Briatore hits out at Ferrari, McLaren

Briatore insisted on Saturday that he was not unduly disappointed about Fernando Alonso's qualifying penalty - but he remains furious about Formula One's ban on mass dampers.

The Italian made it clear that he is furious at the behaviour of rival teams who he believed plotted to get the damper systems outlawed.

He thinks that any rival team unhappy with the system should have lodged a protest at a Grand Prix weekend rather than have sought clarification from the FIA about the matter.

Referring to his earlier comments this weekend that the governing body was working against his team, Briatore said: "I have no feeling like that. I am just annoyed.

"For sure we are unhappy about the mass dampers. If somebody had some problem the easy way was to protest us.

"For our two friends (Ferrari and McLaren), it (complaining to the FIA) was the easy way. And this is what we are not happy about. After that I have no problem with the FIA."

But McLaren boss Ron Dennis has refuted Briatore's claims that his team encouraged the FIA to ban mass dampers after being one of several teams in liaison with the governing body over the issue.

"Was McLaren the catalyst for this change? It most certainly wasn't," he said when asked by autosport.com about Briatore's claims.

"There is an understandable paranoia that teams have about how these things happen. But the point is that if it was deemed to be illegal today, then it was illegal yesterday, last month and throughout the year.

"Whatever the outcome of the balance of the driver moves, we would love and still hope that Fernando joins us as a double world champion. What motive would we have when clearly our championship is over? What would be the logic of contributing to something that would make it more difficult for Fernando to win the world championship?

"It is completely illogical. I would be delighted if he joined us as a double world champion, so why would we be part of a process to detract from that objective?"

Alonso's chances of fighting for victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix were dashed when he had two seconds added to his qualifying times for an incident with Robert Doornbos in Friday practice and overtaking under a yellow flag.

The pain of that penalty was slightly eased by title rival Michael Schumacher getting the same penalty for overtaking cars under a red flag.

Briatore admits he has little grounds for complaining about the situation because Alonso's actions were unnecessary.

When asked to comment about the strange situation of the title rivals qualifying mid grid, Briatore said: "That is good for entertainment.

"Fernando made a mistake. But what is strange is the mistake of Michael today. For a driver fighting for the championship, that is quite funny."