Dec 10, 2007

Who Isn't Spying in F1?

You know the old saying about racers - there are two kinds of cheaters; those who have been caught and those who haven't been caught yet. Well, since many consider Formula One racing the epitome of motorsports, perhaps it is not surprising that it is turning out to be the epitome of cheating, as well. In fact, it might be that the list of F1 teams that isn't cheating is far shorter than the list of teams that is. The sad fact is that in order to compete at the highest level in F1, one might have to cheat just to compete effectively with the other cheaters.

All this will take center stage again this week when Renault racing officials will answer charges that they were found to possess confidential McLaren technical data. This seems only fitting, since McLaren was famously accused and convicted of this same type of infraction earlier this year, which we discussed in a previous Racing Rap.  And like McLaren, Renault is expected to present an interesting defense. The team will not claim that it didn't have the unauthorized information from a rival team, but instead it will say that it didn't use the information to set up its 2007 car nor to concoct racing strategy. Right. The folks at Renault just thought the technical data would look good on the coffee table in their headquarters building. Yeah, that's the ticket.

We'll see if that line of defense stands up later this week when the FIA is expected to make a decision. On the face of it, it seems like that Renault will be sanctioned in some way, but how severe the wrist-slapping will be still remains to be seen.

At the same time, McLaren is in hot water again. The team, which was fined $50 million dollars and banished from consideration for the Constructors' Championship after being caught red-handed with confidential Ferrari tech data, is apparently being scrutinized to make certain none of that data ends up affecting the design of its 2008 car. Just how FIA could go about determining this is difficult, since it would have to involve untested brain-scan technology to make certain that no McLaren designer or engineer was using anything they had learned from the purloined data. We wish them luck on that.

Meanwhile, it seems as though James Bond could find a new career with an F1 team. Don't just try to win; apparently, you must spy to win.