if anything was amiss haven't. So presently we need to go with the assumption that they are genuine. Mclaren can ofcourse question their autheticity in a court of law and only than will they be verified. Till now we haven't heard Mclaren attempt to do so. Admissability of evidence is a technical point and does not invalidate the import of the evidence unless its circumstantial.

So all this talk of McLaren being found guilty of espionage rests entirely on a few emails (and the number of other emails is irrelevant since they did not prove McLaren guilty) that we could have forged without difficulty on our home computers.  The law is a notoriously conservative institution and it is quite possible that emails, as a fairly recent innovation, will not be accepted by the court as admissible evidence.  Even if they are, they will be subjected to scrutiny by experts (geeks) to ascertain their authenticity.  If they cannot be found on a server out of the control of those who submitted them, they will be ruled out as unproven.  Bang goes the WMSC's only evidence and oops goes everyone else who has agreed that McLaren has been found guilty and fairly punished.
Faking e-mails would mean a conspiracy of immense proportions and least of all why would Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa conspire with Ferrari ?
No sporting committee has the right to abrogate matters of law to its authority.  This is exactly what the WMSC has done and there is no getting away from it.

[raindancer]

If Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, et al start to discuss a new series away from F1 it will come as no surprise after the outrageous way FIA Council have handled this situation - talk about 'nobody expects the spanish inquisition' (Monty Python reference for all those too young to understand!).
This has been doing the rounds for a few years.
Businesses 'reverse engineer' competitors products in every industry. If an engineer who is trying to make a name for himself is given a technical file from a competing engineer he is hardly going to say 'oh no thanks I don't need it!'. But that doesn't make the whole team guilty of anything.
In a court of law (or fair play) the accused would be treated as innocent until proven guilty and from what I have heard and read there was no 'evidence' that the team was involved in espionage i.e. they did not take any actions to steal Intelectual Property from anyone (it was given to them, and we all know you can't un-learn something once you have learnt it).
Sorry I'm ranting, but these 'high handed' actions are disproportionate and I'm absolutely sure none of this would have hapened if it was any other team than Ferrari that felt cheated.

[Chameleon]

Raindancer: McLaren did not dispute the existence or authenticity of the emails because they, like the WMSC, do not have the authority or knowledge to do so.  If Ron was telling the truth, and I believe he was, he had no idea that there was any evidence of Ferrari data being used at McLaren because, to his knowledge, it had never happened.  He was hardly in a position to argue when the emails were produced.
Exactly

But did anyone question the admissibility of email evidence or its authenticity?  No, because the WMSC is not supplied with the the necessary structure to investigate such things.  They accepted them without question yet you and I know that it is easy to fake emails.  And the Italian police evidence has no bearing on this either; Mosley himself has admitted that they had nothing until the drivers' emails appeared.  If the drivers' emails had been authenticated by the police evidence, the fact would have been shouted from the rooftops, be assured.
Mclaren who should be the first to question if anything was amiss haven't. So presently we need to go with the assumption that they are genuine. Mclaren can ofcourse question their autheticity in a court of law and only than will they be verified. Till now we haven't heard Mclaren attempt to do so. Admissability of evidence is a technical point and does not invalidate the import of the evidence unless its circumstantial.

So all this talk of McLaren being found guilty of espionage rests entirely on a few emails (and the number of other emails is irrelevant since they did not prove McLaren guilty) that we could have forged without difficulty on our home computers.  The law is a notoriously conservative institution and it is quite possible that emails, as a fairly recent innovation, will not be accepted by the court as admissible evidence.  Even if they are, they will be subjected to scrutiny by experts (geeks) to ascertain their authenticity.  If they cannot be found on a server out of the control of those who submitted them, they will be ruled out as unproven.  Bang goes the WMSC's only evidence and oops goes everyone else who has agreed that McLaren has been found guilty and fairly punished.
Faking e-mails would mean a conspiracy of immense proportions and least of all why would Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa conspire with Ferrari ?
No sporting committee has the right to abrogate matters of law to its authority.  This is exactly what the WMSC has done and there is no getting away from it.

