F1’s governing FIA has rubbished the latest conspiracy theory in the wake of the Italian grand prix.<\/p>\n
After the Monza race, multiple authoritative media publications and F1 officials suspected Nico Rosberg – perhaps in atonement for the Spa crash – deliberately faked braking mistakes on Sunday to gift Lewis Hamilton the win.<\/p>\n
And it wasn’t just the sensational British press causing all the fuss.<\/p>\n
Corriere dello Sport, a respected Italian sports daily, said the change of positions came as the result of “two strange errors” from Rosberg.<\/p>\n
And a poll in Italy’s famous La Gazzetta dello Sport showed that only 22 per cent believe Rosberg’s “mistakes” were genuinely accidental.<\/p>\n
That would explain the latest spate of booing on the Monza podium for the increasingly pressurised championship leader Rosberg.<\/p>\n
“Did he really make the same braking mistake twice in the same place?” Red Bull’s Dr Helmut Marko is quoted by Bild.<\/p>\n
And former driver and commentator Marc Surer said the video replays “left me with an odd feeling”.<\/p>\n
But F1’s most experienced active driver, Jenson Button, slammed the conspiracy theories about clandestine ‘team orders’ issued by an oddly-smiling Toto Wolff.<\/p>\n
“It is a stupid theory,” the McLaren driver said.\u00a0 “No driver would do that.<\/p>\n
“No driver.”<\/p>\n
Mercedes was also pouring scorn on the theory on Monday, ‘tweeting’ a tongue-in-cheek picture of pigs flying over Brackley with the headline ‘Breaking news!’<\/p>\n
Even the FIA is on side.<\/p>\n
The driver steward on duty at Monza was Derek Warwick, who told the Mirror newspaper the incident was “not even on our radar” during the Italian grand prix.<\/p>\n
“Gut feeling tells you a lot and my gut says it was straightforward,” he said, adding that “Mercedes are allowed to have team orders” anyway.<\/p>\n
“I saw mistakes at that chicane twenty times over the weekend,” Warwick insisted.<\/p>\n
Charlie Whiting, the F1 race director, was even more scathing of the conspiracy theorists.<\/p>\n
“Spare me,” he told the Times newspaper.<\/p>\n
“No, we didn’t even give the conspiracy theory a moment’s thought at the time.<\/p>\n
“A few drivers had problems at that chicane in practice, including Nico, who had a few problems there as well as in the race.\u00a0 I really don’t think there is anything in it,” he added.<\/p>\n
So an exasperated Niki Lauda, the Mercedes team chairman, insists it is time for the conspiracies to stop.<\/p>\n
“Once and for all — we do not have team orders.\u00a0 Period,” said the F1 legend.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" F1’s governing FIA has rubbished the latest conspiracy theory in the wake of the Italian grand prix. After the Monza race, multiple authoritative media publications and F1 officials suspected Nico Rosberg – perhaps in atonement for the Spa crash – deliberately faked braking mistakes on Sunday to gift Lewis Hamilton the win. And it wasn’t …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[810,1343,1628,5262,5300,5340,2137,153,154,4,598,5107],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24271"}],"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=24271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24272,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24271\/revisions\/24272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}