Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:36 am
DTM, perhaps? Whatever, they will still be too quick for himF1greyhound wrote:DMT? Would you enlighten us, Julian? -
(check out the time of the DMT post.)
(check out the time of the DMT post.)
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The Ferrari investigation (McLaren issues apology)
Page 20 of 22
(check out the time of the DMT post.)
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:42 am
The FIA have released the hearing transcripts from both sessions (the 26th of July and 13th of September)
Here are the transcripts of the questioning to Pedro de la Rosa and Ron Dennis at the second hearing, it makes for interesting reading.
(note that some information has been removed due to confidentiality)
Ian MILL
Mr de la Rosa, you have a statement in front of you. Is that your signature on the final page?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, it is.
Ian MILL
Do you recognise this as your witness statement to the World Motor Sport Council?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes.
Ian MILL
Are the contents true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes.
Ian MILL
Thank you. I have no additional questions for my witness.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr de la Rosa, please turn to paragraph 8 of your Witness Statement, in which you tell us about the observations made on your competitors’ cars. It is correct to state, is it not, that you, personally, and McLaren as a team, are very interested in what your closest competitors are doing.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, we are interested in all of our competitors, especially after qualifying, based on the delta in lap time, between the Q2 and Q3. We deduce from this – as do all participants – the expected pit stop
strategy arrivals. We do this for everyone.
Nigel TOZZI
You covered just one point there; but you make four points in Paragraph 8 on the various stages of observations. The difference in lap time between Q2 and Q3 is important because one of the pieces of information that is of importance to you is when a competing team is going to make its pit stop.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, we look at all of this. We look also at sound analysis, based on onboard camera footage. We analyse the sound, look at the revolutions and thereby determine the speed. This helps us overlay the speed traces of our competitors’ cars. We do this on every race we can.
Nigel TOZZI
You would not do that if you did not think the information resulting from it would be of no use. You only do it because you think the information is going to be useful, don’t you.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
We do it regularly, at all times, as a discipline. That is regular practice. Every morning, we have our homework done.
Nigel TOZZI
Can you turn forward in your witness statement to Paragraph 16, where you refer to an e-mail sent to Mike Coughlan. Keeping your witness statement open, can you find or be given a copy of that email? It is in the FIA dossier, behind Tab 5, page 61. This is the e-mail where you asked Mr Coughlan’s about the red car’s weight distribution. The red car is the Ferrari, is it not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Absolutely.
Nigel TOZZI
You say that “it would be important for us to know so that we could try it in the simulator”. Two points: did you address that question to Mr Coughlan because you expected him to know the answer?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I was expecting him to at least look for the answer, because at the Australian Gland Prix, one of the cars was picked up. Whenever this happens, everyone is eager to calculate the weight distribution
based on the point at which the car is picked up, the angle, etc. Also, in the back of my mind, I knew that he had told me in which lap Kimi would stop. This was not correct, as it was one lap later, but still, it was possible that he had more information.
Nigel TOZZI
He has been described as Mr Lowe as having the role of a functional manager of a drawing office. What would you expect the functional manager of a drawing office to know the weight distribution
of the Ferrari car?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Regardless of his title, Mike is someone I knew him from my Arrows day in 1999; I had quite a good and long-standing relationship with him. Whether he was Functional Manager or Chief Designer, did not matter.
Nigel TOZZI
Is the real reason not that you already knew, at this time, that he was receiving information from Nigel Stepney?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
That is not correct. I learned from Mike that he was receiving confidential information from Nigel Stepney on 22 March, when I went to the simulator.
When I asked about the weight distribution, he came back with two text messages, saying that this was the weight distribution.
Nigel TOZZI
You then used that information in the simulator, did you not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No, but I must tell you why. When Mike told me the figure, it was so radically different from ours that there was no way that our care could ever achieve that. The whole philosophy of our car was. We had managed to . There was no point. At the previous stage, I thought the information might be important and that we could try it in the simulator, but then the figures were so different.
Nigel TOZZI
Your intention had been to use any information that Mike Coughlan sent to you to try things out in the simulator.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Had it been an interesting figure, I might possibly have at least tested it. Unfortunately, at that moment, I did not think that it was interesting.
Nigel TOZZI
The information that he gave you, as you state in Paragraph 17 of your Witness Statement was “precise weight distributions and also a precise figure for the aerobalance”. That is information that is very useful, isn’t it?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No.
Nigel TOZZI
Let me suggest why: for optimising the car’s stability and balance.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I don’t know how much you know about Formula 1. The aerobalance is dependent primarily on the wind tunnel data. It is a number, but every wind tunnel is different. He also sent me a text message with that figure.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr de la Rosa, having asked this question and having received a very precise answer from Mr Coughlan, are you asking the World Motor Sport Council that you then did not share that information with any of the engineers when you went to the simulator on the next day?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes.
Nigel TOZZI
You had that information on your mobile phone then, but then kept it to yourself.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
At that stage, I kept it to myself, then I shared it with Fernando. All of the information that can to me from Mike, I shared with Fernando. I did not share it with any engineers.
Nigel TOZZI
What was the point of sharing it with Fernando if you believed the information to be of no value, given that the McLaren car was so different from the McLaren car.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Because it was information. It was information I had learned from Mike. It is something that all drivers do. Drivers talk about set-ups, formulas, cars. This is common practice.
Nigel TOZZI
And with your engineers, Mr De la Rosa.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not. We are focused on our cars. I can assure you of that.
Nigel TOZZI
Let us look at Paragraph 20 of your Witness Statement. You say that, on 22 March, Mr Coughlan told you that he believed the Ferrari system to be based on a “ - ”, which . You gave evidence saying that you did not understand what he was talking about.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, I am a driver. I am not an engineer. When he started talking about the - , that was too much to me.
Nigel TOZZI
Why do you think that Mr Coughlan whispered this to you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
When he whispered to me, I realised that he was not willing for anyone to listen.
Nigel TOZZI
This was the occasion when he told you, according to your statement, that he was receiving information from Mr Stepney.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. He told me that when I asked him how he could be so precise about the weight distribution.
Nigel TOZZI
When did you have this conversation?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
On the 22nd.
Nigel TOZZI
I think there is a misunderstanding. I am referring to the 2nd.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I know. It was before he told me this. That is what I was talking about.
Nigel TOZZI
You also stated that he told you about the way that Ferrari inflated their tyres. You think that is the only information and were surprised by this. When he told you he was receiving information from Mr Stepney, whom you understood to be the Chief Mechanic at Ferrari, did you ask him any further questions about that?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I understood that he was an ex-Chief Mechanic at Ferrari. I did not anything more.
