New theory emerges on the Most Controversial F1 season and Schumacher's maiden World Championship

[munudeges]

"the best evidence is that Benetton Formula Ltd. was not using "launch control" (an automatic start system) at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Had the evidence proved they were, the World Motor Sport Council would have been invited to exclude them from the World Championship. Given the evidence available, such a course of action would obviously have been wrong."

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bene ... 55/?nrt=54

Please also don't get TC & LC confused.

I'm sorry, that's not going to help you I'm afraid nor is the rather tenuous get-out the FIA used of having no evidence it had been used. You certainly don't get away with that excuse at scrutineering. The naming convention of whatever system they had 'accidentally' left in there is neither here nor there I'm afraid. Beyond finding it the FIA didn't confirm what it was actually doing, which would have been most handy. One wonders why they did not.

It's a getting little pathetic how desperately you're trying to defend this.

Can you provide any evidence that heavy braking LFB (i.e. the 2nd trace) was possible before 1994?

Senna had been using the throttle in a similar fashion for years. It also doesn't explain the tell-tale engine note of traction control out of corners that he felt he could hear I'm afraid or more importantly the system that was found in the car.

Left foot braking and using the throttle to keep the car balanced has been around long before 1994, and you've ignored just about every other post on it in this thread. You're attempting to split a lot of hairs, and it's rather sad to see.

"Almost certainly did" is not good enough for me & as such I've spent the last 5 years researching if Benetton were guilty or innocent......

Alas, you have done no such thing and at this juncture both you and the FIA need to prove they didn't use it. The assumption is they did because it was on the car and was a huge advantage to have. No one has proved it wasn't used, as they had claimed. You might have spent some time satisfying your confirmation bias, but sadly, that is all you have done here.

[munudeges]

Willem Toet, Benetton's Head of Aero in 94 & Mark Blundell F1 driver in 1994 have both made on the record comments both in that article and somewhere else, which I am forbidden from mentioning that they support this theory. If that is a lie, not doubt they will sue. So let's see if that will happen.

I'm sure Willem does think it's possible since he worked at Benetton and would rather his achievements weren't called into question. They can give their opinion that it's possible all they want, but that doesn't mean they're right in the face of other evidence and the lack of any legal action certainly is not going to help you in any way. That's quite bizarre.

[Jolle]

Which is contradicted by a ton of other evidence, namely the FIA finding the actual traction control system itself.

"the best evidence is that Benetton Formula Ltd. was not using "launch control" (an automatic start system) at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Had the evidence proved they were, the World Motor Sport Council would have been invited to exclude them from the World Championship. Given the evidence available, such a course of action would obviously have been wrong."

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bene ... 55/?nrt=54

Please also don't get TC & LC confused.

Left foot braking was a very well known technique long before the clutch pedal itself was eliminated,

I agree that high speed LFB like this...

https://i.ibb.co/RSrxdtD/Trace-2-Grey.jpg


...was common place before the clutch was eliminated because you don't tend to use the clutch through a high speed corner. Indeed I stated that in an earlier post along with why the theory we are discussing here concerns heavy braking LFB which looks like this...

https://i.ibb.co/C0c1ryc/Trace-1-Grey.jpg


Can you provide any evidence that heavy braking LFB (i.e. the 2nd trace) was possible before 1994?

when we have more than enough evidence that they almost certainly did

"Almost certainly did" is not good enough for me & as such I've spent the last 5 years researching if Benetton were guilty or innocent in order to come to a more definitive conclusion than that all based on evidence (not feeling). You can see from the images I am posting here I am not lying on that front. It's not hard to see where our conversation is heading, so I'm going to let things cool down a bit by not posting here for a while (as I did after the abuse following the OP). A shame for people who are not comment here, but might still be interested in the images & research I am sharing. But I hope to come back in a few weeks time to post some more interesting (non self promotional) evidence for them.

Worth also remember people didn't initially believe the guy who told everyone the earth was not flat. Hence why it is important in general to keep an open mind, until the evidence suggests otherwise.

