On the back of an intriguing four-driver championship battle and a
spellbinding race at the Nurburgring last weekend, the FIA thankfully took
the only sensible decision on Thursday by not penalising McLaren over the
so-called “Stepneygate” Ferrari spy story.
Even Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 circus master extraordinaire, who normally
enjoys and even occasionally encourages any spat between teams or drivers
which keeps his sport in the media, wanted this “nonsense” switched off. The
Tour de France is self-destructing, Formula One doesn’t need to follow suit.
Sweeping any wrongdoing under the carpet would not be right either, hence
Thursday’s high-level FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting and current High
Court actions in the UK and Italy by Ferrari. Jean Todt, the Ferrari team
boss, is on the World Council but of course in this instance he could not
vote, although Ferrari requested and were given permission to be involved in
the questioning, which seems reasonable.
The whole crux of the matter is a package of data, which Ferrari claimed as
crucial material, turning up back in April in the home of a senior,
disgruntled designer at McLaren. Did that information make it into the
McLaren factory and even on to the car? Ferrari seized laptops from the
designer’s home and he provided a sworn affidavit to the High Court. On July
3 McLaren informed Ferrari and the FIA of their discovery of the existence
of the dossier and they state that within an hour a full internal
investigation commenced. Following this the FIA carefully inspected the
McLaren car and its development process through this season.
It seems clear that at no point was any Ferrari material proven to be found
with any other person within the team or on the car, hence the unanimous
verdict by the 25 members of the World Council to declare that although
McLaren, through collective corporate responsibility and because the
designer undeniably had the material at home, were in breach of Article 151c
of the International Sporting Code, no penalty would be applied. Apparently
there were upwards of 75 people in the room with others participating by
satellite link, and the questioning was comprehensive and aggressive.
The FIA have reserved the right to revisit this issue if such evidence does
appear, with the possibility of powerful actions such as banning McLaren for
2007 and even 2008, but without clear evidence of knowledge or usage within
McLaren there was nowhere to go regarding a penalty. Ferrari are livid to
say the least and have vented their feelings without holding back. They
insist “guilty”, a word not mentioned in the FIA press release, must also
include “penalty”. In fact this is turning into an Italy versus Great
Britain issue, with the Paris-based FIA refereeing. Even Flavio Briatore,
the Italian boss of the Renault F1 team and a perennial Ferrari basher, has
sided with Ferrari and called for a McLaren penalty.
The stakes are high, with all of the key teams employing 1,000 people or more
and spending about £200m per year, and they all must win. I first drove a
McLaren F1 car in 1982 and became their works driver in 1994. Subsequently I
also managed their driver David Coulthard for eight years and currently
co-manage their test driver Gary Paffett, and in all of that time they have
been commercially totally correct.
I have never transacted with Ferrari but they have had very long-term
relationships with drivers, key personnel and sponsors and are clearly
similarly commercially correct. But this is a competitive business and all
the key players, who must beat each other while also from time to time
sitting on the same side of the table negotiating new commercial deals with
Bernie and new regulations with the FIA, are complex and highly motivated
characters who can also be brutal with each other and sometimes stretch the
boundaries in their quest for success.
The problem is there are no ground rules for personnel or information transfer
except for the highly successful contract recognition board which triggers
when there is a driver contract dispute. Literally thousands of photographs
are taken every weekend for “spying” purposes by all of the teams and these
would be easy enough to scale from known dimensions such as the wheels. The
teams monitor each other’s radios. They record each other’s cars for sound
analysis. Personnel constantly move between teams carrying valuable
knowledge.
A pertinent example here is top designer Nicolas Tombassis who, quite
legitimately, transferred from Ferrari to McLaren and back to Ferrari in the
past three years. Frankly, given their impressive resources, I would be
surprised if each team couldn’t send to all of the other teams a pretty good
blueprint of all the cars on the grid. Where do you draw the line? I imagine
it’s a similar scenario in the Premier League with competitive stakeholders
contracting each others’ players and managers. Except that hundreds of
millions of pounds of research and development are at stake in F1.