Nigel TOZZI
From the way Mr Coughlan told you this, did you understand that he was entitled to this information, or that it was something that he had obtained improperly?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No, it was his friend. Possibly, they went to dinner together and had relations that I did not know about. I expected, as it always happened, that if they talked about engineering – Mike’s passion – they would talk about their cars. In this business, I always expected Mike to tell him as well thing about our car. You give and you receive; that is how it works between drivers.
Nigel TOZZI
It is not usual for a Chief Mechanic of a rival team, particularly Ferrari, to pass on very detailed information of this nature, though. You would not expect that, would you, Mr de la Rosa.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not know what Mike was giving back.
Nigel TOZZI
You knew it was wrong, didn’t you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
It was common practice in Formula 1. If that is wrong, then we are all wrong. That is what I have been doing. I have been listening with all of our fellow drivers. I can give you lots of examples, if you want. I don’t know what all of this is about. This is common practice. We talk about car setups, rivals, etc., all day long. It is our passion. It is as simple as that. There is nothing else.
Nigel TOZZI
I suggest that you knew it was wrong that Coughlan was receiving this information and that you did nothing about it.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did nothing about it.
Nigel TOZZI
And you are an employee of McLaren, are you not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. I am an agent.
Nigel TOZZI
You work for McLaren.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I am one of the test drivers, but strictly speaking, I am not an employee.
Nigel TOZZI
I accept that. Let us look at Paragraph 24 of your witness statement. This is the testing you say was performed. You say that, “I did not mention to any engineers any of what Mike had told me.” Mr de la Rosa, bearing in mind the answers you told the World Council only five minutes ago – that this was your passion, that you do it all the time – why didn’t you exchange this information with your engineers. Or did you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not. I did not because there was no point in talking about things that were completely out of our range. You also have to be careful about what you talk about with your engineers. At the end of the day, you do not know how reliable Nigel Stepney was. Mike Coughlan had made mistakes
too, with the stops in Bahrain.
Nigel TOZZI
I will come to that. You are contradicting yourself. You are offering as your explanation of the fact that Coughlan was receiving the information from Stepney because it was a shared passion and that everyone talked.
But then you are saying, in the next breath, that you did not mention it to anyone else. That is a contradictory position.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not mention it to anyone else but Fernando Alonso. Everything I knew from Mike is in the emails to Fernando.
Nigel TOZZI
I will give you a chance to answer this: why not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Because the weight distribution was so different from ours and our philosophy that it was out of the question.
Nigel TOZZI
Please turn forward to paragraph 29, where you discuss the e-mail that you sent to Mr Alonso, on 25 March. Keeping that open, can you find the e-mail in the FIA Dossier, behind Tab 5 (page 52 in the English version and page 48 in the Spanish version). This is a string of e-mails. You are
reporting to Mr Alonso on how you fared in the simulator, to update him on projects you were working on. Item 1 concerns the variable brake balance. Toward the end of that, you say “with the information we have, we believe Ferrari has a similar system, but they have three positions which they change from the cockpit. They have a [blank]” – the blank reflecting exactly what Mike Coughlan had told you three days earlier – “which apparently - . We get the same results ”.
In your witness statement, you say that you had not really understood what Mr Coughlan had told you. If that was so, why bother passing this information on to Mr Alonso?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
When I explained to Fernando the brake balance system, which we had been developing since 7 February, I explained our system (as in Point 1). In the last point of that paragraph, I say that we think Ferrari has a similar system, but they have three positions which they change from the
cockpit. That is what I knew from the analysis that we had performed based on the camera footage and a study that some McLaren engineers had done. Our system, I must say, was developed well before this e-mail. It is based on problems that we had in our Week 48 November tests: we were and we already started to think that we should . The process had
thus begun well before that. In the books there is a picture of the Ferrari lever. This is not strictly confidential and unknown to everyone but experts. These are books that are commercially available. There is nothing confidential.
Nigel TOZZI
You wrote, “They have a , which - . You are passing on to Mr Alonso exactly what you said you had been told by Mr Coughlan three days earlier, though you say that you had not understood it.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, exactly. What does this mean ?
Nigel TOZZI
Why were you passing this on to Mr Alonso?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I was passing everything along. It did not make much sense to me, but I was passing everything I heard along. Everything I passed on did not have to be 100% certain or fully-integrated by myself.
Nigel TOZZI
How did you know that you were achieving the same result, ?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Our system is .
Nigel TOZZI
But how did you know that you were achieving the same result? The same result as Ferrari?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
We were adjusting the brake balance. I was explaining to him that we did that , a very different system.
Nigel TOZZI
Let us look at Item 2: the flexible rear-wing. You were aware that McLaren had tried to raise an objection to Ferrari’s flexible rear-wing with the FIA, based on information provided by Mr Stepney to Mr Coughlan.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. What was the objection?
Nigel TOZZI
It had been suggested that the flexible rear-wing was illegal. Did you know that?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not know that. Flexible and illegal are two different concepts.
Nigel TOZZI
I am not suggesting that it was illegal. Indeed, the FIA, ruled that it was acceptable. I was asking whether you knew that McLaren had raised an objection, or query. I have tried out a flexible rear-wing, based on data in the wind tunnel. This is also a copy of the system we think Ferrari uses. Mr de la Rosa, you do not know exactly the origin of that idea, do
you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I can assure you that it did not come from Mike. He never told me about aerobalance or elasticity. We had evidence, based on sound analysis, that Ferrari was achieving higher topspin than us. We could only assume that this was from elasticity.
Nigel TOZZI
Yet you clearly thought that McLaren engineers had been copying Ferrari’s system, making you two- to three-tenths quicker.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
In the simulator, we tried an aero-map, all theoretical, nothing physical. Based on those numbers, we were able to achieve higher topspin. This is what I tested in the simulator. As far as I know, we never raced with that. It was just another item tested in the simulator.
Nigel TOZZI
You pass information from Coughlan to Alonso, and also pass on details of how the tyres are inflated, saying, “We’ll have to try it. It’s easy!” In other words, you were intending to use that information.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, I was interested in the . It is part of the air. When I was in Malaysia, I went to our Bridgestone engineer and asked him whether other teams had been using this. Usually, the engineers there are able to tell you about such details, compared to other teams, having a report
after every race. I went to him because he was the person best-equipped to respond. He told me that this had been used in the past, but with no clear result.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr Alonso replied to you, and it is perfectly clear that he was interested in some of the things you were telling him.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
He sounded interested, yes. That is one of the main reasons why I went to Bridgestone.
