re: The Official F1 Thread
Good news: Brawn GP, Williams and Toyota have all been declared legal by the stewards and will be allowed to take to the circuit. Ferrari, Red Bull and Renault are likely to lodge an appeal against the decision with the International Court of Appeals, but a hearing is unlikely to be scheduled until after next week's Malaysian Grand Prix if that is the case.
I can't help but think the entire protest against the diffusers is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attack on Brawn despite Williams and Toyota being named in the protest. Brawn were consistenty the quickest through testing; while the others showed occasional moments of brilliance, it was the Brackley outfit that kept topping the timing sheets. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual reasoning behind the protest was the teams complaining because Brawn were actually clever and gained a huge advantage for it.
Maybe I'm just being a cynic, but I can't bring myself to believe that any team protesting another is doing it solely for the benefit of the sport. Not after McLaren's appeal in Brazil in 2007. They claimed the cars of Rosberg, Kubica and Heidfeld were running illegal fuel-cooling systems, but they never filed a protest against Nakajima, who was found to have the same thing as his team-mate. Tellingly, Nakajima was the only one of the three drivers who finished behind Hamilton, and if those three had been stripped of their points, Hamilton would have won. As such, I'm thinking that not a few of the teams are trying to close the gap between themselves and Brawn by having Brawn's parts banned.
And speaking of Brawn, apparently Sir Richard Branson is en route to Melbourne to confirm that the Virgin Group will be a major sponsor of Brawn GP. Also, they are now running the numbers 22 and 23. They were originally in-line for numbers 18 and 19 in keeping with Honda's finishing position in the championship last year, but the FIA decided they were a new entry and gave them the numbers 20 and 21; Force India got buped up to 18 and 19. But the Indians had already gone ahead and ordered their merchandise with the numbers 20 and 21, and so asked the FIA if they could be granted an injunction to run with those numbers. The FIA said yes, so now Brawn get the numbers 22 and 23 in keepingwith the policy of new teams taking the final numbers; no-one will carry 18 and 19 in 2009.
And according to Berine, there will be 26 cars in 2010 ...
