Lewis Hamilton radiogate April 3, 2009
Posted by richard in : What I learned today , trackbackANOTHER day, another take on radiogate. Seems Hamilton and team manager Dave Ryan told fibs to the stewards.
Yesterday, of course, I thought the FIA was mad. Just what was this ‘evidence’ being withheld?
After all, hadn’t we all seen him on TV, telling us that he’d discussed over the radio about what to do with Trulli? Cut and dried, we thought. The boy done no wrong. Here was the FIA, continuing its McLaren witch-hunt.
How odd, though, that McLaren didn’t protest it. Oh well. Then, this morning, McLaren suspended team manager Dave Ryan. Eye up.
Then, a contrite Hamilton apologised and, with admirable sincerity, told us he wasn’t a liar. What the? Why? Because, they didn’t quite tell the truth.
They’d only gone and ‘forgotten’ to tell the FIA about these radio conversations. Ah. A decision that was made just before they met with the stewards, but after Hamilton had spoken to ‘us’, via TV.
Ah indeed.
What on earth they were thinking, nobody knows. Suddenly, though, the FIA looks blameless. Merely the moral upholder of the law. But it still can’t be pleased with how things have turned out (there’s the bleedin’ obvious stated).
See, to fans, it’s all a bit sniffy, this whole situation. Why have we had to wait so long? Why could it in the end come down to someone telling porkies? Don’t they have computers, and tech, and, well, all sorts of gadgets? Don’t they monitor the team radios?
This is F1, for heaven’s sake. Pinnacle of world motor racing. Can the world really have been misled by a chap and his colleague not telling the whole truth to some other chaps? Really?
It’s took me this long to work it out, and I follow F1. For the casual F1 fan, listening to the news, they’ll be utterly, utterly baffled.
Guess that could all be part of the FIA’s plan, though. Hold back, hold back, become the whipping boys for a while, then – bam. The truth is, McLaren’s at fault. It’s serious. Fans have been misled. They had to be excluded.
I just wonder, though. Thinking about it, this week’s machinations look like yet another FIA political masterstroke.
Hats off to it, in one respect.
Pity the sport part of F1 seems to have been forgotten, by all concerned, though.
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