phil1993 wrote:FIA to inspect USF1 this week
Today in fact, he spent 4 hrs there, but...
No way in for Stefan
James Allen had lunch with Max Mosley today:
James Allen wrote:Naturally we kept coming back to the outburst from Ferrari on their website yesterday in which the ‘Horse Whisperer’ accused Mosley of waging a ‘holy war’ against the F1 teams, manufacturers in particular. He said he found the whole thing quite amusing but hinted that the team had opened a can of worms here and that he had not planned to say anything rude about them before now, but that they have fired the first shot with this attack. He described Ferrari as a middle aged woman who is jealous of the attention new beautiful women around her are getting! He also said that the comments about Lotus and Virgin ‘limping’ into F1 and implying the new teams are a shambles, was rich given that Ferrari sent one of their cars out of the pits with a fuel hose attached in Singapore 2008.
On the subject of the new teams he is pleased that there is new blood in F1 and regrets the problems of USF1 and Campos. At the time of the assessment of new entries he insists that both places were visited regularly and financial checks carries out by Deloitte and by CVC’s finance experts. As for what happens next, he thinks there will be a merger between USF1 and Campos.
This would leave an open 13th entry, but he reminded us that for Stefan GP to get it, all the teams need to agree. I know for a fact, speaking to Ferrari this week, that they will not agree to that, as long as disgraced former McLaren designer Mike Coughlan is working for the team.
He spoke a lot about Flavio Briatore, much of it was well off the record, but he said that the idea of previous FIA punishments being rescinded such as the $100m fine for McLaren, is nonsense as McLaren were licence holders, the problem procedurally with the ban on Briatore. He said that without Pat Symonds making a confession, the original hearing might not have convicted the perpetrators of the Crashgate offences. He also said he was confident, if not 100% so, that Fernando Alonso was not in on the plot. He bases this on the fact that the investigators are experienced at examining witnesses and they were convinced Alonso was not lying.
it is frustrating seeing the politics going on these days