Nigel TOZZI
He thought it was very important to test the alternative tyre inflation technique, did he not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
He was interested. He replied saying that we should try this, etc. This is one of the main reasons why I went to the Bridgestone engineer.
Nigel TOZZI
You came back saying, “I agree 100% that we must test it.” Yet now you are telling us that you did not.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes. If the Bridgestone engineer had told us that this was a very interesting test – and this would have been a surprise, as he would have told us in January – then I might have pursued. But I realised that it was nothing.
Nigel TOZZI
You are told that Ferrari is doing this and Alonso becomes very excited about it. You talk to a Bridgestone engineer, who says that this is not necessarily any better. You still know Ferrari is doing it, yet you simply dropped the point?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes. What is wrong with that? There is so much information going in and out. We are listening and doing things every day. That is part of work. We are always in contact with people doing similar things. We have daily contact with our drivers. Information flows.
Nigel TOZZI
You preferred the Bridgestone engineer’s opinion, rather than what Ferrari was known to do?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
If my Bridgestone engineer tells me that this has been tested in the past and that it is not necessarily better, then I accept that. He is the expert; I am only the driver.
Nigel TOZZI
Let us turn forward in the bundle to page 62 and the exchange of e-mails from mid-April. Mr de la Rosa, you were very persistent about asking Mr Coughlan to give you details of the Ferrari braking system. You were persistent because Mr Alonso wanted to know.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Not necessarily. Fernando was very interested in the , when he answered back.
Nigel TOZZI
At the top of page 62, you told Mr Coughlan, “Come on, explain the system, Fernando wants to know”.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Here, I must be fair to Fernando. I was very interested in his explaining the system to me. I used Fernando to make him give me a bit more information, if he could. It was not Fernando
Nigel TOZZI
So it was a white lie. Fernando did not want to know.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Fernando did not ask me.
Nigel TOZZI
You are saying that you persisted in asking for this information, purely as a matter of curiosity.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Mike had told me that the . This did not make much sense to me.
I thought that with a better explanation of this, I could grasp it. The e-mail did not clear anything up to me, though, and that is why I never asked for more information. It was too complicated.
Nigel TOZZI
One final point. This is the information you were receiving about pit stops. You make the point that Raikkonen had stopped in Lap 19, rather than Lap 18. As you well know, that is simply a consequence of his being able to use up the last reserves of petrol.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
It could be for saving fuel or for any other reason.
Nigel TOZZI
In Paragraphs 37 and 28 of your witness statement, you tell us that Coughlan also sent you a text message, predicting when the Ferrari drivers would make their pit stops in Bahrain. You think you passed it on to Alonso. Mr Alonso’s very short statement does not deal with this. Then you say, “In the event that Mike’s predictions prove wholly wrong for both drivers, this made me think that the information may not have been reliable in the first place”. Is that true, Mr de la Rosa?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
From what I recall, he gave me the stopping laps and they were wrong for both drivers.
Nigel TOZZI
Why was that? Do you remember what happened in the Bahrain Grand Prix. There was a safety car from the first to fourth lap, was there not? Do you remember that, Mr de la Rosa?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No.
Nigel TOZZI
I am happy for everyone to check that, if they wish. If there is a safety car on the track, then earlier predictions of pit-stops will be wrong. Do you agree with this?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
It could be, because one would save fuel. When he told me, I did not realize this.
Nigel TOZZI
The fact that the predictions did not proved accurate in the Bahrain Grand Prix did not prove that the information was not reliable, but that it was simply a reflection of the safety car’s being out.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
This could be. I did not recall the presence of the safety car.
Nigel TOZZI
If you were being full and frank with this Council, you would have been careful to include this in your Witness Statement, in Paragraph 38, rather than the very misleading information that you were being given faulty information.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. I honestly forgot that there was a safety car in the first few laps in Bahrain. That is how reliable Mike’s information was. That is the whole story. This information was never that relevant to me. I have had, in the past ten days, to go into my computers in Barcelona, Zurich, looking back to what I did six months ago. In context, events from six months ago were nothing. We are making a mess out of all of this for nothing: whether or not there was a safety car? I had forgotten about all of this information until the time came to find these e-mails.
Nigel TOZZI
When you told Mr Alonso that the Ferrari information was coming from Nigel Stepney, who had been the Chief Engineer at Ferrari, in the e-mail we have seen, did Mr Alonso say to you, “What do you think you are doing? We should not be getting that kind of information from someone at
Ferrari? That is wholly improper.”
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No he did not.
Nigel TOZZI
He was happy to use the information as long as it was valuable, wasn’t he?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
He did not say he was happy, but I fed him all of the information. We are touching the Ferrari information, I was sending him an e-mail after every test in the simulator, every test, to keep him up to speed. This is only an example of the many e-mails I was exchanging. I had never mentioned
Ferrari before. This was our way of working at that stage.
Max MOSLEY
Thank you, Mr de la Rosa.
Your next witness.
Here are the transcripts of the questioning to Pedro de la Rosa and Ron Dennis at the second hearing, it makes for interesting reading.
(note that some information has been removed due to confidentiality)
Ian MILL
Mr de la Rosa, you have a statement in front of you. Is that your signature on the final page?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, it is.
Ian MILL
Do you recognise this as your witness statement to the World Motor Sport Council?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes.
Ian MILL
Are the contents true to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes.
Ian MILL
Thank you. I have no additional questions for my witness.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr de la Rosa, please turn to paragraph 8 of your Witness Statement, in which you tell us about the observations made on your competitors’ cars. It is correct to state, is it not, that you, personally, and McLaren as a team, are very interested in what your closest competitors are doing.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, we are interested in all of our competitors, especially after qualifying, based on the delta in lap time, between the Q2 and Q3. We deduce from this – as do all participants – the expected pit stop
strategy arrivals. We do this for everyone.
Nigel TOZZI
You covered just one point there; but you make four points in Paragraph 8 on the various stages of observations. The difference in lap time between Q2 and Q3 is important because one of the pieces of information that is of importance to you is when a competing team is going to make its pit stop.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, we look at all of this. We look also at sound analysis, based on onboard camera footage. We analyse the sound, look at the revolutions and thereby determine the speed. This helps us overlay the speed traces of our competitors’ cars. We do this on every race we can.
Nigel TOZZI
You would not do that if you did not think the information resulting from it would be of no use. You only do it because you think the information is going to be useful, don’t you.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
We do it regularly, at all times, as a discipline. That is regular practice. Every morning, we have our homework done.
