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PS on the BBC:
Minardi boss Paul Stoddart claims the team could boycott the French Grand Prix if the FIA's World Motor Sport Council hands the seven Michelin-shod outfits 'draconian' penalties on Wednesday.
The seven teams were summoned to appear in front of the council for charges of brining the sport into disrepute, after they orchastrated a boycott of the US Grand Prix last weekend.
FIA president Max Mosley told BBC Radio Five Live the teams face penalties at the WMSC hearing from reprimand to a lifetime ban from the sport - but Mosley stated he believed the punishment would not be as light as the former option or as heavy as the latter.
Stoddart, however, warned that any form of punishment more than a reprimand could lead to a backlash from the teams.
"In the worst possible situation of some kind of draconian penalty, would the other teams race? I think we would have a meeting and you wouldn't guarantee it," Stoddart told BBC Radio. "If it is anything more than a reprimand [then it would be wrong]. The teams were totally innocent victims, as was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as were the American public."
Stoddart said a ban would almost certainly lead to an appeal in front of the FIA's International Court of Appeal, "and then it would end up in the civil courts," the Australian said.
"[The penalty] could be anything; I heard unofficial reports of what it might be, ranging from a $2.5 million fine to a suspended ban, to all kinds of possible things.
"I would hope Max would come to his senses, but who knows?"
Man this is getting out of control. Paul ..... grrrrr. Show up, keep up shut up.
Comments
our team raced so let's get out of this!
Paul is in this because this has very little to do with tires anymore and is very much about what he's been out in front of for some time now.
I swear he knows Frank and Ron will screw him as soon as look at him but he's a girl who just can't say no.
Oh, but there will be stern warnings against this sort of behavior in the future.
He could legitimately have a go at Michelin. They would take it on the chin. But the teams were legally tied up once Michelin declared they could not race, true or not. Action against the teams would be taken as an insult to their honour as racers.
Anyone read The Mole on ITV-f1? He's well informed (though he can't predict the future). Aside from including the heartwarming phrase "no one cares about Jordan", the latest suggests that Indy has shifted Bernie onto the side of the teams. Believable, but true?
I was at Indy. One of the members of the MCSF is an editor of the american magazine ROAD & TRACK..... he got a phone call from one of his buddy's in the pits early on Sunday morning who reported that McLaren and Williams had already packed up most of their equipment...and that Toyota had no intention of racing and they had Jarno qualify on Saturday with only a couple laps of fuel in the tank.
I have a big problem with the fact the 7 Michelin teams lined up on the grid only to tease the 130,000 of us that they were here to race ....but then they pulled off into the pits. They might have been telling Max to fuck off...... but in doing so, they told the 130,000 of us the same thing. IF they had ANY honor as racers, they would have withdrew on Sunday morning. We wouldn't of liked it, but that would have been the honorable way to end their envolvement in the USGP............. but again, there is no honor in F1.
I would hope that IMS would be reimbursed by BE for any "rightsfee" ( or the 2006 USGP would be free of fees for IMS)..... I would hope that Michelin would be fined only the amount that would cover reimbursment for USGP 2005 tickets
........ I would hope that there are NO points deducted from both the Constructors and Drivers championship...... and that the 7 offending teams be fined no more than $100,000 each and the $700,000 be given to a charity or charities in Indianapolis..............
Oh well............
Seems to me that there are two things happenning, in a myriad of different places.
The two things are:
1. Hunt the villain, &
2. FIA Wars
In hunt the villain, there are as many theories as there are lost F1 fans. Let's see if we can line them up:
- Michellin. It was they who built and recommended a tyre that wasn't suitable to race. Forget the bullshit about Indy, the tyre was no good for anything. The race was off from the Nurburgring, no-one accepted it till Indy is all. Pretty good villain material there, but so far they are getting off lightly. I wonder if we'll ever find out if all those 'wallings' at Montreal were down to driver error?
