FIA president Max Mosely said Tuesday any Formula One team caught in espionage or spying could be expelled from the competition. “Next time, whoever it was, I don’t think they would stay in the championship,” Mosely said on the F1 official Web site.
McLaren was fined a record $100 million and kicked out of the manufacturers’ championship last year after being accused of using leaked information from rival Ferrari. But Lewis Hamilton, who finished second overall, and Fernando Alonso were allowed to continue in the drivers’ championship.
“In the case of McLaren everybody said ‘Oh, $100 million,’ but the alternative would have been to exclude them – and that would have been more expensive,” Mosely said.
“You can never stop what someone has got in his head, but we can stop the transfer of information in written or electronic form,” Mosely said. “And if you are prepared to check – and we have demonstrated that we are – then somebody using such information would be very unwise because in a modern F1 team you cannot do it without leaving traces, and we will find those traces.”
Mosley discussed the possibility capping costs for F1 teams in the next few years … jump here for more.
Mosley certainly has his own opinions about the McLaren scandal, not to mention Ron Dennis’ part in it. They’re rather mixed when he presents them in public, though you don’t need to read between the lines to discover that Mosley, like the rest of us, wholeheartedly believes that Dennis is lying through his teeth. Proving it is quite another matter; and, perhaps the only positive thing I could ever say about Ron Dennis is that he’s been more than cagey enough to prevent anyone from proving his complicity. Thus far, anyway.
December, 2007:
FIA president Max Mosley says he believes it is likely that McLaren team principal Ron Dennis was aware of just how far his team had been compromised by the spy scandal earlier this year, despite maintaining he knew nothing.
“Once can only say it’s extremely improbable that Ron Dennis didn’t know about it,” Mosley told the Guardian newspaper. “Every time I speak to him he still reassures me that he would never lie, that he has never lied and that he hasn’t lied to us.”
“When you’ve known someone for 40 years it’s difficult to say, ‘Well, I don’t believe you.’ But in the end no hard-nosed lawyer or policeman would believe it for a second. I’m probably being a bit of a wimp about it.”
Mosley went on to deny that he doesn’t like Ron Dennis. “I quite like him,” Mosley maintained. “But I do despise – I think that’s probably the right word – his attitude to Formula One, when he says, for example, that he’s passionate about Formula One. That’s not true. He’s passionate about McLaren finishing first and second in every race, which is his job, but it’s not the same thing as being passionate about formula one and it’s foolish to pretend that it is.” Full Article
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