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Alonso's title hopes hang on hearing
Fernando Alonso's hopes of a possible Formula One title could suffer a knockout blow when the sport's governing body decides Ferrari's fate at a Paris hearing on Wednesday.
The Italian team, preparing for its home race at Monza this weekend, was fined US$100 000 for manipulating the German Grand Prix in July through the use of banned team orders.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA)'s World Motor Sport Council must now decide whether that penalty, imposed by race stewards, was sufficient punishment for 'bringing the sport into disrepute'. The body's options are unlimited, with a points deduction or suspended ban considered likely if further sanctions are agreed.
Neither double champion Alonso nor Brazilian teammate Felipe Massa will be present at the hearing, although a Ferrari spokesman said both drivers would be contactable should council members wish to hear from them.
"I shouldn't think the drivers will get a penalty,"; McLaren's reigning world champion Jenson Button, who is fourth in the championship and six points ahead of Alonso, told Reuters after the last race in Belgium. "It will be the team, if they do get another penalty, because it was an order from the team. Personally I don't understand why they don't just change the points around of those two (drivers), the points they got in that race, but they obviously can't do that within the regulations."
Former FIA president Max Mosley, who remains an influential figure in the governing body and was in charge when the ban on team orders was introduced in 2002, when Ferrari issued team orders to allow Michael Schumacher to win in Austria, believes both team and drivers should be heavily punished.
"If one wants to fulfil the needs of the audience, then one must maintain the ban," the Briton told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag last month. "Both cars and both drivers should lose the points they achieved in the German Grand Prix."
Should Alonso be stripped of the 25 points he won at Hockenheim, the Spaniard would remain fifth overall but 66 points adrift of McLaren's overall leader Lewis Hamilton with six races remaining.
Ferrari, which would have had a one-two finish at Hockenheim even without team orders being invoked, is currently third in the constructors' championship and 80 points adrift of leaders Red Bull.
The team is likely to argue that no explicit order was ever issued, with Massa merely being told that Alonso was quicker and then acting on that information.
During the race, Massa was told over the radio by his race engineer: "Alonso is faster than you." He was then asked: "Do you understand that message?"
The outcome of the WMSC hearing will be controversial whatever the outcome.
There are those who argue that team orders should be legalised since they have been part of Formula One since the championship started in 1950 and have never really gone away.
Others say rules must be respected and to encourage overt manipulation of results would be a betrayal of the spirit of fair competition.
