BAR-Honda Guilty!!

[jackosimm]

yeah I know, he has hardly had any luck, BAR changing to michelins that year improved drastically and were looking good through my eyes to start battling for the championship after the last couple of years performances, but daym they just car get it right in that team

[LUD02C]

An interview with Nick Fry, just the last few questions.

Q. What are you going to be discussing with the other teams?

Fry: In the first instance we want the teams to be supportive of our situation. We know we never ran under 600kgs and the other teams are fully familiar with that as well. I don't think any of our competitors think that we have cheated or done anything wrong. That's the first thing we want from them. And obviously, the rules being interpreted this way, with this level of penalty, has serious implications. Formula 1 and its technical challenge is to get as close to the edge. That's the nature of motorsport. It has made everyone along the pitlane think twice about their own cars given the fact that if you do transgress, or even appear to transgress, the penalties are very significant. I know there are a lot of thought-provoking discussions going on.

Q. Do you really think the others are going to support you?

Fry: The other teams, especially the motor manufacturer teams, are completely glued together, so we will decide collectively what to do as the result of this.

Q. The inference is that you seem to have a much bigger collector tank than strictly necessary. What's your technical justification for that?

Fry: What you will find, and I don't think there's any secrets now, is that our fuel system runs at 50 bar pressure. A road car runs at about two bar. Many of the other teams are running at much lower pressure than us and I know that other teams that have tried to run at the pressures that we run at, have encountered exactly the same problem that we have, which is that you need a large amount of fuel pressurising the system. Our car has to carry 6kgs of fuel in the tank and, without that, the first thing that happens is that the fuel pump starts to get air into it and very shortly thereafter, the engine starts to see air going into it instead of pure fuel and obviously that starts to damage the engine very quickly. In the environment where we have got to last two races, we can't have that happen. It's almost like a home central heating system. We need a header tank of fuel to push pressure against the pump to make sure that the fuel pump and the engine only see fuel, and not air. So we need to carry fuel. That, in our view, is not ballast, it is like oil or water or any of the other fluids in the car. It's necessary. The car would not be able to go into parc ferme or run in the event without that fuel in it. And, in our case, its 6kgs. That's just the fact of our system and I'm absolutely certain that other teams, if they do advance to very high pressure systems, are going to find exactly the same problems. This is a pure engineering issue.

Q. That being the case, how do you design it out of the car?

Fry: We will be doing two things in the next couple of weeks. Number one is that we will either design our system so that we don't need to carry as much fuel to prime the system or, two, we are going to have to carry yet more fuel so that effectively at all times we will be 6kgs over the weight limit. That's something our engineers will have to grapple with over the next two or three weeks.

Q. How has (technical director) Geoff Willis taken this?

Fry: Geoff is under a lot of pressure and we attribute no blame to anyone for this. We are fully supportive of Geoff and the rest of the engineering team and I'm sure when you see the witness statement in the pack that we put before the court, you are going to see that everyone has acted with tremendous integrity. What you will find in the witness statement is not only statements from our team but also a statement from Sir Frank Williams talking about the credibility and integrity of Geoff Willis and Craig Wilson, both of whom came from the Williams team. So it's not just us fully in support of Geoff, it's others along the pitlane that know there is no way in a million years that Geoff would countenance anything other than strict obedience to the rules.

Q. If you were running a bigger collector tank than has been used in the past, did you not seek to clarify it with the FIA beforehand. And if not, why not?

Fry: The system is very straightforward and the manufacturer has confirmed that our system is not unusual in any way. The FIA actually looked at our tank in detail in Malaysia, and again in Bahrain, and nothing was said. It was just accepted as a regular, ordinary fuel system and so I think it has confirmed that there is nothing different about our system.

Q. But that only became relevant at Imola?

Fry: I'm not sure that's the case. It's very easy to see how it works, the FIA didn't ask any questions about us and our car was at all times over the weight limit at Imola. No-one in the FIA court or among our competitors has ever accused us of running under weight. The car always weighs significantly over 600 kilos.

