Unwarranted Invite

Just when we thought we were seeing the beginning of the end of the Spygate affair, Luca di Montezemolo comes out with another prod towards McLaren. We really didn’t need one of the childish jabs from the Ferrari boss especially given that after months the fans were getting to the end of the tunnel. McLaren owned up in admitting that things had gone farther than they claimed to know. The FIA in turn cleared their 08 car and more or less began to wind down the Spygate affair.

For him to come out and offer the photocopy employee that alerted about Couglain’s shenigans to come over to Italy shortly after the aforementioned just seemed to be nothing more than one more swift kick aimed at McLaren. It reminds me of the petty gamesmanship that we saw around Spa when even Hamilton got involved in some of it. Ferrari have been vindicated from their point of view so why not just keep the head down and focus on 2008 and be the bigger ‘man’ so to speak.

Thats it for 2007. We have much to look forward to in 2008 with car launches in early January before the work towards the new season begins in earnest. Bring on Melbourne. Hope you all have a happy and safe New Year.

The Good, the Bad and the Racing

Over the last few days we’ve seen the two faces of McLaren. The good in the signing of Heikki Kovalainen to partner Hamilton. The fact that Heikki was left out in the cold at Renault was eye catching, given how he outpaced Fisichella for the majority of the year. One of the rumours going around is that Heikki was dropped because he was considered too fast for Alonso who is out to avoid a 2007 repeat. He must not remember that Piquet Junior did finish second to Hamilton in GP2 and I doubt he will be keen to lie down given the opportunity.

With the freedom of Kovalainen, he was the obvious choice for the second McLaren seat. I’m sure fans of the Finn were getting a little worried that de la Rosa, with his Spanish connections to many sponsors who joined because of Alonso would get the nod. Nice to see McLaren do the right thing and bring in a top driver who will hopefully push Hamilton and bring the most out of both drivers.

Of course we saw the bad of McLaren over the weekend as well with an admission (finally) over the Stepney-gate issue. A statement claimed that dissemination (in English – transmitting) of Ferrari data went deeper than originally though. They have stopped development on three parts that could be potentially linked back to Ferrari data. It makes the FIA’s decision to wait till February to clear the McLaren 2008 car more prudent now. It’s possible the FIA stewards found something and have given McLaren an opportunity to rectify the problem.

The statement has led to calls for the head of Ron Dennis. Personally, I would be happy if this was the end of someone who whinges anytime his team got beaten. End of the day the buck stops with him. He staked his reputation on his team been clean and playing by the rules and the statement appears to be nothing but an admission of guilt. Will he survive this? Time will tell. Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of this spy fiasco once and for all so we can go racing clean again.

Race of Champions was on this weekend in Wembley – an event I unfortunately missed due to television issues. That was a shame because I was looking forward to the crème of racing talent going at it, especially to see Schumacher racing again for fun. If the go-kart racing in Brazil was anything to go by it would’ve been a treat. Funny thing I noted was that the Brits were selling up the prospect of Hamilton been there to race Schumacher months back. But come the event there wasn’t a peep and no Hamilton, out because of a sponsorship commitment or something similar. After all the chat about the prospect of him been there one would think they would bother to say ‘oh, he actually isn’t coming – maybe next year.’ Should be able to catch a highlights show of it somewhere.

Speaking of Schumacher, it would appear he has found a part-time hobby as a taxi driver. Running late for a plane the champ took over from the taxi driver and drove to the airport. Bloody hilarious that and decent of him to give a generous tip. The taxi driver will have a story to tell his kids. That been said, how proud of his own driving can he be when he had to give up the seat? This is one of the stories that are a bit surreal. It’s the sort of story you would think ‘I wonder what they a racing driver would do in such a situation’ and it was just great to see Schumi take the bull by the horns.

To-mato, To-mat-o

After a few weeks of relative silence in the F1 world we finally got some action both on and off the track the past week.

Spygate round two ended up with a result that has baffled many with Renault guilty but not penalised for it. This response has set many raging bias towards McLaren. Interestingly enough people seem to forget that McLaren were guilty but not penalised on the first hearing as well. Still the fact that Renault got away without penalty just adds more fuel to the fire. It’s just added to the ire of fans who claim that the FIA give Ferrari a different set of rules to the rest of the field.

The FIA aren’t making any friends right now especially with issuing a writ against Brundle for his piece in the Times. So I suppose I should be careful what I say here in case they try to lamp me up as well for expressing an opinion based on the facts put forward!
McLaren won’t have their car designs looked over till February which again is another strange decision. Why can’t the FIA delegates decide now looking at the blueprints that would be different come February when the car is built? It just once more puts questions marks over 2008 which we all hoped were to be left behind after this year’s politics.

Elsewhere Alonso finally decided to rejoin Renault, no doubt having waited to see if the team was going to be penalised over Spygate II. The choice of Nelson Piquet Junior as his team-mate I predicted at the start of the year, but not at the expense of Heikki. With more and more noise been made about de la Rosa for that second McLaren seat – due to his Spanish ties and his inability to cause Hamilton any problems – it could mean the talented Finn is going to spend a year off the grid. This is something I find baffling especially given some people that will make grid next year that really shouldn’t.

On the topic of drivers seeking seats, Ralf seems suitably unimpressed of the Force India after finishing slowest of those in the shoot-out for the second seat. Not long after the test he announced he wasn’t going to peruse the seat in what seems like salvage some pride attempt. Shame it came after he chose to drive the car and not before.

In another interesting decision by the FIA, they have released the 2009 and 2010 calendars for the WRC. With 24 events on their books all events are now only going to be bi-yearly. While it’s great to see Ireland with a place it’s an odd way to go towards the future, especially when it means that long standing events like Monte-Carlo, Britain, Finland are going to only happen once every two years. While a series should be all for expanding, it should also remember the foundations that it was built on.