> Damon Hill: Scandals could damage sport

BRDC president and former world champion Damon Hill has highlighted concerns over Formula 1's ability to maintain credibility as the sport stands on the brink of a second spying scandal in 2007.

The FIA has summoned Renault representatives to explain charges of possessing confidential McLaren intellectual property at a World Motor Sport Council hearing in December, just two months after meting out a US$100m fine on McLaren and throwing it out of the 2007 constructors' championship for possessing a secret Ferrari dossier.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the former Williams star expressed his believe that fans will lose interest if the sport continues to be racked with such controversies and added that it was imperative that the FIA's governance of such issues appears 'just and fair'.

"In this country we are quite sophisticated sport and political spectators," he said.

"If things don't stack up, and continue to fly in the face of what we regard as being just and fair, then the danger is people will just walk away.

"It's a problem that has existed for a long time in this sport, not knowing whether to believe things or not.

"I'm not a lone voice here," he added.

"There are a lot of people who love this sport and have got a lot out of it, who want it to be a healthy sport and to attract people to it. When there are episodes like we had in the last season our hearts sink because we think that they're not doing it any good.

"Last season was the best in F1 for a long time, most notably because there were four drivers who could have been world champion. That brought about a massive amount of interest in the sport for the right reasons.

"It did not need any more controversy or sideshows."

Hill added that he would like to see more consistency in the way teams are punished for infractions, adding that he did not fully understand the severity of McLaren's punishment when put into context of similar cases.

"Why were Ferrari just given a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again after winning the first race with a device [a flexible floor] that was illegal?" asked Hill.

"This brings about a lot of the problems relating to justice and consistency.

"I would like to understand how the Ferrari-Toyota case [former Ferrari engineers in the employ of Toyota guilty of industrial espionage], which ended in court, did not lead to the same outcome as the Ferrari-McLaren case? Why was there no punishment of the team [Toyota]?" he added.

"There was an uncomfortable feeling that there was something more to the McLaren outcome than the issue being investigated. The way that justice was meted out raised some questions about the way the FIA handle these breaches.

"If breaches occur then those things should be investigated and dealt with sensibly and appropriately.

"But in that case there were lots of questions about what really happened that went unanswered."

Source: itv-f1