F1: Renault - Theft or Handling Stolen Goods?

[Rory Phoulorie]

Thursday 6th December 2007

Though you might have thought the FIA had found enough ways to stick two fingers up at McLaren this season, they found another way on Thursday (and may find another on Friday).

The decision by the World Motor Sports Council to find Renault guilty of being in possession of McLaren intellectual property for over a year but issue no punishment is being widely reported as similar to the first McLaren/Stepneygate affair in July.

Then, McLaren were found guilty but not punished because the FIA could not prove that the team had used the information from the 780-page technical dossier. Ferrari were livid at that interpretation of the events and immediately lodged an appeal to get the decision overturned.

Before that appeal could be heard the FIA were tipped off by Ron Dennis himself that there was more to it than even he had been informed. And it was only after it was revealed that there had been e.mails and telephone calls between Ferrari engineer Nigel Stepney and the McLaren team that they were fined $100m. However the FIA could still not point to one part of the McLaren car that benefited from the designs acquired by Mike Coughlan.

In his defence of the steep fine during the Belgian GP weekend, a rattled Max Mosley said that this really wasn't the point, the fact was that McLaren had been able to have a good long look at Ferrari's design process and what would they pay for information like that on the open market, eh...?

Fast forward to today and we find that Renault have done exactly the same thing, yet the price they have to pay for having a good long look at two (yes, ladies and gentlemen two) McLaren designs is - seemingly - nothing at all. Max must be fuming.

However to compare the two cases is missing a really important criminal point. A Renault employee made a predetermined plan to steal McLaren designs and took them with him to his new team.

McLaren had a serendipitous bit of good luck (though it now seems otherwise) in that Nigel Stepney was so fed up with his lack of promotion at Ferrari that he first started tipping Mike Coughlan off about Ferrari cheats to get their car past race scrutineering despite its bendy floor, and then gave him the big technical dossier. Not only that, but the two of them clearly had plans to take the Ferrari information off to Honda and had a preliminary interview with Nick Fry.

So while Renault were guilty of stealing information, McLaren were given it. In a criminal court there is a big difference between theft and handling stolen goods. Which is what it comes down to.

If Flavio Briatore's team get away with no sanction at all, it will be as big an escape as the escape of 1994 when Briatore's Benetton team got away with having traction control on the car, yet keeping their title. No doubt as Flav sits in the director's box of QPR football club along with co-investor, FIA F1 commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone, he'll reflect that he got away with it yet again.

Andrew Davies


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