Formula One news
Ferrari lawyer slams Ross Brawn
15 April 2009Ross Brawn has been heavily criticized by Ferrari's lawyer following Tuesday's hearing in Paris over diffusers. On leaving the FIA International Court of Appeal (ICA), Nigel Tozzi QC explained how Brawn - affectively a former client from Ferrari - has presented his case with 'supreme arrogance'.
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| Brawn celebrates victory with Jenson Button in Melbourne |
With the FIA's ultimate decision on the 'double-decker diffusers' run by three teams due on Wednesday afternoon, eight of the ten teams attended the court on Tuesday morning as Brawn, Williams and Toyota came under fire from Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull and BMW as McLaren took an observing role.
"Only a person of supreme arrogance would think he is right, when so many of his esteemed colleagues would disagree," The Telegraph reported Tozzi as saying about Brawn. With the Brawn GP diffusers containing a space in the middle section, the team claims to have taken advantage of the regulations by presenting the component as two parts, as opposed to one singular area. "Anyone with a command of English will tell you it is a hole," Tozzi continued. "Do not let someone attempting to be clever with words defeat the express purpose of the rules."
Ironically, Tozzi is effectively directing the comments at a former client, with Brawn having been an employee of Ferrari during the spy scandal involving the Italian team and McLaren in 2007. "The appeal is not because we have not made the most of an opportunity, but because Brawn, Toyota and Williams have not acted within the regulations," Tozzi went on.
The general feeling remains that, as the devices have already been cleared by FIA-appointed stewards and technicians on four occasions, the sport's governing body will stand by its view; Tozzi, however, continued to express how both the FIA and delegate Charlie Whiting have been "getting it wrong and not understanding the point".
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| Brawn's two race wins are at risk |
Andrew Ford, legal representative for Renault, also expressed his dissatisfaction over the FIA's conducting of the situation, claiming that Toyota's device closely resembles an outlawed Renault part of 2008. "It is not that Renault missed the boat," claimed Ford. "It is because the FIA said it was illegal - it was at that point the diffuser was abandoned."
The FIA's decision on the diffusers, very much the talking point of 2009, is expected later today; in the unexpected event of the devices being banned, the results of the first two races would be dramatically changed.
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