Q. How would you propose the FIA now checks cars to see that they are not running under weight?

Fry: The FIA conclusion was that the rules weren't altogether clear and what I would expect would be a clarification of the rules, which should be fairly easy to do because one of the things we brought out in court was that in other FIA series, and we specifically talked about sportscar racing and touring cars, it's very well defined. It specifically says the car must be effectively dry of fuel and I think that's the simplest way of doing it. The Formula One rules, and we've learned this to our cost, don't say that. We completely maintain we obeyed the rules as written, but we acknowledge, as the FIA do, that the rules are far from clear.

[LUD02C]

FIA President Max Mosley has accused BAR of a "crude" and "primitive" attempt to break the rules - and revealed he suspected them before the season even started.

The FIA successfully appealed to have BAR punished for entering an underweight car in the San Marino GP, after which Jenson Button's car was found to have a secondary fuel tank.

Mosley claims he was stunned to learn of BAR's device, which kept a quantity of fuel apart from the main tank.

"You have got to be crazy to do it," said Mosley at Barcelona prior to this weekend's Spanish GP. "People don't do that sort of thing in Formula One any more."

"It's the sort of thing people do in a club race, low-grade racing. It's crude, it's primitive, it's not sophisticated electronics."

Mosley claims he was aware of paddock gossip over the winter which suggested BAR were running cars which did not meet regulations.

BAR strenuously deny any wrongdoing and insist they never ran under the 600-kilogram minimum weight during the San Marino Grand Prix.

But Mosley said: "Everybody who was really in the know in Formula One strongly suspected something was going on. There was a general rumour in Formula One that this was going on.

"The 2004 season is closed, there may be an issue between the teams but as far as we are concerned it is closed. The truth is they went on too long if they were doing it last year.

"I personally heard about this during the winter from someone who does not work in Formula One but works in top-level motorsport in the United States.

"The reason I didn't tell [technical delegate] Charlie Whiting at Imola was because if it's true they would know this rumour was going around and nobody would be so stupid as to do it at their first competitive race.

"My intention was to talk to our people about it at this race."

The FIA had asked their International Court of Appeal to exclude BAR from the rest of the season, having accused them of "fraud".

The appeal court did not agree with that assessment of BAR's behaviour.

Mosley added: "Confronted with what appeared to be a deliberate infringement, BAR have pleaded stupidity and the judges have given them the benefit of the doubt.

"I suspect that the judges in the appeal court felt there was some doubt and they were not willing to go all the way and say fraud.

"That would have been the end of the season for BAR-Honda. I think two races reflects the disapproval for the negligence."

BAR have argued that they did not break the rules because nowhere is it explicitly written that a car must weigh 600kg or more when drained of fuel.

They insist data proves they never competed with an underweight car, but Mosley claims "the only way we can be certain is to take the fuel out and weigh it".

He added: "It is for the team to prove they never went under 600kg. Once you analyse it clearly there is no debate, to the extent that in the appeal we didn't even send a barrister."

[LUD02C]

Just read that BAR have scaped the appeal.
No BAR for 2 races!

[Vivski]

You seem excited to see the back of BAR, Jason.

Well, from this and the other thread, I'm pretty sure of my stance. The FIA are wrong on this one. And I don't think BAR should be suspended at all. If the FIA want to change the rules to outlaw this, then they should do so. It's easy... you write "Before and after the race, the car must have a dry weight of over 600kg." That is not stated in the regulations, is it? Therefore the FIA cannot prove that BAR cheated and ran it's car under-weight.

From what BAR says, they need that fuel in the car the whole time, so it wasn't running under-weight. And not the FIA nor the officials for San Marino have proven otherwise.

And for the FIA to try to ban the team completely over this doesn't give the teams much faith in their governing body.

Can anyone remember what happened when Ferrari and Bridgestone were found to be cheating with their tyres? I can't remember what the FIA and Max Mosley said.