Nigel TOZZI
Can you turn forward in your witness statement to Paragraph 16, where you refer to an e-mail sent to Mike Coughlan. Keeping your witness statement open, can you find or be given a copy of that email? It is in the FIA dossier, behind Tab 5, page 61. This is the e-mail where you asked Mr Coughlan’s about the red car’s weight distribution. The red car is the Ferrari, is it not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Absolutely.
Nigel TOZZI
You say that “it would be important for us to know so that we could try it in the simulator”. Two points: did you address that question to Mr Coughlan because you expected him to know the answer?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I was expecting him to at least look for the answer, because at the Australian Gland Prix, one of the cars was picked up. Whenever this happens, everyone is eager to calculate the weight distribution
based on the point at which the car is picked up, the angle, etc. Also, in the back of my mind, I knew that he had told me in which lap Kimi would stop. This was not correct, as it was one lap later, but still, it was possible that he had more information.
Nigel TOZZI
He has been described as Mr Lowe as having the role of a functional manager of a drawing office. What would you expect the functional manager of a drawing office to know the weight distribution
of the Ferrari car?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Regardless of his title, Mike is someone I knew him from my Arrows day in 1999; I had quite a good and long-standing relationship with him. Whether he was Functional Manager or Chief Designer, did not matter.
Nigel TOZZI
Is the real reason not that you already knew, at this time, that he was receiving information from Nigel Stepney?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
That is not correct. I learned from Mike that he was receiving confidential information from Nigel Stepney on 22 March, when I went to the simulator.
When I asked about the weight distribution, he came back with two text messages, saying that this was the weight distribution.
Nigel TOZZI
You then used that information in the simulator, did you not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No, but I must tell you why. When Mike told me the figure, it was so radically different from ours that there was no way that our care could ever achieve that. The whole philosophy of our car was. We had managed to . There was no point. At the previous stage, I thought the information might be important and that we could try it in the simulator, but then the figures were so different.
Nigel TOZZI
Your intention had been to use any information that Mike Coughlan sent to you to try things out in the simulator.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Had it been an interesting figure, I might possibly have at least tested it. Unfortunately, at that moment, I did not think that it was interesting.
Nigel TOZZI
The information that he gave you, as you state in Paragraph 17 of your Witness Statement was “precise weight distributions and also a precise figure for the aerobalance”. That is information that is very useful, isn’t it?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No.
Nigel TOZZI
Let me suggest why: for optimising the car’s stability and balance.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I don’t know how much you know about Formula 1. The aerobalance is dependent primarily on the wind tunnel data. It is a number, but every wind tunnel is different. He also sent me a text message with that figure.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr de la Rosa, having asked this question and having received a very precise answer from Mr Coughlan, are you asking the World Motor Sport Council that you then did not share that information with any of the engineers when you went to the simulator on the next day?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes.
Nigel TOZZI
You had that information on your mobile phone then, but then kept it to yourself.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
At that stage, I kept it to myself, then I shared it with Fernando. All of the information that can to me from Mike, I shared with Fernando. I did not share it with any engineers.
Nigel TOZZI
What was the point of sharing it with Fernando if you believed the information to be of no value, given that the McLaren car was so different from the McLaren car.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Because it was information. It was information I had learned from Mike. It is something that all drivers do. Drivers talk about set-ups, formulas, cars. This is common practice.
Nigel TOZZI
And with your engineers, Mr De la Rosa.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not. We are focused on our cars. I can assure you of that.
Nigel TOZZI
Let us look at Paragraph 20 of your Witness Statement. You say that, on 22 March, Mr Coughlan told you that he believed the Ferrari system to be based on a “ - ”, which . You gave evidence saying that you did not understand what he was talking about.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, I am a driver. I am not an engineer. When he started talking about the - , that was too much to me.
Nigel TOZZI
Why do you think that Mr Coughlan whispered this to you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
When he whispered to me, I realised that he was not willing for anyone to listen.
Nigel TOZZI
This was the occasion when he told you, according to your statement, that he was receiving information from Mr Stepney.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. He told me that when I asked him how he could be so precise about the weight distribution.
Nigel TOZZI
When did you have this conversation?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
On the 22nd.
Nigel TOZZI
I think there is a misunderstanding. I am referring to the 2nd.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I know. It was before he told me this. That is what I was talking about.
Nigel TOZZI
You also stated that he told you about the way that Ferrari inflated their tyres. You think that is the only information and were surprised by this. When he told you he was receiving information from Mr Stepney, whom you understood to be the Chief Mechanic at Ferrari, did you ask him any further questions about that?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I understood that he was an ex-Chief Mechanic at Ferrari. I did not anything more.
Nigel TOZZI
From the way Mr Coughlan told you this, did you understand that he was entitled to this information, or that it was something that he had obtained improperly?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No, it was his friend. Possibly, they went to dinner together and had relations that I did not know about. I expected, as it always happened, that if they talked about engineering – Mike’s passion – they would talk about their cars. In this business, I always expected Mike to tell him as well thing about our car. You give and you receive; that is how it works between drivers.
Nigel TOZZI
It is not usual for a Chief Mechanic of a rival team, particularly Ferrari, to pass on very detailed information of this nature, though. You would not expect that, would you, Mr de la Rosa.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not know what Mike was giving back.
Nigel TOZZI
You knew it was wrong, didn’t you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
It was common practice in Formula 1. If that is wrong, then we are all wrong. That is what I have been doing. I have been listening with all of our fellow drivers. I can give you lots of examples, if you want. I don’t know what all of this is about. This is common practice. We talk about car setups, rivals, etc., all day long. It is our passion. It is as simple as that. There is nothing else.
Nigel TOZZI
I suggest that you knew it was wrong that Coughlan was receiving this information and that you did nothing about it.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did nothing about it.
Nigel TOZZI
And you are an employee of McLaren, are you not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. I am an agent.
Nigel TOZZI
You work for McLaren.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I am one of the test drivers, but strictly speaking, I am not an employee.
Nigel TOZZI
I accept that. Let us look at Paragraph 24 of your witness statement. This is the testing you say was performed. You say that, “I did not mention to any engineers any of what Mike had told me.” Mr de la Rosa, bearing in mind the answers you told the World Council only five minutes ago – that this was your passion, that you do it all the time – why didn’t you exchange this information with your engineers. Or did you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not. I did not because there was no point in talking about things that were completely out of our range. You also have to be careful about what you talk about with your engineers. At the end of the day, you do not know how reliable Nigel Stepney was. Mike Coughlan had made mistakes
too, with the stops in Bahrain.
