This morning, three stories by three of the media’s top F1 journalists have provided food for thought. Take, for instance, Kevin Garside in the Telegraph:

Not so poor Dave Ryan, the middle-ranking manager who left Sepang carrying a heavyweight can, the kind of load you might expect a senior executive to bear. Not at McLaren evidently. Well, not yet anyway.

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh says he is considering his position. Given the knife protruding from Ryan’s back, it would appear that any imperative to walk the plank did not seriously trouble the conscience of the team’s high command.

Ryan is a time-served McLaren fixer, a no-nonsense Kiwi 35 years with the team who can find his way around the paddock blindfold. He is normally an enforcer of policy not the author of it.

Ed Gorman in The Times:

It is easy to imagine Hamilton and Ryan making things up between themselves and going into the room and saying something they should never have done. But the part that stretches credibility to breaking point is the idea that after Melbourne and before the pair were summoned back before the stewards on Thursday in Kuala Lumpur, that no-one else in the team was made aware of what they had said and what was going on. It is important to appreciate that when Ryan and Hamilton went back to the stewards in Sepang they both continued to lie and to stick to their story from Melbourne. This has been confirmed both by McLaren and the FIA. It beggars belief that, in a team like McLaren which has been taught by Ron Dennis to think in a complex and often self-defeating way about even the most simple problems, that this critical issue would not have been more widely discussed by senior management before they went back in and approved by those people (or maybe not approved by some of them).

And Maurice Hamilton in The Guardian:

Is Ryan, who has been suspended by McLaren, being made the fall guy?
That would appear to be the case. Having known Ryan for more than 25 years, there is no one more honest or straightforward in formula one.

How much danger is the new team principal Martin Whitmarsh in?
He appears to have fallen at the first hurdle thanks to his lack of support for a man who has served the team faultlessly for 34 years. Ryan has widespread respect. On this basis Whitmarsh’s judgment is now being questioned.

This all leaves a serious question mark hanging over the McLaren team. Those that know Dave Ryan say he is an honest man who does what he is told by senior management. He has loyally served the team for 35 years. For me, that was one of the most staggering things about this story — that someone with so much experience could make such a serious error of judgement, and that someone would do anything to jeopardise the reputation of the team they have worked for since the 1970s.

I have to admit that last night as I reflected on McLaren’s latest foul-up, I was going through previous events in my head. All those times when McLaren’s version of events turned out not to be true. There have been plenty of them. I usually gave them the benefit of the doubt. But now, I am beginning to suspect foul play.

You may say that all teams and drivers lie and cheat in sport. This may be true, but it doesn’t make it any more palatable. What annoys me about the fact that McLaren are constantly caught with their pants down is the fact that this is the team that is constantly banging on about its honesty and integrity.

At least Jean Todt didn’t hide the fact that he was unsporting. He just shrugged his shoulders and said that’s what it takes to win. Ferrari have offended me a lot over the years. But they haven’t offended me as much as McLaren offend me today.

If there is even an ounce of truth in the hunch that the journalists have, McLaren are finished as a sports team. They will struggle to regain the trust of the fans unless there is a wholesale change at the top of the organisation.

It is bad enough to mislead the authorities. But it is a lot worse if the team then uses one of its most loyal workers as a scapegoat. Some have noticed the uncomfortable echoes of what happened to Mike Coughlan — so it would bring the events of Stepneygate into a new light as well.

First of all, it’s worth looking at the role of the FIA stewards here, and the process behind how stewards make their decisions. Up until this week, I had assumed that the stewards — or at least someone at the FIA — monitored all radio communications as a matter of course. Presumably this is how the radio transmissions between the McLaren team and Lewis Hamilton were discovered. So fair enough.

But to me, it beggars belief that the stewards do not listen to any radio conversations that may have occurred during contentious situations. Moreover, the fact that the FIA did not clock the fact that Hamilton had told different stories to the media and the stewards earlier demonstrates that they don’t really have a clue how to minimise these sorts of situations which are damaging to F1.

It seems as though the entire world, except for those in the stewards’ room up the ivory tower, filled with Max’s mates who run caravan clubs and have never watched a grand prix before — knew that Hamilton deliberately slowed down to let Trulli past. The entire stewarding process needs reform, and not just the tinkering that the FIA does to try and placate the fans.

Race Control also have a potential role that could sort out this kind of situation with the minimum of fuss. They could have simply clarified the situation while the cars were on the track, rather than constantly altering the results behind closed doors. But as Keith points out, they seemingly can’t be bothered — or are deliberately ducking the responsibility.

Now onto McLaren’s role, and if the FIA seem incompetent, McLaren seem to have gone completely loopy. It is not often I feel sorry for Lewis Hamilton, but I have to say I feel awful for him right now.

If I was a driver, I think McLaren would be the last team I would want to drive for. Let us face facts. Despite their puffed-up prestige, McLaren have not been a very successful team over the past decade or so. After a few close calls at the start of the decade, McLaren went into a deep slump in 2003 and 2004 when they produced a car that was so unreliable it never raced, then followed that up with a car that was not particularly fast and was still unreliable.

It took them until 2007 to find their old form again, and it should have been a dream year for them. They had the World Champion in one car, and the hottest rookie F1 had seen in over a decade in the other. But the situation with the drivers was completely mismanaged, and Fernando Alonso had catastrophically lost trust in the team by the end of the season. Things came to a head in Hungary that year with the controversial incident in the pitlane, at which point we can safely say the relationship ended between McLaren and the best F1 driver since Schumacher.

