McLaren adamant Renault gained advantage By Jonathan Noble Friday, November 23rd 2007, 03:17 GMT McLaren are adamant that rivals Renault did gain a 'clear benefit and unfair advantage' from the use of the intellectual property that is at the centre of the latest spy controversy surrounding the French car manufacturer, autosport.com has learned. In a legal submission lodged with the FIA ahead of Renault's appearance before the World Motor Sport Council next month, McLaren's solicitors leave the FIA in no doubt about how seriously they are taking the matter. And they are sure that the information former McLaren engineer Phil Mackareth is alleged to have taken with him to Renault in September 2006 was used to the French car manufacturer's benefit. In the statement, the solicitors state: "It is clear that McLaren's confidential design information was knowingly, deliberately and widely disseminated and discussed within the Renault F1 design and engineering team, thereby providing them [the Renault F1 design and engineering team] with a clear benefit and unfair advantage." According to sources, McLaren's solicitors have also expressed some frustration at the way Renault have dealt with the matter. It is understood that the solicitors have complained in writing to Renault about the 'cavalier attitude' on the part of senior Renault F1 personnel during the investigation, and also that some submissions from Renault staff are "incomplete" or "misleading", as well as that some members have allegedly provided contradictory witness statements. Renault are due to face the FIA on December 6 to answer charges that they had unauthorized possession of intellectual property belonging to McLaren. The exact nature of this information has also been made clear in the FIA submission. It has been revealed that the matter revolves around 33 files of confidential technical information that was copied onto 11 old-style floppy discs. It is understood these files contained more than 780 individual drawings that outlined the entire technical blueprint of the 2006 and 2007 McLaren car. The figure of 780 drawings is very similar to the number of drawings in the Ferrari dossier that McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan was found to have in his possession earlier this year. McLaren's lawyers argue that their team's files were discussed by up to 18 Renault personnel, involving at least seven senior staff members including chief designer Tim Densham, deputy technical director James Allison and head of R&D Robin Tuluie. AUTOSPORT.COM
McLaren is sour over the 07 season. They need to focus on next season before its too late. After this season McLaren lost alot of respect from me and others I know that were McLaren fans.
Funny coincidence, but the Stepney/Coughlan papers were 780 pages, not drawings (= CAD files in the Renault cas?)
It is so obvious that Renault used the McLaren drawings and plans to catapult themselves to all the wins and podiums they (Renault)had in 2007. Shame.
LOL S brake Exactly tifosiron. It apparently helped them oh so much. Besides, these days, and with that kind of technical information and the size files it would take, how much could you REALLY fit on 11 floppy discs?
This is such an IRONIC thing.....MCL had Ferrari's spec.s and data.....and now Renault has MCS's spec.s and data. MCL is protesting this situation now that the shoe is on the other foot.
If Renault is guilty of basically the same offense as Mclaren then they should have some penalty. Keeping consistency in fairness and penalties is important to the integrity of Formula 1.
Yes, I suppose that now McLaren is trying to use this to get rid of an opponent. To be honest, if it´s true that Renault had that information, this time I can´t blame Ron Dennis.
Well by that rationale, you wouldn't mind giving me the PIN number of your bank card and the username/password of your online banking account, so long as I don't use it. Right? And also, we have to consider Williams, Red Bull, Toyota, STR, Honda, Super Aguri and Spyker. All of whom scored points in the constructors championship, and all of whom would have moved up (and gotten financial gain) from beating Renault. If Renault did what McLaren did (and worse, it seems), than all those teams are equally deserving of an additional bump-up in the order just as they were when McLaren got sanctioned. And on the same fairness note, Renault deserves to lose the $$ they got for WCC placement and WCC points just like McLaren did - along with a $100mm fine.
Well if Her Majestys Revenue and Customs can put the entire 25 million entries for the British child benefit scheme on two cd-r's and loose them in the post you would be surprised how much data you can fit on a few discs
Here's the thing I have been thinking of.... It may be more insidious than you think! Many computers these days dont even come with floppy drives. Anyone who wanted to copy a lot of data would put it on a CD, a USB drive, or an external hard drive. McLaren are not stupid and I am sure they have pretty good security policies in place. A very basic starting point would be to disallow copies of information to USB ports and to the CD drive. Keep everything on the network. Since floppies are so seldom used nowadays, maybe a smart engineer who knew that the spankety-new computer he has STILL has an old-fashioned legacy floppy port on the motherboard, and taking a (smart) guess that a security administrator had not locked out something the computers were not equipped with, plugged an old fashioned floppy into the computer and got around the internal security system. Wouldn't that be ingenious. Or, perhaps it's more basic. It would be reasonable for the mass copying of many large files would flag something in the security system. Perhaps this guy didn't want to waste CD's by making lots of multi-session recordings (also knowing such actions would be recorded by a network controller) and smartly knew that copying a few files here and there to floppy was a good approach. I think the whole "it was an old fashioned floppy" argument is a diversion Renault are using to try to make it sound like it was a very small amount of data from a very long time ago. This was 2006 and 2007 data! CAD files like DWG/DXF files and 3D model files are really not that big. Most of ours are anywhere from 50k to 100k. Compress it and you could probably get 30MB+ of raw data onto some floppy disks.
