McLaren claim they had fastest car towards end of 2011
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The idea that someone hacked Autosport and put up a carefully-written and proofed article in the name of a little-known (in F1 circles) science correspondent is a bit far-fetched!
Sky did a story using the quotes, left it up there for most of the day and then removed it. Like Autosport, they’re not saying why, at least not as far as I’ve seen.
The story has also disappeared from EPSN F1, but is still cached in Google News. Very strange. I hope we get to the bottom of this.
The idea that someone hacked Autosport and put up a carefully-written and proofed article in the name of a little-known (in F1 circles) science correspondent is a bit far-fetched!
What do you mean “a bit”? That’s understatement of the year, Keith – and it’s only February.
If it’s been taken down, it’s probably because the interviewee gave an unauthorised interview, and one that tipped all the other teams off that they might want to start queueing up at the FIA with protest documents in-hand.
I can’t understand what the objection would be to a McLaren employee admitting that Vettel is a bloody good driver, when he obviously is. Unless there was a ‘you can’t say anything that suggests our drivers are anything other than the best drivers in the world’, which would be a pretty extreme line for a team to take, in my view.
The legalities thing I can understand, because McLaren wouldn’t really want their rivals looking for issues with their car by giving them all a big hint that there was something iffy with it and they probably wanted to keep them in ignorance in the hope no one would realise and they would get away with it. Either way, it’s a bit late for that now!
I don’t think the Autosport website was hacked and I also believe that the quotes are real although Mr McGrath most probably never wanted them to become public. Maybe Geoff McGrath had some conversation with the science blogger by e-mail and the latter one traitorously forwarded this to Autosport. Who published it, already knowing that they would take it out after an hour or so.
@Magnificent-Geoffrey: He said a lot more than Seb is a good driver. No one has an issue with saying Vettel is a good driver. He basically said that the Mclaren drivers ain’t very good. Are you maybe playing dump because you like Vettel?
And irrelevant of how good Seb is do you honestly believe that the Mclaren drivers aren’t from the best drivers on the grid and deserve such comments? They are both world champions for Christ sake. His comments are nothing but rubbish.
@Keith Collantine: I presume Sky took the story from Autosport. Now why they left it for more time it can be that they are ether slow or maybe the one convincing Autosport to delete the story was late in tracing Sky.He said a lot more than Seb is a good driver. No one has an issue with saying Vettel is a good driver. He basically said that the Mclaren drivers ain’t very good. Are you maybe playing dump because you like Vettel?
Forgive me, but I don’t quite understand what you mean here. I don’t think he’s saying anything about the McLaren pair at all – he’s only praising Vettel. Here’s what he supposedly says:
“[Sebastian Vettel] must be a brilliant driver, because by the end of last season we definitely had the best car and he was still whupping us. We’re trying to figure out exactly what he’s doing that’s so good. How does he pull out that fast qualifying lap every time? We think it’s driver skill. There’s no trickery on the cars, he just gets more out of it than we do.”
All I get from that is ‘Vettel is a really good driver’, not ‘our guys aren’t good because we couldn’t beat Seb even with the best car’. And while I really like Seb as a man and a character and an ambassador for Formula 1, I’m certainly not a fan of him as a driver. I’m not a fan or a hater of the McLaren pair either. I’m pretty much indifferent to all three of them. I’m a Sauber fan. SUPER SUISSE!
And irrelevant of how good Seb is do you honestly believe that the Mclaren drivers aren’t from the best drivers on the grid and deserve such comments? They are both world champions for Christ sake. His comments are nothing but rubbish.
Only an idiot would argue that Lewis and Jenson aren’t brilliant drivers. But again, nothing in the article suggests that what he says implies anything different. The only thing he’s said is that he thinks the fact Vettel beat McLaren at the end of the last season was because he’s a real beast behind the wheel. And it’s true. But I can’t quite see how that takes anything away from Hamilton and Button.
I agree with Kieth, “omg I was hacked” is a lame, overused and easily dismissed excuse.
I dunno why you guys are arguing over the whole Vettel is/maybe/isn’t better than the Mclaren drivers thing, that’s an opinion.
I’m much more interested in that he thinks the new Mclaren is going to be rather, bendy of the rule set. I’d say this section of the article is by far more controversial.
Having said that, for a site like Autosport it’s a very badly written article, which rather extreme views, something Autosport is normally very good at avoiding.
However that wouldn’t explain why many other major F1 reporting sites are also taking it down.
I might also add, Kieth, I respect you 110% for the work you do, and the knowledge that you try to uncover the truth with your readers, as opposed to filtering what we can read. Thank you!
@Magnificent-Geoffrey
Well if they had a faster car and still got beaten by 4 tenths or half a second, basically getting “whupped” as he put it then clearly they aren’t brilliant drivers are they?
So yes it is an insult to them, and it’s even worse considering of who they are.
The only other explanation is that Vettel is sooo good that he can whup drivers that have a faster car and are considered brilliant. Well damn! Then they should all go home and declare Vettel the ultimate driver.Well, they did pretty much just do that in 2011…*ahem*
My guess would be that it’s disappearing from sites without an explanation given because said sites are receiveing cease & desist letters through legal channels emanating from Woking.
A PR slip is entirely possible, and then therefore McLaren would request it to be taken down once they found out that the slip was made.
Things like this said in conversation come across much more casual than when written down in black and white.
But we just don’t know! Either way…new McLaren tomorrow!!
Is it really likely that Mclaren have the power to have an article they don’t like removed just like that for no other reason then they didn’t like it? Surely they could only force an article to be removed if it was factually incorrect?
Also taking into account the other peculiarities about the article as pointed out by @Mike , I think we can assume this is not a simple PR slip cover-up.
Do we know the current status of Mr McGrath?
Disappearing news reports?
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