That was nothing compared to Stepneygate. While you can question to what extent McLaren as an organisation, rather than Mike Coughlan and one or two other individuals, was culpable for that, it did reveal that McLaren as a team was not as well-managed as Ron Dennis liked to think — or liked us to believe he thought. The icing of the cake was when McLaren promised that they hadn’t used any of the knowledge attained from Ferrari’s dossier — only to issue a mea culpa when it was discovered that three elements of the car were inspired by the document.

All the while, what should have been a dream 2007 became a complete nightmare. What should have been a Drivers’ Championship (and McLaren had two drivers that were perfectly capable of winning it) and an easy Constructors’ Championship ended in disgrace and disqualification.

To an extent, McLaren put the terrible events of 2007 behind them to successfully gain the Drivers Championship in 2008. But the season was not without its problems.

At times, McLaren seemed to be conspiring against their own driver. Thanks to their inflexible strategies, which are generated by a computer in Woking, they almost threw away the German Grand Prix which should have been an easy victory. Tyre blunders at Monza completely put paid to Hamilton’s chances to win in Italy.

Meanwhile, throughout the season McLaren appeared to develop a paranoia over penalties handed out by the FIA. A siege mentality appeared to develop inside McLaren.

Matters cannot have been helped by last year’s Spa controversy. Indeed, Martin Whitmarsh even referred to Spa in his statement today, which suggests that as an organisation, McLaren continues to be badly affected by the events surrounding that weekend.

For me, McLaren’s actions in Australia demonstrate that they continue to be jittery when it comes to the FIA. As pointed out by a journalist during Lewis Hamilton’s press conference today, McLaren did nothing wrong on the track. The only thing they did wrong was lie to the stewards.

So, why lie to the stewards? Dave Ryan is a highly experienced person. He has been an employee of McLaren since 1974. He was Team Manager from 1990, and became Sporting Director last year. He is highly experienced, and by all accounts he is a good person.

But in Australia had made a humongous error of judgement when he withheld the truth from the stewards, and apparently advised Lewis Hamilton to do the same. Why on earth he thought this was a good idea, when he knew that the radio conversations will have been recorded, will surely remain a mystery. I would be surprised if Mr Ryan himself knows why he did it. It seems as though the siege mentality is still getting the better of McLaren, and Ryan lost the ability to think rationally. Emotions got the better of the team when it came to discussing the situation with the stewards.

Dave Ryan has been sent home in disgrace, suspended from work by the company he has loyally served for 35 years, apparently sighted in tears as he left the circuit during Friday Practice 1. Another McLaren employee’s career appears to have been left in tatters.

Like I say, I feel awfully sorry for Lewis Hamilton today. He is getting a lot of stick from the media at the moment. But he did nothing wrong. Indeed, he erred on the side of caution when he went on the radio to inform the team that he had passed Trulli while the Toyota driver was off the circuit. That is perfectly legal.

But McLaren were caught out not having the knowledge of the rulebook, which they really should have. They misinformed Hamilton. When they realised their mistake they created a convoluted way to rectify the situation, and failed to properly cover their tracks. Reminds me of Hungary 2007.

None of this is Hamilton’s fault. He may have lied to the stewards, but Dave Ryan must take the blame for this for badly briefing him. In that situation, I wouldn’t doubt someone as experienced as Dave Ryan.

The McLaren team is now a complete shambles. Now a perennially under-achieving team, it stumbles from one crisis to the next. You just never know when McLaren are going to put their foot in it again, but it will happen sooner or later.

If I was Lewis Hamilton, I would start seriously considering moving to another team. McLaren is constantly finding controversy. It is clear that the team doesn’t know the rules as well as it should. The team’s strategies are inflexible and often plain wrong. And most of all, they have produced a terrible car — not for the first time this decade.

Vodafone and McLaren’s other sponsors must be thinking the same. McLaren are coming across in the media as serial cheats and liars, and it can be doing no good whatsoever for “Vodafone McLaren Mercedes” to constantly be in the news for the wrong reasons.

Speaking of which, I wonder what Mercedes thinks of all this. For years they have shown a lot of patience in McLaren, despite the fact that the team has not always produced the results. This year Mercedes is trying out life as a supplier of engines to teams other than McLaren. The fact that Brawn could bolt a Mercedes into their car at short notice and cruise to victory standing on their head in Melbourne will have come as a revelation. Perhaps it is the Brawn, not the McLaren, which should have the silver livery.

McLaren need to sort themselves out, and fast. Everyone concerned — drivers, sponsors, engine suppliers — must be dreading what on earth is coming round the corner from this shambolic team.

Some British media outlets are guilty of putting an anti-Spanish angle into elements of their F1 coverage last year. It reached an all-time low when some papers insinuated that McLaren’s Spanish drivers Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa were “at the centre” of the Stepneygate scandal. This completely ignored the fact that the real protagonists of the scandal — Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan — are both British!

Now Pitpass is reporting that the partisan crowd during testing in Spain has taken a nastier turn:

Yesterday, according [to] the Spanish newspaper Marca, shouts of “puto negro” (fucking black) and “negro de mierda” (black shit) were clearly heard, and that large sections of the crowd were involved.