It is not the responsibility of the defendant to prove or disprove the authenticity of evidence, although he has the right to question it.  The court should be satisfied as to the validity of any evidence before it accepts it.  The WMSC does not appear to have even considered the possibility that the emails were forged, yet there are good reasons to believe that they were (written in English but allegedly between two Spaniards - not likely; almost word for word what an Italian journalist has concocted before anyone had seen the emails - thereby making it seem very likely that the actual emails were forged by someone thinking along the same lines; reference to a mysterious gas used to inflate tyres - which later turned out to be nitrogen, something used in F1 for 5 years or more, strange that FA and PdlR knew nothing of this; references to weight distribution as though this were info that could change everything - yet teams change the weight distribution all the time according to the track and the circumstances; the wooden and stilted way in which Coughlan's and Stepney's names were dragged into the emails, as though the forger needed to bring them in somehow and this was the best he could do).

Any decent court of law will examine the emails much more closely than did the WMSC and is very likely to find them wanting.  Admissibility of evidence is a technicality, yes, but that does not mean that the evidence is good.  It means that it cannot be used and it may be good or it may be bad - since it's inadmissible, it's not tested.  Therefore you cannot say it was fine apart from a technicality.  Technicalities are there to prevent unfairness in the procedures of the courtroom and not merely to get criminals off the hook.  If they appear to do so sometimes, that is because the law goes to great lengths to prevent an innocent man being found guilty.  Ron Dennis has been found guilty on the strength of a few dubious emails that have not been tested - that is a miscarriage of justice (whether or not he is guilty) that would not happen in a proper court of law.

No conspiracy is necessary to explain a forging of emails, although there are those who are talking of such a thing.  If Alonso was using imaginary emails to bribe Ron Dennis into doing as he wished and then Ron called his bluff by going to the FIA, what is Alonso to do?  He has been threatened with the loss of his super licence if he does not produce the emails and yet has no incriminating emails.  But then he sees that it's a way to get out of his contract - has a word in his compatriot's ear who agrees to go along with it, and they "create" a few apparently incriminating emails.  Put those with the great mass of their other correspondence and they look quite legitimate until closely inspected.

No great conspiracy, just a man prepared to use blackmail but had his bluff called.  I'm not saying it did happen; I'm pointing out that it is possible.  And, if you want to masquerade as a court of law, you had better make sure you cover all possibilities before handing out judgements.

[johnbull]

I have no faith in a court where the person/s making the accusations are also the judges.

I also have no faith in the honesty of any judgements made by Max Mosley who has too many chips on his shoulders to do anything straight.

I would love to see the same case decided by a proper court, and not one of the Max variety that has already made it's mind up before the hearing has even started.

[Alianora La Canta]

I am sure you will get your wish... in a couple of years' time. They're going to have to wait while the mess caused by the public trial has been calmed down a bit before looking for impartial people to judge the case.

[SennaMan]

[in part] 

I believe that next year we will see big changes in the governance of the sport.  Max will go and many of his compadres on the FIA board.  Bernie may stay but with much reduced powers.  Never again will the decision as to who gets a GP and who doesn't be in the hands of one man.  Never again will the FIA sit in judgement on a matter that has already been scheduled for the properly-constituted civil and criminal courts.  The power of the WMSC will be limited to sporting matters only and the members will be selected in a more equitable way - probably shared out between the teams themselves.

The manufacturers have invested too much money, effort and time in F1 to see it wasted by a governing body that cares only about its members' self importance and power.  Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda and Renault will unite and force the FIA to rebuild itself in another image.  It is the only way they can stay in the sport and justify it to their owners and backers.

Goodbye Max.

Brilliant post Chameleon and thank you for it. As you suggest I hope some major restructuring of the FIA takes place soon. Power concentrated on one person always corrupts and the money now generated by motor sport demands more professional standards of accountability and management.   

[Monty]

To speed up the demise of Max Mosley why don't we accuse him of taking bribes from Ferrari, announce this to the press and then exclude him without pay.
Using his own rules we don't have to prove that he took bribes just simply have the suspicion that he did!

[Alianora La Canta]

Max doesn't get paid for being the FIA president anyway...

[Steven Roy]

Max does not get paid for being head of the FIA but is all over the internet today suggesting that Nigel Stepney would not have sent the information he did unless he was paid for it.  So by that logic someone other than the FIA must be paing Max.

[Andy B]

Just a thought and maybe someone will know the answer!

If a team scores zero points then all transportation costs for the first half of of the season are their problem so does this apply to McLaren too as theirs have been removed?

[Steven Roy]

Yes and they have the pits at the wrong end of pit lane.  Which means they will have fewer garages, be allowed fewer transporters etc etc.  In many ways this is the bigger punishment than the financial one.

[johnbull]

All part of the scheme to disadvantage Mc Laren again next season.

That's why I can't help but think it's not yet over.