The Hindu : Sport / Racing : Motor : Ferrari president flays 2007 series

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Friday, Oct 26, 2007
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Sport - Racing : Motor

Ferrari president flays 2007 series

MARANELLO (Italy): Ferrari president Luca Cordero di Montezemolo called this year’s Formula One series “a championship of poisons” and attacked the World Motor Sport Council’s handling of the spy scandal.

“We saw people who lied, people who improved the performance of the car in a non-sporting fashion,” Montezemolo was quoted as saying on Wednesday by the ANSA news agency.

“We saw our work focused on looking for the irrefutable proof of this unsportsmanlike behaviour.”

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen clinched one of the closest title races in years by winning the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday. Raikkonen finished with 110 points, followed by McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso with 109 points.

However, the season was marred by the spy scandal that led to a record $100 million fine for McLaren, which was found guilty of using leaked data from Ferrari.

The British team was also kicked out of the constructors’ championship, which Ferrari won comfortably, although Hamilton and Alonso were allowed to keep their points.

McLaren was sanctioned in September by the World Motor Sport Council, after the sport’s governing body FIA obtained fresh evidence.

But at an earlier hearing in July, the council ruled that McLaren had possession of Ferrari data but did not punish the team on the grounds that there was insufficient proof that the material was misused.

“(It was) an absurd sentence, which affirmed that there was treachery. But this treachery was not underlined in the decision,” Montezemolo said of the July ruling. — AP

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