Nigel TOZZI
I will come to that. You are contradicting yourself. You are offering as your explanation of the fact that Coughlan was receiving the information from Stepney because it was a shared passion and that everyone talked.
But then you are saying, in the next breath, that you did not mention it to anyone else. That is a contradictory position.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not mention it to anyone else but Fernando Alonso. Everything I knew from Mike is in the emails to Fernando.
Nigel TOZZI
I will give you a chance to answer this: why not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Because the weight distribution was so different from ours and our philosophy that it was out of the question.
Nigel TOZZI
Please turn forward to paragraph 29, where you discuss the e-mail that you sent to Mr Alonso, on 25 March. Keeping that open, can you find the e-mail in the FIA Dossier, behind Tab 5 (page 52 in the English version and page 48 in the Spanish version). This is a string of e-mails. You are
reporting to Mr Alonso on how you fared in the simulator, to update him on projects you were working on. Item 1 concerns the variable brake balance. Toward the end of that, you say “with the information we have, we believe Ferrari has a similar system, but they have three positions which they change from the cockpit. They have a [blank]” – the blank reflecting exactly what Mike Coughlan had told you three days earlier – “which apparently - . We get the same results ”.
In your witness statement, you say that you had not really understood what Mr Coughlan had told you. If that was so, why bother passing this information on to Mr Alonso?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
When I explained to Fernando the brake balance system, which we had been developing since 7 February, I explained our system (as in Point 1). In the last point of that paragraph, I say that we think Ferrari has a similar system, but they have three positions which they change from the
cockpit. That is what I knew from the analysis that we had performed based on the camera footage and a study that some McLaren engineers had done. Our system, I must say, was developed well before this e-mail. It is based on problems that we had in our Week 48 November tests: we were and we already started to think that we should . The process had
thus begun well before that. In the books there is a picture of the Ferrari lever. This is not strictly confidential and unknown to everyone but experts. These are books that are commercially available. There is nothing confidential.
Nigel TOZZI
You wrote, “They have a , which - . You are passing on to Mr Alonso exactly what you said you had been told by Mr Coughlan three days earlier, though you say that you had not understood it.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, exactly. What does this mean ?
Nigel TOZZI
Why were you passing this on to Mr Alonso?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I was passing everything along. It did not make much sense to me, but I was passing everything I heard along. Everything I passed on did not have to be 100% certain or fully-integrated by myself.
Nigel TOZZI
How did you know that you were achieving the same result, ?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Our system is .
Nigel TOZZI
But how did you know that you were achieving the same result? The same result as Ferrari?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
We were adjusting the brake balance. I was explaining to him that we did that , a very different system.
Nigel TOZZI
Let us look at Item 2: the flexible rear-wing. You were aware that McLaren had tried to raise an objection to Ferrari’s flexible rear-wing with the FIA, based on information provided by Mr Stepney to Mr Coughlan.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. What was the objection?
Nigel TOZZI
It had been suggested that the flexible rear-wing was illegal. Did you know that?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I did not know that. Flexible and illegal are two different concepts.
Nigel TOZZI
I am not suggesting that it was illegal. Indeed, the FIA, ruled that it was acceptable. I was asking whether you knew that McLaren had raised an objection, or query. I have tried out a flexible rear-wing, based on data in the wind tunnel. This is also a copy of the system we think Ferrari uses. Mr de la Rosa, you do not know exactly the origin of that idea, do
you?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
I can assure you that it did not come from Mike. He never told me about aerobalance or elasticity. We had evidence, based on sound analysis, that Ferrari was achieving higher topspin than us. We could only assume that this was from elasticity.
Nigel TOZZI
Yet you clearly thought that McLaren engineers had been copying Ferrari’s system, making you two- to three-tenths quicker.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
In the simulator, we tried an aero-map, all theoretical, nothing physical. Based on those numbers, we were able to achieve higher topspin. This is what I tested in the simulator. As far as I know, we never raced with that. It was just another item tested in the simulator.
Nigel TOZZI
You pass information from Coughlan to Alonso, and also pass on details of how the tyres are inflated, saying, “We’ll have to try it. It’s easy!” In other words, you were intending to use that information.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes, I was interested in the . It is part of the air. When I was in Malaysia, I went to our Bridgestone engineer and asked him whether other teams had been using this. Usually, the engineers there are able to tell you about such details, compared to other teams, having a report
after every race. I went to him because he was the person best-equipped to respond. He told me that this had been used in the past, but with no clear result.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr Alonso replied to you, and it is perfectly clear that he was interested in some of the things you were telling him.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
He sounded interested, yes. That is one of the main reasons why I went to Bridgestone.
Nigel TOZZI
He thought it was very important to test the alternative tyre inflation technique, did he not?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
He was interested. He replied saying that we should try this, etc. This is one of the main reasons why I went to the Bridgestone engineer.
Nigel TOZZI
You came back saying, “I agree 100% that we must test it.” Yet now you are telling us that you did not.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes. If the Bridgestone engineer had told us that this was a very interesting test – and this would have been a surprise, as he would have told us in January – then I might have pursued. But I realised that it was nothing.
Nigel TOZZI
You are told that Ferrari is doing this and Alonso becomes very excited about it. You talk to a Bridgestone engineer, who says that this is not necessarily any better. You still know Ferrari is doing it, yet you simply dropped the point?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Yes. What is wrong with that? There is so much information going in and out. We are listening and doing things every day. That is part of work. We are always in contact with people doing similar things. We have daily contact with our drivers. Information flows.
Nigel TOZZI
You preferred the Bridgestone engineer’s opinion, rather than what Ferrari was known to do?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
If my Bridgestone engineer tells me that this has been tested in the past and that it is not necessarily better, then I accept that. He is the expert; I am only the driver.
Nigel TOZZI
Let us turn forward in the bundle to page 62 and the exchange of e-mails from mid-April. Mr de la Rosa, you were very persistent about asking Mr Coughlan to give you details of the Ferrari braking system. You were persistent because Mr Alonso wanted to know.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Not necessarily. Fernando was very interested in the , when he answered back.
Nigel TOZZI
At the top of page 62, you told Mr Coughlan, “Come on, explain the system, Fernando wants to know”.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Here, I must be fair to Fernando. I was very interested in his explaining the system to me. I used Fernando to make him give me a bit more information, if he could. It was not Fernando
Nigel TOZZI
So it was a white lie. Fernando did not want to know.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Fernando did not ask me.
