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Formula One tells its spy story
By Brad Spurgeon International Herald Tribune
Saturday, September 15, 2007
A day after the world of Formula One was shocked by a $100 million fine
over spying, the racing federation on Friday revealed some extraordinary
details of the scandal.
In a 15-page account - including details from e-mails and cellphone
text messages - the International Automobile Federation explained its
punishment of the previous day against McLaren Mercedes. What came out
was a tale of intrigue, and insight into the workings of the pinnacle of
motor racing.
In Formula One, each team spends hundreds of millions of dollars each
season to build a car to gain precious seconds on the competition.
Sharing intellectual property is, to a degree, part of the game, with
teams employing photographers to take pictures of the elaborate
technology belonging to the opposition to garner the slightest
advantage.
But the federation concluded that the McLaren team probably had gained
an unfair advantage by obtaining data from its rival Ferrari. On
Thursday, in addition to the fine, it excluded McLaren from the
constructors' championship this season.
The case first broke in the media in the days leading up to the British
Grand Prix on July 8. But its beginnings can be traced to the retirement
from Ferrari of Michael Schumacher last year after 11 seasons with the
team, and the resulting sabbatical of Ross Brawn, the team's technical
director.
Nigel Stepney, a right-hand man to Brawn, was unhappy about his new
boss. According to the federation report, as early as the first race of
the season in mid-March, the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne, Stepney
began to communicate with his friend and former colleague, Mike
Coughlan, McLaren's chief designer, about details on Ferrari's car and
team strategy.
When the scandal broke in July, it focused only on a 780-page document
found at Coughlan's home in England.
Ferrari claimed that it had been tipped off about the document by an
employee of a copy shop in Woking, England, where McLaren is based, as
the employee was a Ferrari fan and became suspicious about the document.
But, according to Stepney, in an interview with the British media in
early July, Ferrari had been following his movements all season.
On July 4, McLaren said that the data had not been transferred to the
car or used by anyone else within the company, and that it had been an
isolated incident involving a rogue employee.
But the evidence issued Friday suggests otherwise. Coughlan and Stepney
were shown not only to be communicating regularly since before the first
race of the season - won by Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari - but also to
be contact with two drivers of the McLaren tam.
Coughlan had worked with the McLaren test driver, Pedro de la Rosa, on
another team years ago. Coughlan shared some information in e-mail
exchanges with de la Rosa.
"Hi Mike, do you know the Red Car's Weight Distribution?" de la Rosa
wrote in an e-mail to Coughlan on March 21, three days after the first
race. "It would be important for us to know so that we could try it in
the simulator." At the hearing Thursday, de la Rosa confirmed that
Coughlan had responded by text message "with precise details of
Ferrari's weight distribution."
De la Rosa then sent an e-mail to Fernando Alonso, the McLaren driver
and reigning world champion, setting out the Ferrari's weight
distribution to two decimal places on each of Ferrari's two cars as they
were set up for the Australian Grand Prix.
"Its weight distribution surprises me," Alonso responded in an e-mail.
"I don't know either if it's 100 percent reliable, but at least it draws
attention." De la Rosa responded on 25 March, saying: "All the
information from Ferrari is very reliable. It comes from Nigel Stepney,
their former chief mechanic."
De la Rosa then mentioned to Alonso in the e-mail that in the first
race of the season, Stepney was "the same person who told us" before the
race the exact lap on which Raikkonen would make his first pit stop in
the Ferrari.
Other information provided included such things as a special gas that
Ferrari used to inflate its tires to reduce the internal temperature and
blistering of the rubber.
"We'll have to try it, it's easy," de la Rosa wrote to Alonso.
E-mail exchanges continued through April, when de la Rosa asked Coughlan
for details on Ferrari's braking system, and Coughlan told him.
In June, Ferrari started proceedings in court in Modena, Italy, against
Stepney.
The Italian police provided the racing federation with evidence that
showed Coughlan and Stepney had exchanged 288 text messages and 35
telephone calls between March 11 and July 3.
For the federation, this evidence seemed to nullify the argument that
two rogue employees had simply been sharing data.
"The advantage gained may have been as subtle as Coughlan being in a
position to suggest alternative ways of approaching different design
challenges," the report says.
The report says that the evidence led the federation "to conclude that
some degree of sporting advantage was obtained, though it may forever be
impossible to quantify that advantage in concrete terms."
After the report was released Friday, Dennis continued to deny that the
team had gained any advantage and he also pointed out that he had
himself supplied some of the final evidence after he learned about it at
the Hungarian Grand Prix on Aug. 5.
"We now have seven days to appeal and are carefully considering the
company's position once we have a full understanding of the FIA's
findings," Dennis said, referring to the federation.
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