Formula 1 is populated by drivers and teams alike who revel in the competitive aspect, and will do whatever it takes to win.
For the most part, the desire to become the best driver or to build the best car suffices - but there’s also the desire to put the limits of the regulations to their absolute extremities – and F1 is no exception.
Thus, teams will spend long periods of time assessing the rules and interpreting them in their own way and, sometimes, those interpretations fall over the line of what is considered legal.
On other occasions, there have been some significantly more flagrant rules breaches as teams seek to gain an advantage by delving into the unsavoury world of cheating.
Of course, cheating is only punished if one gets caught doing so, and thus teams in F1’s past have sought to cover up any morally obtuse actions to find their way onto the top step of the podium.
These can cover everything from what the driver does on track to technical innovations that produce an unfair advantage – and everything in between.
Here’s a look at the most memorable different cheats, exploits and rules breaches that teams and drivers have carried out to try and find an advantage.
You could pen a full documentary on the ‘Spygate’ scandal that rocked F1 in 2007. Chief mechanic Nigel Stepney was suspended by Ferrari, described by head of communications Luca Colajanni as a result of “irregularities discovered at the Ferrari factory”. Ferrari then took legal action against a McLaren employee, which later emerged to be chief designer Mike Coughlan.
Stepney had passed on a wealth of Ferrari documentation to Coughlan, believed to be almost 800 pages-worth of secrets, which Coughlan had given to his wife to take to a Woking photocopying shop. The photocopier tasked with the tree-butchering exercise blew the whistle to set the chain of events into motion – and although McLaren’s investigation found that no Ferrari documents “had been passed to any other members of the team or incorporated into our cars”, the FIA also did its due diligence.
The FIA found that McLaren had been in possession of the documents, but concurred that there was no evidence that Ferrari’s design secrets were incorporated into the design of the car.
But on the arrival of new evidence, McLaren was disqualified from the constructors’ championship and handed an eye-watering $100m fine. Although the drivers were free to fight it out for the drivers’ crown, the battle between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton eventually contrived to help Kimi Raikkonen swoop in and claim the 2007 title.
When the Richard Nixon administration attempted to cover up its involvement in the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building, it had no idea that the ‘–gate’ suffix would enter common parlance when describing scandalous acts.
After Spygate, F1 played host to Crashgate in the following 2008 season. The Renault team, buoyed by the return of Fernando Alonso, had started to enjoy improved performance over the course of the season, and looked good ahead of Singapore. But as Alonso was set to challenge for pole, his car suffered a fuel problem in Q2 and left the two-time champion stranded on-track, unable to set a time. Thus, he lined up 15th.
Alonso then made a pitstop on lap 12 to rejoin at the back of the field, but then team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr crashed into the wall at Turn 17 to bring out a safety car. With the pitlane closed, Alonso was able to shuffle up towards the pack at the front, and following pitstops and penalties for the drivers ahead, the Spanish driver sat in the lead – and claimed victory, which he credited to the fortuitous timing of the safety car.
But it had all been a carefully orchestrated move. Piquet, after being dropped by the team midway through 2009 owing to poor performances, went to the FIA with his testimony that Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds asked him to crash, bring out a safety car, and give Alonso the opportunity to secure victory. Alonso, however, was not considered to have been one of the conspirators in the crash.
Briatore and Symonds left Renault in September 2009, following the allegations, and it became apparent that Piquet’s allegations were true. Symonds confessed, receiving a five-year ban for his part in the ploy, while Briatore was handed a life-time ban from holding a position within an F1 team. Renault’s title sponsor ING also left the team.
Although Briatore and Symonds’ bans were later overturned, Briatore has not returned to F1 in an official capacity.
When the turbocharged era first hit Formula 1, the significant power advantage that the forced-induction powertrains brought (once reliability was dialled in) rose in popularity. But the naturally aspirated cars, owing to their lighter engines, had a weight advantage. F1 had mandated a minimum weight requirement, so the non-turbo cars could build their cars underweight and take it up to the limit with ballast.
The rules also specified that the cars should be weighed topped up with their usual fluids, coolants and the like, and so the likes of Brabham, Williams and McLaren – the leading naturally aspirated runners – hatched upon a plan.
Thus, they came up with the nebulous integration of water-cooled brakes. The cars’ water tanks were topped up for the start of the race, to be jettisoned in the general direction of the brakes to hence run the cars underweight through the race. Those tanks could then be topped up later ahead of the post-race inspection, meaning the cars were weighed at the right amount.
After Brabham’s Nelson Piquet and Williams’ Keke Rosberg finished first and second in 1982’s Brazilian Grand Prix, the cars were protested - and disqualified from the results after the FIA sought to put an end to the practice. John Watson, driving for McLaren, managed to assume second as his car was not protested against by the turbocharged teams. But with the lines drawn between turbo and non-turbo cars, the latter group elected not to attend the San Marino Grand Prix two rounds later.
Tyrrell had been a force to be reckoned with in the early 1970s but, as F1 budgets skyrocketed, the British team couldn’t keep up with its adversaries. With turbo engines becoming more commonplace in F1, Tyrrell opted to continue with the cheaper, naturally aspirated Cosworth DFY V8 powerplants. The turbo units could churn out around 1000bhp in qualifying trim, which meant that Tyrrell was barely on the same playing field as the rest of its main rivals.
With a little sprinkling of ‘ingenuity’, the Ockham-based team sought to redress the balance. The team’s 012 car was designed to run underweight, but after FISA closed the loophole where cars could top up with water after the race, Tyrrell had to get its cars up to weight during the race. Teams were also unable to fuel their cars either midway through the race, but could top up the water tank.
Tyrrell thus used their final pitstops to fill the car with a mix of water and lead shot, which would give them plenty of time running in the race with an underweight car. Teams reported that plenty of spilled lead shot would frequently litter the Tyrrell pitbox, and the team eventually got caught loading the cars with extra weight.
But that’s not all – the team also peppered that water mix with a range of aromatics – which the team used to spray the inlets to derive extra power from the engine. As the team was considered to have been taking on extra fuel during the pitstops, in addition to running underweight, Tyrrell’s full 1984 results were expunged and the team disqualified from the entire season. Drivers Martin Brundle and Stefan Bellof were also banned from competing in the final three races of the year.
The BAR team had come off the back of its best ever season in F1 as 2005 beckoned. The second-best team throughout 2004, lead driver Jenson Button had his breakout year as BAR was rejuvenated under the management of Prodrive’s David Richards. Having poured its attention into 2004, however, BAR struggled for pace at the start of the following year with its new 007 chassis.
The team finally snared points at the San Marino Grand Prix, with Jenson Button taking third and Takuma Sato finishing fifth – but Button was disqualified after his car was found to be 5kg underweight in scrutineering. The stewards had found a secondary fuel compartment within the car and also drained that, which BAR contended was the minimum amount of fuel necessary to run the car. The stewards accepted that reasoning and the result - initially - stood.
But the FIA contested that and appealed the decision, and the International Court of Appeal agreed – stating that the car could not meet the 600kg minimum weight unless it was using fuel as ballast within the secret compartment. Having investigated BAR’s fuel consumption data too, it could not be determined if the car was of the correct weight throughout the entirety of the race.
For failing to seek clarification on the rules, BAR was handed a two-race ban from F1 – missing both the Spanish and Monaco grands prix. Regardless, the fiasco did not deter Honda from completing its buyout of the team in late 2005, having already purchased a 45% stake in th Source: Autosport