Nigel TOZZI
You are saying that you persisted in asking for this information, purely as a matter of curiosity.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
Mike had told me that the . This did not make much sense to me.
I thought that with a better explanation of this, I could grasp it. The e-mail did not clear anything up to me, though, and that is why I never asked for more information. It was too complicated.
Nigel TOZZI
One final point. This is the information you were receiving about pit stops. You make the point that Raikkonen had stopped in Lap 19, rather than Lap 18. As you well know, that is simply a consequence of his being able to use up the last reserves of petrol.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
It could be for saving fuel or for any other reason.
Nigel TOZZI
In Paragraphs 37 and 28 of your witness statement, you tell us that Coughlan also sent you a text message, predicting when the Ferrari drivers would make their pit stops in Bahrain. You think you passed it on to Alonso. Mr Alonso’s very short statement does not deal with this. Then you say, “In the event that Mike’s predictions prove wholly wrong for both drivers, this made me think that the information may not have been reliable in the first place”. Is that true, Mr de la Rosa?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
From what I recall, he gave me the stopping laps and they were wrong for both drivers.
Nigel TOZZI
Why was that? Do you remember what happened in the Bahrain Grand Prix. There was a safety car from the first to fourth lap, was there not? Do you remember that, Mr de la Rosa?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No.
Nigel TOZZI
I am happy for everyone to check that, if they wish. If there is a safety car on the track, then earlier predictions of pit-stops will be wrong. Do you agree with this?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
It could be, because one would save fuel. When he told me, I did not realize this.
Nigel TOZZI
The fact that the predictions did not proved accurate in the Bahrain Grand Prix did not prove that the information was not reliable, but that it was simply a reflection of the safety car’s being out.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
This could be. I did not recall the presence of the safety car.
Nigel TOZZI
If you were being full and frank with this Council, you would have been careful to include this in your Witness Statement, in Paragraph 38, rather than the very misleading information that you were being given faulty information.
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No. I honestly forgot that there was a safety car in the first few laps in Bahrain. That is how reliable Mike’s information was. That is the whole story. This information was never that relevant to me. I have had, in the past ten days, to go into my computers in Barcelona, Zurich, looking back to what I did six months ago. In context, events from six months ago were nothing. We are making a mess out of all of this for nothing: whether or not there was a safety car? I had forgotten about all of this information until the time came to find these e-mails.
Nigel TOZZI
When you told Mr Alonso that the Ferrari information was coming from Nigel Stepney, who had been the Chief Engineer at Ferrari, in the e-mail we have seen, did Mr Alonso say to you, “What do you think you are doing? We should not be getting that kind of information from someone at
Ferrari? That is wholly improper.”
Pedro DE LA ROSA
No he did not.
Nigel TOZZI
He was happy to use the information as long as it was valuable, wasn’t he?
Pedro DE LA ROSA
He did not say he was happy, but I fed him all of the information. We are touching the Ferrari information, I was sending him an e-mail after every test in the simulator, every test, to keep him up to speed. This is only an example of the many e-mails I was exchanging. I had never mentioned
Ferrari before. This was our way of working at that stage.
Max MOSLEY
Thank you, Mr de la Rosa.
Your next witness.
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:15 am
Ian MILL
Mr Dennis.
Mr Dennis, in the bundle before you, behind Tab 1, you will find your witness statement. Looking at the final page, can you confirm that this is your signature?
Ron DENNIS
Yes, it is.
Ian MILL
Can you confirm that the evidence is true, to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Ron DENNIS
Yes, I can.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr Dennis, in light of the statement provided by Mr Sutton, I would like to read a declaration by Kimi Raikkonen to you and ask you about it: “I confirm that, during my time at McLaren, between 2002 an 2006, it was routine practice for McLaren to eavesdrop on pits to car radio transmissions of other teams.” Do you agree with that?
Ron DENNIS
During what years?
Nigel TOZZI
Between 2002-2006, when he was your driver.
Ron DENNIS
2002-2006. I am trying to remember the year of encryption. I think that 2002 may be possible.
Nigel TOZZI
In any case, you accept exactly that which Mr Sutton describes Ferrari as doing: eavesdropping on pits to car radio transmissions.
Ron DENNIS
At that point?
Nigel TOZZI
Don’t worry about the dates; I just want you to confirm that this is something that McLaren has done.
Ron DENNIS
It was established practice up and down the pit.
Nigel TOZZI
Exactly. When you carried out your initial investigation, you state that it did not cover the drivers.
Ron DENNIS
That is correct.
Nigel TOZZI
The drivers were aware, of course, that McLaren had been asked to come before the Council, on a charge of being in breach of Article 151 of the Sporting Code.
Ron DENNIS
The drivers?
Nigel TOZZI
Yes, they must have known about that.
Ron DENNIS
They heard about it after 3 July. They must have, from the newspapers.
Nigel TOZZI
Yes, and they knew that the basis for all of those allegations had been that Mike Coughlan was receiving information that belonged to Ferrari.
Ron DENNIS
No. The 3rd July issue focused on a quantity of documents that were, as we all know, obtained by him, copied by his wife, shredded by his wife and burned in the back garden and ultimately, seized on the 3rd of July. Everything that emerged thereafter was focused on the possibility of the material contaminating our company.
Nigel TOZZI
Neither Mr de la Rosa and Mr Alonso came to you at that time saying that there was something you ought to know: that Mike Coughlan had been receiving information from Nigel Stepney.
Ron DENNIS
No, 100% negative. No driver approached me and, in fairness to them, I never approached them.
Nigel TOZZI
Thus, it is established that at least two people on the McLaren team who, in the course of your very thorough investigations, did not come forward with information which I suggest was clearly relevant.
Ron DENNIS
Three people, insofar as Lewis was and is driving the cars. I was trying to establish, through the actions I had unstructured to be taken, whether the drawings or material from those drawings had contaminated the McLaren system. There was no way that I could make the link between drawings
coming into the company and being looked at, or material reputedly floating around. How could I make that link to the drivers? There was no way. It never occurred to me that the drivers could be involved, yet clearly they were.
Nigel TOZZI
When Mr Alonso said to you, after the Hungarian Grand Prix, that he might disclose information to the FIA, unless –
Ron DENNIS
You are wrong in your timing. The exchange between Fernando and I, with his manager present, took place on the Sunday morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Nigel TOZZI
When he came to you, saying that he had information – as you tell us, in the course of a heated discussion – you did not carry out any further investigation to see whether there had been any truth in what he had said.