[LUD02C]

I actually wasn't happy when I heard they aren't racing this weekend.
I was wanting to see Jenson fighting it out with Alonso and Michael hell even Kimi.

Thing is, if they cheated they deserve the fine/suspension.
I'm 50/50 on this.

But I don't think banning them from 2 races is a solution at all.

[^^v]

Second to last paragraph...

(GMM) Banned F1 team BAR packed up and left Circuit de Catalunya without the single turn of a F1 wheel.

Team trucks, carrying the '007' cars, rumbled out of Barcelona late Friday, although the motorhome stayed put -- to entertain Honda and BAT bigwigs.

''We believe we could have won (here),'' said a gutted CEO Nick Fry, and Jenson Button commented later that he would've been even stronger at Monaco.

Fry said the two-race ban, to not be challenged further so as to save F1 'a damaging fight,' would - to honour contracts - cost BAR more than $10m.

Then there's the Button issue, and the fact that meeting performance criteria to retain the 25-year-old Englishman is now near-impossible.

''We've certainly made things more difficult for ourselves,'' Nick Fry admitted.


Written: Sat, 07 May 2005 05:36:23

so i guess this means button will be leaving at the end of the season... unless some merical happens n BAR Honda wins every race from the European GP onwards

[pornstar]

You know the problem with all of this is the uncertainty in the wording. Max Mosley claiming them to be cheats certainly doesnt do anything for the reputation of the sport.

Fuel is not to be sued as ballasts, but the BAR honda team argue that the extra bit that they keep in there is merely to keep the car running "at all". IE its not ballast to them, but something that must remain in the system for the car to be running. But serisouly if your going to CHEAT over fuel, wouldnt u think they woulda used more than the 5kg difference found?

In any case, It sucks cos I know i personally wont be watching the next 2 F1 comps. Max Mosley is just a c0cksucker that cant take the fact that his the one fvcking the sport up. Taking it out on every team other than ferrari, yeah thats a good way of managing a competition u fvcking r3tard, how about posing simple solutions and working with the rebel teams to get to a solution.

meh to all of this, everyone pushes rules, its not cheating. The tribunal couldnt find bar CHEATED, they found them lacking transparency and not for getting the issue clarified, but clearly, if they did nothing intentional, they shouldnt be punished but the rules clarified in future.

[^^v]

Could there have been more cheats?

(GMM) As the shudder of BAR's two-race ban is still felt up and down pitlane, it has emerged that three more teams may also have been running an iffy fuel setup.

Britain's 'Guardian' newspaper said the trio is believed to have 'modified (their tank's) design' after BAR were found guilty of using fuel as ballast and running an underweight contender.

But, at Imola, FIA stewards did not also check - for example - the Ferrari F2005 and Renault R25's own fuel system.

''We have not even the slightest reason to believe other teams are doing this,'' FIA president Max Mosley said at Barcelona.

However, BAR's fuel cell supplier - ATL - revealed that it builds a near-identical design for several other teams.

Mosley admitted that there are 'similar systems' in pitlane, but that BAR's offence was using fuel as ballast in the secondary tank.

[panda[cRx]]

i just had to post this ....

[^^v]

ahahahahahahaaaa... the one with sato n button is hilarious...

[Javed]

Mosley is really out of line here. His comments sound like a personal attack on BAR. His comments are very immature and unprofessional for a person of his position. The rules and regs were unclear, so the damage that has been brought upon the reputation of BARHonda is completely unjust. Their car wouldn't even last 5 laps if they ran underweight, due to what Nick Fry has already stated about the pressure of the fuel system. I think Mosley is just pissed off because BAR are always trying to push the limits, which is NOT cheating. And for him to say he suspected them due to rumours he had heard was very very childish. How can he say that he would not suspect any of the other teams if he was merely going on word of mouth? The top 3 cars should have been inspected the same. Jenson's car would not have made the distance if that car was running underweight.