Pitpass also has photographs of a group of people tastelessly “blacking up”, wearing t-shirts bearing the words “Hamilton’s Familly [sic]”. This is absolutely disgusting. A lot of people find it far too easy to pluck out an accusation of racism whenever it is suggested that Hamilton might not be the messiah, but there can be no doubt about the nature of these people’s demonstrations.

The article also notes that “such insidious behaviour has never been part of Formula One” — although a cynic could say that this was because of the paucity of nonwhite drivers in F1 historically.

There have been growing concerns about the nature of the “supporters” who have been turning up to test sessions in Valencia, Barcelona and Jerez. For instance, yesterday Keith Collantine wrote:

But what I do find odd is that there are some Alonso fans who got up this morning, and decided to make a banner because they were going to an F1 test. But instead of making a banner supporting Alonso, they made one attacking Hamilton.

There are a billion reasons to like F1. I don’t like the thought that some people who buy Grand Prix tickets are in it for the hate.

There have also been reports that some people have been throwing missiles at the McLaren cars. This is totally unacceptable in Formula 1 for obvious reasons.

I don’t necessarily mind some of the more humorous anti-Hamilton banners that have been on display. My personal favourite read “Lewis, have you learnt to pee by yourself, or does daddy still help you?” — mocking the overbearing presence of Lewis Hamilton’s father which has seen Anthony Hamilton become a minor celebrity in his own right.

But there is a difference between this kind of teasing and the kind of outright racism that is beginning to be reported. Pitpass calls on Fernando Alonso “to publicly distance himself from these so-called fans”. But this isn’t Fernando Alonso’s fault. He has nothing to do with these racists, and has never spoken about Hamilton in terms of his race.

But the media should immediately stop its disgustingly debased coverage of Formula 1 — in the UK as well as in Spain.

And would you credit it, it was by ITV-F1. WHY LEWIS IS TAKING THE FLAK, the headline screams, stomping its feet.

The article by Mark Hughes (who is normally one of the more sensible ITV-F1 people) starts as it means to go on, by taking a true event and completely twisting it out of shape:

When Lewis Hamilton put his car into the Shanghai pit lane’s gravel trap there was a lot of spontaneous and ill-concealed cheering in the non-British sector of the press room.

Yeah, do you know why? Because it was a spectacular event that turned the season on its head, just like when Nigel Mansell’s tyre exploded or when Michael Schumacher’s engine exploded last year. Not cheering when Hamilton beached his car in the gravel trap would be like not cheering when a goal is scored in the 89^th minute of the football World Cup final. Only the most partisan of people would be unable to see this.

For an explanation from journalists — journalists who are British, but who aren’t hopelessly biased like the morons at ITV — of exactly why there would be cheering in the press room, just listen to the latest edition of the BBC (yes, that is British Broadcasting Corporation) Chequered Flag podcast.

David Croft: You mentioned a stampede in the press room. I hear there was quite a cheer in the press room as well when Lewis went out. Is that right?

Jimmy Roberts: Well, it was more a cheer of… Unbelievable scenes. We can’t imagine what we’re watching. The thing is, Formula 1 — it never fails to excite, it never fails to generate moments of sheer sporting drama. It reminded me of when Nigel Mansell’s tyre blew in 1986, and it was just one of those moments where you just have to shout. There was just pandemonium.

[...]

Maurice Hamilton: I remember the reaction in ’86. It’s an exclamation! “Whoa, look at that! How did that happen?” And the same thing, there’s Lewis Hamilton stuck in the gravel trap. I think the vision of that McLaren beached with its rear wheels spinning in the gravel will just live with Formula 1 forever. It’s one of those emblematic shots that people will forever remember.

In short, history was being made in front of our eyes. How can you just sit there? Despite the fact that even British mainstream journalists can see this, Mark Hughes is playing the usual game that British MSM journalists have been playing. According to them, it’s Brits versus the world (and Spain in particular).

You could even see this in some of the press coverage of the Stepneygate scandal, where some consumers of news were left with the impression that there was golden boy Britain’s Lewis Hamilton keeping his nose clean. It was those dirty Spaniards, Pedro de la Rosa and Fernando Alonso, who were at the centre of all this!

Let us just gloss over the fact that the real people who were at the centre of the scandal — Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan — were both British. But this just doesn’t fit in with the story that the racist British media wants to project. In this ITV-F1 article, Mark Hughes is pressing all of the same buttons, albeit a bit more subtly. You ought to be able to expect better from the country’s biggest commercial broadcaster. But I have given up.

Mark Hughes carries on through the article. I really wish it was good, but I am afraid it is just straw man after straw man.

Even Hamilton’s summoning for the marshals to push him out of the gravel was greeted with jeering by onlookers.

Just as it was when Michael Schumacher did the same thing. British journalists weren’t too keen about Michael Schumacher got pushed out of the gravel either. But even Schumacher never used a crane to re-join the race. Interestingly, Mark Hughes makes no mention of the crane incident anywhere in his article.

He goes on to take a look at Hamilton’s “on-track etiquette” before going on to talk about a number of Lewis Hamilton’s moves. Unfortunately, he paints a picture that all of the complaints about Hamilton’s etiquette are about hard moves. This is simply not the case.

Even so, though, let’s not forget how put out Hamilton was when Alonso played a similarly hard move on Hamilton at the Belgian Grand Prix. It’s so different when the boot’s on the other foot, huh? The other drivers lived with it, while Hamilton just started moaning about it.

