The evidence that McLaren Mercedes were contaminated by and used secret technical information stolen from Ferrari is comprehensive and highly damaging to the Woking-based team.

After the dramatic judgment against McLaren in Paris on Thursday, when the FIA levied a £50 million penalty against McLaren, yesterday the governing body of motor sport released the main details of the judgment reached by its World Motor Sport Council (WMSC). The 14-page dossier shows how the team were infected by Ferrari secrets, which were used in race strategy, testing and in the team’s understanding of how this year’s Ferrari works.

The evidence presented to the WMSC undermines the McLaren defence that Mike Coughlan, the team’s chief designer, who has been suspended, was a “rogue employee” whose contact with Nigel Stepney, the disaffected former chief mechanic at Ferrari, influenced nobody else in the team or their race cars.

The key to the new evidence are e-mails between Coughlan and Pedro De La Rosa, the McLaren test driver, and Lewis Hamilton’s teammate, Fernando Alonso, plus telephone and text messages between Coughlan and Stepney. The WMSC shows how the frequency of telephone contact matches both e-mails and key events such as Grand Prix weekends and tests.

The main focus of the evidence is events in March, well before Coughlan received a 780-page dossier of secret Ferrari technical information from Stepney at the end of April. In one e-mail to Coughlan on March 21, De La Rosa asked Coughlan: “Hi Mike, do you know the Red Car’s weight distribution? It would be important for us to know so that we could try it in the simulator. Thanks in advance, Pedro. PS I will be in the simulator tomorrow.”

De La Rosa told the hearing in Paris on Thursday that Coughlan replied by text message, telling him the precise details of Ferrari’s weight distribution. Four days after the exchange, De La Rosa sent an e-mail to Alonso setting out the weight distribution to two decimal places on each of Ferrari’s two cars prepared for the Australian Grand Prix.

In his reply Alonso remarked: “Its weight distribution surprises me; I don’t know either if it’s 100 per cent reliable but at least it draws attention.” To that, De La Rosa responded: “All the information from Ferrari is very reliable. It comes from Nigel Stepney, their former chief mechanic. He told us in Australia that Kimi [Raikkonen] was stopping in lap 18. He’s very friendly with Mike Coughlan, our chief designer.”

In subsequent e-mails, the drivers and Coughlan discussed the Ferrari braking system. On April 12, for example, De La Rosa wrote to Coughlan: “Can you explain to me as much as you can Ferrari’s braking system . . . are they adjusting from inside the cockpit?” Coughlan replied with details of the Ferrari system that, together with other evidence, convinced the council that “the McLaren system was being worked on from a position of knowledge of the details of the Ferrari system”.

The records of phone and text message contacts between Coughlan and Stepney, supplied to the FIA by Ferrari from the Italian police, showed that there was a “systematic flow” of Ferrari information to Coughlan before he received the dossier and that this was far greater than was appreciated by the council when it first sat on the matter at the end of July. At least 288 text messages and 35 phone calls were logged between Stepney and Coughlan between March 11 and July 3, when the scandal was uncovered. The judgment notes: “The number of contacts increased considerably during private tests carried out by Ferrari in Malaysia at the end of March” and in the run-up to and during the grand prix weekends in Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain and Spain.

One of McLaren’s defence arguments was that the contact between Stepney and Coughlan and the exchange of the dossier was not intended for use in McLaren but as part of a plan by both men to seek new employment elsewhere, most likely at Honda. The council rejected this explanation.

Critically, it also rejected McLaren’s claim that the information flow stopped with Coughlan. “The WMSC regards it as reasonable to infer that Coughlan was in receipt of a flow of confidential Ferrari information from Stepney and that at least some of that information was communicated to others within McLaren [eg, Mr De La Rosa and Mr Alonso],” the council concluded.

The council dismissed McLaren’s claim that Coughlan was not influenced in his work by what he knew from his contacts with Stepney. “The secret Ferrari information cannot but have informed the views Coughlan expressed to others in the McLaren design department, for example regarding which design projects to prioritise or which research to pursue,” it said.

In its summary, the council decided that McLaren had been involved in conduct that amounts to cheating. “The WMSC believes that the nature of the information illicitly held by McLaren was information of a nature that, if used or in any way taken into account, could confer a significant sporting advantage upon McLaren,” it said.

Dramatis personae

Fernando Alonso
The Spanish two-times world champion is the subject of intense speculation that he may be dropped by McLaren over his role in the spying row.

Lewis Hamilton
The British rookie, who leads the World Championship, has not been involved in the Ferrari secrets scandal, but is looking ever more the favoured son at McLaren.

Pedro De La Rosa
The Spanish McLaren test driver, known as the “Barcelona Bullet”, is in an awkward position after the evidence emerged of the e-mails he sent that implicated McLaren. However, he is not thought to be under any threat at McLaren.

Ron Dennis
The perfectionist workaholic team principal of McLaren has confirmed that it was he who told the FIA about new evidence that led to his team being fined £50 million. Dennis has been fending off questions about whether it is time for him to consider retirement as McLaren get into ever-deeper trouble.

Mike Coughlan
The now suspended chief designer at McLaren at the centre of the spy scandal is the subject of legal action by Ferrari and is thought to be on sick leave from McLaren at his home in Surrey. His dismissal is inevitable.

Nigel Stepney
The English former chief mechanic at Ferrari is facing criminal charges in Italy over allegations that he leaked sensitive company information to Coughlan (including the 780-page dossier of technical secrets) and tried to sabotage Ferrari’s race cars for this year’s Monaco Grand Prix. He denies the allegations.