When does clever thinking become cheating? - The Undercut with Damon Hill and Mark Hughes
Stay On Track with Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert
When does clever thinking become cheating? - The Undercut with Damon Hill and Mark Hughes
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Term
double diffuser
A double diffuser is a part of a race car that helps it stick to the ground better by using air flow. It has two sections that work together to create more downforce, which is important for racing.
Concept
FIA
The FIA is the organization that makes the rules for car racing, like Formula 1. They help keep the races fair and safe for everyone involved.
Term
performance enhancing drugs
These are drugs that some athletes might take to get better at their sport. In car racing, though, it's more about how fast the car can go rather than the driver's abilities.
Term
bigger engine
A bigger engine means it can make more power, which helps the car go faster. It's like having a stronger motor in a toy car to make it zoom quicker.
Brand
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz is a famous car brand from Germany that makes luxury cars and trucks. They are known for their high-quality engineering and technology.
Term
ambient temperature
Ambient temperature is the temperature of the air around us. In cars, it can affect how well the engine runs and how much power it produces.
Term
compression ratio
The compression ratio is how much the air and fuel mixture is compressed in an engine before it ignites. A higher number means more power, but it can also mean you need special fuel.
Brand
Ferrari
Ferrari is a famous car company from Italy that makes fast and expensive sports cars. They are also well-known for racing in Formula 1.
Term
power unit
A power unit in racing is the engine and all the parts that help it run, including things that recover energy to make the car go faster.
Term
fuel flow
Fuel flow is how quickly fuel goes into the engine. In racing, there are rules about how much fuel can be used to keep things fair.
Term
miscalibrating
Miscalibrating means setting something wrong, like adjusting a machine incorrectly, which can cause problems or break rules in racing.
Term
Conrod
The conrod is a part of the engine that connects the piston to another part called the crankshaft. It helps turn the up-and-down movement of the piston into circular movement that makes the car go.
Concept
ground effect
Ground effect is when a car uses its shape to create extra grip by pulling itself down toward the road. This helps the car go faster and handle better, especially in racing.
Term
ride height
Ride height is how high or low a car sits above the ground. It can change how the car handles and performs, especially in races where every detail matters.
Part
hydraulic pumps
Hydraulic pumps are machines that use liquid pressure to move things. In cars, they can help adjust parts like how high the car sits off the ground, which can be important in racing.
Term
weight limit
A weight limit is the maximum weight allowed for a race car, including the driver. It helps keep the competition fair by making sure all cars have similar chances to win.
Term
lap time
Lap time is how long it takes a car to go around a racetrack once. It's important for comparing how fast different cars and drivers are.
Concept
cheating in motorsports
Cheating in motorsports means doing something unfair to win a race, like hiding special parts in a car that make it go faster but are against the rules. It's like trying to sneak in a secret advantage that others don't know about.
Brand
McLaren
McLaren is a British car company that makes super-fast cars and is also known for its racing team in Formula 1.
Term
Kimi Räikkönen
Kimi Räikkönen is a famous race car driver from Finland who has won a championship in Formula 1 and is known for being very direct and honest.
Term
regulations
Regulations are the rules that teams must follow in racing to make sure everything is fair and safe.
Concept
Formula One
Formula One is a type of car racing where specially designed cars compete in races called Grands Prix. It's considered the top level of motorsport and has races all over the world.
Brand
Renault
Renault is a car company from France that makes many types of vehicles. They are also involved in Formula One racing, providing cars and engines for teams.
Concept
aerodynamic device
An aerodynamic device helps cars move more efficiently through the air. It can make the car faster and more stable by reducing wind resistance.
Term
cooling
Cooling is how cars keep their engines from getting too hot. It helps the engine run better and last longer by making sure it doesn't overheat.
Term
turbo cars
Turbo cars have a special part called a turbocharger that helps the engine make more power. However, this can make the car heavier because of all the extra parts needed.
Term
Cosworth
Cosworth is a company that makes powerful engines for race cars. Many famous racing cars have used their engines to win races.
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The Athletic.
So, Damon, where do we draw the line between cheating
and ingenious exploitation of a regulation?
This is the uncomfortable feeling of a time I was asked into the headmaster's office
to explain myself.
Can I just make it clear?
No, you're not accusing me of cheating.
I'm not accusing you of anything.
I'm just...
Where do we draw the line?
We're talking about it abstractly.
We're trying to discover this.
What is the cheating?
Because with our sport, clearly there are people who say
there is no such thing as the spirit of the regulations.
It is what you can get away with.
And famously, I think it was Ross who said that you're a fool
if you don't exploit the opportunity of a loophole in the regulations
towards that effect.
In a technical point of view, there have been many examples
where people have said, well, you didn't clearly define that in the regs
and we think that you could interpret the regs like that.
Therefore, we're going to do it.
And until they define it, that particular specific thing,
let's say double diffuser, for example.
The discussions were had before and what would happen normally
is that they would present their drawings to the FI technical working group
which I think would have included Charlie at that time
and they would have said, well, the regs say this,
but actually you found a good loophole and we think that's commendable.
