Espionage at Ferrari and McLaren

[Rob W]

A couple of things we could consider here please.

- McLaren didn't steal anything - they were sent stuff (allegedly) by a Ferrari employee.

- If McLaren did indeed want to look over the info received, reporting their possession of the info at an earlier date would not at all change the usefulness of the data they had. The data would be useful five months ago, four months ago, and yesterday too. They would have no reason not to disclose it until a later date - in fact, earlier would be better. This 'non-disclosure' by McLaren says to me that the team didn't even know Coulghan had it until Ferrari outed him. But as soon as they did know they publicly suspended him and made immediate efforts to cooperate with the due process.

If you go and look at any news archive on the subject, they seem to support this chain of events.
----------------------

The only anomaly in this above comes regarding the Ferrari flexi-floor boards. But this situation (which also involved BMW as far as I remember) could have been brought to McLaren's attention by a simple verbal/email during race weekend by Stepney to Coulghan. No rule would have been broken by McLaren in this case (you can't penalise pit-lane chit-chat/rumours) but they would have enough to the marshalls and query the floor rules.

Rob W

[checkered]

Well, if the

proverbial "F1 Spy Story" horse is beaten to the kingdom come of insignificancy (as DaveKillens noted), people seem to follow up by tenderizing the meat. I won't bother paraphrasing it, follow the links if you dare:

Ferrari's counter-attack (by grandprix.com)
Stepney names Brawn as part of breakaway team (by grandprix.com)

[FLC]

FIA sends spy case to court of appeal

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/61242

[FLC]

I suggest you read Max's letter to Macaluso:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/61244

There are a number of suspicious elements, all of which the World Motor Sport Council took into account when reaching its decision. For example: the claim that the tip-off was the only information that passed in March; the failure to inform Ferrari of a spy when negotiating an agreement based on mutual trust; the installation of a "firewall" at McLaren to stop Stepney communicating, with no attempt at a similar block on Coughlan's private computers; McLaren's agreement to Coughlan travelling to Barcelona "to ask Stepney to stop communicating" rather than simply phone him; the fact that, far from ceasing communication, Coughlan returned from Barcelona with a vast quantity of Ferrari data; the failure to make clear what Coughlan was working on at McLaren while in possession of the data; Jonathan Neale's advice to Coughlan to destroy the documents, without knowing or wanting to know what they were and so on.

That part of Mclaren letting Chouglan go to Barcelona to ask Stepeny to stop is very amusing, as the firewall thing. If it wasn't sad I'd be laughing my ass off. And those are just "for example".

[Scuderia_Russ]

Well but caught RED HANDED with, ur rival's COMPLETE car docs, and intriguing details...

Just to clarify, you could not get an entire car design onto 780 pages. It would be in the thousands.

Also, considering Jean Todt has also said McLaren has track, testing, set-up data it would require even more 'pages'.

Rob W

Can't really be arsed to get involved in this one, except to say that having worked for a big motorsport team I believe that a handful of the 'right' technical drawings would be all a rival team needed to gain an advantage. How much of an advantage is something I cannot answer.

[Rob W]

..I believe that a handful of the 'right' technical drawings would be all a rival team needed to gain an advantage. How much of an advantage is something I cannot answer.

For sure. You could get a massive advantage from one drawing if it were the right one. My point was that people were implying McLaren had the entire Ferrari car plans and also all of the data on how to set the car up (weight, brakes etc) - which is simply not accurate.

Rob W

[checkered]

I'm not immediately

sure how the Court of Appeal "treatment" will help in forwarding either teams' case. Sure, in theory it buys time to investigate, but my first impression is that this plays mainly in the hands of Coughlan and Stepney (whether they have done something improper or not) ... they get a month or so to hear out both teams' "offers" and whichever has the better "deal" to put forward they will side with unless they have a waterproof defence already. Perhaps this is a bit cynical, but this was my first thought. Not a the best way to get to the "truth", I can only surmise.

I'm also less than sure whether Ferrari really wanted to go into the FIA Court of Appeal anyway, despite the "correspondence" between Mosley and Macaluso. Ferrari certainly didn't request it themselves, and are engaged in legal proceedings both in Italy and UK, and neither case will propably end before the Court of Appeal convenes to re-hear the teams. If Ferrari discontinues either civil/criminal (which are they anyway?) case before the CoA thingy, though, it propably means that the team has reached an agreement with the defendant of that case to side with Ferrari in a significant and meaningful way. Or that there's absolutely no evidence of impropriety, which would then be demonstrated by CoA upholding WMSC's decision.

