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then here is the latest release from Ron Dennis. It is well worth reading as it appears to dispell many assumptions made so far.
http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=32299
It is a lengthy read, so get yourself a large cup of coffee before you start.
Stepneygate - the whole story
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19473.htmlhttp://a.tribalfusion.com/i.click?si...stID=281798365
One of the big problems with the ongoing Stepneygate Affair is that there is a huge amount of hearsay, but not a great deal of fact. There are two affidavits: one from Mike Coughlan and one from his wife Trudy. Elements of these documents have been reported in detail in Italy and have been copied elsewhere in the media, but no-one is admitting to having the affidavits or of having supplied them to the press. This is because these statements are privileged information and are only available to the Coughlans, their lawyers, High Court officials and Ferrari, McLaren, the FIA and their respective legal teams.
There are elements of truth in what has been published, but it is by no means clear whether all the details have come out, nor whether the timing of the various events has been taken into account in the stories that have been written. The timing of events is clearly important because between March and July, the relationship between McLaren and Mike Coughlan was changing. In parallel to this story, Nigel Stepney, Coughlan and four others (three at Ferrari and one at McLaren) were developing a plan to join forces to create an engineering group that would be employed by another Formula 1 team. The problem therefore is to distinguish at what point Coughlan was working for himself, or for Stepney's engineering group, and when he was working for McLaren. Ferrari claims that McLaren was involved throughout.
The story begins, however, back in 2006 when Ferrari made Coughlan an offer to join the team in Maranello.
This was not possible because at the time Coughlan had just agreed a new deal with McLaren to run from 2007 to 2009. We hear that the World Council also heard that Coughlan was involved in discussions with Toyota in the same period. This information apparently came to light when McLaren went through Coughlan's e-mails after the current crisis began.
It is clear, therefore, that from late 2006 Coughlan was interested in moving elsewhere. Engineers can leave their employment with just six months of gardening leave, if they can find a way to get their intended new team to settle with their current employers. According to our sources Coughlan wanted to move from earning around $700,000 a year to become one of the highly-paid big name engineers in F1.
At the same time Nigel Stepney was becoming very disaffected at Ferrari, as he was not happy with the new management structure at Ferrari after Ross Brawn's decision to leave the Italian team. This relationship deteriorated over the winter and around the time of the Australian Grand Prix, Coughlan received an e-mail from Stepney alerting him to technical questions about the Ferrari. McLaren apparently argued to the World Council that this was a case of whistle-blowing and that this event should be viewed as being entirely separate to later developments. This argument was backed up by the fact that in mid-April Coughlan asked for a firewall to be created to stop further e-mails arriving from Stepney.
Coughlan travelled to Barcelona on April 28 and it seems that McLaren was under the impression that he was going there to tell Stepney to stop him sending e-mails.
In his affidavit, it seems that Coughlan says that he returned to the UK with 780 pages of Ferrari documents.
The meeting in Barcelona seems to have triggered an approach by Stepney to Honda. He informed Honda that he had a group of engineers from different teams who wanted to work for Honda. This led to a meeting between Stepney and Honda's Nick Fry at Heathrow Airport on May 9. At this meeting Stepney told Fry that Coughlan was involved in the plan.
On May 21, according to Ferrari, Stepney put white powder in the fuel tanks of the Ferrari F1 cars that were due to go to the Monaco Grand Prix on May 27. Stepney denies this and says that he is being framed.
It was in the same period that Coughlan asked McLaren Racing's Jonathan Neale for an early release from his contract. Neale then suggested that they meet away from the McLaren factory to discuss this - because the glass walls in the McLaren factory make it easy for people to see if there is a lively discussion going on. It was agreed that they would meet for breakfast at a local golf club on May 25. It is alleged that during this meeting Coughlan tried to show Neale documents, but McLaren says that he refused to look at them.
Within a few days of this meeting Coughlan and Stepney met Fry at Heathrow on June 1, and discussed doing a deal.
There have also been suggestions that the two men also made an approach to Toyota.
By June 7, the F1 circus had moved to Canada and it was there that McLaren and Ferrari agreed to work together to solve disputes over the regulations, without the FIA having to be involved. While the teams were in Canada and the United States, Mike Coughlan's wife Trudy took the Ferrari documents to a copying shop in Surrey and asked for them to be put on a disk. She paid with a personal cheque. The original documents were then destroyed, apparently having been shredded and then burned in the back garden of Coughlan's house.
At some point in this period Ferrari learned via the copying shop in Surrey that Coughlan was in possession of Ferrari documents.
There were rumours at Indianapolis that there was about to be a new espionage scandal and stories circulated that Nigel Stepney had been arrested. These were not true, but on June 21 Ferrari announced that Stepney was under criminal investigation in Italy. Stepney responded the following day saying that he was the victim of "a dirty tricks campaign".
In this period Ferrari went to the High Court in London and obtained a search warrant for Mike Coughlan's house. They found disks containing the data from the Ferrari paperwork. McLaren immediately announced that it had suspended Coughlan. The Coughlans appeared in court in London on July 10 and the following day agreed to provide Ferrari with sworn affidavits.
