Harris said that a “reprimand might be proportional” given the total lack of
clarity from the FIA over whether or not they should be allowed to use a
2013 car at the test.
Failing that, perhaps their running at the next Young Driver Test should be
curtailed. Any penalty more severe than that, Harris said, should surely be
suspended given the inconsistencies in the FIA’s case.
To be honest, he had a point. The FIA do not come out of ‘Testgate’ looking
very clever. Mark Howard QC, representing the governing body, basically said
that Mercedes should not have heeded the advice of Charlie Whiting, the
FIA’s own race director, since he was “not in any position to provide
binding permission”.
Nor should they have listened to one of the FIA’s senior lawyers in Geneva,
Sebastien Bernard, who agreed with Whiting’s opinion that Mercedes could run
a 2013 car since it was a Pirelli test and therefore did not constitute a
test by a competitor.
Is it any wonder, given those two assurances, that Mercedes felt sufficiently
emboldened to try their luck?
Mercedes surely knew they were skating on thin ice, though. Their defence was
not at all convincing.
As Howard said, neither they nor Pirelli chose not to alert any of their
rivals to what they were doing, ignoring Whiting’s instructions to that
effect.
Their claim that they derived no material advantage from the test was
preposterous. And as for Mercedes’ dramatic allegation that the FIA was
guilty of hypocrisy by not hauling Ferrari in front of the judge for
conducting two Pirelli tests with their 2011 car, that was briefly
diverting.
It will be interesting to see how Ferrari
react to the accusation that they pushed the envelope even more than
Mercedes, exceeding the 1000km limit and keeping the data. But ultimately,
Ferrari were not the ones on trial here.
Mercedes were and it felt as if they knew the game was up. Even they admitted
that it had been a mistake asking Hamilton and team-mate Nico Rosberg to
wear anonymous black helmets while driving in the test. “We had our
reasons,” said Harris. “It was about the lack of bodyguard and security
personnel.”
It was just the sort of farcical claim which summed up ‘Testgate’; a pointless
waste of time and money, wrangling over rules: a Formula
One speciality.