The FIA has summoned representatives of the Renault F1 team to answer charges of possessing confidential McLaren information, as a new spying scandal threatened to engulf the sport on Thursday.

Two months after McLaren was disqualified from the 2007 constructors' championship and fined up to $US100m when its staff were found of having secret Ferrari technical documents, the governing body has turned its attention to the team which won both titles in 2005 and 2006 with Fernando Alonso and leads the chase to re-sign the uncontracted Spaniard.

"Representatives of the Renault F1 Team have been requested to appear before a hearing of the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Monaco on Thursday, December 6, 2007," read an FIA statement.

"The team representatives have been called to answer a charge that between September 2006 and October 2007, in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, the Renault F1 Team had unauthorised possession of documents and confidential information belonging to Vodafone McLaren Mercedes," the statement continued.

"Including, but not limited to the layout and critical dimensions of the McLaren F1 car, together with details of the McLaren fuelling system, gear assembly, oil cooling system, hydraulic control system and a novel suspension component used by the 2006 and 2007 McLaren F1 cars."

McLaren lawyers informed the FIA that Renault had the information during the September 'Spygate' hearings, but Flavio Briatore publicly denied his team had done anything wrong.

“First, if somebody tells me it’s the same [as McLaren's situation], I sue somebody, quickly,” he said in the FIA press conference during the Belgian Grand Prix.

“Second, it’s not an investigation regarding myself and the team.

“Third, we give all the information to the Federation, at least when we found out something, and this is it.

“And I give the evidence as well to McLaren.”

Renault’s involvement in Formula 1’s latest spying scandal may have been far more extensive than originally perceived, if details of a briefing document leaked to ITV-F1.com outlining the evidence McLaren has submitted to the FIA are proved correct.

The ramifications of these allegations have the potential to equal or even dwarf those of the original 'Spygate' hearings in September.

According to the briefing, McLaren alleges in its submission to the FIA World Motor Sport Council that its former engineer Phil Mackereth loaded 33 files, containing more than 780 individual drawings, onto Renault’s computer system.

The memo claims this information amounted to the entire technical blueprint of McLaren’s 2006 and 2007 cars.

The Woking team alleges that these files, contained on 11 floppy disks, were uploaded onto 11 Renault company computers and were discussed by up to 18 team personnel, including what it called the 'Renault seven' – senior engineering chiefs and heads of department, among them chief designer Tim Densham.

ITV-F1.com has learned that McLaren’s solicitors, Baker McKenzie, contend in their submission to the FIA that the team’s confidential design information was “knowingly, deliberately and widely disseminated and discussed within the Renault F1 design and engineering team, thereby providing them with a clear benefit and unfair advantage.”

Renault faces a charge of possessing intellectual property belonging to McLaren – in breach of Article 151c of F1’s International Sporting Code – at a hearing of the World Motor Sport Council on December 6.

More at ITV-F1.com

sigh...

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=41399

On the eve of the World Motor Sport Council Hearing in Paris, which will convene for Renault to answer charges of possessing intellectual property belonging to McLaren - in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting code - the latter team has moved to redefine certain elements of the briefing, leaked to the press in late November.

The briefing asserted damning evidence that suggested Renault's part in the scandal could be even larger than that of McLaren's in the Ferrari "Spygate" affair, which cost the Woking team up to $US100m in fines and all of its constructors' points.

But McLaren now claims only nine Renault employees, rather than the stated 18, admitted to seeing the confidential McLaren data brought to the team by engineer Phil Mackereth in September 2006.

In addition only 13 engineers in all made a total of 18 statements over the affair.

McLaren's release on Wednesday also added that a back-up copy of the information was made to an 'unknown' number of Renault servers and tapes after it was loaded onto Renault's T: server, rather than a total of 11 computers as stated in the brief.

Furthermore McLaren pointed out that when printed, the documentation came to a total of 762 pages rather than the claimed 780, and moved to clarify the breifing statement that the data in question amounted to the "entire technical blueprint of the 2006 and 2007 McLaren car".

The correction read: "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."

Renault was not penalised for possessing confidential McLaren technical information due to “insufficient evidence” that it gained any advantage from it, the FIA revealed on Friday.

In a statement summarising the main findings of Thursday’s World Motor Sport Council hearing, the governing body confirmed that former McLaren engineer Phil Mackereth took a large amount of McLaren intellectual property with him to Renault.

But it said only a small proportion of this information was seen by any of his Renault colleagues, in the form of four drawings of parts from McLaren’s car – and judged that these were of no benefit to Renault.

It therefore concluded that no penalty was warranted “due to the lack of evidence that the championship has been affected”.

In arriving at its verdict the WMSC drew a crucial distinction between the information Mackereth took from McLaren and that which actually disseminated within Renault – and said it could only be concerned with the latter.

...

It found that Mackereth had shown only four drawings of McLaren parts – of the fuel system, the gearbox assembly and damper systems – to other Renault employees, and the conclusion of the FIA’s technical department was that three of these “were either of no use to Renault or were not in fact used by Renault”.

The fourth drawing depicted an innovative ‘J-damper’ system developed by McLaren as a substitute for the tuned mass dampers which were banned by the FIA in July 2006.

Renault admitted to using this information when it requested a rule clarification from the FIA due to concerns about the legality of McLaren’s damper system.

However, the WMSC said the hypothetical design Renault supplied to the governing body suggested it did not have meaningful or reliable knowledge of the damper system actually being used by McLaren.

...

And whereas in the McLaren/Ferrari spying affair the WMSC suggested there was an ongoing transfer of information from Ferrari’s Nigel Stepney to McLaren’s Mike Coughlan and others within McLaren over an extended period of time, it concluded that this was not the case with Renault.

...

But the FIA made clear that it reserved the right to call Renault back before another WMSC hearing should new evidence come to light.

“It should be noted that in the event of new information coming to light which calls into question the WMSC’s conclusions in this decision, this matter may be re-opened by the FIA,” the statement said.

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=41409

Now we wait for Flav to sue Ron & Co. for defamation.

You know what, I reckon each and every team should apply for a copyright on their vehicle designs. That way, nobody can leak them out.

Originally posted by iveco:

You know what, I reckon each and every team should apply for a copyright on their vehicle designs. That way, nobody can leak them out.

Uhhh, say what? Copyright doesn't do anything to prevent leaks - it only provides recourse in the event of copying.

Originally posted by Gedanken:

Uhhh, say what? Copyright doesn't do anything to prevent leaks - it only provides recourse in the event of copying.

Yeah, I think you are right.

What I meant was that if Macca's designs were copyrighted, Flav wouldn't be able to sue Ron and Co for claiming the blueprints were copied if they were ever leaked out.

Originally posted by iveco:

What I meant was that if Macca's designs were copyrighted, Flav wouldn't be able to sue Ron and Co for claiming the blueprints were copied if they were ever leaked out.

But McLaren stole Ferrari's designs, not Renault's. if Flav is going to sue for anything, it'll be for defamation through McLaren's accusations.