Mark Hughes then completely twists the tale of Hamilton’s erratic driving behind the Safety Car at Fuji, completely glossing over the real issues. He mentions the first re-start, when Alonso was behind Hamilton. There is one particular point about this paragraph that makes me laugh so much (emphasis mine)!

On the restart behind the first safety car in Fuji he was perhaps a little over-aggressive in getting the jump on Alonso, braking so hard that Alonso (technically illegally) passed him to avoid an accident.

I love it! When Fernando Alonso does something technically illegal it merits a mention. As one of Hamilton’s defenders, Tom, said in the comments on another post on this blog, this rule is really a grey area — particularly if the car in front is effectively brake-testing.

But when Lewis Hamilton does something which is actually illegal, it is completely glossed over or just downright ignored in this article. The incident that provided the most controversy — the one when Hamilton brake-tested Webber and Vettel — does not get a single mention in this article. Yet this is the incident where it has been proved that Hamilton broke two rules.

First of all, Hamilton was driving erratically. This is against the rules, and there is no room for games behind the Safety Car. Drivers are not racing, and the purpose of the Safety Car is to make the track safer and to stop drivers from doing dangerous things. Hamilton did the complete opposite — as we can see from the number of accidents that happened in Safety Car periods compared to during the race.

Secondly, Hamilton strayed more than five car lengths behind the Safety Car. This is not some technicality that the FIA put in there for the hell of it. The Safety Car is designed to bunch the drivers up. This is partly to give the marshals plenty of time to clean up on-track debris. If the cars are more spread out, the marshals have less time (and less safety) to do this. Hamilton had complete disregard for this rule.

The FIA have since changed the rules so that a leader is allowed ten car lengths. This trick of changing a rule after it has been broken is usually reserved for pro-Ferrari purposes. And oh, how many times the British media has lambasted the FIA for it.

Hamilton effectively brake-tested Webber. Webber slowed down to avoid being “technically illegal” just like Alonso was. This is what caused Vettel to go straight into the back of him. It was all Hamilton’s fault, and you can see this in the video. But the British media just aren’t prepared to admit this — and you can see this in the fact that Mark Hughes has completely ignored this incident in his article.

So anyone with some vague notion of “Hamilton being controversial behind the Safety Car in Japan” will have the impression that Hamilton was completely in the right after reading this article. In reality, Mark Hughes has skirted round the issue completely. Nice piece of obfuscation there.

I find the views expressed by Alan Permane and Steve Nielsen in the latest Renault podcast interesting. You could say that they had a vested interest in Hamilton losing the Japanese Grand Prix, although they also say that he shouldn’t have been disqualified from the race, but given a grid penalty for China. Besides which, I think you would struggle to find many sensible F1-heads (that is, F1-heads that don’t have a vested interest in a British driver succeeding) disagreeing much with what they say.

Steve Nielsen: During the race, the only time we became aware of it was when the FIA came onto the intercom to us and said that Heikki [Kovalainen] should watch his distance to Lewis. Which is very unusual. What was implied was that we were too close — dangerously close — and so we conveyed that message to Heikki. And it wasn’t really until after the race, talking to a couple of the other drivers, and then the now famous bit of film that was on YouTube, that we became aware that Lewis actually was far from innocent in all of that and that his driving was questionable — very questionable in a couple of instances. And my own personal view is that he caused the accident between Vettel and Webber.

Alan Permane: Yeah, I find it a bit odd that Vettel got penalised, then they realised that actually it was not his fault, but we’re not going to penalise anybody. To me it was Lewis’s fault.

SN: And at that very race on Friday in the drivers briefing, Charlie [Whiting] told both the McLaren drivers that their driving behind the Safety Car at Monza — which was two races previous — had not been good enough. It was too erratic. And Lewis had a kind of — not a problem with it, but he certainly raised concerns and said he thought it was okay and was surprised that it wasn’t okay. And yet here we are two days later and he repeated it. And as Alan’s just said, for that to go totally unpunished, I’m a bit surprised at.

AP: What I find strange is that they felt that punishment was needed. And Vettel got that punishment. And then when the blame was reapportioned, or it was figured out it wasn’t [Vettel's] fault, that punishment [should] still [be] there, so whose fault was it? I don’t think it was just a racing incident or one of those things. It clearly looks like Lewis stops the car and it causes a bit of a pile-up. I think to exclude him from Fuji would have been way too much. That really would have been unfortunate for the Championship. But maybe a grid penalty or something in China, I dunno. Anyway, that’s all history now.

It is painfully clear to me that the FIA were aware that Lewis Hamilton was driving dangerously behind the Safety Car. Not only had they warned him about his driving at Monza, but they were also aware that he was doing exactly the same thing during the Japanese Grand Prix. We know this because after the accident between Vettel and Webber, Heikki Kovalainen was told by the FIA to keep an extra distance behind Hamilton during Safety Car periods.

Yet, they didn’t punish Hamilton for it. Yes, Hamilton really is getting all of the flak, isn’t he!

Back to Mark Hughes’s article.

There was also some glee from his detractors when Ron Dennis revealed that the circumstances leading to Alonso’s blocking of Hamilton in the Hungary pit lane during qualifying had been triggered by Hamilton’s non-compliance with a team request at the beginning of the session.

