http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19871.html

How to bury a story

The best way to deal with stories that might prove to be embarrassing is to make sure that the fewest possible number of people get to read them. It is called news management. And the best way to do that is to make sure that the news breaks very late on a Friday, after the Saturday editions of the national newspapers have gone to press. That way by the time the Sunday papers are being prepared there have been other stories, particularly in the sporting world, and thus the impact of the story is lessened and it gets less space in the newspapers.
The outcome of the FIA International Court of Appeal is just such a story. The court has ruled that the appeal was inadmissable. It is not explained why and one has to apply to the FIA for the explanation. This pretty much guarantees that the story will get very little coverage. It has become a convenient non-story..




I'm getting pretty tired of the FIA doing whatever they want to bend the rules to suit their needs. Anyone else?

Steve

Not really. Just as bad as imposing rules without sufficient evidence really, especially as no human being has managed to explain how a car would benefit from it other than a tiny advantage in refuelling.

Glad it's over. Congratulations Kimi, you deserved it. Roll on 2008 (but keeping an eye on the Renault saga). Twas a good season, and quite exciting. Now it's merely history.

Also, I think most of the papers will have this in, all of the internet... Maybe a couple of countries in the east will not have until Sunday, but it'll just run then. It's hardly burying a story. Obviously that website is written by fools who can't understand F1, so they avoid actually writing anything remotely interesting about it. They don't even show a quote of the press release, and we know how easy copy-paste is (because you just did it).

Personally I think the cars should have been disqualified based on the fact they had a technical infringement that was almost certainly down to pushing their luck with the rules, fuel isn't magically colder than the ambient temperature. Having said that we'd probably have seen a Honda win the championship if rules had been consistently applied and cheating, at least when it's blown to attention of stewards, was penalised fairly and consistently. The whole McLaren spy saga opened a can of rather viscous beans that the FIA has just about managed to keep away from Joe public.

Whilst I don't think that McLaren are actually any worse than any other team, or that the reason for them getting done for what happened wasn't largely because it suited Max Mosley, I think that F1 is now going to have to clean up its act and set an example of how to enforce rules fairly in a sport rather than this rather random discretion nonsense that is nothing short of fixing in a sport that is used far too often throughout the racing world. In the end of the day it's sad there are LFS leagues run by people in their spare time for free with fairer and more open penalty systems than at the pinnacle of a multi-billion pound sport

@Tirstan - I guess the advantage would making a more efficient heat engine (a cooler cold reservoir without changing the hot reservoir?), you're the engineer though so you should be telling me As to how much of an advantage it would make I'd say not a lot but teams are have obviously felt it's worth cooling fuel and some technical counsel somewhere has decided it's worth making rules for therefore a car that doesn't conform by them is illegal end of story, the only exception usually granted is if an infraction is caused by accident damage and did not give an advantage.

I've read that if they used colder fuel the gain was something like one second when you look at the total race time. And it is yet another FIA joke anyways. There is zero consistancy with the rules.

If you cheat early in the season you need to pay 100 millions, or if you get caught conviniently later just need to promise you don't do it again. Drivers are not guilty and get no penalty. If you cheat in the mid-season, you get penalty only if you are not part of the championsship. If you cheat in the last race(s) you will not be punished because it might change the finishing order. FIA lacks some serious balls and they are too afraid of making any decision because they are afradi of losing the big money constructors.

The whole way of thinking that "it was about to be decided in court" is just so irrational. The court decision should be nothing more than a natural, justified following to the action that was against the rules. If BMW was using illegal fuel, it was decided right there when they lowered the fuel temperature that they are not going to score any points. But no one doesn't even seem to know whether the fuel temperatures were measure on the right way...

I think it would be the best if the teams voted about the punishments

Quote from Hyperactive :

I think it would be the best if the teams voted about the punishments

If each team was really independent from any other one, it would work, but there are too many close relationships and rivalries. In this situation I see some teams capable of forming alliances based on relationships and interests and not on fairness of judgement.

I'm curious to see how F1 will be managed next year; from what I've seen this year I don't see any good coming. I hope I'm wrong.

Quote from ajp71 :

Personally I think the cars should have been disqualified based on the fact they had a technical infringement that was almost certainly down to pushing their luck with the rules, fuel isn't magically colder than the ambient temperature. Having said that we'd probably have seen a Honda win the championship if rules had been consistently applied and cheating, at least when it's blown to attention of stewards, was penalised fairly and consistently. The whole McLaren spy saga opened a can of rather viscous beans that the FIA has just about managed to keep away from Joe public.

Whilst I don't think that McLaren are actually any worse than any other team, or that the reason for them getting done for what happened wasn't largely because it suited Max Mosley, I think that F1 is now going to have to clean up its act and set an example of how to enforce rules fairly in a sport rather than this rather random discretion nonsense that is nothing short of fixing in a sport that is used far too often throughout the racing world. In the end of the day it's sad there are LFS leagues run by people in their spare time for free with fairer and more open penalty systems than at the pinnacle of a multi-billion pound sport

@Tirstan - I guess the advantage would making a more efficient heat engine (a cooler cold reservoir without changing the hot reservoir?), you're the engineer though so you should be telling me As to how much of an advantage it would make I'd say not a lot but teams are have obviously felt it's worth cooling fuel and some technical counsel somewhere has decided it's worth making rules for therefore a car that doesn't conform by them is illegal end of story, the only exception usually granted is if an infraction is caused by accident damage and did not give an advantage.

The teams are allowed to cool the fuel in the rig, and all of them without exception do it. The rule about temperatures has existed for ~20 years.

The case knew the max ambient temps, and the minimum fuel temps, but they did not know what the difference was at the time of refuelling. Just because there is more discrepancy that allowed between max and min doesn't mean they gained an advantage outside of the rules at the point of refuelling.

So what about sorting the regulation out in future? Surely this was an exposition of a flawed regulation, because it cannot be (or simply is not) effectively enforced. What steps will be taken to address McLaren's original demand to have this regulation an actual regulation, rather than just yet another irrelevent and pointless line of text, potentially open to the FIA to apply selectively/abuse?