Trulli: FIA right to punish McLaren

Although the Italian says he has no hard feelings against what McLaren did to try and cost him third place in the Australian Grand Prix, he fully supports the way the FIA has taken the matter so seriously.

Not only was Lewis Hamilton disqualified from the Melbourne race, but his McLaren team has been summoned to a hearing of the FIA's World Motor Sport Council to answer disrepute charges about its behaviour.

In an exclusive interview with AUTOSPORT, Trulli said: "My feeling is that the FIA took such a strong decision because they felt that someone was taking a joke of them at the end of the day, and they want to show to everyone that the FIA is just like a judge.

"Go in front of the judge and you have to be honest and tell the truth. You might get away with it once, but it's better not to do it. You take a lot of risk. This is what happened, basically.

"I think it was a very, very unfortunate circumstance for both of us. I personally don't know who had lied and why he had lied. In my opinion, there was no interest there to lie. Really, no interest. But someone has really misjudged the rules.

"Personally I'm not here to blame anyone. The problem is on that particular occasion I looked stupid and I haven't done anything wrong. I'm not the kind of person who thinks about revenge or anything, I get on with everyone. I use a sentence like live and let everybody live."

Trulli also welcomed the attitude of the FIA race stewards, who came to speak to him personally immediately after they had made their decision to reinstate his third place finish in Melbourne.

"It was great that once they announced the decision of giving the position back, afterwards I was doing some interviews with some journalists, and two of the stewards walked straight up the paddock to find me and shake my hand to say you deserve it, because you have been honest - in front of all the press. This was really appreciated by me.

"That's why I say in that particular case I believe that the FIA has shown good common sense and a lot of strength, re-opening a case that was basically closed. They felt and they smelled that something was wrong, they were good enough to do it. This pays a lot of credit to the FIA, after so much trouble in the first race with so many problems."