In a way, we're not going to stop you because...
It's not what we meant.
It's not what we meant and I'm sure that the other teams will be extremely upset.
But in this particular occasion, we should have made it clearer.
So it's not really cheating.
It's getting a technical advantage and everyone else will then have to catch up.
So that's cleared by the FIA before it even arrived on the track.
So if you have something that...
And we're talking about cars particularly.
Because the thing is, people often say to me,
does anyone take performance enhancing drugs in our sport?
Well, what's the point as a driver?
I mean, there's no point because the car is the means by which you achieve your speed.
And so inevitably, the obvious thing would be to put something in the petrol
or have a bigger engine or something like that.
You can't have a wide-edge driver or something, I don't know.
Anyway, so they test all the drivers.
I don't think there's anything of that sort in our sport.
But you can't have too much caffeine.
So they do do drug testing and certain levels of performance enhancing things
aren't measured if you're unlucky enough to get tested.
Anyway, so...
But the difference is whether or not you know deep down
that this is not allowed by the regulations.
But you do it anyway in the hope of not getting caught.
That's slightly different, isn't it?
So, I mean, a good recent example is the Mercedes-Benz Power Unit controversy
whereby the regulations say compression ratio limit is 16 to 1,
measured at ambient and obviously while it's stationary.
And it seems that...
So they say that in the rigs?
It will be measured like this?
Yeah.
But there is another bit of the regulations,
a separate part of the regulations say the car must comply to the regulations at all times.
At all times.
So Mercedes believed they've found a way of increasing the length of the Conrod
once everything warms up.
I suspected it might be that.
Which increases the compression ratio,
which gives you a significant performance advantage,
but possibly as much as three-tenths of lap in this case.
So those who haven't figured out this ruse but have heard about it
of voice of displeasure at the FIA and discussions are ongoing.
I heard that they declared it, the FIA said.
The FIA have said effectively,
well, if it's legal when we measure it and we can't measure it when it's running,
then any claim that it's running illegally is only hearsay
because we don't have any evidence of that.
Thereby, we can't do anything about that.
So they're now discussing ways for the future of how would you measure this dynamically.
Will they do that halfway through the season?
Because they sometimes have the option to re-take the regs, don't they?
They do, yeah.
Yeah, especially if that advantage is big.
Historically, when somebody's had a big advantage, they might step in like that.
That's one of the big changes to the way they regulate this.
They reserve the right to be able to change this.
Exactly, yeah.
But this is, well, it's quite similar to what Ferrari were penalized heavily for the 2019 power unit.
That was fuel flow.
All the evidence suggested that it was being breached, but there was no definitive proof.
All there was proof of was that they were miscalibrating the amount of fuel that was in there
because you would take full advantage of an increased fuel flow.
You'd need to have more than the regulation capacity.
And they were putting more than regulation capacity in.
So that part of it, they were banged the right to record.
So QED.
Therefore, why would you be doing that?
Why would you be carrying a weight disadvantage if you weren't exceeding the fuel flow?
But did they get penalty for that?
Well, they had to come to an arrangement because I would, we have to be careful how this is phrased
because it's still not out.
It's still strictly between Ferrari and the FIA, theoretically.
But they came to an arrangement.
It was termed an agreement.
But that agreement would reduce Ferrari's competitiveness significantly for the following two years.
So to save embarrassment, we're going to insist that you stop doing it.
We won't go any further because in actual fact, what you were doing was quite clever in a way
because it circumvented the way we measure it.
And you knew that that was circumventing the way we're measuring it.
So really strictly speaking, you were cheating.
So in that case, they were...
Inverted commas, I just want to say.
Yeah.
So in that case, it was the deliberate exceeding of the fuel capacity
whereby you would say, well, you knew you were exceeding the fuel capacity.
Thereby, that's a cheat.
And the only reason you would do such a thing would be to take advantage of a fuel flow.
So that is slightly different to what we're talking about with the compression ratio thing
because there is no smoking gun.
There's only hearsay.
No one's hearsay with Ferrari for a long time before it was finally dealt.
But this is one step cleverer than that even.
And it's also quite...
I mean, it seems ridiculous because everything expands and it gets hot.
Yeah.
All metals get.
Indeed.
But talking to some engineers, they say, yeah, but what usually happens is that everything around the Conrod expands more.
Thereby, the compression ratio reduces and you actually lose a bit of power.
And typically, current 16 to 1 ratio, if you haven't got this trick,
you're down to something like 15.2 or 15.4 to 1 from 16.
Whereas the Merck one is apparently going up.
So some very clever use of materials technology, probably,
because you can't use trick linkages and things like that.
That is specifically banned in the regulation.
And certain materials are banned.
Yes, they are, yeah.
But it's somehow found a way of doing this.
If you were running Mercedes powertrains or Red Bull or whatever,
you would say, I want you to find an advantage.
And there would be someone sitting there going, OK, the regs say this.
But we think that this is a way through the regs that is permissible
because they have established that the way they measure it is like this.
So it's very likely the famous ride height with the ground effect errors
where they, in order to stop the problems associated with the Venturi ground effect cars,
they said you have to have a ride height of x.
