So the FIA have decided. McLaren are guilty and it’s going to cost them $100M and all their points docked from the 2007 constructors championship. In some senses it could have been worse. Earlier this afternoon Autosport.com were reporting that McLaren were going to be kick out of the 2008 championship too.
The interesting thing is that the points are only being stripped from the constructor and not the drivers. Surely is McLaren got some advantage from the information obtained from Ferrari then the drivers have gain because of this and not just the team.
If one was being cynical about this you might think that the drivers championship is close this year and could well still be decided at the last race. Would you want to take away that excitement and effectively kill off this season’s championship? Probably not. But it does seem to be a bit of a fudge as so often these decisions from the FIA are.
And of course still it could linger on if McLaren decide to appeal, which surely they must if they believe that they are innocent. This, however, just drags it out even more and make it such a bad news story for F1. I have a good friend who is into cycling and I also revel in the drug stories that taint the Tour each year – this is on the same level. Let’s hope it stops here.