planetf1.com

Exactly. Surely anyone that has been following F1 for a few years knows this?

Even so, Kovi was appalling during races and I'm sure his No. 2 status at McLaren during the Lewis/Kovi years was deserved.

I suppose it depends on whether you believe Alonso knew about Crashgate or not.

His 'record' inclines me to believe that he may well have known. Admittedly, I paid no attention to Alonso before 2005, but in 2005/06 he gained the reputation of 'throwing his toys out of the pram' when things didn't go his way.

Edit - the whole '07 saga merely confirmed this, particularly when he not only was happy to use stolen data, but was also prepared to try to blackmail Dennis! I can understand why he thought he deserved No. 1 status in '07 (current WDC), but he left no doubt that he is prepared to do pretty much anything to get what he wants. Let's not forget that this was not in the heat of the moment on track, but pre-meditated action to get what he wanted.

I'd change that to "suspected".

He had just got a get out of jail card in 2007 for the crashgate involvement, I don't think he'd risk another "gate". But this is not for this thread

Suprised and confused that you feel the need to be shocked, I have warched F1 for over 3 decades but it does not rule my life. I have a family and i 3 (ordinary) cars to care for. There is a lot written, some of it is bull **** but most of the time people are unable to prove what they say or write. A friend of mine at work told me that Vettel had already signed for ferrari........
Further, "Exactly Surely anyone who has followed F1 for a few years knows this" is almost a statement and a question which can be taken as an attempt at belittling a newer member. Your answer corrected any feeling of this by following it up with Kovi was shocking in the races, which indeed he was and i thought that is wholly why he is where he is now, in a low ranking team simply becayse he is at best an average F1 driver. If this is true it does beg the question of other drivers getting the same treatment, Jos Verstappen for instance in 1994?
It also begs the question was Alonso aware of the scheme? Or did Alonso think the whole scheme up of NPjr crash a few years ago?
Then the question of will Massa ever win a race let alone the championship? Which he never ever will He has seriously got more chance of winning the lottery 8 times in a month.......

Delusion if you believe Briatore would have asked NPJ to crash if the driver wasnt Alonso. None of us are privy to what went behind the scenes and what kind of pressure Alonso put on Briatore for him to take this extreme step. And it is very much within the realms of possibility that Alonso was even part of it, so stop playing the we are in a courtroom card and all of us will play naive and dumb coz you happen to like Alonso.

A bit like Lewis and 'Liegate' I suppose. Lewis' fans are convinced that he only lied at the insistence of the team, but this seems extremely unlikely to everyone else.

Similarly, Alonso's fans are convinced that he knew nothing about Crashgate. At least that seems more plausible, even though (in view of his previous actions) I'm not convinced.

What are you wittering on about? The OP said "seem to recall that DC had broken a driver agreement going in to turn 1 etc prior to that race and possibly was an element of payback”

Your talking about an agreement that Coulthard stuck to not one he broke!

The broken agreement was between Senna and Prost.

The ultimate irony is that theres a fair chance Alonso would have delivered them 2007, 2008 and 2010 if they had kept him and gotten behind him.

Hamilton nearly won 2010 but made unnecessary crashes.

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Supporting in 2012:
Mark Webber.
Lewis Hamilton.

The real irony is that Alonso lost many points in the first half of the season through plenty of his own mistakes and nobody remembers them and he ended up losing the title by 4 measly points. It is more likely that Hamilton would have won that title in 2010 in a Ferrari than Alonso would have in a McLaren.

I wasn't talking about senna and prost. i was talking about Hak and DC. The agreement was made prior to the race, the call then comes through telling DC to move over for Hak to pass after DC went ahead of Hak through pit stops... as i said, i didn't recollect all details, just thought that there was a prior agreement...

Quite possible of course that the 'prior agreement' was a fabrication to cover Macca's insistence that Hak takes the win over DC.

Either way, I certainly do not buy in to Macca conspiring against LH vs FA. Rather, I see it as serving their interests to ensure that both drivers complete the race in 1-2 formation rather than risk tangling over the final stages of Monaco of all places.

I believe it was in 2006 that Alonso said "This is not a sport anymore" and I think he meant every word of it.
F1 is dirty business, Whitmarsh and McLaren in general seem to want to uphold a fake image because the British public is very sensitive to sportsmanship.
They're done plenty of it in the past and will in the future.

Thanks for the compliment, but you don't have to be rude you know. We can have a perfectly good conversation without insulting the other poster.

In any case I think I misunderstood you. I thought you questioned the drivers involved in an incident, not if DC broke an agreement or not. But you are right, he gave the position back, stuck to the agreement made.

And now he's saying how proud he is of the decision his team took.

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1.- Could you please list the incidents in 2005/6 that make you say he "gained the reputation of 'throwing his toys out of the pram' when things didn't go his way."? Because I have the feeling that people keep on repetaing this based on one or two incidents,a nd I am sure that we can find similar ones for other drivers too.