I've read both that the CoA tends to impose draconian penalties and also that the CoA hasn't usually altered WMSC decisions. I haven't really followed that "part" of the sport very closely so I can only guess which one comes closer to the actual record. The latter comes from sources that have usually proved trustworthy later on, so in a way the intention of going through the process might just be to appease Ferrari without really changing the outcome.

I'm starting to think the best "punishment" for this bunch is something creative, like forcing them to work together on confidence building measures that'd benefit the whole sport with a set deadline. And if they don't present an acceptable outcome, they would both face a punishment with a little more bite ...

[FLC]

"Ferrari finds the decision of the FIA President to be sensible," a Ferrari spokesman said after the FIA published Mosley's letter.

"The FIA has correctly found that Ferrari, as interested party, must enjoy all the rights of a party in a trial, which is what didn't happen in the WMSC hearing."

[Rob W]

FIA sends spy case to court of appeal

This is a little confusing to me. What interest (more rather involvement) do Italy's automobile federation have in this? None technically.

Moreso, the case which has been heard already was between the FIA/WMC and McLaren. Not McLaren and Ferrari.

Ferrari gave evidence of course but they didn't bring the case.. so I kind of think it's weird (in purely legal terms) that they've joined with the IAF to appeal. I would have thought they'd be better served to take a case against Coulghan and Stepney directly as individuals and hope they open the pandoras box to more information which points the finger at a McLaren involvement - something which they could then take to the FIA/WMC to show their case that, in the least that, McLaren weren't as open and honest as they claimed.

A tacit rule in sports is competitors can't sue each other over sporting events (i.e. a baseball team can't sue another because they think they cheated). Usually the sports governing body and code will even state they can't - this is the case in F1 meaning Ferrari's only direct attack on McLaren would hinge around theft or possession of stolen property and not that they were cheating in the sport of F1.

As I've said many times before, there must be more about this case yet to come out - and major stuff too. Nigel Stepney's new denial and accusation that Ferrari have set him up must have some credibility as there is no way in hell he and Coulghan could hide all email/fax/phone evidence from Ferrari, McLaren and the private investigators. This leads me to think he might actually be less 'guilty' than Ferrari are making out. (He might be dodgy but there are others involved surely)

Rob W

[DaveKillens]

[Rob W]

beating_a_dead_horse.jpg

for sure, I agree. There is so much we don't know, and even more we wont get to know now that more debate is almost pointless at this stage.

Let's wait a month.

Rob W

[FLC]

This is a little confusing to me. What interest (more rather involvement) do Italy's automobile federation have in this? None technically.

A Formality? Italy's automobile federation? Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile?

Moreso, the case which has been heard already was between the FIA/WMC and McLaren. Not McLaren and Ferrari.

This is exactly what Ferrari wants to change. When they go to the appeal they will be given a chance to present their arguments, and not just sit and watch "the show".

I would have thought they'd be better served to take a case against Coulghan and Stepney directly as individuals and hope they open the pandoras box to more information which points the finger at a McLaren involvement - something which they could then take to the FIA/WMC to show their case that, in the least that, McLaren weren't as open and honest as they claimed.

Who said they aren't?
The board members of Ferrari met on Tuesday and decided to "press on with their current legal action and initiate additional if necessary". They ratify in particular "The submission of another legal action against Stepney (on top of the first one concerning sabotage) concerning the theft of technical information, the civil action presented to The High Court of London against Mike Coughlan, chief designer of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, and his wife, concerning the theft of the aforementioned documents" and they conclude with "The Board gives its full authority to the Board of Directors' President, to the CEO, and to the Managing Director to initiate and continue any necessary legal action, in the name of the Company, in addiction to those legal actions already underway in every legal, civil, criminal, administrative, sporting jurisdiction be it, in Italy or abroad."

[checkered]

Brawn denies links with Ferrari's rivals

[RH1300S]

Thanks Dave

&

Exactly @ Rob

Nothing more useful can be said right now; it's pretty obvious there are a lot of facts not in the public domain

[nae]

http://www.mclaren.co.uk/latestnews/pdf ... caluso.pdf


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