Ferrari Mailing List: Re: F1 SPOILER

[Bill Rosen (razpootin]

IMHO:
Alonso was not unfairly penalized, he should have gotten out of the way, 
and let the man on the hot Q lap, go by unimpeded.  He would not have 
lost so much time, that he wouldn't have had a final hot lap.  This was 
not a race, it was qualifying.  Also, in the following, notice the use 
of  intention, intentionally and deliberately, which have nothing to do 
with the validity of the penalty, as stated in the complete decision 
released by the FIA.  Beyond that, at the start of the race, both Fisi 
and Alonso were staged beyond their respective start position lines, 
another cause for penalty, not enforced.

Alonso, close to tears at a packed press conference at the Renault 
motorhome on Sunday morning, said that the FIA's decision to delete his 
three fastest laps had changed his view on what F1 was all about.

"I did my lap without blocking anyone INTENTIONALLY," said Alonso, 
speaking in front of video screens showing on board footage from Massa's 
cars of the incident.

"I love the sport, I love the fans coming here, a lot of them from 
Spain, but I don't consider F1 anymore a sport."

Alonso insisted that he did not block Massa DELIBERATELY and said that 
if he was penalized for what happened this time then it would likely 
lead to problems in the future.

"If you see the video, then if this is blocking INTENTIONALLY we will 
have a lot of problems from now on in qualifying. If this is blocking, I 
don't understand how we will race today if this is the minimum distance 
(between cars)."

Team boss Flavio Briatore made it clear that Alonso had not impeded 
Massa DELIBERATELY - and that he had only completed his out lap in 
qualifying at such a speed because he needed to get across the 
start-finish line before the chequered flag came out.

"Yesterday Fernando was penalised for the lap, and I want only to tell 
you, Fernando never INTENTIONALLY wanted to stop Massa," explained Briatore.

"You know, he had a tyre accident. Fernando come back to the pits, we 
checked on the chassis and it was quite dangerous to send Fernando out 
again.

"But we are fighting for the championship and the people need to see a 
show. This is the reason why we love the sport, this is the reason why 
Fernando go out and he made the chequered flag to start his quickest lap 
by one second.

"We told him by radio to drive like a qualifying lap on his out lap 
because really we were very, very tight, because we check the chassis 
and the suspension. He did a perfect job and we had no INTENTION to stop 
Massa."

"We don't want to argue with the decision, but we tell you what is our 
position - we are quite sad that this happened and Fernando takes the 
risk to do this lap."

"We need to recognise that when you send the driver out in the position 
he was, he takes a lot of risk."