Flavio Briatore, the principal of the Renault Formula One team, went on the offensive yesterday to make clear that Renault have, in his view, done nothing wrong and should not be punished for possessing technical secrets belonging to McLaren Mercedes.

In an interview with The Times, Briatore admitted that Phil Mackereth, the former McLaren engineer at the heart of the latest scandal to hit the sport, had “showed” some technical drawings of McLaren systems to his new colleagues at Renault, but matters had gone no farther.

Briatore said that his team has been transparent about the affair and that as soon as he became aware that Mackereth, who joined Renault from McLaren in September 2006, had brought technical information with him, he informed the FIA and McLaren.

The Italian team leader seemed puzzled as to why McLaren had waited so long to make a formal complaint to the FIA, which they did this week – triggering a hearing of the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) on December 6 – when the British team had had information from Renault for so long. “When we found out in September, we talked with this guy [Mackereth], we started an investigation and immediately suspended the guy and then immediately we informed McLaren and the FIA,” Briatore said. “We gave to Mr Mosley [Max Mosley, the president of the FIA] all the correspondence and the evidence and a statement from our engineers making clear we never used any McLaren system in our car.”

Briatore said that Mackereth had brought floppy disks with him with technical drawings but none of it had been used. “The information was in the computer, it was in the disks that this guy brought,” he said. “It was very simple. It was a drawing of a few systems, it was part of a drawing of the gearbox and was part of a drawing of a mass-damper. I am confident the information was not used and not only me. We have witness statements from every engineer that was involved and, categorically, everybody says that there was no influence of any of these things on the design of our car.”

Renault invited independent experts appointed by McLaren to visit their headquarters in Enstone, Oxfordshire, to investigate what had happened to Mackereth’s data, but they say that the officials, from Kroll, the security firm, made only a short visit and simply took back the relevant disks.

“We were happy to let them inspect our computer, we wanted to give McLaren the opportunity to check that there was no influence on the design of our car, but they never took up the offer,” Briatore said.

This account is at odds with other published versions of what was found, which suggest that the Kroll team did examine the hard drives of the Renault computer system and that the dossier sent to the FIA by McLaren includes at least 15 statements from Renault engineers admitting that they had discussed the material brought by Mackereth.

Either way, Briatore said he was confident that Renault would not be punished at the WMSC hearing in Paris and dismissed suggestions it could face a fine to match the $100 million sanction levied on McLaren for possessing Ferrari technical secrets. He pointed out that there was no flow of information from McLaren to Renault in this case, as had happened between Ferrari and McLaren, and the technical information in question could not compare with the 780-page dossier of Ferrari technical information that was found in the home of Mike Coughlan, the McLaren chief designer.

Briatore indicated that Mackereth would be dismissed and said that it was impossible to stop information of this kind being transferred when engineers move between teams.