F1 teams are continuing to put the FIA under pressure to reveal details of the secret agreement it reached with Ferrari following an investigation into the legality of its power unit last year.
The sport’s governing body has indicated it cannot reveal detail of the terms of the arrangement without the permission of Ferrari. Seven teams – all F1 competitors not powered by Ferrari – objected to the FIA over its handling of the matter.“It does sit uncomfortably that there is an agreement that has been entered into about the legality and conformity of a car,” said Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. “That immediately draws you to think: What is in that agreement? What does it comprise of? Because obviously in our mind, it carries either legal or illegal.
“The questions have been raised with the FIA. The FIA said that they’d be happy to disclose that document but, of course, they need a clearance from the other signatories.
“So obviously it does nothing but promote suspicion when there are private agreements about legality and conformity. So the healthiest thing would be to get it on the table so everybody sees what it’s comprised of. The FIA have said they’re willing to do that, it would be great if Ferrari were prepared to do the same so it puts it all to bed.”
The FIA introduced new rules governing the power units for this year following its settlement with Ferrari. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said he expects the engine performance Ferrari had last year will not be reflected in the data this year.
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“It would be good to understand exactly what happened, that they found what the solution is,” he said. “It was last year so hopefully we won’t see on the data maybe what we saw last year.
Mercedes softened its stance over Ferrari’s power unit around the time of the abandoned Australian Grand Prix. However team principal Toto Wolff said they remain unhappy about how the matter was handled.
“We didn’t back off,” he insisted, “we decided in Melbourne that for the start of the season, this additional controversy plus Corona starting to get really bad in Italy, it was not the opportune moment.
“I would very much agree with what Christian said. In this day and age transparency is extremely important and good governance is extremely important. And it may well have been good governance, but if you don’t know it’s difficult to judge.
“So the position that we are in is that we are monitoring the situation. We are not happy about last year. It has stretched all of us to a point to be competitive against Ferrari, where it was all difficult to cope. And therefore let’s wait and see how the season starts and gets going and we will reassess ourselves and probably with the other guys where it stands.”
However Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said the team would not agree to disclose the terms of the settlement, as doing so would involve disclosing its intellectual property.
“I think the answer is straightforward,” he said. “First of all there was no clear breach of the regulations, otherwise we would have been disqualified.
“The reason why we don’t want to open [up] is simply because whatever we need to explain intellectual property to our project to our power unit. I think no one in the paddock would be happy to release information on their design and the project. So it’s confidentiality, it’s intellectual property protection and that’s the reason why we’re not keen to do it.”
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ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
3rd July 2020, 13:51
Binoto just give a clue to Wolff how to answer DAS dispute.
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
3rd July 2020, 14:03
@ruliemaulana
DAS trick has been very well explained by the usual F1 experts, there is even a 3D animation produced by Paolo Filisetti of La Gazetta Dello Sport that demonstrates how the system works. In case of Ferrari, the FIA themselves with the available data were not able to prove that Ferrari were bypassing the fuel sensor, let alone knowing how they were doing it.
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
3rd July 2020, 15:37
@tifoso1989 There will be no settlement without any dispute. Unless the so called experts can provide legal aspects of the DAS, RedBull request is still had merit.
ColdFly (@)
3rd July 2020, 23:04
DAS is the exact opposite, @ruliemaulana.
Mercedes developed something; presented it to FIA before using it; never denied it; or, hid it from its competitors.
Nobody is asking Ferrari to release IP (as nobody is asking Mercedes to do this on DAS), but FIA should share with all teams what they think Ferrari was doing illegally and why they cannot prove it.
If nothing else then at least the teams can jointly discuss how to close that loophole and stop infringements.
Rui Trindade (@trindade)
3rd July 2020, 13:59
On Friday, with Binotto appearing in the second part of the press conference, Ferrari’s stance was made clear.
“The answer is straightforward,” Binotto said. “First, there was no clear breach of regulations, otherwise we would have been disqualified.
“The reason why we don’t want to open [up] is simply because whatever we need to explain is IP, intellectual property, to our project, to our power unit.
“And I think that no one in the paddock would be happy to release information that are designs in that project.