2.- Could you please quote Dennis stating that Alonso blackmailed him? Because as far as I know, he has never been on record stating such a thing. What he has often said is that he had a heated discussion with Alonso, in which nasty things were said, but that Alonso apologised within half an hour. And, no matter how mush you dislike the guy, that is neither blackmailing nor premeditated.

I dont blame Whitmarsh for his comments, I guess most people were just caught offguard by the decision. Only reason why this has become a hot topic is because it was a new track and quite slippery at that. Any other track nobody would be talking of spirit of the sport. If you go by the rules Ferrari have done nothing wrong. They took the penalty. Thats the end of it. If we talk of "Spirit of the sport", I ask you when has there been Spirit in any sport. Football? Cricket? Hockey? Baseball? Nascar? All the teams are there to win at any cost. When you are fighting for wins and prestige then Spirit be damned. That spirit has waved goodbye to this and all other sports a long time ago.

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And you came here an spill all that totally disregarding that Piquet himself has stated exactly the opposite, ie, that telling Alonso made no sense since the objective was to lure him to stay at Renault. The only thing in your post which is correct is that none of us are privy to what went behind the scenes, which is why it helps listening to what those who were there (and exposed the whole thing) have to say.

well, according to this article there were witnesses to Alonso attempting to blackmail Ron, so it'snot completely unfounded. The claims are also repeated in this book

Witnesses? Here, have a look at what Dennis himself had to say about that conversation:

"'He said things that he subsequently and fully retracted. Within the passage of material, he made a specific reference to emails from a McLaren engineer. When he made this statement, I said "Stop".
'I went out, brought Martin Whitmarsh [McLaren's chief executive officer] in, and Fernando said everything again, in front of his manager.
'When he had finished, I turned to Martin Whitmarsh, asking what we should do with this particular part of the conversation.
'Martin said we should find Max [FIA president Max Mosley]. After Martin and Fernando left, that is exactly what he did. I recounted the entire conversation to Max."
http://www.metro.co.uk/sport/extra/6678 ... -treatment

So, as per Dennis's testimony, the only people present in that conversation were Alonso, Whitmarsh, Alonso's manager and himself - which sort of dismisses the claims of other potential "witnesses" of that conversation made by the article.

As for the book, isn't that the one that was disauthorised by Ecclestone?

I am sorry but where does Dennis say other people were not present. He just mentions that MW was not present to start with and he brought him in. Alonso's reference to emails is the blackmail that prompted Dennis and MW to call his bluff and go to Mosley.

McLaren are the team that was involved in both spygate and liegate.

Despite all teams having a gentlemans agreement not to develop aero-stalling devices, Mclaren turned up with an F-duct.

McLaren also tried to win a championship by having Williams cars banned from a race for having fuel that was a fraction of a degree to cold relative to ambient temperature simply becuase they used a differant weather forecast supplier from that used by McLaren.

In other words he might not be in the best position to try and play the role of white knight, surmanising about how "sporting" other teams are, as the old saying goes he should get his own house in order first.

Its true Macca did complain about the williams super cooled fuel that was colder than allowed but the FIA did nothing, had william been penalised Macca would have wone the championship, any team would have lodged that complaint in their situation.

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That's the point, he understood it and acts accordingly...

I'm just saying there is more than one version of the events of that day, from different, independent sources. We will likely never know the full truth but there are enough reports to merit raising questions about what actually happened.

Well you have a choice of what to believe, the Guardian/a british writer/a blogger calling Alonso "the Spaniard" who hates Hamilton or Rone Dennis/Alonso.
They all have thier agenda.

no disrespect but so do you with what you just wrote. My point is simply that the blackmail allegations aren't something that have been made up on this forum. The previous poster asked for proof. Without having a recording of the conversation we will never know for sure but there are enough differing reports to put the actual events in doubt.

No, but have you ever heard it/seen it in writing from anyone off those who we're there?

fair point, but consider this: barely a day goes by on here without at least one TP being accused of lying or holding something back. It's been reported that Alonso is bound by an agreement not to discuss the matter. It's therefore not unreasonable to conclude that Ron also has an obligation under the same agreement. Reporters are not bound by such an agreement, and while I'm not one for conspiracy theories it's rather telling that nobody has been taken to court regarding the blackmail allegations to the best of my knowledge.

exactly! they lost all the best drivers in past decade, having only 1 of them winning 1 single driver's championship since 1999 (Hamilton in 2008)

they are also a good team for not winning a constructor's championship for more than 10 years, having the fastest and most dominant car for several of thos past 10+ years

Looking from that POV noone from Mclaren honestly has any right to say anything about team tactics or drivers' management within a team because they've show that their approach in past 10+ years is far from succesful

this is why i said thE Whitmarsh dig is just a smokescreen for his f*ck up of managing Mclaren this year.