Drivers caught practising illegally for world championship rallies will be punished severely, International Automobile Federation (FIA) president Max Mosley was quoted has said.
"We are going to watch it and if we catch somebody doing it, he will get a very lengthy suspension and the team will get a monumental penalty," British weekly newspaper Motoring News quoted Mosley as saying. "If we catch a team, we hope then that the fine we impose will finance having spies everywhere for the next two or three or four years.
"We'll catch somebody," added Mosley. "It's blatant, blatant cheating. It's the worst kind, because it's the actual sportsman himself trying to get a wholly unfair advantage and he knows he's doing it."
France's Gilles Panizzi was accused of taking part in illegal practice two weeks before last year's San Remo rally, which he won in a Peugeot, and had a heated argument with team mate Francois Delecour during the event. There was no proof of cheating and Peugeot team boss Corrado Provera responded at the time to the allegations by insisting that the French team would sack any driver proven to have broken the regulations.
British championship contender Richard Burns, runner-up in 2000, said later that it was difficult to do anything about illegal practice without evidence. "But I hope the FIA can do something to try to prevent it from happening," he added. Motoring News quoted Briton Colin McRae as saying that the FIA had to make their intentions stick.
"They've got to put it in writing," the Ford driver said. "If the penalty is large enough it'll put people off unless they're completely off their heads. "Something must be done. At the moment it's a joke."
Filed by Sinéad Gleeson