Ron DENNIS
That is completely out of context.
Nigel TOZZI
Answer the question, then give us the context.
Ron DENNIS
I will not answer the question.
Nigel TOZZI
Very well.
Ron DENNIS
I will give you a detailed account, so that you can put the whole issue in context.
Nigel TOZZI
I am assuming that we have it in your witness statement.
Ron DENNIS
The material placed before the World Council has not been read by all of the World Council members. Therefore, for the Members to understand, I would like to repeat what took place. That is entirely reasonable.
First, the relationship between Fernando and myself is extremely cold. That is an understatement. In Fernando’s mind, there is the firm belief that our policy, whereby each driver receives equal treatment, doe not properly reflect his status as World Champion. He bases this assertion on the fact that his experience and knowledge and what came to him from his former team is such that he should receive an advantage.
In that discussion, he was extremely upset with what had taken place the previous day, but nowhere nearly as upset as I was. He said things that he subsequently and fully retracted. Within the passage of material, he made a specific reference to e-mails from a McLaren engineer. When he made this statement, I said, “Stop”. I went out, brought Mr Whitmarsh him in, and Fernando said everything again, in front of his manager. When he had finished, I turned to Martin Whitmarsh, asking what we should do with this particular part of the conversation. Martin said we should find Max. After Martin and Fernando left, that is exactly what he did. I recounted the entire conversation to Max. I was upset and angry, but mainly upset. Max calmed me down. He said that I should do nothing. I started to calm down. Then, prior to the race, Fernando’s manager came and said that he had lost his temper and completely retracted everything he said. When I phoned Max, Max was understanding and said things to me that are irrelevant here, though I would be more than
comfortable sharing them. He was completely understanding and said that, on the basis of what I told him, if he felt there was any real validity in what Fernando had said, he would contact me prior to taking any action.
I, however, on the basis that this was an engineering matter, I asked Martin whether he thought something was amiss in that area. He told me, “We have been too thorough in talking to the engineers; he cannot have been telling the truth.” We subsequently had a reasonable Grand Prix. Fernando came to me. He had come in 3rd. He apologised for the outburst and I put it down to the heat of the moment, in which he was angry. That is how I took it. Other than following up with Martin, the matter ended there, until 26 days later, when the drivers received a letter. What took place between those times, I do not know. I do not know what circumstances brought that into the public domain.
Nigel TOZZI
That is not quite right. You know what Mr Mosley said in his letter dated 6 September 2007. You know what the explanation is: Mr Alonso apparently showed some information to someone else.
Ron DENNIS
I have not seen anything anywhere indicating who said what to whom. To this day, I do not know how this came to Max’s attention, apart from my telling him. Only Bernie may said that he had seen something and said he would pass it to Max. I do not know what that is. I do know that Bernie
said it was in Spanish, but I do not know how this material came to the knowledge of the FIA. Most certainly, I advised Max of this. I am pretty sure I said to Max that there was reputedly …
Specifically in that conversation with Fernando, Martin said, “You mean, your engineer on the car”. He said, “No, I don’t mean your engineer on the car.
Nigel TOZZI
After matters had calmed down with Mr Alonso and you were once again on speaking terms, you did not ask him then…
Ron DENNIS
We are not on speaking terms, but that does not matter.
Nigel TOZZI
You did not ask him, in a calm and measured way, whether his suggestion that he had e-mails was correct on the basis that, if he did have them, he should have told you about them, rather than keep them up his sleeve. You did not have that conversation, did you?
Ron DENNIS
We have not had any conversations since that point.
Nigel TOZZI
And you did not inquire of Mr de la Rosa, whether he knew?
Ron DENNIS
Why would I talk to drivers, when the conversation with Mr Alonso was subsequently retracted in full, through his manager. Why would I deal with that? And if I were trying to conceal something, would I have called Max?
Nigel TOZZI
Let us put that in context. You started that conversation by saying, “We have never had this conversation”, did you not?
Ron DENNIS
To Max?
Nigel TOZZI
Yes.
Ron DENNIS
I said, “in the strictest confidence”. I do not know that I used the phrase, “We have never had this conversation. I am not disputing that Max’s recollection may be more accurate than mine. The fact
remains that I was speaking to the President of the FIA. Max will tell you that we have a difficult relation. It is not a great relationship, due to various issues in the past years over which we have had differences of opinion. To call him on the telephone and tell him what had taken place clearly indicates that there was absolutely no effort on my part to hide what had happened. There was no such effort at all. It was subsequently retracted and put down to one of our engineers. I had absolute confidence that the information passed to our engineers had not been involved in it. That gave me the confidence that he was not telling the truth. And he retracted it.
Nigel TOZZI
If Alonso had not shown the documents to Mr Ecclestone, and Mr Ecclestone had not alerted Mr Mosley, who then wrote to the drivers, we would not have found out about these e-mails. Is that not so?
Ron DENNIS
The simple fact is that they did not even exist, as far as I was concerned. Nothing existed, because he said that he retracted it, that it did not happen. I phoned Max and said that he had retracted it and calmed down.
Nigel TOZZI
Why is Mr Alonso not here?
Ron DENNIS
Mr Alonso is not here because he does not want to be here. He does not speak to anyone much. He is a remarkable recluse for a driver. He is not here by choice. Moreover, he said he had other things to do by previous arrangement. I cannot force him to come. We asked him to come.
Nigel TOZZI
Would it be fair to say that it would not be as supportive of McLaren’s case as your other witnesses?
Ron DENNIS
I presume that what he has written in his statement is the truth. If our relationship is as it appears to be, why would he make the statement? The statement is the truth. That is what statements are about.
Nigel TOZZI
In your witness statement, Paragraph 3, Sub-paragraph 5, in the context of the investigations carried out, you stated that you offered access to Quest. Ferrari’s experts carried out similar searchers. You say they found nothing. They actually found that the Ferrari dossier – the documents which Coughlan had downloaded onto the CD – had been viewed by him on a computer at McLaren’s premises.
Ron DENNIS
No.
Nigel TOZZI
Are you saying that this did not happen, Mr Dennis?
Ron DENNIS
I cannot exactly remember, but as far as I can recall, there was a reference to material having been looked at, but they did not know what it was. As far as I know, that was consistent with what Coughlan said. Where it happened, nobody knows, because it was on his laptop, which he took back and forth from his home. I therefore have no clue where it happened, nor do I know what he was looking at. It is an assumption that he could have been looking at that material. There was no evidence that he was; that was but a shadow.
