FIA reaches settlement with Ferrari

[59hrld]

I am a bit confussed that this news was left unnoticed......
So what are your thoughts about this..

Richard

[jaykay]

Someone cheated a bit too much. They got a slap on the wrist and it was agreed behind closed doors to not make too much fuss about it because it would create too many bad news for F1. The other teams probably know the details but keep their mouths shut for the same reason. If you believe the hints by insiders, that has happened more often than we know...

[59hrld]

Basicly what my thoughts are.
The fact that it remains behind close doors is as much as a:" You are Guilty"
But because you are Ferrari we settle outside court......

Richard

[bestbalsakits]

But because you are Ferrari we settle outside court......

Richard

A settlement usually benefits both parties compared to taking it to court, i believe.

wim

[racingkars]

So it looks like there's a hush of guilt.
To me a bit strange this way.
Other teams might have suffered gaining less amounts of price money.
E.G. Red bull might have been 2nd instead of 3rd which leaves them with 8 million less price money.

[stubeck]

But because you are Ferrari we settle outside court......

Richard

A settlement usually benefits both parties compared to taking it to court, i believe.

wim

Yep. I think what they were doing is similar to what happened to Red Bull in 2014. Red Bull had technically broken the rules, but the readings Red Bull had were within the requirements, and the readings the FIA had were within the margin of error of the sensors of being legal. The court found that Red Bull hadn't cheated, but because of the rules and how they were written, they were still thrown out of the Australian GP. After this, the FIA banned teams running their own sensors.

I'm assuming this is something that the FIA felt they could lose (they haven't had good luck in outside courts lately) so they settled to avoid losing.

[ringleheim]

This is a big deal and has major ramifications for the upcoming season, at least for Ferrari.

They obviously developed a few tricks for making power that were ultimately deemed not legal. However, it sounds like they worked closely with the FIA to come clean, inform the FIA of what they were doing, and have thus brought the FIA up to speed on what other teams might try themselves, allowing the sport to be more efficiently policed.

So the "penalty" is not being allowed to continue with these power making tricks, but no further penalty beyond that, such as eliminating their points from last year's championship, which the FIA could have done.

Having watched a LOT of both testing sessions (and I'm a huge Ferrari fan) I think the car Ferrari has made is not that great, and this is combined with the lost of engine performance noted here. On top of that, Ferrari have added some drag creating elements not found on last year's car in an effort to claw back some downforce.

The upshot: Ferrari is down on power (for sure) relative to last year, at least on the ICE side, and will not enjoy the straight line speed advantage it had last year.

[Orso]

I am a bit confussed that this news was left unnoticed......
So what are your thoughts about this..

Richard

I agree. Very unnoticed as I have no idea what you are talking about.