BBC Take on McLAREN Saga

[SennaMan]

for this 21 September update please go to:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7006365.stm

In the meantime here are the final paragraphs from the BBC story:

"......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."



                           

[Monty]

The BBC verdict seems to completely agree with the great majority of views on this forum. It seems that the great majority of interested parties feel that there has been a massive miscarriage of justice but Max and Ferrari will get away with it again!