Williams knew about JPM's disqualification?

[Homer Simpson]

Can anyone confirm that Williams team members were notified early of JPM's disqualification, but that they asked to allow the car to continue running for sponsor exposure? I heard this news on television, but can't seem to find mention of it anywhere else.

[Wrex]

Well everyone was quick to jump on the officials about how long it took to call him in, and I thought that was unfair.


Firstly, we were talking about blackflagging a racer, and I would hope they dont take the lightly. I also believe we were talking a margin of mere seconds, so this needed to be looked into very closely. I would hate to think they rushed the call, ruined Juans race, then said "sorry, you can go back out again".

Also, we have no idea how long Williams were arguing the case, for the obvious reasons as well as the potential sponsorship reasons. A report is released every season of ecactly how many seconds each car is shown, and this has a huge influence on sponsor money.

But lets no allow facts to get in the way of a good beat-up, lets just hang the stewards.

[avsfan733]

I absolutely agree with Wrex I pointed this out in an earlier thread and was ignored...when disqualifying someone for a minor infraction such as that you better be sure you hear all sides and are absolutely sure of the decision

[Led ZeppF1]

No way a team would not tell the driver if they were in the know. Too many real serious things could happen with serious consequences like a big crash.

And, the "car 3 under investigation" notice wasn't posted until 40 laps into the race.

[Wrex]

Who said he did'nt know?

[alfasud]

Should this be allowed.... if the officials and the team know the car would be disqualified, but allow it to continue for the sake of the sponsors?

Imagine if he had a incident involving another car.... a car that could have gone on to score points? Surely once it is known the car is to be disqualified, it should be called in.

Now if the disqualification was in doubt... fair enough, give the team a chance to argue their case, but beyond that they shouldn't let it continue to race.... it isn't fair on the others.

[Logrence]

Maybe Zsolt Baumgartner shouldn't have been allowed to start the race in case he had an accident with a points-scoring car - he's not that good, you know.

[Mr V]

IF Williams did know early, i doubt they stayed on track for sponsers exposure!. They would have stayed out whilst argueing their case! As we saw, as soon as that arguement was lost, Williams called in JPM, who came in within the required time frame.

[gert]

I guess Williams knew there were close to the 15 second rule, and so knew a black flag would be possible.

However, I think it's extremely doubtful the stewards would allow to let the car on track for sponsorship.
What if he would have gotten into an accident with one of the (other) leaders?
That would have been inexcusable - for the stewards.

No-one wanted to see something like the black-flagged Mansell take out race leader Senna...

[Spudgun]

This is racing. Teams are there to race. A team is not going to pull a car out of the race just because they think they might have broken a rule earlier on. Even if they know they've broken a rule.

They'll keep on going until that black flag is shown.

If the stewards want a car to pull out, it's up to them to bring out the flag.

[Kicking-back]

I don't think Williams knew they would be disqualified much earlier than we the viewers did.

Montoya himself was pretty annoyed it had taken so long before anything was said - so it's very unlikely he'd been kept out as a show for the sponsors.

[paulzinho]

And after Ralfs accident i don't think Williams would have risked something similar just to satisfy a sponsors considering how much exposure they get throughout the season.

[Adam43]

I've seen nothing to suggest they did.

I've also seen little to suggest the Stewards did anything drastically wrong.

We jsut don't know the details of what went on. What we are suffering here is a complete lack of facts!

Still it woun't stop it reinforcing people's hatred of Williams or the FIA.

[N I Tram]

I'd be very surprised if this is true, especially considering Ralf's crash, and how late the initial 'car 3 under investigation' board appeared. My guess is that it simpy took the FIA this long to make the final decision (which isn't really good enough IMO).