> McLaren penalty 'soft', says Todt

Ferrari boss Jean Todt reckons the penalty handed to McLaren in the spying scandal was “soft”.

The British squad was stripped of its 2007 constructors’ points and hit with an unprecedented fine in Paris last week, with the first part of the penalty gifting Ferrari the constructors' championship.

However Todt believes the punishment handed out by the World Motor Sport Council could have been much harder on its rival.

“We feel it's a soft penalty considering the whole story,” he said.

“What was very important for us, as I mentioned before, is that if you are guilty, you must be penalised.

“So they were guilty, they were penalised.

“Now you can always decide enough, not enough.”

FIA president Max Mosley admitted in Belgium over the weekend that the penalty given to McLaren may subsequently be judged to be too lenient.

He also added that he would have cancelled both Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso’s points to ensure that there was no lasting suspicion that either won the title with an unfair advantage over their rivals.

Todt acknowledged that it is better for the sport that both McLaren drivers are allowed to see out the season, but says the interests of the championship in this respect were put first.

"I know that yesterday the president of the FIA said that he confirmed that it was soft but we know in this business you have to take a lot of things into consideration and I can understand that,” he said.

“It's much better to have four races, including this one, with all the drivers and I'm not arguing about that, but lots of things were taken into consideration in order to favour the championship rather than this single bad case.”

However he reckons that should McLaren decide to appeal the verdict, then there is still the possibility that its drivers could be taken out of the title race.

"It will be very important to see if they make an appeal or not,” he said.

“If they do appeal, I think it will change the drivers' situation quite a lot.

“The appeal would probably be judged before the Japanese Grand Prix and we may therefore be facing a completely different situation.

“Before we know about the appeal, it's not something I'm going to comment on further."


Source: itv-f1