Once again McLaren has been dumped in the mud by an employee - Dave Ryan's suspension, followed by Whitmarsh's apology for the lie told to the stewards hearing in Melbourne, inevitably brings to mind Coughlan's stupidity in the "spygate" affair. We can point at the incompetence of the stewards in not considering all the available evidence before penalizing Trulli, but the fact remains that they were misled by a McLaren employee trying to keep an extra championship point by lying and a driver who foolishly did as he was told.
"Okay, Heikki, here's the plan - retire on the first lap and then the stewards won't be able to penalize you..."
There is something wrong in the team's employment policy, that is clear. Maybe it is a function of large organizations that the head honcho cannot keep a lid on all the actions of his employees, perhaps it is the result of a culture of secrecy, paranoid about giving away truth that might be used against the team, it might even be that employee selection processes do not include a concern for ethics. But something is wrong, somewhere.
It may be that McLaren has been victimized by the FIA in the past; I think a comparison between the transcripts of the McLaren and Renault WMSC hearings gives good reason for believing so. But that requires that the team be so squeaky clean that no mud will stick and this latest affair proves that the lesson is still to be learned. It would help McLaren supporters enormously if the team were proved right occasionally.
Part of the problem is the team leaders' attempts to avoid direct responsibility when caught out. Martin Whitmarsh's statement yesterday was an evasion that must have embarrassed him no end when the FIA produced the radio transmission to prove that the team's representatives had deliberately misled the stewards. How much easier things would have been if he had just admitted the fault then and sacked Ryan immediately.
I am left shaking my head at the inability of the team to learn from past mistakes. McLaren was unfairly dealt with in the spygate affair and suffered innumerable incorrect stewards' decisions last year but their handling of controversy is poor, to say the least. As a result of an incredibly bad decision by one employee, a minor matter that should have been dealt with and forgotten very quickly has been blown up until it threatens even the participation of McLaren in F1. Martin Whitmarsh should accept responsibility and then hammer into his employees' heads the idea that only the truth will do.
It remains true, however, that the stewards and their interpretation of the rules have become so unpredictable that none of the teams can be sure that they will not find themselves unfairly penalized in the future. McLaren's transgressions have obscured the fact that the stewards made more than one very dubious decision in Adelaide (will we ever get to hear what Donnelly said to Vettel, one wonders). For too long the sport has suffered from such apparently irrational decisions and it is time that competent and qualified stewards were appointed.
It is good that the FIA has adhered to its promise to release transcripts of the evidence in stewards' decisions but this applies only to the McLaren case so far. As well as showing that McLaren acted incorrectly in the hearing, the evidence also shows that the stewards made a decision without consulting all the evidence available. In view of this, we are entitled to wonder why the evidence in Vettel's case has not been released and to suspect that the reason is because the decision was as incompetent as usual.
Keith Collantine has examined the weaknesses in the decision-making of the sport in his article entitled "Two sides to the Hamilton-Trulli controversy: Another avoidable crisis" and I will say no more on that subject. But it is clear that the sport has a long way to go to clean up its own act so that such fiascos do not occur again. The best that can happen now is that the Hamilton/Trulli debacle be put to bed and we all move on to the next race.
Finally, a brief word in Dr Mario Theissen's ear: I see that BMW has tagged on to the teams protesting against the double diffusers. My advice is, "Don't do it, mate - FIA politics is a dirty game and it's best to stay out if you can."