- The FIA. Terms like ivory towers come to mind in regard to the FIA's hands off approach to solution finding. Indy will probably be the point at which (if nothing changes) folks finally have to come to grips with understanding that 'governance' does not include 'responsibility'. At no point does the FIA ever feel that it has responsibility for something that has hapenned. That it can happily take responsibility for instituting costly and dramatic changes to the racing cars with goal of reducing cost without once consulting the stakeholders (no, not just the teams, the STAKEHOLDERS), and then say they have no responsibility after their plan results in what happenned at Indy is amazing. Let us not lose focus. The FIA mandated a one-tyre rule against all resonable advice this year, and that rule directly contributed to the absence of any viable alternative at Indy. This is 'barbarians at the gate' stuff, and the FIA reaction was exactly the same as the Roman Senate. Something MUST be done..............by somebody else. Laughably, they timed their feedback from the fans beautifully. They will actually refer to that later in the year as if nothing happenned at Indy at all.
- Bernie. FOM is responsible for putting on the event. FOM failed in that task. Most people are saying that Indy revealed how much his power had slipped. Probably true, but he has used the 'divide and conquer' approach for so long, that when he needed to achieve unanimity, he failed. In fact, I put Bernie right up there in the villain capacity by failing to use the opportunity to win America. Just imagine if he had managed to get the seven, eight, or nine, to agree to a non-championship race of limited duration, let's say 40 laps, of the revised, chicane included circuit. Forget that crap about safety, set-up, etc. A quick warmup would have fixed all that. After that race, you could have had Indyfarce, which hopefully would have been TOIT touring around an empty stadium. Indyfarce goes off at 4pm and you cop the late penalties, which would be a lot less than the cost fallout that will be there (for everyone). Two things would have come out of that. One, the fans would have loved it. A 'good old' Amercan approach to getting the job done in the face of adversity. Second, the FIA would not have even a sliver of public support on which to base their current witch hunt, particularly since most of the Amercian fans would have gone home/switched off, after the non-championship thingy. As for Bernie, what a coup! The man who saved F1 one from the scrapheap.
- The Teams. The teams? Surely not! Well let's have a look at this. Rumours abound that Toyota cynically manipulated qualifying to score a couple of sponsor points. Clever, but naughty and a real slap in the face to their fans. Hands up all those who belive that Red Bull driver-to-team exchange on the parade lap. Seems to me that somebody was trying to say 'look at us, we're reluctant victims' and exploiting the fact that it was their turn to turn on the mike. All of them though, were responsible collectively for not putting their hands up afterwards to say, 'Yeah, we knew that the tyres were on the edge already, and we didn't bring a proper spare". How can the data that they had collected be any different from Michellin? Give me a break. At best, it is a case of negligent culpability, at worst, a deliberate sham to force FIA wars into the limelight.
- Tony George. For no other reason than her seems to have pissed off so many people over such a long time that he is a natural villain - BOO!!
- The Motorsport Press. Have you ever seen so much sanctimonious tripe in such a short time?! To read it all is to see the hearts of journos lacerated with the wounds of betrayal. Oh the pain..........the pain................the pain. This is the stuff that they live for, and if they can hang around long enough, a great bar-time story for getting the wide-eyed cadets of the future into their respective beds. They are a pack of naughty untruth tellers and they know it. This is the best thing ever to happen to most of them.
FIA Wars later.
[Edited on 27/6/2005 by Lease]
"Stoddart is a sad case," Mosley told the newspaper. "I helped him tremendously when the other teams were trying to steal his money. But now my reaction is that he's obviously forgotten to take his medication."
Gosh, THIS is the same way Patty attempts to explain MY behavioral problems to family members and friends..... I never realized just how much Paul and I do have in common.............................. except for the smoking........and the trusting of Uncle Ron & company part......
http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=24964
We don't have to worry until he starts posting on internet forums :P
I was unaware that they ate things that didn't consist largely of various meats.
If there is one thing I love, it is a fat hot pork sandwich on white bread with lots of butter and gravy (also crackling if they have it). Would I be happy with the Indy version?