Motorsport Conspiracies

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Carbonox
One I initially thought of was the 2001 Pepsi 400. There were rumors about the race being rigged so Dale Jr. would win, fittingly at the first Daytona race since Dale Sr passed away. I guess nothing was ever proven, but I've got to say, it looked suspicious how superior his car was to the others, with it being a restrictor plate race and all. It was even stated in the race coverage that he had to only hold the throttle about 75% so he'd maintain speed with the back and not get too far ahead, which would put the others in prime position to leapfrog past him.
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Considering DEI owned all restrictor plate races, and primarily with Junior from 2000 to about 2006...no it's not surprising at all. Especially when it was always shown how he had a better understanding with the gen 4 car at the track under DEI package than others in similar cars and make.
 
I'm surprised that the Hamilton/Rosberg conspiracy from 2014-present hasn't arised yet. It arises every single race Hamilton doesn't win.
This only comes up because of the stupid fanboys on social networking.

The conspiracy above was a joke.
 
jake2013guy
I'm surprised that the Hamilton/Rosberg conspiracy from 2014-present hasn't arised yet. It arises every single race Hamilton doesn't win.
This only comes up because of the stupid fanboys on social networking.

The conspiracy above was a joke.
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I don't like Hamilton that much but I despise his fans.
 
jake2013guy
I'm surprised that the Hamilton/Rosberg conspiracy from 2014-present hasn't arised yet. It arises every single race Hamilton doesn't win.
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I wouldn't call that a conspiracy. It would be a conspiracy if Mercedes developed a car powered by Twitter likes and the other car makers suppressed it. I would just call that stupidly-dedicated fans unable to accept that someone is capable of beating their idol on merit.
 
prisonermonkeys
I wouldn't call that a conspiracy. It would be a conspiracy if Mercedes developed a car powered by Twitter likes and the other car makers suppressed it. I would just call that stupidly-dedicated fans unable to accept that someone is capable of beating their idol on merit.
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Read the Disclaimer.
 
DK
I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the demise of Group C yet.

In 1991, the FIA introduced new regulations for Group C, which required naturally-aspirated 3.5 litre engines, as in F1. For the 1991 World Sportscar Championship season, old Group C cars that didn't conform to this formula were allowed to run alongside the new Group C cars, with the Porsche 962 and Sauber Mercedes C11 putting up a decent fight, scoring several podium finishes.

For 1992, the old cars were no longer allowed to compete. Grid sizes plummeted in that season. Whereas 17 cars entered in the 1991 season finale at Autopolis (and 44 at that year's Le Mans race!), this shrank to 12 for the 1992 season opener at Monza. 30 showed up for the 1992 Le Mans 24 Hours, but this included 14 cars that weren't competing in the World Sportscar Championship. The final race, the 500km of Magny-Cours, saw just 8 entrants. The Peugeot 905 was all-but-untouchable, taking five wins from the six races of that season, and were only denied victory in the 500km of Monza after crashing out two laps from the finish.

It has been widely believed that the new engine regulations were forced on Group C because Bernie Ecclestone feared that they could compete with F1, and to be honest, I agree with this conspiracy theory.
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I've always subscribed to this as well. Who knows how different sportscars in the 1990s could have been had its popularity kept increasing over F1?
 
Liquid
I've always subscribed to this as well. Who knows how different sportscars in the 1990s could have been had its popularity kept increasing over F1?
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Well it would appear that the Sports car scene is gaining momentum again globally, and for the right reasons too, F1 has become a dull lifeless shell of its glory days,
 
Trouble with that is every time it does get popular someone with F1 in his blood does something to 🤬 it up. Nothing is allowed to compete with F1.
 
This is one that I always liked for how quickly it fell apart: when Kimi Räikkönen joined the World Rally Championship in 2010, he got substantial backing from Red Bull. A lot of Räikkönen's fans insisted that this was proof that Red Bull Racing were trying to poach him upon his triumphant return to Formula One, undercutting any of the other teams that were trying to get him.