You honestly feel that Renault should not face the same penalty for the same crime? Why not? McLaren got smacked down VERY harshly by the FIA. It seems Renault did all McLaren did and worse. Surely they deserve at least as harsh a punishment, no? How could anyone reasonably argue otherwise?
From what I understand Renault went directly to the FIA about this when they found out that guy brought over the info and they delt with it then so y bring it back up? Oh cause they were caught using the info they had when they could have come clean to the FIA in the first place. I agree they should b punished but it obviously didn't benifit Renault through out the year.
You could be right with this thinking, interest take Mike. +1 And Blame Max for making the lawyers rich infact blame the dick for everything....
IF THE CHEATED.THEY SHOULD PAY...not in the same scale as McLaren but they sure deserve some punishment...on top of being stupid enought not to take some meassurable advantage like the other guys that almost got the cake...
It was reported that it came to Flavio's attention in Sept 07 and it was in Sept 06 Mackereth joined them with his disk's ok
No prob's I hate all this crap but fair's fair's and it could make F1 look more of a farce if nothing is done if guilty IMO Max set the Mc fine far to high because of personal dislike of Ron D, now it looks to backfire on him.
Unfortunatly there is no way to rid of this kind of bs in any sports. Weather its some one taking staroids or technical data its some thing in sports that is here to stay. What the thrill of competition does to ppl!!
McL has a huge incentive to show that they are not the biggest cheaters in F1. In fact, they would like the impression that "everybody does it" and thus it's no big deal. And maybe this is a warning shot to Alonso not to take any McL info to another team.
I don't think we obviously know it didn't benefit them. Maybe they would have been much worse off and they only got 3rd because of having the info? I think its wrong to assume that only the winner can be harmed by someone having their IP. Actually, Ferrari won WCC and WDC fair and square before the penalty to McLaren was even considered - so we could say the same "obviously having the info didnt help them". Right? I dont think so.
Wait a moment... Why should they not have the same harshness of punishment as McLaren got? Max very clearly stated his position - that posession of someone else's IP is enough. It does not need to be used, and it does not need to provide an advantage. Thats the law, from the boss-man himself. At least, that was the law when he was laying it out for McLaren. So clearly Renault are in violation as it was stated by Mosley. Why should Renault not be facing the exact same penalty? Is it because they may just withdraw from F1? Does that mean a smaller team can do anything they please since no harsh penalties would be imposed? Why should the means have anything to do with the penalty. Toyota has more means than McLaren, why weren't they fined a few billion dollars (an equal % as to McLaren's % of income paid in a fine)? Is it because Renault was not as fast as McLaren? What does that have to do with it, though? Its only bad if it helped you? How do we know it didnt help them? Maybe they'd have been in 8th place if it was not for the info. Since McLaren didn't win the WDC, the same can be said of them... they had the info of the car one spot ahead of them in the points and could not beat them, ergo McLaren's fine was too harsh (or, from the flipside, that the same fine must be imposed on Renault). Is it because Renault went to the FIA? They acted no differently than McLaren... as soon as Ron found out that others were involved, he called Max and told him personally. Is it because Renault is in 3rd and nobody should care? I am sure teams 4 through 10 care! They would stand to get significantly more $$ for their work this year. I cant understand why Renault should not face the *exact* same penalty as McLaren if they did indeed knowingly possess McLaren data - someone explain it to me.
I agree with you 100%!!!! I hate it too... but I think Max went way too far with McLaren because he's got a woodie for Ron and he dug his nails in as hard as he could and ripped the biggest chunk of flesh out possible. Then he told everyone it was nothing against Ron or Mac, just that they are adopting a zero-tolerance policy. Well, it came and bit him in the ass! Because now Renault is on the hot seat, and he either dishes out the SAME penalty, in which case Renault will probably be done with F1*, or he comes up with some convoluted reason why they won't get the same penalty, which will make the whole governance of F1 an obvious farce. *I think they would be done because I imagine Ghosn would blow his top if the break-even or lost-a-little F1 team suddenly added a $100mm loss to their bottom line. That is NOT the kind of money that any corporation can gamble with. It's more than multi-billion dollar corporations pay for violating anti-trust laws. It's just a gigantic sum of money. To fine a company 20% of their entire revenue for a year would be like dishing out a multi-billion dollar fine to Toyota. The fact that the FIA did that is astonishing to me, when viewed in comparison to the seriousness of the transgression. Now Max must be even handed and squish Renault out of F1, or he will have to BS his way out of it, which will show him and the FIA as a total farce. Too bad the GPMA disbanded.
