Juan Pablo Montoya says he is not surprised that Formula One has become embroiled in a major spy scandal, because he thinks everyone has been pushing the rules to the limits in recent years.
The now NASCAR driver, who drove for McLaren in 2005 and 2006, thinks there is nothing out of the ordinary in what McLaren did.
"It's just how Formula One is," said Montoya in an interview with the Associated Press.
"Teams are allowed to bend the rules too much. That's just my personal opinion, but I always felt like people bent the rules and that some teams were allowed to bend the rules more than others. But this? This is crossing the line."
He added: "Someone is always cheating. All the teams have photographers who take pictures of everything on the car. Everybody does it. Here in NASCAR, you have the car right next door to you, you can see it and everything on it.
"But in F1, if someone tried a new wing or something, everyone would go and take pictures of it. A million pictures of the wing at every angle and then they'd put it on the wind tunnel and go try it.
"Everyone copies. It's just the way F1 works. There are so many ways for people to bend the rules."
Despite his feelings about what happened, Montoya does not actually believe that the emails between Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa that were central to the case were that unusual.
"The crazy thing about the e-mails is they aren't really that big of a deal because you can always find out what everybody else is running," he said. "Somebody will always open their mouth.
"You go for dinner, and somebody will say 'We are running this weight and doing that.' So most of the time you can find out what people are running anyway. And de la Rosa was always like that.
"He would call people and tell them 'We tried this, this and this, and this didn't work.' So he just sent e-mails that said 'We need to try the weight distribution of Ferrari.' But anybody could have found out those numbers without the documents."
When asked about his reaction to the penalties that were handed down against McLaren, Montoya said: "I was surprised by the fine. It was a little high.
"But I gotta say, I was surprised that since they were taking points, they should have taken the driver points, as well. That is crazy, you know, because they took the constructor points but the drivers gained from the knowledge. So if you are going to do it, do it properly."
autosport.com
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