When Räikkönen underperformed through the 2010 season, Red Bull dropped him, thus proving the conspiracy was a figment of the fans' imagination.
 
I'm not really sure that this would be considered a conspiracy, But in the 1963 Indy 500. For the last 20 laps Parnelli Jones who was leading was supposed to be Black flagged due to an oil leak and constant smoke from his car. An oil leak which caused another driver Eddie Sachs to spin out.

It's believed that the USAC officials didnt black flag Parnelli because they didnt want Jim Clark to win. They were biased towards the American Parnelli. As Jim Clark would have been the first Non-American driver to win the Indy 500 and The Lotus would have been the first ever Rear engine car to win.



However if it was a conspiracy to keep Clark and the Lotus from winning, It didnt work for long as He and the Rear engine Lotus Won in 1965.
 
Um, have you all forgotten about the 2002 Indy 500?

For those unfamiliar with the story: In the closing laps of the race, Team Penske driver Helio Castroneves was leading the race but was having to slow down to save fuel. Meanwhile, Team Green (and ex-Penske, ironically enough) driver Paul Tracy - who was on a different fuel strategy - was rapidly closing in on Castroneves. On the penultimate lap, coming down the backstretch, Tracy pulled alongside Castroneves and ahead of him going into Turn 3. As this was happening, two backmarkers collided in Turn 2, bringing out the caution and essentially ending the race.

Chief steward Brian Barnhart and other IRL officials ruled that Castroneves was ahead the moment the yellow trackside lights came on, and was thus the de facto winner. Tracy and car owner Barry Green disagreed and, armed with video and other evidence, lodged an appeal, however Barnhart tossed it out, essentially saying that sort of decision was "un-appealable."

So where's the conspiracy? Well, in 2000, full-time CART driver Juan Pablo Montoya won the 500 driving for full-time CART entrant Chip Ganassi. In 2001, full-time CART driver Castroneves won for full-time CART team Penske, both of whom would defect to the IRL in '02. In 2002, PT and Team Green were, you guessed it, a full-time CART driver and team! Do you think maybe, jussst maybe, Barnhart and his boss Tony George were willing to do whatever it took to keep CART invaders from pillaging their crown jewel event for the third year in a row? :confused: :odd:
 
Yes, so much yes. I almost forgot about that. This further cemented my thought that the IRL was an absolute joke (first indications came in 1997 when Eliseo bleeping Salazar won a race, and pretty much set in stone when Danica won a race in 2008) Not to mention the CART period of the Indy 500 seems to have never actually existed according to the IRL/Indycar PR people, as they never seem to actually talk about it.

I do remember some fans actually gave PT a replica Borg-Warner trophy at the next CART race with the mention "the real 2002 Indy 500 winner"
 
ButtKick
I'm not really sure that this would be considered a conspiracy, But in the 1963 Indy 500. For the last 20 laps Parnelli Jones who was leading was supposed to be Black flagged due to an oil leak and constant smoke from his car. An oil leak which caused another driver Eddie Sachs to spin out.

It's believed that the USAC officials didnt black flag Parnelli because they didnt want Jim Clark to win. They were biased towards the American Parnelli. As Jim Clark would have been the first Non-American driver to win the Indy 500 and The Lotus would have been the first ever Rear engine car to win.



However if it was a conspiracy to keep Clark and the Lotus from winning, It didnt work for long as He and the Rear engine Lotus Won in 1965.
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Poor Eddie. One year later...:(
 
Did McLaren sabatoge Michael Andretti's lone F1 season?

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"If you ask me, it was sabotage," (Marco) Andretti told The Associated Press on Wednesday, as he prepared for Sunday's Indianapolis 500. "It was."

According to conventional racing wisdom, Michael Andretti didn't succeed in his lone F1 season because he wasn't committed enough, wasn't properly prepared or simply didn't measure up.