Barichello is one of the very few racing drivers who didn't use left foot braking, strangely.

But anybody else with even a hint of racing experience will tell you that you brake with your left foot initially, with semi automatic gearboxes you keep your foot there and with manuals you switch feet before you shift down when you've build up braking pressure.

I guess you don't have any racing experience yourself?

[marvin78]

We all "know" that? I would say it's still guessing. Or did I miss the proof for that?

Not that I believe, they did not have a thing like TR (could be but we will never know) without proof there is no "we all know". It's "we all suspect".

[garygph]

But anybody else with even a hint of racing experience will tell you that you brake with your left foot initially, with semi automatic gearboxes you keep your foot there and with manuals you switch feet before you shift down when you've build up braking pressure.

I guess you don't have any racing experience yourself?

Switching feet during heavy braking is new to me , the time taken to switch feet and pick up the pressure to the correct amount would be an enormous waste of precious braking time I would have thought. And actually yes I do have some racing experience and have done both left and right foot braking depending on the specific cars gearbox. Was I missing a trick all the time!?

Apologies for going off topic but I felt it was relevant

[Wass85]

three paddles doesn't rule out left foot braking. The clutch, because everybody (at least all the top teams) were using paddle shifting, the clutch paddle was only used for starts from stationary (like the start and pit stops) and the left foot was used for braking. Even when they had or still have gear sticks, you start braking with your left foot, before the right foot takes over. This is and always been standerd practice with racing. Try it for yourself in your road car, it takes about five minutes to master.

its nice that you are so focused on this theory, but all evidence points in a different direction.

I tried left foot braking in the work van as our Transit Custom has got horrendous pedal placement that hurts my knees, my sleeping workmate nearly went through the windscreen.

[gold333]

This theory is just plain wrong.

LFB was a technique used by all racing drivers going back to the 80’s. It was definitely not “invented” by Schumacher.

On a three pedal layout with a H gated shifter it depends on the type of corner and the attitude of the car in roll and pitch whether the driver uses his left foot to brake or not.

Here is Senna’s own teammate G. Berger left foot braking in 1992.

To insinuate that Senna would not know what left foot braking was or not to be able to distinguish the sound is not very realistic.



(2:30s, 3:30s, 4:50s, etc.)

There is no “vested interest”. The Benetton team doesn’t exist anymore. This is Jonathan Williams confirming that he was sure Schumacher was using traction and launch control in 1994:



(59:04s)

[GPR-A]

It's amazing how a lot of arm chair experts here have such strong opinion that Benetton and Schumacher cheated in 1994! Especially when there was never any concrete evidence of them having done any of that. FIA was and is a lousy governing body as they have proven over the years. It's hard to believe they could have had the expertise to find out anything technical back in those days either.

Senna was a sore loser (no disrespecting him here for his driving talent) and him sounding suspicious about another car because he was unable to win everything like in the past, taken as an evidence to believe that there was something illegal about that Benetton is hilarious. There was a new kid on the block who just had more potential, hunger and talent to do more than any other driver on the grid, coupled with some really good engineers in a team that kept winning, was a difficult affair to digest for a number of people. FIA kept punishing them for silly and made up reasons and yet that team and driver won the season.

FIA has always been a disgrace.

[mclaren111]

Where Flavio Briatore were involved there was always cheating...

[Jolle]

It's amazing how a lot of arm chair experts here have such strong opinion that Benetton and Schumacher cheated in 1994! Especially when there was never any concrete evidence of them having done any of that. FIA was and is a lousy governing body as they have proven over the years. It's hard to believe they could have had the expertise to find out anything technical back in those days either.

Senna was a sore loser (no disrespecting him here for his driving talent) and him sounding suspicious about another car because he was unable to win everything like in the past, taken as an evidence to believe that there was something illegal about that Benetton is hilarious. There was a new kid on the block who just had more potential, hunger and talent to do more than any other driver on the grid, coupled with some really good engineers in a team that kept winning, was a difficult affair to digest for a number of people. FIA kept punishing them for silly and made up reasons and yet that team and driver won the season.