And so they put hydraulic pumps on the brams that lifted the car up when it was measured.
And you can see it on telly.
It's ridiculous.
And they even went, I think Gordon Murray did it first with Brabham.
And he did it quite elegantly.
But everybody found out what it was.
And so almost in protest, everybody said, well, we'll just do it.
We'll make it.
And they actually had levers saying up and down.
So they could come in.
Do you have any memory of this one?
And I don't know if it might be apocryphal and slanderous even.
But when they had them, they brought in a weight limit
because in the old days, the car was weighed without the driver.
And so if you put Alan Prostin, he had a massive advantage over Nigel Mansel
with about half a second of lap.
Yeah, so you've unbalanced the car up.
So then they brought in the weight.
The driver weight.
And that's when Michael went with the heavy helmet.
Or was it heavy helmet?
I heard it was nuts and bolts in his pockets.
I think it was a heavy helmet.
But anyway, it might have been both.
Have you got evidence of that?
I haven't got evidence.
No, there you are.
We have to kind of leave that there as a maybe just as a bit of slanderous gossip.
But yeah, I mean, that's so people will push the limits.
That's their job is to find a way through.
So in this case, because a lot of people have drawn that parallel
between the compression ratio and the Ferrari 2019.
In this case, you would say, well, there is no smoking gun.
There's just people saying that it runs a higher compression ratio.
Whereas with the Ferrari, people were saying it's running in a legal fuel flow.
And then you got the evidence.
The smoking gun was the excess capacity.
So if I have a box and I show you what's in the box and there's a, I don't know, a span
or something.
And then I put the lid back on the box and I say to you, what's in the box?
There's no way of proving.
Tommy Cooper.
Is this going to be Tommy Cooper?
Yeah.
It's a kind of bottle glass, glass bottle.
Do you remember that one?
Anyway, so it's the same thing.
Yeah.
You know, you don't know.
You can't prove that their spanner is still in the box.
No.
Whilst the lid is on.
Trudding as Conrod, isn't it?
Trudding as Conrod.
Exactly.
I think you can run with that one.
That's a great analogy.
But the point is this.
What is in the soul of the person doing these things?
Are they aware that what they're doing is cheating?
Or do they think what they're doing is clever and within the way the sport is run?
So, there are rules in cricket.
You know, you're in or you're out.
And to some degree, the way you play the sport should be down to the umpire.
If the umpire says it's out, now we have the VAR and all the rest of it.
And other ways of trying to measure it.
But clearly, VAR and football is becoming a massive problem.
But, you know, until then, you accepted that the judge, what the judge said, was the final.
Yeah.
And you might disagree with them.
And you might scream umpire and tennis.
It's irrelevant.
It's in.
The ball is in.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, well, the umpire said it was out.
And either you play the game accepting the rules and then we come into the question.
What are the umpires trustworthy?
Are they biased or whatever?
What was it?
Cameroon?
What was it?
No, Senegal, the football match recently in Africa.
Morocco versus Senegal.
Anyway, big final that went.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
And anyway, the ref had to had to, I mean, that's a brave job to do that.
But anyway, so the ref, what the ref decides, I mean, I've got a little bit of a story with
Charlie Whiting, who wrote the sporting regs for the sport back in 2010, I think it was.
And I was asked to be a driver steward.
And so there had been some, this is not technical, this is sporting.
So there had been some accusations or, you know, people weren't comfortable with the
stewards who had typically people who have worked in the sport but don't have any experience
of racing on the track in Formula One.
And they are stewards and they make decisions about driver tactics and behavior on the track.
And so people were saying, well, you're penalizing the wrong thing.
So what would be good would be to have someone who's got experience sitting with the stewards
and advising them.
Anyway, so that was decided that we'd have a driver steward.
And I was asked to come and do Monaco.
And I hadn't been near the sport for a while.
But I arrived and then I was told, you have to sign this FIA document and you're now an
FIA steward.
And I went, whoa, no, wait a minute.
That's not what I understood it to be.
Anyway, couldn't really back out.
So I'm signing the document.
And now I'm thinking, I need to refresh my memory.
So I looked at some of the changes and one of the changes was the safety car rules as
the race finishes.
And they had a line before the pit lane entrance.
Which was to demark the point after which you can't overtake going up to the line.
Should the race have finished under a safety car?
Yeah.
Right.
So what the regulation says.
So I looked at this and I thought, that's interesting.
So what can I get away with?
Can I, and I asked Charlie, what do you have to do when you're lined up behind the safety
car?
You can race to the line or you can race after the safety, after the yellow lights can go
off.
At what point can you position your car?
And he said, you can have the front axle, the car in front of you that is when the race
was suspended.
That's your position.
But you can get alongside as long as your front axle doesn't go ahead of their front
axle.
That's different now.
You have to be behind.
But I thought, oh, that's interesting because I certainly would want to get my car as far
alongside as I possibly could.
And because when the yellow goes out, you can race from that point.
So I talked about that before and I thought I had an understanding of it.
Anyway, learn behold in the race, the safety car.
They can't clear the track so they're now going to finish.
