So we're back to your usual, common-or-garden, FIA loophole exploitation scenario, which is usually more closely association with Newey and Aerodynamics. Awh.
Being F1, probably both. I think Pirelli screwed up and Mercedes took advantage, knowing they could shift the bulk of the blame to Pirelli.
Is there a bug in the site or something? I just clicked back onto this section, and it said 813 people viewing. You're not having my credit card details, go away virus's.
One of Benson's better attempts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22677161 Two things from it: 1) Among the tyres they tested was the new design Pirelli wants to use in Canada. 2) Red Bull and Ferrari - and others, who chose to leave the protest to F1's biggest beasts - were mostly incensed by two particular aspects: the use of a current car (and current drivers) and that the test was conducted clandestinely. Benson's not a reliable source, but current drivers suggests that Rosberg was involved (since we think Hamilton was in America). The claim that they were testing the Canada spec tyre is big, and it's outrageous if true. He's also completely changed his tune from earlier in the week when he was defending the racing and the tyres.
Someone stooped low enough to give us a few plugs since we had some fairly rare snippets of info http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22676348
The amount of Pictures of Hamilton in America during that time makes his story watertight. If Nico really was testing tyres I can't imagine Lewis would have been to pleased, I haven't really seen anything to suggest Hamilton is miffed with Mercedes. My guess for now is Sam Bird. He has past Mercedes experience so wouldn't need to get up to speed much. If it was Canada 2013 tyres then thats bad, really uncool bad! I know Force India wanted changes tested first but I'm sure they didn't mean like this. I don't think it was Canada tyres as Pirelli wouldn't have known about the change until the weekend on the Spain Grand Prix surely? The Canada change only came out in the days after the GP, and then the scale of changes has changed since then???
Okay, that is shocking. You can't give one team 1000 km of testing two weeks before you implement the tyres, that's ridiculous. Interesting he said current drivers, seeing as we know Hamilton was elsewhere (and sources elsewhere on the net check out on that), that might suggest there's an element of fiction he's woven into that. We can't be the only people to have noticed Hamilton was in the USA. I agree with BLS that Sam Bird seems pretty likely. Days before he's tweeting about not being able to wait to get back in an F1 car, then he's late back to the UK and has a meeting with F1 fitness people and a chiropractor mid week. I can't see why he'd leave that until midweek unless there was a reason for it. Also, Rosberg was involved in that Nurburgring thing later in the week, anyone know how much build-up there was to that? I can't imagine he'd be too keen to do a GP weekend, 3 days testing, then hop across Europe to do PR work and more driving. He's surely want some time off.
Is this the biggest political scandal in the sport since spygate? And if so will there be similar punishments or will the FIA be even more harsh than on that occasion?
He was at a official Blackberry event in the US, his story backs up pretty well Lots of pictures (could be a double of course lol)
is every grand prix not a test though? from practice one to the chequered flag? are the teams not sharing their data with pirelli?
