The BAR Situation
Things are getting mighty serious. The latest headlines tells us that the FIA are out for blood. BAR blood. More headlines over here.
Not only are they calling for the complete exclusion of the BAR team from this year's championship but they want to slap a million euro fine.
The FIA were apparently tipped off by former employees of BAR.
My thoughts are the stewards of the San Marino Grand Prix made a mistake. If the car was found underweight when emptied of fuel, then I believe that no matter what explanations the BAR team may come up with, it should have been rejected. The car was underweight full stop.
Now it could have been an honest mistake in which case a disqualification should suffice. It would not have been the first time. But if the BAR team knowingly ran the car below the minimum weight then it is intentional and therefore cannot be tolerated.
So was it intentional? The fact that BAR offered up explanations to convince the stewards, I think goes to show it was. They knew there was something amiss already.
God how I wish it were Ferrari on the line. But you just know the would get away with it. So if BAR is excluded who's going to field third cars?
2 comments:
Hey Qwerty, I came to get your take on the BAR situation and I think we're basically on the same page. Some additional evidence that BAR knew they were walking a fine line with the rules: if former employees tipped off the FIA, then (depending on when they ceased to be employed by BAR) that shows they must have known they were doing something shady for some time. Otherwise, how would *former* employees know about it, and know that it was bad enough to report it to the FIA.
There are two big questions in my mind, which I discuss in our blog (blatant and desparate link referral here): a) Is it actually a violation of the rules if their car was never actually underweight during the race, and b) if the car did violate the rules, did BAR think they were onside or offside?
Clearly if it was a violation they must be punished. But if it was innocent or malicious I think has to be weighed when the penalty is assessed. Personally I'd like to see a rule violation followed with a fine and possibly a single race ban, but not a multi-race or season-ending ban. Kicking BAR out of the championship for the remainder of the season would hurt F1 (and I'm sure you agree - I'm just soap-box-ing).
My 2c.
Hi there...can we trade links? We have an F1 section to our racing blog at http://f1.fastmachines.com.
Thanks,
Josh (josh@fastmachines.com)
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