McLaren and its boss Ron Dennis seem to be getting desperate. The sightings of Flavio Briatore visiting Dennis’ motorhome in Monza were first attributed to possible Alonso to Renault talks.
In fact it seems that these two guys were talking about Dennis’ threats to drag Renault into the spy saga story.
There was a reference to article in Spanish paper Marca at formula-1.updatesport.com. According to them Marca “claims that Dennis is in possession of knowledge that could cause the immediate exclusion from the championship of the French team”. Here is the link to the original Marca article.
I do not know how serious Marca is. But then few hours later, Autosport.com runs an article with quotes from Briatore’s interviews with Il Giornale and Gazzetta dello Sport:
“We told the FIA what we had, so there’s no problem,I don’t know what Dennis refers to, he’s throwing stones a bit everywhere. We are calm, no problem at all.”
and
“Everything we had to say we told the FIA and now we wait for Thursday, I’ve just learned that Ron Dennis accuses us too, he’s throwing stones in the lake. We want to know the truth, it’s important for all the investors in F1. We need to clean up. If someone did wrong he must pay. If there was nothing, the FIA must say so, and everyone will have to apologise to who was wrongly accused. In 1994 they did everything to make us lose the championship. Maybe I’m more used to these situations than Dennis.”
Flavio Briatore made his opinions clear about a month ago when speaking to Italian media:
“When we started developing the car for 2007 we maybe underestimated the big technical impact there would have been with the coming of Bridgestone as sole tyre supplier in place of Michelin. For me it was unquestionable that Ferrari, after many years with Bridgestone, would have had an advantage. But had I only known Ferrari’s weight distribution, or how big their tank is, if I had a bit of those documents, then we surely wouldn’t be in this situation today. We would certainly have gained in performance.”
“When everything is played within one tenth of a second, any information on your rivals, even if partial, is important.”
“If he (Ron Dennis) knew there were those papers around, he should have informed Jean Todt about it immediately. And the federation. Dennis says he’s immaculate, but it’s hard to believe him. No, I don’t believe in his good faith. In a team everyone knows everything. Especially if the dossier – let’s call it that – in question is at that level.”
“All the team managers should say that in F1 there’s no more room for them (Coughlan and Stepney). And it’s an extremely serious thing that Coughlan hasn’t yet been fired by McLaren. We must clean up by punishing certain people. So that what happened won’t happen again. So that a mechanic, before passing on certain information to a rival, will think about it 27 times.”
Did Ron Dennis just tried to start his personal vendetta against a guy who dared to question his integrity ? Or is he really so desperate that now anything will do ?
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