But Marco said people don't know "the real story" behind his father's poor performance that year, insisting the team tried to make his dad look bad so they could get rid of him and make room for a promising young driver -- Mika Hakkinen, who would go on to win two world championships.

"They wanted him to fail," Andretti said. "I don't know, it was a very bad deal. The reality of it was, they had Mika Hakkinen ready to come in for a lot less than what my dad was getting paid, and that's all it was. Right then and there, they had to make him look [bad]."

Andretti said McLaren's efforts to sabotage his father's career went beyond simply giving better cars and engines to his teammate, Ayrton Senna -- something that might be expected, given Senna's status as a three-time world champion. Andretti insists the team intentionally made his father's cars more difficult to drive.

"They would make the car do weird things in the corner electronically, stuff out of his control," Marco Andretti said.

The situation only improved, Andretti said, when Senna stepped in.

"And I think my dad's biggest supporter over there was Ayrton Senna," Andretti said. "Because he was one of the few who knew what was really happening in the team, and I think he believed in my father. It was Monza that he really said, 'Give him my car. Give him exactly what I had.'"

Michael Andretti finished third in the 1993 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, his only top-three finish of the season. It didn't matter, as Andretti was replaced by Hakkinen in the final three races of the season and returned to race in the U.S.

A McLaren team official did not immediately answer a request for a response to Andretti's comments. Senna died in a crash at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994.

Michael Andretti didn't want to go into detail about the '93 season, but didn't deny his son's version of the story.

"I'm not going to go into all of it," Michael Andretti said. "Let's just say it was not a pleasant experience. It was a time where I think I was sort of caught in a political battle of auto racing, and because of that wasn't a very good experience."

But Michael said he understood why Marco would speak out, saying he probably would do the same thing if something similar happened to his father, racing legend Mario Andretti.

"If my dad went through that, I would obviously probably approach it a different way and tell that story," Michael Andretti said. "But it sounds like sour grapes coming from me."

http://espn.go.com/rpm/racing/indycar/news/story?id=3406937
 
*quietly waiting for David Coulthard, Heikki Kovalainen, Fernando Alonso, to come forward*
 
Earth
Did McLaren sabatoge Michael Andretti's lone F1 season?
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Wellp, Wall-of-text time...

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To begin with, it's fair to say that McLaren were pressured into signing him through Phillip Morris because there were serious concerns that Aryton Senna was not going to race for them in 1993 and Marlboro wanted a "Marketable" driver in case that happened. (Ron Dennis wanted Mika Hakkinen, with Andretti getting signed only as a #2 to Hakkinen and only if Senna walked out of his contract option with the team). After that all sorted itself out somewhat with Senna agreeing to race only on a race-by-race basis, the team were thrown into a bind after losing a works Renault V10 engine deal to Ligier and having to redesign the whole back end of the car to adapt customer-spec Ford-Cosworth V8s, plus severe testing restrictions meant that Andretti was probably going to F1 at the worst possible time and entering a perfect storm of tension & chaos...

However, in my opinion, most of Michael Andretti's biggest issues that year were self-inflicted: He refused to live in Europe and decided to commute across the ocean Via Concorde jet for every test and race (Which, in F1, is seen as the ultimate slap in the face to a team's morale); He never really got "Chummy" with senior personnel at McLaren the way certain other drivers did then and do now (Let alone know the names of the mechanics that looked after his cars, for example); His then-wife (Marco Andretti's mother) insisted that she should tag along with Michael to every race, which in turn lead her to make unprecedented demands (Such as a full paddock access "Hard Card" and private radio channel to talk to "Her man" during races) and, infamously, she drove Ron Dennis crazy enough that he allegedly hired somebody to take her away from the paddock on race weekends ("W.A.G. Wrangler", I believe it was termed)...