What they didn't want to do is have cars trundling over the line behind a safety car.
So the safety car pulls in and you're all supposed to behave yourself up into the line
and follow it over and on television it looks better.
They're all racing under a yellow, but they finish where they lined up when the yellow
came out.
So Michael comes to the last lap, the safety car pulls in, he's right alongside Fernando
Alonso.
And then the moment he crossed the line, he blatted it, overtook him and gained a place
towards him.
So then Charlie comes down the stairs when he was above us and I could hear him racing
down the stairs going, right, that's not, you know, so he reported it to the stewards.
We got the message from loud and clear.
In other words, stop him.
That's not what the regulations say.
So I went, well, what do the regulations actually say?
Because it says if the race finishes under a safety car, then you're not supposed to
overtake.
So I said, where does the race finish?
And he said the start and finish line.
So I said, Charlie, the race hadn't finished then because the race finishes at the start
and finish line.
And so it sounds to me you could interpret the regs as saying it's okay to race.
Between that line and that line you can race.
You can race.
And so that's exactly, the incredible thing about that story is that they had already
anticipated that Ross Braun and Michael Schumacher already understood the sporting regulations
in that much detail that they were prepared for exactly that scenario and they took advantage
of it.
And so they were called up to the stewards and there's me and Michael Schumacher.
Well, that must be awkward.
It was a bit.
Yeah.
So he's sitting there looking at me and he's smiling.
And obviously I'm in a situation where people are going to think, well, he's massively biased
against Michael.
So you're not going to get a fair ruling here.
And so I looked at him in the eye and I said, Michael, you knew what the intention of the
regulation was.
Didn't you?
And he wouldn't give it.
He said, well, the regulation, what did the regulation say?
And I said, clearly the regulations are not clear enough, but we know what the intention
was.
So really, you knew you were doing something wrong and therefore we're going to penalise
you.
Anyway, I got death threats from Germany after that.
You would do it.
But it was an interesting example of how the regulations also apply to technical.
Yeah.
So it's sporting regulations as well.
Yeah.
So what about in the car?
Like not, forget sporting regulations, but just is there an agreed code?
Not written down, but just among the drivers, there's a certain things you don't do.
And where is that line drawn?
And are the drivers, do guys like Max Verstappen, Michael Schumacher occasionally cross over
that line?
And where is that on the chart?
So I think going back to your original question, what is cheating?
I think cheating is doing something, knowing that it's wrong, but hoping you'll get away
with it.
And so there is the crime is not doing something that's against the regulations, contrary to
the regulations, whether they're technical or sporting, the crime is getting caught in
their mind.
So if you're not caught, then you haven't cheated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, I race for a guy when I left Williams, I went and I have to say, you know, I think
that I'm sure the agents saw a loophole in regulations and so forth, but I really sincerely
believe that Williams wouldn't cheat.
Williams were a team that wanted to win fair and square.
And I think that other teams I could name also, but then there were other teams that
just took the view that the only way you're going to win is cheating.
You've got to find some way of getting an advantage.
And I was shocked to find that when I drove for arrows that Tom was of the view that you
have to break the regulations to win.
And he was involved with the Bennington team and originally and with Flavio and Michael
Schumacher.
And I do think that they, and we can say this now because famously they planned to do something
that was in effect cheating in Singapore and when Flavio was banned from the, and Pat
Simmons were both banned from the sport.
And so do we need to remind everyone what happened there?
I mean, that was, that was allegedly asking a driver to deliberately crash to give themselves
a strategic advantage in the race because they would know when it was going to happen.
So that is manipulation of the race and quite apart from the safety factor as well, putting
someone at risk.
So I think they, they took the view that the crime is getting caught.
And so, you know, for me, it's quite, it's quite clear.
Don't get caught and you're not cheating in some people's minds.
Yeah.
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What was that like for you here in Tomorck?
I can just say that.
What's that like?
It was upsetting because I just won.
Yes.
I mean, apart from the fact that he was slighting your previous achievements, but I'm thinking,
were you then, you're driving for him.
Were you then in a, were you just, I don't want to know.
I don't want to know anything that you might be doing or.
There is, from the point of view of a driver, you can do a say to the same thing.
I don't want you to do anything and I want to know as much as I can about, but you don't,
you're not in the factory every day.
You're not putting the car.
You, you, it's impossible for a driver to know exactly what is going on.
The weight of the car and all those things are not, they're not something, I mean, clearly
the weight is easy to spot with the, you know, the stewards can find that one out and quite
easily just put it on the scales and you're out.
So a plank where all those things.
But, you know, we had, for example, plank.
The, a lot of people came up with ways to get around the pressure that would have been
applied to the front of the plank by getting it to buckle so that it, once it hit, hit
once it lifted and then relieve the pressure and then it didn't wear out as much.
And so is that cheating or is that clever design?
If it doesn't say anything in the regulations, then it's clever.
It's clever design.
That's because it's, you're measured on the plank depth.
But if you have, if you were to have a device hidden in the car, that's the sole reason
for having that device there was that it would enable the car to run lower in such a way
that it was not detectable unless somebody was in the factory and saw it.
