We've seen blatant cheating and foul play in many forms, driving opponents off, blocking the track, team orders, illegal fuel tanks, illegal fuel and then there are those that do get away, like probably this case would of, the documents Ferrari probably has detailing the internals of the McLaren and the active diff that that Senna wiped the floor with at Donnington.
1. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 2. MASSA Ferrari 3. ALONSO McLaren 4. HAMILTON McLaren 5. ROSBERG Williams 6. HEIDFELD BMW 7. WEBBER Red Bull 8. TRULLI Toyota 9. KOVALAINEN Renault 10. FISICHELLA Renault 11. SCHUMACHER Toyota 12. COULTHARD Red Bull 13. BUTTON Honda 14. LIUZZI Toro Rosso 15. KUBICA BMW* 16. WURZ Williams 17. VETTEL Toro Rosso 18. BARRICHELLO Honda 19. SATO Super Aguri 20. SUTIL Spyker 21. DAVIDSON Super Aguri 22. YAMAMOTO Spyker
Maybe, probably, perhaps. Interesting words that have no meaning if they cannot be backed by evidence.
Once again, can you prove what you say? No. Voice your doubts if you like, but the real difference here is that what happened to McLaren is based on facts.
Driving opponents off and parking on the track - well a certain Ferrari driver did that occasionally, look at the vids to decide if you want to side with him.
Team orders - the red cars at the Austrian GP in 2003 (or 04?) is the best example of foul play by team orders, although technically legal then IIRC.
Fuel tanks - BARs 'pressurization' system.
Fuel - Benetton, quite possibly made Jos Verstappen's pit fire worse.
Electronic trickery - lots of teams have been thought to have used illegal devices, Benetton is the only one to be done for it AFAIK, but there's suspicion of others having done the same.
As for this kind of straight forward espionage, I don't think anyone has ever been accused like this before but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen
I don't side with anyone, and certainly not with Schumacher. But it seems that a lot of people are completely unable to cope with the seriousness of what McLaren did, so they minimise it, imagine conspiracies, point the finger somewhere else and even insult opposing teams and supporters (I'm talking generally, not referring to one particular McLaren supporter or to you).
I don't like team orders and cheating, everything should be punished, but there's a lot of difference between the things you mention and what McLaren did, otherwise the sponsors wouldn't talk about revisiting contracts and there wouldn't be all this fuss. It's another matter of fact. McLaren supporters and Ferrari haters may feel hurt, but they choose the wrong targets in my opinion: they should blame McLaren, not the rest of the world. Or, at least, they should blame the guilty people inside McLaren, and - again - these people are important in McLaren. No minimising or finger pointing could convince me that what McLaren did was right, and I'm not talking as a current or former Ferrari supporter.
Edit: There's an interesting 10 minutes interview with Mosley on BBC. He quickly and efficiently recollects what happened, then gives his opinion on the judgement. It seems an honest interview.
They did it in 2001 and 2002 but there was nothing illegal about team orders then. It made sense from a team view though because even though Schumacher had a big lead at that point and Ferrari looked unstoppable he could have had another accident and broken his leg or been out for months. The extra 4 points for the win could have made the difference between winning and losing the championship. It's been won by a point or less a few times in the past...
Benetton were given verbal authorisation by the FIA to remove the fuel filter from their rig before Verstappen's pit fire. It didn't contribute to the fuel spill or fire and Benetton were innocent in that one - blame it on the Intertechnique rigs which weren't great in '94 (and you could argue they're not much better now).
Benetton were never penalised for using any electronic traction control/launch control systems. They were investigated (along with Williams) and they openly admitted their electronics systems contained code for the traction control/launch control systems from the previous year but they they had been disabled and weren't in use. Given the complexity of the electronics systems it's easier to disable features than to totally remove them (since removing them would have an add-on effect on other parts of the system).
Yay, nice to see a donut from Kimi, we really don't see enough of that stuff any more! A deserved win for Kimi, decent pace from Massa, Alonso and Lewis, plus another great performance from Rosberg, and Webber getting a well deserved sixth. A good race, Spa is great!