And that's all before you get down to how Andretti drove that year and how he got caught out at the start of so many races either trying to pull off overtaking moves that weren't going to work or bullied off the track by more experienced drivers. Or how the European press had a field day drafting up ever-more ridiculous stories about how Andretti was going to "Fail his family name" in the next race and painted him as a bigger "Villain" on-track than Pastor Maldonado is seen in the sporting press today...

With all that said though, who's to say that Andretti's car WASN'T tampered with in some way throughout that season? How much effort went into sorting out all of the gremlins Andretti's car usually had on any given weekend when the team had it' focus elsewhere (IE "Getting Senna to come back for the next race") and that Ron Dennis was practically seething in frustration at the sight of Andretti in one of "His" cars by the halfway point of the year (One alleged quote, after Andretti qualified 5th: "The 🤬 are you smiling about Yankee? You're only the 4th Loser.")? Especially when Mika Hakkinen stepped in at the end of the year and out-qualified Senna first time out?

Heck, who's to say that Andretti's failure in F1 was tied to the fact that F1 teams interest in signing Americans to full-time drives evaporated when the US Grand Prix in Phoenix, AZ went bust and Bernie Ecclestone practically gave up on finding a replacement venue until he suckered Tony George into spending an ridiculous amount of money to build the infield road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway?

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It makes me with the old F1 Rejects site was still up, because one particular reader did one heck of a job analyzing Andretti's season in F1. Same with Nigel Mansell's last year in F1, which kind of mirrored Andretti's in many respects (Gets a ride because of marketing opportunities, clashed with the team, no real results on-track, gets fired before the season ends etc. etc. ).
 
Kingofweasles
It makes me with the old F1 Rejects site was still up, because one particular reader did one heck of a job analyzing Andretti's season in F1. Same with Nigel Mansell's last year in F1, which kind of mirrored Andretti's in many respects (Gets a ride because of marketing opportunities, clashed with the team, no real results on-track, gets fired before the season ends etc. etc. ).
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I think I have that old article saved on my home computer for "offline reading" when I didn't live somewhere with internet. I might try and find it later.

The fact that he didn't move to Europe for the season shows how committed or uncommitted he was. For all the excuses and circumstance that can be thrown at the team, he has to take at least some of the blame himself for that alone. Even if he didn't want to go to F1 and it was more of a marketing ploy, why not at least try and make the most of it?

TDZdave
David Coulthard
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TenEightyOne
Links added, you're welcome :D
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Not only the 1998 Australian Grand Prix. Coulthard talks extensively in his book about how unfavoured and pushed aside he felt; at one qualifying session Coulthard bettered Häkkinen's time and there was a muted reaction but then when Häkkinen went back out and beat Coulthard's time, the whole garage was celebrating and jumping.

McLaren has a proud history under Ron Dennis of questionable team management and those same vibes seemed to have followed Lewis Hamilton to Mercedes-Benz.

Although the concept of team favouritism is an interesting one. When Audi were a works BTCC team in the late 1990s their drivers for the first two years were Frank Biela and John Bintcliffe. In 1996, Biela had the top 1996 spec car and Bintcliffe had a 1995 spec car. In 1997, Biela had the best 1997 spec car and Bintcliffe had a 1996 spec car. So both years Bintcliffe was using an old car and Biela was using a new car.

However this was not a conspiracy or a secret for once, this was open; the commentators even pointed it out from time to time.
 
Liquid
Coulthard talks extensively in his book about how unfavoured and pushed aside he felt
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I honestly wonder why McLaren kept Coulthard around for as long as they did. He was always a second-tier driver, there to keep banking points and support WCC bids, but I don't think that he ever really accepted it.
 
Kingofweasles
It makes me with the old F1 Rejects site was still up, because one particular reader did one heck of a job analyzing Andretti's season in F1. Same with Nigel Mansell's last year in F1, which kind of mirrored Andretti's in many respects (Gets a ride because of marketing opportunities, clashed with the team, no real results on-track, gets fired before the season ends etc. etc. ).
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Thankfully most of F1rejects is still available via the Internet Archive - here's a link to the (as you say excellent) article on Andretti's ill-fated 1993.
 
prisonermonkeys
I honestly wonder why McLaren kept Coulthard around for as long as they did. He was always a second-tier driver, there to keep banking points and support WCC bids, but I don't think that he ever really accepted it.
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I dont agree he's the perfect 2nd driver. I would have love to have him in a team with another driver from my team gunning for the championship.

