None of this makes any sense:
McLaren have been stripped of their points in the 2007 Formula One constructors’ championship after the outcome of the ‘spygate’ row.
The team were also fined a record $100m (£49.2m), which includes any prize and television money they would have earned from the constructors’ championship.
But drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso can keep their points.
Now, nobody but a few racing geeks and PR men care about the constructor’s championship. The title that matters is the World Drivers’ Championship. So if the FIA were really seeking to redress a wrongdoing, they would have stripped the drivers of their points. But they didn’t.
Sir Jackie Stewart makes a plausible case for there being more to this than meets the eye:
“All I can say, without being in full command of all of the information, is that the offence must be considerably larger than has been projected either by the governing body of the sport or within the media,” he told BBC Radio 5live.
“This isn’t murder that has been carried out, this is something that has happened before and there wasn’t even a fine or disciplinary action taken by the same governing body.… And even if they were found guilty of that particular crime, it doesn’t justify this kind of penalty.”
When the season ends, I hope that the World Drivers Championship is headed by Hamilton and Alonso (preferably in that order), and the Constructors’ result will be asterisked and forgotten. The Belgian Grand Prix is this Sunday ((I’ll be in Brookline, MA, but my DVR will watch it for me, just like Douglas Adams’ electric monk.)) and I really hope that the McLaren boys are able to put this nonsense aside and concentrate on winning.
UPDATE: Now that the details have been published, I think I’m going to have to reverse my position on this. The “industrial espionage” (what else can you call it?) went way beyond “two former colleagues chatting in the pub”. There were enough people involved that the McLaren organization itself must be judged as guilty. Even Alonso clearly knew what was going on.