Is that cheating?
Yeah.
That's, and that's a question that relates obviously to the, the thing that became known
as Stetny Gates and the Mike Coughlin episode whereby someone in Ferrari, John Todd concluded
the only way that this thing could have been detected is if someone had spilled the beans.
And the only reason you wouldn't want it to be detected is if it was competitive.
Well, a cheat, a technical cheat.
And what happened in that situation was very controversial.
Of course, it led to Ferrari accusing McLaren of spying on them.
But really the origins of it was this device.
On the Ferrari.
On the Ferrari.
Yeah.
Which meant that, potentially meant that Kimi Reichen won the first race of the season.
But his results stood.
And I remember Max saying something to the effect of Max Mosley saying something.
Oh, it's against the regulations.
It's not illegal because he'd made, he always made the distinction between law and regulations.
So you can't use the term legal, but it was against the regulations.
And so we're going to ban it now.
But the results.
The results stood.
So they got away with it.
And then that season became famous in a way because it was Lewis's, potentially for Lewis's
first ever Formula One championship in his first season.
So if we accept that McLaren in 2007 were fine for industrial espionage, 100 million dollars,
lost all the constructors points for that crime in the middle of all that or towards
the end of all that, the Renault team was found to have McLaren information actually on its
system, actually on its, you know, on the computers.
And that was just a telling off.
So where's the, where do we think the distinction is there?
It sounds ostensibly a very similar crime.
Yeah.
So how does it, how do the Renault people, how do they explain they got, how they got
this information?
I think it was a transfer of personnel.
It was just.
A transfer of personnel.
So, you know.
I mean, now they have the gardening leave thing.
So presumably they expect the person to either forget something in six months.
Or is no longer relevant.
You're not allowed.
I can understand not taking a suitcase full of design drawings with you when you leave.
But a lot of the information they have because they've created it in the first place.
So they do have.
You can't, you can't get rid of it from your mind.
And people talk, you know, the people in the sport, people use to talk.
I don't think it ever happened before that someone had been accused of industrial espionage.
That, that was the next level up.
And it was, it was created because it was because it was so damaging.
I think it was so damaging to Ferrari for them to have been exposed as putting a gadget
on that, that wasn't supposed to be there.
That they, they kind of gaslighted McLaren and they accused them of the crime.
When actual fact, they were trying to whistle blow.
Well, yeah.
So ended up costing Ron a lot of money.
And also, yeah, hugely embarrassing for them.
And, and that, that's, that's, that speaks to a time in the sport when the ruling individuals
potentially I would suggest had another agenda, which was to.
Yeah, there was a very personal acrimony between the powers of B and Ron.
And yeah, it was difficult not to interpret that as being very much part of how they dealt with.
Yeah.
I mean, so the politics of the sport were such that if the FIA and FOM, Bernie and Max wanted
to go in a certain direction and somebody was preventing that from happening, then they
had better be well protected.
And this was an opportunity for, I think for them to undermine and pull the, you know,
pull the rug from, from Ron.
Yeah.
In that regard.
So in that case, the politics probably we're saying swayed the judgment on what was legal
and what was not.
Because if it just been about the argument of what was technically legal and technically
not legal, it would have just been about the babe on the Ferrari and then a separate,
a separate issue of what's the penalty for transferring information from another team.
And we had the precedent of the precedent of the Renault team just being admonished for
it.
So in terms of the actual.
And I think fans saw this.
I think fans, I don't think anybody was completely bamboozled by it.
I think people understood this was the nature of the game.
It was like a very Machiavellian court and that this is just, if you're going to enter
this arena, the Piranha Club, you're going to have to expect to, to be, you know, you
have to be properly protected.
So what wasn't that just all fair and love and war?
I mean, or was it, for example, bendy wings and stuff that is, you can argue that you
can't have something that's totally rigid.
Yeah.
And so everything bends.
This question is when it's bending, when it's measured.
Yes.
That's an interesting parallel with the compression ratio question because the, the point is the
same.
The point is you measure it statically as defined by the regulations.
It passes the test.
And when you put more load on that, that sees out on track, it exceeds the, the, the flex.
But the distinction is everybody can do that.
Everybody knows how to do that.
And so the FIEA, they've tightened the limit a little bit, but they've just sort of said,
well, we've changed it.
That's, and everybody just gets on with it.
But this is a case of one team having, or maybe two teams having it, and the rest not.
I'm not knowing how to do it.
And the FIA have to say, okay, your car is, when we're measuring, it's the only way we
know, it's, it passes the tests that we've devised for it.
When it's on the track, we have no way of knowing what's going on.
And I'm reminded of the, the clever, because when it used to be that you have, you, you
can top up your fluids.
Yeah.
The, the engine water and all the rest of it.
All these water cooled breaks.
Do you remember that?
Huge tank.
Like a massive bucket of a water that was kind of 65 kilos of water that was never actually
in the car until after the end of the race.
And that's funny because actually they were, everyone knew what it was there for.
Absolutely.
And they're just taking the mickey out of the FIA regulations, aren't they?