The rest of the story is now public information.
The schedule above may not be 100% correct
Thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valve Bounce
My reading of this is that there is a sense of very genuine grievance on the part of Dennis and McLaren that goes beyond any attempt to merely avoid censure.
Ferrari it seems will come out of this much the worse for making so many accusations when the whole episode started with them through no fault of theirs.
Ferrari cheated. Stepney blew the whistle. Ferrari realised that Stepney knew too much and tried to scew his integrity by making up the white powder story ( did anyone believe that at the time ?). Then Stepney behaved like a traitor in my view by passing all the docs to Coughlan ( if he did ). Ferrari now try to pass the buck onto McLaren. BS. Sorry but I really hope Ferrari get a wopping penalty for wasting time post the FIA inquiry. Can Brawn seriously return.......
Quote:
Originally Posted by seppefan
Ferrari wasn't cheating .
That's why , even though the FIA knew they had used the flex-floor in Melbourne , they didn't sanction them .
Instead , they clarified the rulebook to make them illegal .
Had Stepney been "blowing the whistle" he would have done it in the direction of the FIA , not a competitor .
Ron talks a lot about protecting the "whistle blower" , then names Stepney directly , and says they put up a fire-wall to stop him .
The white powder is really the only thing I see as fishy here .
Exactly, and the only reason for Ron's latest comments is to try to discredit Ferrari knowing that McLaren are already on the back foot after being declared guilty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bagwan
Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
Arrows, the problem is RD's incoherence when talking about this topic. I'm quoting from the link that Valve posted:
1) RD says "Ferrari run an illegal car in Australia". That's a lie. The car passed scrutineering several times during that GP, and there was nothing outside the regulations. Afterwards, a clarification by FIA deemed the floor illegal. This is no different than McLaren's third pedal in 98 or the Michelin tyres in 03: was McLaren "running an illegal car" back then? Hypocrite.
2) He first says that Stepney told McLaren about the rear wing separator, and later he says that it was "visible for everyone": but they needed someone to tell them? Yeah right.
3) As has already been mentioned here, it is ok to encourage employees to secretly tell the authorities about something not legal within their team. RD seems to think that the right path to do this is to tell your competition first :rolleyes:
4) And he keeps talking about the "illegal device". If we have to believe him, we have to assume that the marshalls at Australia are corrupt? Why doesn't he ask for punishment for these officials?
5) He says McLaren "installed a firewall" so that Coughlan avoided receiving emails from Stepney. So, McLaren's computer technicians cannot make one of their users to filter his email. I have to assume then that McLaren has a huge problem with spam :p :
6) RD says that Ferrari has no evidence of anyone other than Coughlan at McLaren with knowledge of the documents. Yet Ferrari has Coughlan's affidavit saying otherwise. He says that Coughlan showed a diagram "but without saying where it came from", and that Neale apparently "closed his eyes" or something ( ;) ) when Coughlan tried to show him. But they didn't know, yeah right. Try to imagine the situation: Coughlan tries to show Ferrari's documents to Neale, he refuses to see them, and he doesn't mention the episode to anyone else at McLaren's :eek:
7) When he addresses the use of the Ferrari documents (quite unnecessarily, I would say, if he had already established that the documents never were at their factory), he only mentions use of "performance enhacements". As has been mentioned several times, of course they cannot use Ferrari's blueprints in April or May to do any changes to their car already running races. But the documents were about way more than just drawings of the car. There was a lot of operational data, which of course he doesn't mention.
8) Next he says that "Coughlan acted secretly", after having mentioned at least two attempts of Coughlan to show the documents to other people at McLaren.
9) The last few paragraphs sound quite convincing to me. But they don't change the previous contents of the letter.
In summary, quite a liar, our friend RD, and a bad one for that matter.
The "F1 Circus" travels around the world together and spends most of the year together. They're really one big incestuous family.
I'm kinda surprised this type of thing doesn't happen more often.... or is this just a case of someone getting caught.
At the end of the day, the FIA is going to have to just kill the whole thing for the good of the sport. Because to penalise Mclaren is going to be seen by half the world as unfair, while NOT penalising them will be looked on as equally unfair by the other half.
Just this thread is a good example of this, as people reading the same articles are using the same article to justify completely opposed points of view.
So his detailed letter is not a response to the fact that Ferrari have refused to accept the FIA hearing verdict, despite being allowed to present their evidence and take part in the procedings, and have repeatedly made unproven allegations via the media without producing any new evidence to back them up?Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
Me-thinks you oversimplify things a little :) but Max has given Ferrari another opportunity. If they have the evidence then there shouldn't be a problem. If not...Well, let's wait and see.
This is my only real problem with the contents of that letter. You could add Jordan's anti-stall device in '99 to that list, of course. Again, not illegal at the time, but clarified as such afterwards. Therefore, I have no problem with Ferrari's Australia victory and don't feel that they deserve censure regarding it.Quote:
Originally Posted by tinchote