F1: McLaren forced into embarrassing climbdown

[Rory Phoulorie]

Thursday 6th December 2007

McLaren have been forced into releasing an embarrassing statement ahead of Thursday's World Motor Sport Council hearing in Monaco.

Renault will answer a charge of being in unauthorised possession of documents and confidential information belonging to the Woking -based team.

The case involves engineer Phil Mackereth, who joined Renault from McLaren and took with him information proprietary to McLaren and contained on floppy disk.

Ahead of the case, details of a legal dossier into Renault's role in the spy saga were leaked to the media a fortnight ago.

McLaren have confirmed it was they who issued the briefing, and into making a number of factual errors.

At the insistence of world governing body, the FIA, McLaren have been asked to correct their mistakes.

It cannot be overlooked the FIA have ordered McLaren into their climbdown on the eve of the hearing.

The statement read: "In our briefing, we stated that there were 18 witness statements from Renault employees admitting that they had viewed McLaren confidential information.

"To the extent this implied 18 different Renault employees admitted viewing McLaren confidential information, it was inaccurate.

"Thirteen Renault F1 employees provided 18 witness statements and nine of them have so far admitted they viewed and discussed the confidential technical information belonging to McLaren.

"We stated the confidential information on computer disks was uploaded onto 11 Renault computers. This is not accurate.

"Mr Mackereth copied information onto 11 computer discs. The information on these disks was uploaded by Renault IT staff in September 2006 onto Renault's T:drive and then transferred by Mr Mackereth to his personal home directory stored on Renault's network server.

"A back-up copy of the material on Mr Mackereth's personal directory was made onto an unknown number of Renault's back-up servers/tapes.

"Our briefing could have been interpreted as suggesting the Renault employees who admitted sight of McLaren confidential information all viewed it on computer screens.

"Only Mr Mackereth and Mr Hardie admit viewing McLaren confidential information on Mr Mackereth's computer.

"The other seven employees who have admitted seeing McLaren confidential information admit seeing it in the form of computer print outs or hard-copy documents.

"We said that the information on the 11 computer disks taken by Mr Mackereth included 780 individual drawings. This was an error.

"The information taken by Mr Mackereth on floppy disks, in hard- copy form and by email amounts to 762 pages when printed out.

"The 11 computer disks included 18 individual technical drawings.

"Mr Mackereth also admits he took hard copy drawings of McLaren's dampers.

"We said the McLaren information amounted to the "entire technical blueprint of the 2006 and 2007 McLaren car. This requires clarification.

"The position is that, the McLaren drawings plus the information in a confidential MP4-22A specification document taken by Mr Mackereth constitute a technical definition of the fundamental layout of the 2007 McLaren car and the technical details of its innovative and performance enhancing systems."

The FIA refused to comment ahead of the hearing.


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