And so then they have to come up with a new reg to change it.
But of course in those days, you couldn't change it quite so quickly.
So then there'll be a big argument about when are we going to change it?
But of course you have to then think of Bernie's fan car, Gordon Murray's fan car, when he
turned up with a, with a device that wasn't strictly speaking a movable aerodynamic device.
Even though it has a, even though it had a hella on it.
And he was stuck in it.
A skirt to seal it, but it was, it helped the cooling.
It was for the cooling.
Yeah.
It was for the radiators.
Yeah.
And so Bernie sort of looked at that and went, we are going to destroy the sport if we run
this car.
It's so clever.
It's far too clever.
And we're going to pull it.
And so that's, that was to his massive credit that he did that.
Yeah.
And it must have been very, very disappointing for Gordon Murray.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
Yeah.
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Bye.
Yeah.
Lead shot in the petrol tank.
Can we talk about that?
Well, yeah.
Terrell disqualified from the second half of the 84 championship for that.
And well, that was an extension of what had been going on with the Cosworth teams two years
earlier, whereby they were getting around the weight limit by what you were saying before
with the water tanks.
And basically they, they could get their cars as much as 65 kilos beneath the weight
limit, whereas the turbo.
Yeah.
Enormous.
Whereas the turbo cars, because they had all the turbo and ancillary and the plumbing
could not get down to that weight.
So therefore they sort of justified it.
It was couched very much in political terms because it was the FIA against the voter teams,
Bernie's teams, which were mainly Cosworth powered.
And so they were the ones that could get the cars light.
And so their reasoning was that, well, we don't believe that the turbos are strictly legal
in concept anyway.
So therefore if the turbo is not legal, we can equalize the performance.
We can say if we get about 65 kilos beneath the weight limit, that'll be about the same
performance as a turbo.
Therefore everything's good.
And the turbo teams and the FIA disagreed, of course.
But the lead shot was, yeah, Tyrell was the only team by then still with the Cosworth.
Everybody else had their turbos.
And was it refuelling?
So they basically came in.
They'd run light for most of the race.
And then to get it to pass the late pit stop.
The late pit stop.
They put late.
Okay.
And you do hear stories of previous seasons with certain cars, certain teams.
And the mechanics would put a new bodywork on in qualifying.
Yes, absolutely.
And they couldn't.
They had to talk about five men to pick it up.
To pick the wing up, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Yeah, so.
It's funny sometimes, isn't it?
As long as you're not on the receiving end of that.
It is.
And it's also, well, I don't know what the general view of the fan base is now.
But certainly when you and I started watching it, it was part of the entertainment of the sport.
How can they outfox the teachers and the headmaster?
Absolutely.
And it was, you know.
The rascals.
Yeah.
And the idea that it's all like, let's all put them in identical cars and then make sure
that every car is absolutely to the letter and the same.
That just for me would, that's not very appealing.
No.
Yeah.
You're missing.
You're missing.
I mean, we kind of love a cheeky chappy, don't we?
You know, we, and when somebody's smarter, which they normally are, their teams are normally
ahead because they have hundreds of engineers now looking at the rakes and check.
And so the FI can't, you know, it's always a little bit one step behind, isn't it?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, but it is now getting very, very difficult to find a loophole.
But back then, you know, the way of measuring things was pretty primitive.
Yeah.
I mean, Frank Durney, the Williams engineer famous, he said, well, motor racing, it's
just about clever people beating, beating thick people.
Yeah.
That's how he looked at it, which sort of embodied a certain attitude, which is probably still
a little bit in the DNA of the sport.
But I think what we might be saying is cheating is where it's generally accepted to be within
the margins.
And I don't think it's a line.
No.
I think there is a sort of a space out either side of the line within general acceptance.
But you might argue about where that.
I mean, some things can be measured.
So they're either, they're either 10 centimetres long.
Yes.
Or they're not.
Yeah.
Or you can't, you can't run under the weight limit.
Or yeah.
But once you use words to define a physical object, then you're in trouble.
And I did a little bit of investigation into philosophy when I was, when I stopped racing
and I read a little bit.
And there's a guy called Wittgenstein, along with Bertram Russell, who worked on language
because they, they realized that with philosophy, when you make a statement, which they always
trying to do, like, well, I don't know, I can't think of an aphorism, but they were
always trying to say something that could be regarded as true.
And of course, you can't with words because they're very imprecise.
Wittgenstein almost went completely mad trying to come up with a language that was, and so
this is the point about the, you know, where does the race finish?
If the race finishes behind the safety car, well, hang on a minute, the safety car's
gone in, so it's not behind it.
And where's the finish line?
So you'll, the words weren't sufficient to actually, actually describe it.
So there is a bit of a game going on with language, which is fun.
But, you know, what cheated.
So people will kind of admire someone who's clever and can run rings around the regulations.
But what we don't like, we want to see something that is truthful, something that is meaningful.
And so I, I sort of thought quite long and hard about this and how would you make things
better?
Because it's impossible.
What you don't want to do is have a race and then have everyone argue over the, at the
end about what was allowed and what was good and what was bad and what was, you know, what,
what shouldn't, shouldn't have happened.
