{"id":17129,"date":"2012-11-20T06:56:03","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T11:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=17129"},"modified":"2012-11-20T06:56:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T11:56:03","slug":"paddock-figures-back-ferraris-gearbox-penalty-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/paddock-figures-back-ferraris-gearbox-penalty-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddock figures back Ferrari’s gearbox penalty ‘trick’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Fernley, the day-to-day team boss at Force India, has backed Ferrari’s decision to deliberately penalise Felipe Massa in Austin.<\/p>\n

\"Ferrari\"The Italian team was roundly criticised for tampering with Brazilian Massa’s long-life gearbox for no other reason than to incur a five-place penalty that switched title-fighting teammate Fernando Alonso to the ‘clean’ side of the grid.<\/p>\n

Ferrari’s immediate competitors, Red Bull and McLaren, said they wouldn’t have made a similar decision.<\/p>\n

But Fernley told PA Sport it is nonsense to write of Ferrari’s tactic as unsporting.<\/p>\n

“At the end of the day the regulations are what they are, Ferrari took them to the limit, and that’s what we do in formula one,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I would absolutely have done the same.\u00a0 We’re not here to try to make friends, we’re here to win.”<\/p>\n

Many commentators in the media also slammed Ferrari’s tactic, but former driver Marc Surer said the Maranello team did the right thing.<\/p>\n

“If you look at the (race) start, it was absolutely right,” he told German television Sky.<\/p>\n

The Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport added: “With a world title at stake, everyone would have done Ferrari’s trick.”<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Fernley, the day-to-day team boss at Force India, has backed Ferrari’s decision to deliberately penalise Felipe Massa in Austin. The Italian team was roundly criticised for tampering with Brazilian Massa’s long-life gearbox for no other reason than to incur a five-place penalty that switched title-fighting teammate Fernando Alonso to the ‘clean’ side of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[3171,5262,130,149,93,4144],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17130,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17129\/revisions\/17130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}