McLaren look to put spy affair behind them

By Jens Marx Sep 26, 2007, 10:18 GMT

Fuji, Japan - Although their 2007 constructors' title hopes have been dashed, McLaren-Mercedes remain favourites to land the drivers' crown with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso occupying the top two places with just three races remaining.

Rivals Ferrari secured their 15th Formula One constructors' championship last week after McLaren said they would not appeal the sentence handed down by FIA after the British-based team had been found to have secret Ferrari documents in their possession.

The FIA World Council fined McLaren 100 million dollars and docked them all points they had in the constructors' standings.

Ferrari's Felipe Massa, for his part, said the Italian marque deserved the constructors' title.

'If we have won the championship because another team has not followed the rules, then we can say that at least we did follow those rules and we won,' said the Brazilian.

'I feel the whole team deserves this for the job they have done so far this year.'

McLaren still have high hopes this season as drivers Hamilton and Alonso kept their points in the drivers' standings. Hamilton goes into this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix with 97 points, two clear of defending champion Alonso and 13 ahead of Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. Massa lies fourth on 77 points.

But Mercedes motorsport director Norbert Haug's main fear is that even if a McLaren driver does land the title, the whole spying affair will cast a shadow over the achievement.

'First we have to win the title and if we achieve this then I hope talk will be of gloss and not shadow,' he said.

Haug told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the spying issue was 'now closed' and that McLaren would 'build up stringent internal security mechanisms' to prevent any future scandals.

Haug also revealed that McLaren decided against appealing the 100- million-dollar fine so as to fully focus on landing the drivers' title.

'We are now concentrating on the fight for the drivers' world championship,' said Haug. 'Our drivers have leads of 13 and 11 points over the nearest challenger and our objective is to maintain an advantage over the last races.'

Meanwhile, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone defended FIA's decision not to punish Hamilton and Alonso, saying that Max Mosley, president of motorsport's ruling body, promised the drivers no action would be taken if they came clean about their knowledge of the affair.

'If he then took away their points, he would have broken this promise,' Ecclestone explained in an interview in auto, motor und sport magazine.

The 76-year-old Briton echoed Haug's view that spying would no longer be a problem in the sport, saying that the size of the fine imposed on McLaren meant most team bosses would make sure the same thing didn't happen to them.

'There is a clear warning in this punishment,' said Ecclestone. 'Don't do this type of thing.'