Whereas if you say to someone, if you say, okay, cheating is allowed.
Okay.
Do what you like.
Okay.
Cheating allowed.
But if you get caught, you're banned for a year or you're some sort of massive penalty.
Because maybe that's a different, that's another approach to it because it's pointless
trying to block all the, it's whack-a-mole.
You know, you keep, you keep popping up everywhere and you're kind of trying to block all these
roots.
And eventually you've got this regulation that's 7,000 pages long and it can't possibly
cover everything, especially with AI now.
So AI, what they'll do is they'll feed the, the regs into a computer language, large
language model where it's called.
And it will go, yeah, but it covers everything, but it doesn't cover that little bit there.
So, you know, I don't know where we're going to go with that.
But, you know, if you say, if you say, okay, we're going to take a very dim view of cheating.
And also maybe driving standards, if you drive overly aggressively.
And let's say we get a vote of the fans say, 60% of fans say that was awful.
That's just like getting a Liverpool and Man United fine to agree on a penalty, isn't it?
You need a lot of fans basically on your side.
But no, so, you know, if you've got a driver in the driver stewards, then the people are
going to say, well, he's, I mean, clearly that guy doesn't like that driver.
And so this is one of the problems with how you define what is safe driving.
So I noticed, for example, in the famous race that Max did in Brazil, where he was brilliant
in the wet and came from the back.
If he went round quite a lot of cars on turn one, not one of them ran him wide.
Now, if he was racing for person, he was on the inside.
He's actually said nobody will ever pass me on the outside.
He's actually said that.
Yeah.
He said my dad drilled that into me.
Other drivers can't bring themselves to do it.
Yeah, yeah.
So why is that?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
There's something which is preventing some people from driving like that.
And others are quite comfortable.
And Max knows the rules really well.
And he knows what the rules say.
And if the rules say, if you're ahead at the apex, then you're okay.
Yeah.
So he does.
Yeah.
That's not, that's fair in a way, isn't it?
Yeah.
We have attempted when you were in the car to do something.
Yeah.
I did do some stuff.
And I just, I just felt awful.
Yeah.
So I just thought, I don't know about driving like that.
I was brutal with a Michael once in Canada.
Right.
We were racing for position, but you know, but I just thought, well, see how you like
it.
I squeezed him.
Did he like it?
Didn't like it.
No, he didn't like it at all.
But I did.
I did think it was a bit too harsh.
But so yeah, maybe we're, we're too soft.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But I think in terms of driving standards, I do think there's a case to be made for
the referee.
Yeah.
Just the one guy.
You can't argue with it.
Yeah.
And it doesn't matter.
No, you might have called it wrong.
Yeah.
But I, this is, this is, I think, I think you're right is that if we can accept that
that the arm pass decision is final and we go, okay.
Yeah.
And you should have the power of the black flag.
But then aren't you going to end up with the situation we had in Abu Dhabi where all of
the teams are trying to get to know Michael Massey really well.
Yeah.
And trying to get him to like them and persuade him, especially when it's broadcast.
But that brings another dimension to the whole thing because so far we've been talking about
the participants adhering to the rules.
What about when they represented of the government body doesn't adhere to its own rules?
Right.
Give me an example of that then.
Abu Dhabi 21.
Okay.
On three counts.
Yeah.
That was not valid.
He wasn't, Massey wasn't empowered to make the decisions that he did.
It wasn't within his remit.
It's like the referee saying, oh, I'm going to have, I'm going to make up a purple card
just at random and I'm going to put it at the end just to make it exciting.
He's not empowered to do that.
The referee is not empowered to do that.
Did someone not suggest to him that he could play a little bit loose with the regs?
I know, or was it retrospectively they looked at the regs?
Respectively, I think they had to find a way of justifying.
Justifying the result.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that's the same thing.
It wasn't utterly convincing.
But that's a whole can of worms.
It is.
But yeah.
But we need another show, maybe two or three to go into.
Yeah.
But it's the whole idea we assume.
So then you're saying, I think we have.
Okay.
So he wasn't empowered.
That's their point.
So if the race director was empowered to say, I'm now going to give you a 10 second penalty
for what you just did willy-nilly, you know.
That's a different situation.
If you've got the equivalent of the referee, whatever you call them, that says, no, that
was dirty driving, you're getting a black flag, turn your engine off, get out of the
car.
That's different from someone saying, oh, I'm going to make up a new rule right now
because I want to change the outcome of the race.
So he would say, well, my interpretation of the rules were that I was entitled to allow
some cars to unlap themselves and not others.
And I can bring in the safety car and I can deploy the safety car whenever I like.
But he wasn't.
Okay.
And the regulations don't state that.
But anyway, you're right.
We're getting into something that needs a lot more discussion than just part of a bigger
discussion.
What is it?
Is cheating allowed or not?
Well, where have we got to?
I think there's a generally...
We like a bit of cheating.
We like a bit.
But we don't like people to put their hands up and go, fair cop.
That was a bit of a...
You caught me.
And I think it's...
