McLaren MP4-23 Allowed To Race
Relief for McLaren as MP4-23 model gets go ahead from WMSC.
It's Go-Go-Go for McLaren as FIA President's recommendations to the WMSC results in the authorisation of their MP4-23 model to race in 2008.
After a troublesome season that saw the squeaky clean image of McLaren tarnished forever, followed by weeks of speculation, court appearances, investigations by the governing body and the general will-they-won’t-they [be allowed to race in 2008] suppositions of the world’s media, Ron Dennis and his team were due some good news and they finally got it this week when the World Motor Sports Council decided to heed Max Mosley’s recommendation that they draw a line under this year’s ‘Spygate’ dramas and allow McLaren’s 2008 car to race next year.
The WMSC had refused to sanction the 2008 McLaren model after it was felt that there was enough concern over three elements of the car. Instead, the Council chose to defer their decision on the car that Lewis Hamilton hopes will take him to the 2008 Driver’s Title until 14th February 2008, barely five weeks before the season starts. It is believed that three elements of the McLaren MP4-23 car bore striking resemblance to technologies used by Ferrari and therefore the question of whether McLaren were still using illegally obtained Ferrari data continued to haunt the British team. The delay in authorising the car was decided in order to allow rival teams, including Ferrari, to peruse the report at their leisure and raise any objections they might have to McLaren racing with those components next season.
In order to bring the matter to a close, last week McLaren issued a public apology and offered a moratorium on the components queried by the WMSC. Following the apology, an act that cannot have been easy for Dennis and his board of directors, FIA President Max Mosley recommended the council bring the matter to a close and allow McLaren’s next car to race in 2008.
On Tuesday, the World Motor Sports Council agreed, with the support of Ferrari, to allow McLaren’s car to go ahead as long as no further development was undertaken on the three elements brought in to question. The sanctioning of the MP4-23 will be of a huge relief to the team who later admitted that the ongoing uncertainty over the permissibility of their racing car was making it difficult to secure long-term sponsorship deals and was therefore raising doubts over the financial certainty of the team’s future.
Now that the WMSC have agreed to cancel the meeting of 14th February, the Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes team are free to prepare for the 2008 campaign without the threat of penalty or exclusion hanging over them.