FIA has always been a disgrace.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bene ... lease/655/

In short: they had it, before anyone knew they had it the competition saw they used it but their defence was, you can’t prove that we actually did.

[GPR-A]

It's amazing how a lot of arm chair experts here have such strong opinion that Benetton and Schumacher cheated in 1994! Especially when there was never any concrete evidence of them having done any of that. FIA was and is a lousy governing body as they have proven over the years. It's hard to believe they could have had the expertise to find out anything technical back in those days either.

Senna was a sore loser (no disrespecting him here for his driving talent) and him sounding suspicious about another car because he was unable to win everything like in the past, taken as an evidence to believe that there was something illegal about that Benetton is hilarious. There was a new kid on the block who just had more potential, hunger and talent to do more than any other driver on the grid, coupled with some really good engineers in a team that kept winning, was a difficult affair to digest for a number of people. FIA kept punishing them for silly and made up reasons and yet that team and driver won the season.

FIA has always been a disgrace.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bene ... lease/655/

In short: they had it, before anyone knew they had it the competition saw they used it but their defence was, you can’t prove that we actually did.

In short: they never used in races. It was a test system. That is what that article says. None of that points to what Senna was talking about the performance advantage throughout the race, which is what is being discussed in this thread. There was never an evidence of traction control or anything like that.

[Just_a_fan]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bene ... lease/655/

In short: they had it, before anyone knew they had it the competition saw they used it but their defence was, you can’t prove that we actually did.

In short: they never used in races. It was a test system. That is what that article says. None of that points to what Senna was talking about the performance advantage throughout the race, which is what is being discussed in this thread. There was never an evidence of traction control or anything like that.

Read that release and you have only Benetton's word that it wasn't used in races. And as they lied about how it was accessed etc., why should anyone believe them about never having run it in races? Charlie certainly didn't.

[Jolle]

Plus, not only did they had illegal software in their system and tried to hide it, they did everything in their power not to hand over their software for tests.

That’s not a smoking gun, that’s a burning building.

[GPR-A]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bene ... lease/655/

In short: they had it, before anyone knew they had it the competition saw they used it but their defence was, you can’t prove that we actually did.

In short: they never used in races. It was a test system. That is what that article says. None of that points to what Senna was talking about the performance advantage throughout the race, which is what is being discussed in this thread. There was never an evidence of traction control or anything like that.

Read that release and you have only Benetton's word that it wasn't used in races. And as they lied about how it was accessed etc., why should anyone believe them about never having run it in races? Charlie certainly didn't.

How is it lying if there is no way to prove it? It's lying only because some want to believe it that way. No one had to believe them if they could have been proven wrong. Because FIA couldn't prove them wrong, Benetton's statement can't be argued.

It's like Mercedes burning oil all along in their PU, while nobody could prove it, but everyone believes it to be true. Same thing applies to Ferrari recently. People who want to believe something without a proof, are free to do so, but that isn't the truth.

[Just_a_fan]

In short: they never used in races. It was a test system. That is what that article says. None of that points to what Senna was talking about the performance advantage throughout the race, which is what is being discussed in this thread. There was never an evidence of traction control or anything like that.

Read that release and you have only Benetton's word that it wasn't used in races. And as they lied about how it was accessed etc., why should anyone believe them about never having run it in races? Charlie certainly didn't.

How is it lying if there is no way to prove it? It's lying only because some want to believe it that way. No one had to believe them if they could have been proven wrong. Because FIA couldn't prove them wrong, Benetton's statement can't be argued.

It's like Mercedes burning oil all along in their PU, while nobody could prove it, but everyone believes it to be true.

The fact that something is lie does not require proof from a third party. If a statement is a lie, then it's lie. Just like you're speeding if you exceed the speed limit even though no one sees you doing it.

And Mercedes never denied oil burning so that'll be a straw man you're building.