Well, with the Canadian Premier the other day was talking about, well, the rules-based
order is only a rules-based order if everybody agrees to it.
And as soon as one person agrees, the facade starts to crack.
And then it's not a rules-based order.
So let me get nasty bruteses in the short world.
So there has to be some sort of general agreement about where, how far you can go.
And I think it can only be intuitive.
It can only be a society.
See, I think that's just a fascinating thing.
What I was saying is there comes a point where everybody goes, no.
I mean, Michael and his famous last lap in Monaco where he pretended to crash in qualifying
and blocked the track.
The outcry was incredible.
I mean, that's not the only time in his career where there was a massive outcry.
And eventually, I mean, Jack Villeneuve won.
There was a massive outcry.
And eventually the FIA had to kind of public opinion was so outraged that they had to do
something.
They weren't going to do anything otherwise.
But it was because people went, yeah, boo, that's rubbish, that something was done.
So that's where I come back to the fan thing.
There's fans of the sport as well.
They're not just fans.
They're not just parties.
So there is something that we want to see happen.
We want to go, we don't mind a little bit of naughtiness, but we've got to keep it within
some sort of reason.
But otherwise it's chaos.
We want to come away thinking we've seen a fair fight each.
And there might be people nudging up against those limits, but there is something around
it that would pull it in when it becomes...
Someone's running, I always think, if I was a defender and someone is running, they're
in the penalty box and they're running for goal and there's no goalkeeper, I'm probably
going to...
What can you do?
You're going to kick his legs, aren't you?
You're going to throw yourself in front of him.
I cannot let you score.
I'm sorry.
You're going to do that and you're going to get away penalty.
But that's understandable, I suppose, in sport, in football, if you just stood there.
And you're finished, aren't you?
So I think we're saying that there are some regulations where, yes, it's either in or
out and they're very easy to define.
Weight limits, a few level, things like that, dimensions.
But yes, when you start to get interpretations of technical matters, but then, yeah, I think
the field should be open to an extent of deliberately getting it around the intention of the regulations.
I think that's fair game.
Is there something in the rig saying that they have to obey the spirit of the rigs?
There's nothing that says.
There is in the FIA Sporting Code, though, I think.
It says that they adhere to certain values.
Values.
Yeah.
How do you measure that?
You could just argue, well, that is within my interpretation of that value.
Yeah.
My value is I want to win and I'm going to do it whatever way I find acceptable to me.
I can live with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess so.
So if you'd been a bit more like that at Adelaide in 94, you'd have two titles, wouldn't you?
Well, no, because how would I have done that?
I went for the pass.
Yeah, but you should have just crashed it.
But I did crash into him.
Well, you should have taken him out.
Well, you did take him out.
Yeah.
The trouble is I took myself out as well.
That's what I mean.
You did it the way Jack did it.
God, you got me thinking now.
But no, I, yeah, Jack's just, yeah.
Well, I think we've thoroughly confused ourselves.
Well, and we've left no one with a clear idea as to where the line is.
Excellent.
That's good.
That's good.
Well, that's, that's how it is.
I suppose you have difficulties.
That represents reality.
There's no right and no wrong.
That represents reality.
And that's, that's where we are.
And you got Wittgenstein in.
I got, I threw him in.
Yeah.
And, and also Thomas Hobbs.
Yeah.
And Bertrand Russell.
Who'd have thought they would have been involved in the regulations?
The considerations for the regulations for Formula One.
Their influences come down all those years.
Yeah.
So we've got Newton as well and Einstein, I suppose.
Probably maybe not so much, Einstein, but Newton's in there.
Yeah.
With Conrods and stuff, expanding metals.
And what do you call them?
Schrodinger.
Schrodinger speaking.
Oh, Schrodinger.
We had Schrodinger.
Yeah.
They're just, Schrodinger's spanner.
So what you can't see doesn't hurt you.
That's, that's, why don't you go, it would be great if you went called up to the stewards
and they say about this thing that's hidden on your car.
Well, if you, you can't see it Conrad, you can't.
Maybe that should be the spirit of the regulation.
I'm sort of advocating that, I think.
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About this episode
Damon Hill and Mark Hughes delve into the fine line between clever engineering and outright cheating in motorsport. They explore historical examples, such as the double diffuser controversy and the recent Mercedes power unit debate, discussing how teams exploit regulatory loopholes. The conversation raises questions about the integrity of competition and the role of governing bodies like the FIA in enforcing rules. With anecdotes and technical insights, the episode challenges listeners to consider what constitutes fair play in racing.
Original notes
People in F1 have long talked about finding ‘the unfair advantage’, but sometimes the line between clever thinking and outright cheating is not easy to see - as Damon Hill and Mark Hughes discuss on the latest episode of The Undercut.
The engine compression saga that’s engulfed F1 ahead of the 2026 season is the latest scenario where a team looks to have found a loophole in the F1 regulations - but should Mercedes be congratulated for what is undoubtedly clever engineering or should the FIA always look to curb any advantage that could be said to go against the spirit of the regulations?
Mark and Damon discuss this and other 'grey area' scenarios in what is a typically wide-ranging and free-flowing conversation.
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