Comments on: The rights and wrongs of immunity

By: john g

john g — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:52:05 +0000

quel surprise… pt1) max hates ron. ron is out.

pt2) flav is the ring leader in getting max to stand down in the recent FOTA / FIA war. in these cheating allegations, piquet and symmonds get random immunity (granted by teh FIA). flav is out.

watch out for the demise of di montezemolo next

i think a behind the scenes documentary of bernie and max over the last 20 years would be totally fascinating. would be a very long film tho…

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:37:31 +0000

In a different set of circumstances, for example if NPJ had crashed and a marshal was hurt or killed, there would be a serious case of attempted manslaughter/manslaughter.
No immunity should have been given.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:15:56 +0000

Dear James, forgive me for saying this article fell below your usual high standard. I was unconvinced by you quoting with implicit approval a lengthy comment from HarV8. For me one problem was that (as the beginning of the article actually explained) the FIA process is just not equivalent to the UK criminal process, which I assume is your correspondent’s background. And of course Pat Symonds is a known quantity to the FIA, not some anonymous defendant. My other problem was that your correspondent – let’s give him a name, say “Mr Smith” – has his own axe to grind and so an interest should have been declared. For Mr Smith, Max Mosley and the FIA can do no right; in “crashgate”, as in the Mclaren “liegate” saga, MM/FIA must still be some of the bad guys as far as Mr Smith is concerned. Another observation: I was curious why you declined to comment for several days on the leaked evidence, which I think was first in the public domain a week ago? Apologies, I feel someone must have asked this before … Peter

By: James Allen

James Allen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:03:48 +0000

Hardly!

By: Kirk

Kirk — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:29:23 +0000

Well, this is not a criminal proceeding (not yet anyway) so to treat it like one is a bit excessive. Draw similarities as you wish, but in the end it has to be treated in the sporting sense, in the same way a football player dives in the penalty area, scores a goal with his hand, stamps on another player, or even a tennis player that swears at the officials… And F1 has many recent cases to use as a guide for this kind of thing, like Spy-gate and Lie-gate – none of these unmasked thanks to the goodness of any individual’s heart, but instead due to the interest these individuals had in the scandals.

The point missed here is this: without the imunity offer/deal NOTHING would have been done about Singapore 2008. We would be none the wiser about what happened, and the evidence leaked so far makes it crystal clear something DID happen. It’s simply a matter of pinning the tail on the right donkey now. Is that an acceptable option?

The case is and will always be about what was said in the pre-race meeting, and unless someone had the Renault office bugged, only the 3 people involved could come forward and blow the whistle.

So the lesser of two evils: take a deal with one (or two) of them and finally get an insight into what happened, so you can then have a basis to dig further, get some clues into how the jigsaw of radio conversations and funny/dumb fuel strategies fit in, have a chance of getting to the bottom of seems to have been a big fix and punish someone for it.

Or… when approached about the incident, you offer nothing except the further threat of a lifetime ban from the sport, severe sanctions, scare off any potential whistle blowers, now and in future, end up with a very clear idea that something disgusting did happen in that race (you were approached after all), but with no evidence to do anything about it. And watch as the people responsible laugh, joke and spray the champagne for years to come as if that was all good and proper. They might even do it again, who knows.

Make no mistake, Piquet Jr. may get imunity from action coming directly from the FIA, but his dream has been chattered, and his racing career has been damaged, he will pay for this one way or another down the line when a job he wants is not even given a thought by prospective employers. And yet he could have just chosen to keep quiet, carry on as if nothing had happened…

By: PaulL

PaulL — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:20:47 +0000

He cared about, and rightly, was that a different type of tyre gas had been identified. He neither stole that information himself or illegitimately sought it.

I’d rather that be attributed to me than 5 driving based penalties in one year (ala Hamilton in 2008), or else being found guilty of having been party to the construction of a lie to invent a false penalty on another competitor.

By: Ben G

Ben G — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:56:26 +0000

Calmez-vous, ladies. I didn’t say Piquet’s crash caused Massa to lose the Championship; merely that it ‘led to’ the botched pitstop that ultimately cost him a probabl ten points, and thus the championship. It is an unarguable fact that Piquet’s crash contributed to the decision to release Massa too soon, not least because Kimi was waiting directly behind in the pitlane.

By: Harveyeight

Harveyeight — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:48:29 +0000

If one had a peurile sense of humour, one might ask James if the site crashed, and if so, was it on purpose.

Thanks goodness I’m above that sort of thing.

By: Opposite Lock (Ken)

Opposite Lock (Ken) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:37:27 +0000

I do wish people would quit throwing around the term “fix”. Teams do things all the time to influence the outcome of a race. From timing of pitstops to having a car slow and run interference to hold up the opposition.

He only improved Alonso’s chances of moving to the front of the pack. The outcome was NOT fixed. Many things could have happened to prevent Alonso from winning. Fixing is when a favorite is slowed to prevent a win to the benefit of gamblers. (Ferrari telling Rubens to let Michael win?) Or having a boxer take a fall to “fix’ the match results.

I can’t help but think that this is similar to Schumi’s botched attempt to block the track at Monaco to slow Alonso’s run.

In this case, Piquet put himself, other drivers, course workers, safety crews and the spectators at risk. We have seen what can happen with and errant tire or part from a car. Imagine one of the tires that had come off of Piquet’s car being hit by a following racecar and then going into the stands…

That is why this is so much more egregious.

BTW, I don’t mean to pick on Schumi or Ferrari, those were the events that first came to mind.

By: Opposite Lock (Ken)

Opposite Lock (Ken) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:22:06 +0000

Actually, you don’t know what the terms of Symonds immunity are. As Harvyeight stated it may be offered ONLY if he implicates Flav. Or it may be blanket immunity regardless of his testimony. If it’s a blanket immunity, Symonds could take full responsibility and absolve Briatore. With Max’s years as a barrister, I seriously doubt he would offer Symonds immunity unless he got a guarantee that Symonds would testify against Flavio.