"In many ways I'm in awe of Flavio. I've never seen someone win so many races and know so little about a racing car, but it obviously works for him so why change it."

Interlagos, lest anyone needs reminding, is the scene of Alonso's BIG STUPID MOMENT from 2003 when after Mark Webber's crash he drove an entire lap at racing speed, ignoring double waved yellows and then crashed into Webber's Jaguar with all the certainty of a moth heading for a flame. And received no penalty for it.

The Suspicious Stink of F1
Opinion: It's difficult to concentrate on Winners and Losers when there's such a strong smell of suspicion coming from the FIA's technical delegate.

It's a bit like sitting down to watch a film you've been looking forward to and finding that a piggery has moved next door. Charlie Whiting's move to ban the Renault damping system so pivotal to their set-up makes me mega suspicious - and trying to focus on the German GP has been hard given such a rank smell.

The fact is that Renault will have shown their damping system to him before they put it on the car; it has reportedly been on the car since Brazil 2005, and only now - with the F1 Championship delicately poised - does he decide to ban it. It raises huge questions over either his competency or raises the possibility of connivance within the FIA.

If the system was illegal then it should have been banned straight away. If it was illegal and he failed to spot it for nine months then clearly he is not up to the job.

Whiting's ban was undermined by the fact that the FIA's own race stewards could see nothing wrong with the Renault system.

The timing is very suspicious, coming so soon after the French GP when Fernando Alonso snatched an unlikely second place. Perhaps something needed to be done to put a bigger gap between Schumacher and Alonso if Schumi is to win the 2006 Championship.

Exactly the same thing happened in 2003 when after the Hungarian GP it looked like the 2003 season was getting away from the Scuderia. All of a sudden Max Mosley was announcing that there was a problem with the shoulder of the Michelin tyre and the tyre rules were tightened up to benefit Bridgestone. Embarrassingly for the FIA, Mosley said they hadn't been influenced by anybody and then subsequently Ross Brawn admitted that they had told the FIA about it and that Max had flown down to Maranello the next day.

That stank too.

Tom Rubython. the maverick publisher of F1 Business magazine is not slow to point out that Ross Brawn and Charlie Whiting have been drinking buddies in the past. He has also been very vocal pointing out the unwise nature of such a relationship given the fact that Whiting is the keeper of all the teams' F1 secrets. He knows the technology on all the cars and (no pun intended) needs to be whiter than white..

Maybe it is just coincidental that it came now and we are being overly critical. Only complete transparency will rid us of our doubts. What the FIA need to do now is print a full report. We need to know:
a) Why did Whiting ban the system now?
b) Was he prompted by another team - and if so, who?

It's unlikely Whiting will step down. He is one of Bernie Ecclestone's coterie of former Brabham personnel such as Herbie Blash who he likes to keep around him at races.

Our opinion is this: keep him as race director, for which he is very competent, and appoint a new technical delegate who does not fraternise with any team. And print a full report into the circumstances surrounding this highly controversial move.

this is the one that I hate him! talking too much...
on my own opinion, he just can win 2005 title because of the rule of cannot change tyre on race    & michelin done good job...

you not going to take 2006 WC ALONSO... the 2006 WC is for Schumi

I'd rather support Fisi than Alonso...