Flavio Briatore is calling for McLaren to be excluded from the F1 World Championship in light of the Stepneyga

I think people need to realise that they will never expel or suspend the McClaren team, regardless of what they have done. This is simply because of money - if they throw McClaren out of the competition, who the hell is going to carry on watching F1 if only one team is going to end up winning all of the time? No one. This will lose F1 - and the FIA - a HUGE amount of money from lost revenue, gate receipts, etc. They cannot let this happen. This is why they will not suspend or throw out McClaren - the money is just too important. It's a catch 22 situation. By throwing McClaren out, they are basically punishing the whole of Formula 1. For this very same reason, it is why most of the match fixing teams in Italy stayed in Serie A - because if they threw all of them out it would lose Italian football far too much - perhaps even an unrecoverable - amount of money. Or if a corrupt business is found out - the fine is often very small in comparison to the severity of the crime, because it is more in the interests of the government to keep the business running to get corporate tax and all of the tax/revenue from the employees/company rather than make the company go bust or force them into laying off staff or cutting back on financial forecasts. I'm pretty sure this will be blown out of court with perhaps the two scapegoat engineers taking the rap for what is a rather messy affair - even Ferrari have f*cked up - they were using an illegal car for much of last year...

1. Yeah you're right 2: I suspect, none 3. Ferrari can't even afford the petrol bill anymore...

Right. Mclaren cheats and goes to hell

Work it out! Doesn't his name say enough? Flavio is Italian! Maybe, he would like a Ferrari as his next car and expects a discount LOL Seriously though, I think his attitude is more to do with Alonso than McLaren. Alonso doesn't deserve his place with McLaren and as we have just seen, he believes he can win the championship through cheating. This reflects on the whole McLaren team. To be honest, I agree! McLaren should be excluded, as Alonso is going to win the Championship by castrating Hamilton if he can get away with it. No team deserves to participate in F1 if it's driver can not compete fairly. Ron Dennis should have put Alonso in his place from the very beginning but didn't. This reflects on Ron Dennis's ability to manage the team. Either McLaren should go or Alonso should go.

3. What the hell has it got to do with Flav? The whole situation is being dealt with. he could try keeping his fat overpaid nose out.

Flavio Briatore has a lot more pull with F1 than most people realize. I would not be surprised that it was more him than anything else that convinced Moseley to order the appeal hearing. And, as one of F1's senior figures -- his nationality has nothing to do with it -- for him to weigh in critically on an issue that has NOTHING to do with his team, they're going to listen. Maybe won't change any minds in the end, but he definitely commands attention.

Since when has Flavio had any pull with the FIA? It's got nothing to do with him, and he certainly won't affect the outcome!

1 He was never happy at loosing Alonso (I think he might get him back next year now.) 2 A lot, this guy is a liked face in F1.

Here's a possible scenario... McLaren end up being excluded from the Championship and Alonso receives an internal disciplinary "slap on the wrist" from McLaren for unsporting behaviour to his team-mate (during qualifying today). These two factors help Alonso to decide to return to Renault (as Pat Symonds hinted at in this month's F1 Racing magazine). This all means that Ferrari are happy, Flavio Briatore and Renault are happy, and Fernando Alonso is happy. That is, of course, idle speculation but a possibility! To answer your second question, Briatore is a well-respected and occasionally feared figure in the world of F1 and his opinions will be taken on board by the FIA and WMSC, but I couldn't imagine him being a deciding factor in their investigations.