> A brilliant analysis abt the Spygate verdict. A must read for all F1 fans

This is the biggest penalty ever handed out to a team in F1 history and there are few parallels in any sport.

A hundred million dollars is an eye-catching number. But the details are slightly different. McLaren will not have to pay the FIA $100 million from their own bank account.

Instead it works like this, according to Christian Sylt, editor of a new book called Formula Money, which explains F1’s finances.

McLaren would have received around $60-70 million in prize money for their constructors’ championship position, so that money goes directly from Formula One Management to the FIA and McLaren will have to write a cheque for the remaining $40 million or so themselves.

But in terms of net cost to them, it is $100 million because that is the hole it will leave in their budget.

They will also have to spend more money next year on freight and travel costs because they will be the 11th team on the grid.

In addition they will find that instead of their current allocation of five garages, they will have two, and instead of their generous allocation of VIP paddock passes for sponsor guests, they will have a limited amount.

It’s a huge blow to their prestige as well as their pocket.

If you look closely at the document the FIA produced today containing the grounds for their decision, it is hard to argue with its conclusions.

There is no doubt, studying the evidence, that there was a systematic use – and analysis – of Ferrari secrets by Mike Coughlan, Pedro de la Rosa and Fernando Alonso.

There are a lot of assumptions in there as well, such as the assumption that if de la Rosa is talking about testing things out and running things on the simulator, then he must be working with other engineers to do that, so more people were in the know.

That is probably fair, as a driver does not direct engineering projects.

The document shows that the key players knew that they were using information obtained illicitly and that this carried on for a period of several months.

I think McLaren will have to take it on the chin and believe that they will not lodge an appeal.

Particularly because there is that menacing little clause in there about the FIA studying the 2008 McLaren to see if there are any Ferrari ideas in it.

If they don’t lodge an appeal I think that clause will go away. If they appeal, they’ll be facing another season of turmoil.


Let’s be clear about one thing: The McLaren was not an illegal car at any stage of this season as a result of what they were doing.

Rather, they were able to take some short-cuts at the start of the season to arrive at set-up solutions which they probably would have arrived at anyway. They just got there much more quickly.

But combined with the removal of Ferrari’s floor after Melbourne (following Nigel Stepney’s tip-off) and its subsequent problems with warming up the front tyres, the red cars lost some competitiveness in March/April, while McLaren got its car working well on the Bridgestones, so the gap closed up.

The FIA document shows that de la Rosa was very keen to learn Ferrari’s weight distribution, because he felt that the weight should be moved forward in the car to get the most from the tyres, whereas Alonso thought from his Renault experience that the weight should move backwards.

Ferrari’s weight was very much on the nose and learning that exact distribution will have saved time and resources.

At least 288 SMS (text) messages and 35 phone calls passed between Stepney and Coughlan between 11th March and 3rd July. So this was a pretty systematic process.

It is quite normal for teams to study other cars and copy ideas, especially aerodynamics, which are obvious.

For example, McLaren introduced its up-and-over front wing in Spain and now Williams and Toro Rosso have one. In 2004 Toyota introduced gills on their rear wing endplates and the following year every car in the field had the same gills and still does to this day.

But the kind of information which is referred to in the FIA document is the kind which you cannot learn by studying photos or even from gossip. You need the numbers to understand how it works.

In one email to de la Rosa, Coughlan explains how Ferrari’s brake system works and then says, “We are looking at something similar.”

The WMSC decided that this kind of thing was the smoking gun, which had not come to light at the original hearing in July. A severe punishment was inevitable.

I do not think that this episode makes McLaren the biggest cheats in F1 history; rather, it illustrates how a few rogue employees can cause a lot of pain to an organisation. That goes for Ferrari as much as McLaren.

F1 teams are now so big (up to 1000 employees) it is impossible for the boss to know everything that is going on.

This episode does illustrate that both Jean Todt and Ron Dennis have become quite remote from their teams; Todt did not know that Stepney was plundering Ferrari’s secrets and Dennis did not know that McLaren’s legendary sense of fair play was being so badly breached.

Both have seniors or shareholders they must answer to and it will be interesting to see if both or either are still in their positions next season.

This is the most interesting aspect of the story for me. On one level I think Alonso, having been shown to have been involved with the illicit material, is lucky to keep his drivers’ championship points.

What condemned McLaren was the email traffic between him and de la Rosa (as well as a report from the Italian communication police regarding the volume and timing of email, phone and text traffic between Stepney and Coughlan).

The $100 million question all week has been, “How did the emails come to the FIA’s attention?”

Dennis has now confirmed that once he learned of the emails, from Alonso on the morning of the Hungarian GP, he himself told Mosley about them, because he did not want it to come from anyone else.

But what was Alonso trying to achieve by confronting Ron with the emails on that Sunday morning?

Apparently Dennis explained to the WMSC that Alonso had some demands, which are not hard to imagine, but Dennis refused to satisfy them. When this all comes out next week, it will probably look quite bad for Alonso.

I think Ron comes out of it quite well, albeit that it shows he did not have the control over his team on which he prided himself.

He is determined to win the drivers’ championship and all the signs are that despite Alonso’s behaviour he will be given an equal chance to win the title to Lewis Hamilton.

McLaren has a precedent here; in 1989 Dennis and Alain Prost fell out, but Prost was still given a winning car and beat his team-mate Ayrton Senna to the title before leaving for Ferrari the next year. Not many teams would behave like that.

Crucially, history will show that Alonso’s meeting with Dennis came after the qualifying episode in Hungary, where first Lewis disobeyed team orders and then Alonso blocked him at the end of the session and was penalised.

That brought things to a head between Alonso and Dennis.

Alonso’s relationship with the team has now totally broken down and it is impossible to imagine him driving a McLaren next year.

He may move back to Renault, or propose some sort of mega-deal to Toyota. BMW seems closed off and although certain top men at Ferrari would like to hire him to replace Massa, Todt is on the record as saying he will never drive a Ferrari after he snubbed Todt and signed up with Renault and Flavio Briatore in 2001.

The way things were shaping up in Monza last weekend, this whole saga was starting to look like a witch-hunt against Dennis, but with the evidence now before us, a different picture emerges.

The FIA has been thorough and methodical in its work and has brought closure to the issue.

The Italian prosecutor still has some open files, of course, and that may lead to some headaches down the line, but as far as F1 is concerned we can all move on now.

McLaren have been hammered, but it could have been a lot worse for them. The team’s reputation has taken a major hit, due to the behaviour of some employees, but Ron Dennis appears to have conducted himself correctly throughout.

The biggest blow will be to his pride, that his team has been dragged into something so dirty.


Source: itv-f1

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