In all life, the senior (not eldest, senior) figure in the organisation carries the can for the incident. Now there is no doubt that the whole incident suggests that to call Hamilton a halfwit would be unspeakably generous, and to not point out to your manager that you've just told the BBC something completely different is absolute madness. But from McLaren, the senior party present at the débacle would have to be Dave Ryan.
And I defy anyone to find me a driver who gave a toss who wouldn't yell at his team if he disagreed with them. I don't know if any arguments occured, but the fact of the matter is that this was not a decision they made off-the-cuff when they got into the Stewards' Room and would properly be punished by a 2-race ban for Hamilton, as I have already suggested.
McLaren had no choice but to suspend Ryan, if they are to shake off the image the FIA have of the whole team as cheats! Someone had to act and someone had to carry the can. The way F1 works, it is be far easier to suspend a behind-the-scenes virtually unknown team manager than Hamilton, who's tied up with sponsorship and with McLaren's British fanbase!
Often enough McLaren have been punished unfairly on the track, but this sustained bout of pillockry does them and the sport no good at all! The arguments in Hungary 2007, I would imagine, probably occur often enough anyway, when refering to drivers making judgements about the possiblities of things happening on track. I doubt anyone seriously is afraid to make a judgement and infuriate their team, except Felipe Massa! We saw who else was unafraid to make an autonomous decision on that day as well, remember.
Don't get me wrong boga, the whole bloody organisation is at fault. Remember how easily SpyGate could have been avoided (if they'd got a photocopier on premesis, for example...). However, life is such that someone had to be blamed, someone who isn't on posters for Mercedes, Tag Heuer, Vodafone, Santander...!
