News of the day... When Hypocrisy Punctured Morals Sunday Times (London) September 16, 2007 Hugh McIlvanney
It is hard for an outsider to find a mooring of unchallengeable truth in all the heavy currents of rumour, innuendo and allegation that have been sweeping through the murky waters of Formula One since that extraordinary sentence was passed on the McLaren team in Paris on Thursday. But one judgement is inescapable: there is a sickening hypocrisy at the core of the decision of motor racing's ruling body, the FIA, to punish McLaren as an organisation with a fine of $100m and the invalidation of points gained by their cars in this season's constructors' championship while at the same time decreeing that the men competing in those cars, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, should be left untouched and free to continue their dramatic battle for the drivers' world championship. If the FIA considered the underhand acquisition of confidential technical information relating to the race cars of Ferrari by key figures at McLaren so prejudicial to Ferrari's interests, such a heinous violation of fundamental regulations, that the English team's participation in the constructors' championship of 2007 had to be obliterated, didn't that mean McLaren's cars, indeed their whole operation, had to be regarded as tainted by the industrial espionage? So how can it make sense, or represent justice, to rule that Alonso and Hamilton should keep all the drivers' points they have amassed? Isn't that a bit like disqualifying a horse but saying the jockey won the race?
Hamilton, whose arrival as the most prodigiously talented rookie ever seen in F1 has been one of the global sports stories of the year, would obviously have merited huge sympathy had he been included as a guiltless victim in the FIA's punishment. But that, sadly, is what should have happened as a natural corollary of the Paris findings. The FIA's division of culpability is exposed in all its shameful expediency (as a purely commercial decision) by evidence establishing that Alonso and his team's test driver, Pedro de la Rosa, discussed Ferrari trade secrets in an exchange of e-mails. Alonso was directly implicated in the wrongdoing.More on this story At odds with reality Times Online Only available verdict BBC Sport