As ever there are sub-plots. Back in Australia for the first grand prix of the
season, McLaren had been informed by a “whistleblower” that Ferrari were
using a device to control the floor of the car which would be considered
outside the regulations. Using an unwritten but accepted procedure of asking
the FIA if they could use such a device, McLaren therefore forced a new
ruling which clarified this position. A clearly photographed and furious
argument ensued between Martin Whit-marsh of McLaren and Todt which
generated three months later a written memorandum between the two teams of
how they would communicate if they saw parts on each other’s car which they
felt were unacceptable. Todt is furious that McLaren didn’t mention the
already known whistleblower and claims hypocrisy in the extreme. McLaren
claim that naming a whistleblower is outside of the agreement about
technical disputes and the event happened before the memorandum.
So where does it go from here? Stepney claims he “knows where Ferrari’s
skeletons of the last 10 years are buried”, whatever that means. Ferrari are
taking Stepney to court for espionage and sabotage and, in my mind’s eye, I
envisage a meeting where Stepney and Todt have a firm hold on each other
where it hurts most while simultaneously saying: “We’re not going to hurt
each other, are we?” But it may well get a lot more serious than that, and I
can see no winners in this whole smelly business.
The FIA will be keeping an eye out for any evidence of knowledge transfer into
McLaren, Ferrari will surely tighten their IT protocol and try to find more
ammunition against McLaren in the High Courts. Meanwhile McLaren will
“whilst continuing to observe the instructions of the UK High Court in this
matter provide answers to the media on any issues outside those constraints
in Hungary next weekend”. In other words, try to turn the tables on Ferrari.
F1 simply has to find a new code of conduct.
Fernando Alonso’s brilliant victory last weekend has put him in line for a
hat-trick of world championships. Lewis Hamilton was breathtaking in his
bravery and overtaking but his wrong early call for dry tyres and allowing
himself to lose so much time when being lapped reminds us that he is a
rookie and likely to make other errors. He needs to be faultless now to take
this championship under extreme pressure. The Ferrari still seems slightly
the faster car on dry tyres, if slightly less reliable, and both Felipe
Massa and Kimi Raik-konen still have a real chance to steal it from the
McLaren boys. The World Motor Sport Council decided it needed all to happen
on the track - thank goodness.
McLaren feel the heat in spy row as championship hots up
Drivers’ championship standings
Pts 1 Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren 70 2 Fernando Alonso (Spa)
McLaren 68 3 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari 59 4 Kimi Raikkonen
(Fin) Ferrari 52 5 Nick Heidfeld (Ger) BMW 36 6 Robert Kubica
(Pol) BMW 24 7 Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita) Renault 17 8 Heikki
Kovalainen (Fin) Renault 15 9 Alexander Wurz (Aut) Williams 13 10
Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull 8 David Coulthard (GB) Red Bull 8 12
Jarno Trulli (Ita) Toyota 7
Constructors’ standings
1 McLaren 138
2 Ferrari 111
3 BMW 61
4 Renault 32
5 Williams 18
6 Red Bull 16
7 Toyota 9
Remaining races
Aug 5 Hungarian Budapest Aug 26 Turkish Istanbul Sep 9
Italian Monza Sep 16 Belgian Spa Sep 30 Japanese Fuji Oct 7
Chinese Shanghai Oct 21 Brazilian Interlagos
The spying row
- The row between McLaren and Ferrari erupted when a 780-page Ferrari
technical dossier was found at the home of McLaren chief designer Mike
Coughlan. The designer has been suspended by the team.
- The case against McLaren was heard by FIA, the governing body, who ruled in
Paris on Thursday that the title race would not be affected. McLaren
insisted that they did not benefit by the information. Ferrari are
considering an appeal against the decision
