Well, I read the
article. To me it seems that it's very noncommittal, never claiming that any allegation is actually true. The saying about grasping at straws came to mind. Alonso himself in fact only refused to answer a question about manipulation and tyre pressures, which amounts to the same kind of non-liable vagueness - and he has a financial incentive in some other kind of termination of his contract at McLaren than resigning and having to pay a restitution for breach of contract.
One way to achieve this is to cause so much trouble that it's cheaper to let him go, for fear of an FIA investigation into claims of manipulation, for example. Or better yet to cause an investigation in the hopes of finding even the slightest improper action in order to claim that the team itself has breached his contract. It could even be that the question was less than a coincidence because it has already been pointed out that tyre heat manipulation is very hard to prove. On a general level it can also be stated that if one is prone to imagine conspiracies, one is bound to see those everywhere.
Anyway, on Friday Ron Dennis already responded to this speculation - quote from the
official F1 site (link):
Q: (Ed Gorman – The Times) Ron, yesterday Fernando was asked whether he thought he’d been treated fairly by the team in Japan and specifically whether his car had been doctored by the team in terms of tyre pressures and wing settings and he specifically declined to answer the question which gave the impression to most of us in the room that he feels that there may be some grounds to believe that the team is interfering with his car. Could you comment on that please?
RD: Well, you introduced the word doctored. I don’t think that was a word that was used in the question or the answer to it. Going into the Japanese Grand Prix Fernando was two points behind Lewis. I think the Grand Prix season so far, in respect of our two cars, their reliability, their competitiveness and the way that our team has conducted itself leaves nobody in Formula One with the view that we do anything other than provide equality to both of our drivers. There are numerous equality clauses in our contracts. They are reciprocal in both drivers’ contracts and it is a well known fact that we do not favour – even in very very difficult circumstances, even in the level of competitiveness and the spirit of competitiveness that sits between our drivers – we never will, never have and certainly are not favouring either driver at the moment. This is a straight fight and I’m obviously disappointed that someone who really has all the knowledge should not be more direct and open with the response which is: equality is how we run our team.
Anyway, Bridgestone has an army of liaison engineers at hand for the teams, and especially the teams' race engineers during the race weekends. They follow up all the testing, document all the the tyres very minutely afterwards (also with pictures) and give recommendations about tyre pressures and warmths. They are not team staff, but Bridgestone employees and I suspect if the teams went against their orders or there was unusual or unexpected tyre wear or something like that at odds with consistent results they'd notice that kind of stuff pretty quickly. There are many articles about this on the Bridgestone website.
It can also be noted that while Alonso is a very all around driver, his most consistent Achilles' heel has been understanding the tyres. During his title fights while at Renault, every now and then he had an off race because he couldn't protect his tyres at certain races and conditions, something that was partly attributed to the aggressive way he took the corners. This is well documented. He also had at least partly tyre related problems during early season.
Meanwhile Hamilton has also suffered heavily from tyre problems, often far more catastrophic ones by comparison (delamination i.e. straightforward failure at Turkey and China), plus a puncture caused by a defective wheel gun setting at Nürnburgring. Hamilton hasn't cried wolf, though, even if Alonso has even volunteered that he pays bonuses to engineers when he beats his team mate (if I understood that correctly).
Anything is possible. But against the backround of how things are going and what systems and protocols are generally in place, as I see it, thus far tyre blanket/ tyre pressure manipulation sounds farfetched. To me, there are much more compelling developments afoot in the world of Formula One than this. But I'm interested to see what other perspectives more knowledgeable/ better informed/ imaginative people can come up with. We can learn about F1 tyres and setups in the process, no doubt.