This, for me — and many other F1 fans — is the defining moment of Hamilton’s career so far. Yet, once again, Mark Hughes completely glosses over it. He even implies that Hamilton’s actions were somehow mitigated by the fact that there was “glee from [Hamilton's] detractors”. Give me a break!

Why do we have to keep on putting up with ITV’s awful, biased coverage?

The FIA promised that an confidential information would be removed from the documents before being published. Well, they certainly blacked them out. But simply copying and pasting the black areas revealed all! F1Fanatic has the story.

It is utter incompetence. Essentially, to remove the secret information, the FIA used a similar technique that internet users use to hide “spoiler text” when discussing films and the like. Highlight the text below, as they say.

Max Mosley would be hilarious if he wasn’t so pathetic!

So now all of Ferrari’s super secret information has been leaked for all to see. Not only this, but other sensitive information — such as Mike Coughlan’s salary at McLaren — has also been revealed. Who needs any rogue Nigel Stepney-style figure when you can get the FIA to do all the work for you?

The FIA have since fixed their documents, but of course it is too late. The originals are all over the internet now. On websites like major Dutch broadcaster RTL.

Do I envisage Max Mosley being fined $100m dollars for bringing the sport into disrepute because of this? Not a chance — even though he deserves it more than anyone else!

What was that you say? A double-rear master cylinder with spring? Very interesting!…

First things first. The evidence against McLaren was fairly damning. In the original hearing, McLaren’s defence was that Mike Coughlan was a rogue employee and that no other employee had access to any confidential Ferrari information. Furthermore, most of the evidence pointed to Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan intending to use the documents at Honda, where they jointly applied for a job, rather than McLaren.

The new evidence demonstrates that there was, to an extent, an intention to use Ferrari information to guide development at McLaren. Pedro de la Rosa and Fernando Alonso also knew about the documents and discussed information from them. And, as the WMSC pointed out (points 3.10, 3.11), it is highly likely that other employees must have known about this.

Otherwise, the implication is that Pedro de la Rosa has the sole say on which weight distributions get tested on the simulator and whether to try out a special type of gas on the tyres. Common sense says that somebody else other than the test driver is involved in these decisions.

However, this also conclusively proves that Ferrari information was not flowing among McLaren employees freely. My guess is that Mike Coughlan probably knew that he would end up in big trouble if enough people found out that he had special access to Ferrari information.

It is notable that Pedro de la Rosa — somebody who Coughlan will have known since his days at Arrows — is at the centre of all the email conversations. He was clearly being used as a kind of middleman between Coughlan and whichever other employees de la Rosa was working with.

Perhaps it was Coughlan’s intention to keep the Ferrari documents to himself all along. It is possible that he accidentally let it slip to his friend Pedro that he was in regular contact with Nigel Stepney. From then on, de la Rosa’s curiosity forced Coughlan to look up the documents and the rest we see in the emails. de la Rosa let his compatriot Alonso in on the secret. This explains why Lewis Hamilton had no incriminating emails.

And it is still possible that no other employees were aware of the Ferrari documents, although de la Rosa was providing helpful suggestions to his colleagues. In this sense, the McLaren team is no more guilty now than it was in July. It was just the actions of one (or two or three) rogue employees in a company which must have several hundred employees.

What the new evidence also reveals is that the Ferrari data was probably not much use to McLaren anyway. The revelations about weight distribution suggest that the Ferrari data was so different to what McLaren was used to that it was deemed useless for their car to the extent that Fernando Alonso doubted the accuracy of the data. It backs up what I said in my previous post on this subject — that it would be like putting together pieces from two different jigsaws.

There remains precious little evidence that McLaren actually did use any of the Ferrari data in the end. It’s a shame that, because of the way this story has been presented by the media, most people seem to think that McLaren were found guilty of “spying” on Ferrari and copying Ferrari parts and therefore having an illegal car.

McLaren were actually found guilty of the catch-all “bringing the sport into disrepute”. This (along with the fact that all of McLaren’s drivers provided the FIA with the relevant emails) explains why the drivers have kept their points while McLaren have lost all of theirs. It is close to the prediction I made in my previous post — that McLaren would be punished heavily while Hamilton (the story of the season, remember) would get away scot-free.

It is cynical of the FIA to do this. But there was not much else they could do. They had got themselves into a situation where they had to punish McLaren, but at the same time they did not want to jeopardise the story of entire season (the emergence of Lewis Hamilton and an exciting 3- or 4-way title battle). It is fair, though, for the drivers to keep their points as they have not been driving an illegal car.

A lot of the problem came down to the fact that the WMSC had to be seen to be punishing McLaren harshly. The media latched onto this story in an unprecedented way, and in many respects it was sensationalised and blown out of proportion. As such, the punishment is suitably sensationalised and overblown.

The $100 million fine was clearly designed to attract headlines, not least because this is nothing like what McLaren will have to pay. Some of the money will come out of the earnings they will lose as a result of being thrown out of this year’s Constructors’ Championship. McLaren won’t even have to pay half of the $100 million.

Another aspect of the coverage that has annoyed me is the way that it has become known as “spygate”. You will notice that I continue to call it by its original name, “Stepneygate”. Why? Because there was no spying going on! Mike Coughlan did not break into Maranello and hide in Jean Todt’s cupboard. He was approached by a Ferrari employee, Nigel Stepney, and from there a relationship was formed.

