Jun 11, 2007

Who's Zoomin' Who?

When is a race not a race? Apparently when it is one of the crown jewels of the Grand Prix racing schedule, the Grand Prix of Monaco. If you haven't heard, the ruling body of Formula One racing, the FIA, is taking a long, hard look at Team McLaren in the wake of the Monaco Grand Prix. In effect, team honcho Ron Dennis supposedly ordered his number two driver, Lewis Hamilton, to make certain he lost the race to teammate Fernando Alonso. FIA wants to determine if Dennis' move was a violation of the prohibition against "team orders" and if it violated the international sporting code.

One might guess that ordering a driver to intentionally lose might, indeed, violate the international sporting code, which all of us who write about sports have been required to memorize. Okay, that last part is not true, but one could assume the first part is. If you were Ron Dennis, though, you'd be taking the completely opposite tack. His essentially specious defense is that Team McLaren did not employ "team orders" (which were banned in 2002), but instead employed "team strategy." Yeah, right, so that's what they're calling it now. Hamilton was reportedly told to "take it easy" during the latter stages of the race, just the kind of thing a team boss will say if he wants his driver to charge hard for a win.

A McLaren team spokesman was quoted by the BBC as saying, "We are very confident about FIA's investigation into our race strategy. All the decisions that we made before and during the race respect perfectly the international sporting code."

Of course, you didn't expect a spokesperson to say, "Yeah, we did it all right, and we're happy we did it. Now we'll take our penalty."

Instead, as is F1 custom, there was a great deal of posturing and bluster, none of which could disguise the fact that McLaren decided that during (or perhaps even before) the race, Alonso should win and Hamilton should lose. Most amusing was Dennis' statement to the BBC: "We do not, and have not, manipulated the Grand Prix unless there are some exceptional circumstances."

This isn't a court of law, but that sounds pretty incriminating to us.