“So it’s confidentiality. It’s intellectual property protection. And that’s the reason why we’re not keen to do it. ”
DAllein (@)
3rd July 2020, 14:01
LOL
There are no suspicions.
It os clear as day, as this is another MaFIAt deal
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
3rd July 2020, 14:29
I wonder if Ferrari’s IP is used to circumvent government emissions testing similar to what Volkswagen was doing with their engines. It would make sense because the high performance luxury autos cannot possibly be fuel efficient to where the various governments want them to be.
ColdFly (@)
3rd July 2020, 23:08
I believe small volume manufacturers are exempt from those standards (are have much more lenient standards), @jimfromus.
Sattalyte (@sattalyte)
3rd July 2020, 14:41
The simple reason for all this smoke and mirrors is that Ferrari were cheating.
Rui Trindade (@trindade)
3rd July 2020, 15:15
So it’s easy. Enlist in the FIA, or write to them and say you have the necessary proof !!!!!!!
Pironi the Provocateur (@pironitheprovocateur)
3rd July 2020, 15:28
Proof: NoOooOo, Ferrari can’t gain a competitive advantage over Mercedes, trust me, guys!
Sattalyte (@sattalyte)
3rd July 2020, 18:54
A competitive advantage so legal they removed it from the car.
Jeorge
3rd July 2020, 16:08
I believe you, the hundreds of Engineers from FIA put together can’t compare to your expertise
We should let them know you found the answer without being physically anywhere near the PU or the data
Sattalyte (@sattalyte)
3rd July 2020, 18:53
The FIA know exactly what’s up – that Ferrari were cheating. And they’ve helped Ferrari conceal it. I wonder if the President of the FIA being a former Ferrari Team Principal has anything to do with that?
mystic one (@mysticus)
3rd July 2020, 22:45
“I wonder if the President of the FIA being a former Ferrari Team Principal has anything to do with that?”
no no no no :) certainly impossibella :)
anon
4th July 2020, 22:41
@sattalyte you can see why some might raise the question about whether there could be conflicts of interest in this investigation, given Jean has previously indicated he had a fairly significant involvement.
As you note, Jean Todt is a former employee of Ferrari, and there are a number of individuals at Ferrari whom Jean would have had a fairly lengthy working relationship. Mattia Binotto is potentially one of those individuals, as Binotto was starting to become a more prominent member of Ferrari towards the latter part of Jean’s career at Ferrari and was being tipped as a rising start at the team at the time.
Asides from the question of how close his own friendships might be with current Ferrari personnel, there are the questions of potential financial conflicts of interest due to Nicolas Todt, Jean Todt’s son. Charles Leclerc is the most prominent of all of the drivers that Nicolas Todt manages, and the one whom he has stated that he is most proud of – Nicolas Todt has also indicated that he directly invested his own money into the career of Leclerc, having helped directly fund Leclerc’s junior racing career when Leclerc was struggling to raise funds earlier on.
In that sense, Nicolas has arguably more money riding on Leclerc than usual as he would be looking to recoup his own direct financial investment in Leclerc’s career, and in 2019 Nicolas would have been in the process of negotiating that contract extension with Ferrari – a move for which he might well have earned a sizeable commission, given Leclerc got a significant pay rise out of those negotiations.
You can see why some might question whether Jean would want to take particularly harsh action against Ferrari at a time when it could risk damaging his son’s reputation as a manager and when it might cost his son the chance of earning a decent commission.
With the negotiations over the financial cost caps also taking place in 2019, some have also speculated over whether the two might be linked as well and whether the FIA might have offered Ferrari the prospect of an amicable agreement over the engine issue in return for providing support to the cost cap.
Now, how credible you might think those arguments are is up to you, but you can see the sort of logic that has resulted in people wondering what might be behind those decisions.
Fletch (@fletchuk)
3rd July 2020, 17:55
For me the real issue here is more around the competency of the FIA, and specifically Jean Todt. How could any competent person or body believe that this would be an appropriate way to handle the situation and how could they have not predicted the (predicable) response from the other teams and the wider F1 community!?