No bugs. No wiretaps. No covert break-ins. Just one Ferrari employee exchanging information with one McLaren employee. As far as I am concerned, this all began with the wrongdoing of a Ferrari employee, not the McLaren team. It begs the question once again — why were Ferrari not also charged with bringing the sport into disrepute? It was their employee who started this whole sorry episode. A rogue employee, yes — just like Mike Coughlan.

In fact, if anyone has been the victim of spying, it is Nigel Stepney. Earlier this year he claimed that he feared for his life after finding that he had been bugged. He says he was also involved in “Mafia-like” high-speed car chases and subsequently fled Italy.

This is where the whole tale becomes darker. Clive at Formula 1 Insight says that certain articles on some websites have mysteriously disappeared. I am certain of this as well, because I can not find any reference to Stepney’s car chase claims on the reputable F1 websites that I read, although I am certain that I must have read of them there.

This leads us nicely onto conspiracy theories. The FIA’s institutional pro-Ferrari bias is well known and barely contested by anyone except the most blindly ardent Ferrari fans. For instance, the World Motor Sport Council — the body that found against McLaren on Thursday — has more representatives from Ferrari than any other team. The governing body’s constant attempts to rig the championship in Ferrari’s favour has done far more to place the sport into disrepute than anything Ron Dennis or McLaren have done.

A lot of people are asking why McLaren have been so harshly punished. One of the things that I am reading time and time again is that this sort of thing is apparently fairly commonplace in Formula 1 (although perhaps not to the same extent). I mentioned Peter Windsor’s comments on this blog before (near the bottom of the post).

Many are also drawing parallels with the incident that involved Toyota a few years ago. The FIA stayed well away from that — the whole matter was kept to the Italian courts.

So, why have McLaren been singled out in this way? The FIA’s pro-Ferrari bias can’t explain it all. The Toyota case also involved Ferrari blueprints. Obviously, the way the media latched onto the story explains part of it. But the media latched onto it for a reason. Ferrari pushed this for all it was worth and asked the FIA to get involved (unlike the Toyota case). But was there something else at play?

Many claim that FIA president Max Mosley has a personal vendetta against Ron Dennis. Mosley didn’t do much to change this perception with his comments at Spa yesterday morning (awkward photo opportunity or not).

It seems to me that Max Mosley’s comment that the large fine was designed partly to “bring… his [Ron Dennis's] budget down to the level of some of the other top teams in the paddock” backs up this notion that Mosley is anti-Dennis and pro-Ferrari. It sounds like a calculated plan to damage McLaren and help its rival teams.

Paul Stoddart certainly put in more than his two cents in a must-read interview with Pitpass. Stoddart was an old nemesis of Max Mosley, but he was hardly best pals with Ron Dennis either. It is notable therefore that Paul Stoddart should come out so strongly in Ron Dennis’s favour.

As an aside, note Stoddart’s claim that Max Mosley was the person who prevented there being a proper race at Indianapolis in 2005. He and Jean Todt were the only people who were not willing to compromise for the sake of the sport. Even Bernie Ecclestone was so incensed at Mosley’s stubbornness that he threw his phone at him. This is a real (albeit thoroughly unsurprising) insight into Max Mosley’s character.

Speaking of Max Mosley, Ron Dennis and character, another thing I have read about time and time again is the integrity of Ron Dennis. It is difficult to imagine Ron Dennis cheating or knowingly allowing cheating to go on in his team. He is clearly a proud individual — not just proud of himself, but proud of McLaren as well.

His company has a strict policy whereby the drivers are treated equally. This had already got the team into trouble at least twice this year (at Monaco and Hungary). Still, Ron Dennis refused to deviate from the policy.

Well, seemingly it is the equality stance that has landed McLaren in the deep doo-doo that it has found itself in. Apparently Fernando Alonso confronted Ron Dennis on the morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix. He told Ron Dennis about the incriminating emails and threatened to hand them over to the FIA unless he was made number one driver.

It is interesting that Ron Dennis preferred to hand over the information himself rather than capitulating to the powerful Alonso’s demands. He risked the reputation of his team to preserve the integrity of his team. Very, very admirable. Allegedly, Alonso and Dennis have not spoken since the incident.

It has to be said, this casts Alonso in a very bad light. Not only did he sit on incriminating information, but he also effectively blackmailed his boss in an attempt to get preferential treatment. I bemoaned Lewis Hamilton’s arrogance a few weeks ago, but Fernando Alonso is obviously not squeaky clean either.

I am just glad that there is a race tomorrow so that hopefully this whole sorry affair can be put to rest at last. For some light relief, check out this amusing animated version of the Stepneygate saga (via Ed Gorman). The captions are all in Spanish (or something), but I can still understand it all perfectly!

It would have been bad enough had it just been the Stepneygate scandal from which McLaren (at the time) escaped any harsh punishment (probably rightly given the evidence there was at the time). But despite escaping punishment, the cloud of suspicion lingered, the media was not impressed and the tifosi were livid.

But there have also been rows over team orders and the status of the drivers which was kicked off by a deterioration in the relationship between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. McLaren probably have the two best drivers in the world in their cars, but instead of being an unmitigated success it has turned out to be a disaster.

At Hungary the FIA stepped in to prevent McLaren from scoring constructors’ points due to what was essentially an issue between the two drivers. It was harsh to levy such a heavy penalty on McLaren due to something that the team itself was seemingly quite peripheral to.

