Spy-gate

The long drawn out Spy-gate issue came to a head yesterday, with McLaren been found guilty, stripped off all their constructor points for 2007 and fined a whopping $100 million. Dayum.

I’m going to look at this at a different angle and not going to go into the ‘Who’s right, who’s wrong’ talk. Why? Because every F1 forum in the world is doing that right now and unfortunately, most are just arguing for their team and not willing to listen to reason. How can we, the public seriously make a judgement on this when we don’t know the facts? As a journalist I was thought to gather all the facts before forming an opinion on something. We can’t do that because everything was decided behind closed doors and left us simply with a breach of a certain rule line that is as transparent as a double glazed window.

Of course it hasn’t stopped the public, the fans, and the media from taking sides. Everyone is getting involved in it, even the legends. But why people are forming opinions without all the facts is a bit ignorant eh? It’s such a shame that we will never know all the facts. It would help to vindicate any arguments in the public eye. Perhaps this will happen given the size of the public uproar.

This brings me to the punishment. Is it harsh? Well if they did do something wrong – the point’s deduction is merited. The fine? $100 million! When you add in driver wages, loss of prize money and the like that number will nearly double. I would expect this to be cut down under appeal if they do ala Turkey’s fine last year. 100 mill does seem extremely harsh though. It does bring into question why the drivers got away scant free however. If McLaren are guilty of using the documents, then surely its drivers benefited from it all? Maybe the extraordinary money fine was given in place of leaving the drivers alone.

I would question Hamilton’s decision to be there. Up until last week the drivers had more or less kept a low profile on the whole issue. Which was correct. They stayed away from the politics – up until Hamilton opened his mouth last weekend at Monza. Allot of people were making a ruckus yesterday at Alonso’s no show in Paris, preferring to stay and prepare for the race. What was the problem with this? His job is to race the car. Not play politics. Hamilton’s appearance yesterday was unnecessary in my view. Maybe his reasoning for his appearance was a set of mind games on his part, to show his undying allegiance to McLaren given further impression of Alonso’s distance from them. Judging by some of the articles and the media reaction, it worked well.

So into the season run-in. Whatever happens it’s a tainted season. No doubt people will be bitching left, right and centre from here on in. The lines have been drawn and amongst the fans, there is a deep level of hatred towards those they feel got the shaft.