At that time the trend wasnt to have 2 very strong drivers but rather having one championship drivers and another that could grab point when needed and I think Coulthard did that very well.
 
It's not really a conspiracy but I'm not sure where else to pose this. Maybe people who were older at the time can help me;

Why exactly did Williams drop Damon Hill after 1996? I know that it's because he was already going to be replaced by Frentzen and Frank Williams had always wanted Frentzen ever since Frentzen first entered F1 but again... why? Why have unproven Frentzen over proven Hill? It's always been a bit of an odd one for me.

Even with the difficult 1995 season, Hill was by far and away one of F1's top drivers. He could have won the 1997 championship with that year's car. It seems an odd error for Williams to have made. It didn't work out for either party; Frentzen had a torrid time at Williams and Hill was left floundering at Arrows that year.

The ultimate irony being that Frentzen didn't ascend to the upper echelons of the championship until he was Hill's teammate in 1999.
 
From what I have heard, the relationship between team and driver simply fell apart. Frank Williams apparently wasn't convinced that Hill could lead the team in the long term.
 
prisonermonkeys
From what I have heard, the relationship between team and driver simply fell apart. Frank Williams apparently wasn't convinced that Hill could lead the team in the long term.
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Hindsight is 20/20 but I still find this unusual. Neither Villeneuve, a one season novice, nor Frentzen, a three season 'veteran' with one podium to his name, were ready to carry the team forwards in '97 either.

Obviously we weren't to know that McLaren would brush Williams aside but you'd have thought at the time that a Hill/Villeneuve partnership at Williams for 1997 and 1998 would have been the ideal time for Damon to retire from the top and hand over the team reigns to a teammate who would have learnt the ropes under a world champion for three seasons.
 
I honestly believed that Hill went to Arrows on his own accord, Arrows offered him an opportunity to completely develop a car around him including enough rope to hang himself, who knows...
 
TDZdave
I honestly believed that Hill went to Arrows on his own accord, Arrows offered him an opportunity to completely develop a car around him including enough rope to hang himself, who knows...
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Arrows were the only team that were willing to give Damon Hill a one-year deal and Hill was told that he was out of a drive at Willlaims late enough in the year that no other team had open seats available anyway. McLaren were allegedly very interested in Hill's services for '97 (Ron Dennis was already looking for a way to fire David Coulthard after 1996), but they would only pay him on a results basis and he would've been relegated to official #2 behind Mika Hakkinen.

Hill supposedly took one look at their contract and said "No thank you" (Or words to that effect).
 
Whenever a crash happens in the V8 Supercars, there is always a conspiracy theory that all the drivers in a manufacturer actually team up and take out the competition for their other guys :lol:.

Though if this was true, I wouldn't mind it as V8s has always been promoted a brand warfare.
 
Kingofweasles
Arrows were the only team that were willing to give Damon Hill a one-year deal and Hill was told that he was out of a drive at Willlaims late enough in the year that no other team had open seats available anyway. McLaren were allegedly very interested in Hill's services for '97 (Ron Dennis was already looking for a way to fire David Coulthard after 1996), but they would only pay him on a results basis and he would've been relegated to official #2 behind Mika Hakkinen.

Hill supposedly took one look at their contract and said "No thank you" (Or words to that effect).
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According to that season's VHS review, Damon Hill even turned down a McLaren drive for 1998 too before he signed for Jordan. Can you just... comprehend what Hill might have done in those last two seasons with those superb McLarens?

Christ, the lack of love from McLaren Coulthard wrote about in his book is certainly gaining ground.
 

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