Then at Monza the race stewards decided to fine the team $50,000 for running a lightweight gearbox at the Hungaroring. The race stewards say that the new gearbox should have been crash tested prior to being run. For their part, McLaren say they were open with the FIA at all times about the existence their new gearbox.

Even if the FIA were not made aware of the situation, you have to ask the question: what were the Italian stewards doing passing judgement on something that happened two races ago? There is a discussion on this over at BlogF1. This is the equivalent of a referee in a football match giving a footballer a yellow card for something he did three weeks ago.

This is not to say that the FIA should not have punished McLaren. But the race stewards are not the people to do it. And the scrutineers at Hungary were seemingly okay with the new gearbox. It all looks a bit fishy to me, particularly since it happened at the Italian Grand Prix. Italy is, of couse, the country where Ferrari almost rivals Catholicism as the biggest religion.

A similar thing happened last year at the Italian Grand Prix when Fernando Alonso was penalised for “blocking” a Ferrari that was a hundred metres behind him. The video of the entire lap is still available. Yes, that distant speck on the horizon is meant to be blocking Felipe Massa. The only people in the world who actually believe this are FIArrari.

But the FIA does not have to be in Italy to unfairly find in favour of Ferrari and against every single other team. Jackie Stewart rightly pointed this out today.

Now the whole Stepneygate saga is being opened up again, and the World Motor Sport Council is meeting on Thursday to discuss it. It will be a big day for Formula 1. Will the FIA cave into their pro-Ferrari instincts and award the Scuderia the Championship in the courtroom? Or will they act like the governing body of a sport and allow the Championship to be won and lost on the racetrack?

This series of events has prompted some to ask: are McLaren being picked on by the FIA this season? Craig has also taken a look at this. Many have mentioned the fact that FIA president Max Mosley has a pretty frosty relationship with Ron Dennis. The FIA deny that there is a witch hunt, but they would say that wouldn’t they?

For what it’s worth, I do not think that the FIA are deliberately singling out McLaren. At least, not beyond the extent we have come to expect from the FIA’s pro-Ferrari bias. But I think the adverse reaction to the original WMSC hearing in July has encouraged the FIA to punish McLaren heavily for the slightest wrongdoing.

The FIA are quite right to re-open the Stepneygate case if they think there is sufficient evidence. The integrity of the sport is important, and if McLaren are found to have benefited from Ferrari documents then they should face a heavy punishment.

But to me, it just does not stack up for the reasons I explained in my previous post on Stepneygate. The McLaren car had already been built by the time Mike Coughlan got his hands on the documents, and from then on basing developments on Ferrari blueprints would surely be like trying to piece together pieces from two different jigsaw puzzles.

But the whole saga became much more serious when drivers became involved. It is suggested that Fernando Alonso gained some insight into set-up data as a result of an email conversation with test driver Pedro de la Rosa, who is good buddies with Mike Coughlan.

This could prove crucial because beforehand McLaren had claimed that no employee was aware of the Ferrari information except for Mike Coughlan. If it transpires that de la Rosa and Alonso also knew, then there could be serious consequences.

A lot of people are asking themselves how the FIA could punish McLaren (if they are found guilty) without damaging the great story of this World Championship — particularly the emergence of the hugely exciting Lewis Hamilton. There is a nasty idea in my head that the FIA could end up punishing McLaren and punishing Alonso (because of the emails) but exonerating Hamilton. That way, Hamilton can win the World Championship while McLaren still get punished.

Yesterday Rory left a comment on this blog pointing out that the rumoured conversation between de la Rosa and Alonso was infact a fabrication. But that does not mean that the emails did not exist. They could have contained perfectly innocent information — or it could have been far worse than suggested by La Gazzetta dello Sport.

For the integrity of F1, and for the sake of this year’s fantastic World Championship, let us hope it is the former.

Update: See also Formula 1 Insight: Sport and Politics in Formula One.

While the media has been tempted to spin this as motorsport’s governing body letting McLaren off the hook, this misses an important point. There isn’t much evidence that McLaren have done anything wrong. The saga remains an issue concerning two rogue employees — Mike Coughlan of McLaren and Nigel Stepney of Ferrari.

There is no evidence that McLaren have benefited at all from the Ferrari documents. Indeed, there is not even evidence that the documents were ever in the possession of any McLaren employee except for Mike Coughlan. And while, as chief designer of McLaren, he was a pretty important figure, he can not have had the time to do much with the documents anyway.

Somebody yesterday said to me that it was a bit fishy that McLaren have come up with a fast car this year. But Mike Coughlan came into possession of the documents in late March — long after this year’s McLaren was designed; even after it first raced. And it is not as if it is unusual for McLaren to design a fast car. Indeed, it has been overdue, as they have experienced an unprecedented drought of success in recent years.

You only need to take a glance at the Ferrari and the McLaren to appreciate that they are not similar cars. The joke normally goes that if you gave all of the F1 cars the same paint job you would be unable to tell them apart. But the chassis of the Ferrari and the McLaren are very noticeably different to each other. Seemingly, nothing on the inside of the cars has rung alarm bells either.

There is the possibility that some Ferrari information was used in the development of the car as the season has gone on. But McLaren’s incredibly open offer to hand its car over to the FIA for inspection shows just how confident Ron Dennis was that his team had not broken the rules. The fact that the FIA have seemingly found no evidence of copied Ferrari parts vindicates this. Ron Dennis is a meticulous and honest man, and McLaren’s record is about as unblemished as they come.

Furthermore, a careful reading of the saga as it has drawn out has revealed that McLaren was never going to be the team where the Ferrari documents would have come in handy anyway. The most likely scenario is that Stepney approached Coughlan with a view to creating a “dream team” of engineers who would approach Honda.

Stepney in particular, and presumably Coughlan as well, were disillusioned with their employers for whatever reason. In Honda they would have seen the perfect opportunity: a team with a big budget and in desperate need to extra engineering and technical expertise.

They were looking for a boost in pay and status, and saw Honda as their best option. The Ferrari documents merely formed part of their arsenal. Honda are in the clear though, as they did not hire Stepney or Coughlan.

And Stepney’s involvement is important. GrandPrix.com has suggested that McLaren may have argued in court that if McLaren are to receive a penalty because of Mike Coughlan’s actions, then Ferrari ought to receive a similar penalty for Nigel Stepney’s actions. Given the lack of evidence of McLaren actually benefiting from the documents, this seems like a sound argument to me.

Given all of this information, it would have been pretty difficult for the WMSC to justify any draconian punishment for McLaren. Yes, Ferrari are livid. But this is typical of Ferrari. It is tough to think of a year in the past decade or so where Ferrari have not resorted to the rulebooks and the courts in an attempt to win the championship.

I will pluck just a few examples from the top of my head. The illegal bargeboards at Sepang in 1999: cleared by FIArrari. The sudden appeal against Michelin tyres towards the end of 2003, despite the fact that they had been used for almost two years: upheld by FIArrari. Last year’s claim at Monza that during qualifying Massa was being “impeded” by a Renault that was half a kilometre further up the track: supported by FIArrari.

Usually Ferrari’s whining succeeds because the FIA are Ferrari lackeys. This is why Jean Todt’s claim that Ferrari would have been punished if they were in the same situation is so laughable.

This latest saga is yet another example of Ferrari trying to win the championship through the many grey areas of the rulebook rather than the grey surface of the race track. What a breath of fresh air for the FIA to go against Ferrari’s wishes. It further demonstrates how little evidence there must have been of McLaren wrongdoing.

It is also worth remembering that McLaren have not gone completely unpunished. The FIA will be keeping an eye on them for the next two years to check for an evidence of the Ferrari information being used by McLaren. If McLaren step out of line, they face immediate exclusion from the championship. This is surely a fair verdict. As Ron Dennis said yesterday, “the punishment fits the crime.”

Keith Collantine has come to a similar conclusion to me, and makes a number of interesting points.

Ferrari claimed that the verdict creates a damaging precedent. They’re wrong. Imagine if McLaren had been docked points, even banned from the championship, simply because Coughlan was found to have Ferrari documents in his possession, without having used them.

We would then have a scenario where any disgruntled employee could hold their team to ransom by claiming they possessed similar confidential documents about another team.

In all legal systems, there has to be a dividing line between the companies’ responsibility and the individual’s.

Now for a bit of tin foil hat stuff. Where has this all come from? Many observers have noted how difficult they found it to believe that such well-regarded figures as Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan would get involved in this kind of behaviour. Whatever their motives, there is little doubt that it has not paid off, as their reputations are in tatters and they both face lengthy bans from motorsport.

There is, indeed, a real whiff of fish around this entire saga. Sidepodcast outlined a number of the aspects that just didn’t add up. A good point is made about the whistleblower who contacted Ferrari, said to be a worker at a Woking photocopying shop:

here’s a challenge. pretend you’re the copier guy, try and call the Italian team, see how many hoops you have to jump through to get in touch with them. then see if they even respond, let alone believe what you’re claiming.

i’m damn sure if it were me the first call i’d make would be to the police…or failing that, the Daily Mirror. this guy could be worth a fortune now!

final point. where is this mysterious tipster and why isn’t he talking? what a great story he would have. the tabloids would love it, especially on the weekend of the British GP. we’re not getting half the story here.

Here is something else that has got me scratching my head. It is this month’s ‘Friction Circle’ column in F1 Racing, written by Peter Windsor. He is a bit of an FIA / Ferrari lackey, but he is also a wise man whose word and experience are surely to be trusted. Here is what he said:

…espionage is alive and well in F1 and has been for the past couple of decades. I’m not talking about ‘cloned’ cars such as the Benetton–Ligier or the current Newey or Honda chassis. I’m talking deliberate industrial espionage — and I speak from the experience of having worked in F1 teams for a total of eight years during that period. I saw it with my own eyes — the evidence of senior employees sending drawings to destinations that could only be described as arch-rivals. It was blatant, obvious, but the F1 world just seemed to take it for granted.

…

A big thank you, then, to Ferrari, McLaren and Honda — and especially to the FIA — for giving this most recent matter the publicity and sincerity it deserves.

Now this is surprising to me, because almost every other experienced observer that I have read has written about how unbelievable they found the entire situation. Yes, they say, spying is normal. Taking photographs of rival cars is standard practice. But industrial espionage on this scale? “I’m shocked, just shocked!”

So is Peter Windsor right? Is industrial espionage the norm in F1? If it is, why has nobody said anything about it before? Why hasn’t Peter Windsor himself ever said anything about it?

Assuming Peter Windsor is right, this just adds on another question to the never-ending list. Why have Stepney and Coughlan been singled out, while similar behaviour has been “taken for granted” in the past?