Nigel TOZZI
That was a McLaren-owned laptop, was it not?
Ron DENNIS
And it drives home in a McLaren car. Yes, at the end of the day, it was a McLaren computer. But, like many others owned by engineers, it went backwards and forwards. We trust the engineers and believe them to be correct people. But we cannot require them to leave their laptops at the office.
Nigel TOZZI
The computer searches carried out by both your experts and ours did not turn up the e-mail exchanges which Mr de la Rosa and Mr Alonso have now disclosed.
Ron DENNIS
Nor was anything found on the computers that you held on the morning of the 3rd.
Nigel TOZZI
Thus, if there are other e-mail exchanges that have not been disclosed, it is quite likely that they will have been missed by the computer experts as well. Is that not so?
Ron DENNIS
Is that not a double-negative? How can we assume what someone did or did not do? Either it exists or it does not. The forensic nature of those processes, as I understood, was not only very detailed, but could reconstruct most of the material held in a computer. That is why they are
experts. They did reconstruct a great deal of material, as I understand it.
Nigel TOZZI
We can test that in this way. As you told us, on 26 July, when you came before this Council, as far as you were concerned, the e-mails which we have now seen disclosed by Mr de la Rosa and Mr Alonso did not exist.
Ron DENNIS
Can you say that again?
Nigel TOZZI
I am quoting you. You said that, as far as you were concerned, on the 26th of July, when you came before this Council, the e-mails we now have did not exist.
Ron DENNIS
I had absolutely no knowledge of them. How could I? 1 300 people work for our group. How on Earth could I know all about what moves amongst my employees? How do you expect me to know that? I certainly did not know anything about the e-mails moving between our drivers.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr Dennis, I agree with you. This puts into context any categorical assurances, however.
Ron DENNIS
You can only give categorical assurance about knowledge: what you do know, not about what you do not know.
Nigel TOZZI
Thank you, sir.
Max MOSLEY
Do you want to ask Mr Dennis further questions?
Ian MILL
No.
Max MOSLEY
That is all, then, as far as Ron is concerned.
Click here for the full transcript of the 13th of September (in PDF)
Click here for the full transcript of the 26th of July (in PDF)
Mr Dennis.
Mr Dennis, in the bundle before you, behind Tab 1, you will find your witness statement. Looking at the final page, can you confirm that this is your signature?
Ron DENNIS
Yes, it is.
Ian MILL
Can you confirm that the evidence is true, to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Ron DENNIS
Yes, I can.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr Dennis, in light of the statement provided by Mr Sutton, I would like to read a declaration by Kimi Raikkonen to you and ask you about it: “I confirm that, during my time at McLaren, between 2002 an 2006, it was routine practice for McLaren to eavesdrop on pits to car radio transmissions of other teams.” Do you agree with that?
Ron DENNIS
During what years?
Nigel TOZZI
Between 2002-2006, when he was your driver.
Ron DENNIS
2002-2006. I am trying to remember the year of encryption. I think that 2002 may be possible.
Nigel TOZZI
In any case, you accept exactly that which Mr Sutton describes Ferrari as doing: eavesdropping on pits to car radio transmissions.
Ron DENNIS
At that point?
Nigel TOZZI
Don’t worry about the dates; I just want you to confirm that this is something that McLaren has done.
Ron DENNIS
It was established practice up and down the pit.
Nigel TOZZI
Exactly. When you carried out your initial investigation, you state that it did not cover the drivers.
Ron DENNIS
That is correct.
Nigel TOZZI
The drivers were aware, of course, that McLaren had been asked to come before the Council, on a charge of being in breach of Article 151 of the Sporting Code.
Ron DENNIS
The drivers?
Nigel TOZZI
Yes, they must have known about that.
Ron DENNIS
They heard about it after 3 July. They must have, from the newspapers.
Nigel TOZZI
Yes, and they knew that the basis for all of those allegations had been that Mike Coughlan was receiving information that belonged to Ferrari.
Ron DENNIS
No. The 3rd July issue focused on a quantity of documents that were, as we all know, obtained by him, copied by his wife, shredded by his wife and burned in the back garden and ultimately, seized on the 3rd of July. Everything that emerged thereafter was focused on the possibility of the material contaminating our company.
Nigel TOZZI
Neither Mr de la Rosa and Mr Alonso came to you at that time saying that there was something you ought to know: that Mike Coughlan had been receiving information from Nigel Stepney.
Ron DENNIS
No, 100% negative. No driver approached me and, in fairness to them, I never approached them.
Nigel TOZZI
Thus, it is established that at least two people on the McLaren team who, in the course of your very thorough investigations, did not come forward with information which I suggest was clearly relevant.
Ron DENNIS
Three people, insofar as Lewis was and is driving the cars. I was trying to establish, through the actions I had unstructured to be taken, whether the drawings or material from those drawings had contaminated the McLaren system. There was no way that I could make the link between drawings
coming into the company and being looked at, or material reputedly floating around. How could I make that link to the drivers? There was no way. It never occurred to me that the drivers could be involved, yet clearly they were.
Nigel TOZZI
When Mr Alonso said to you, after the Hungarian Grand Prix, that he might disclose information to the FIA, unless –
Ron DENNIS
You are wrong in your timing. The exchange between Fernando and I, with his manager present, took place on the Sunday morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Nigel TOZZI
When he came to you, saying that he had information – as you tell us, in the course of a heated discussion – you did not carry out any further investigation to see whether there had been any truth in what he had said.
Ron DENNIS
That is completely out of context.
Nigel TOZZI
Answer the question, then give us the context.
Ron DENNIS
I will not answer the question.
Nigel TOZZI
Very well.
Ron DENNIS
I will give you a detailed account, so that you can put the whole issue in context.
Nigel TOZZI
I am assuming that we have it in your witness statement.
Ron DENNIS
The material placed before the World Council has not been read by all of the World Council members. Therefore, for the Members to understand, I would like to repeat what took place. That is entirely reasonable.
First, the relationship between Fernando and myself is extremely cold. That is an understatement. In Fernando’s mind, there is the firm belief that our policy, whereby each driver receives equal treatment, doe not properly reflect his status as World Champion. He bases this assertion on the fact that his experience and knowledge and what came to him from his former team is such that he should receive an advantage.
In that discussion, he was extremely upset with what had taken place the previous day, but nowhere nearly as upset as I was. He said things that he subsequently and fully retracted. Within the passage of material, he made a specific reference to e-mails from a McLaren engineer. When he made this statement, I said, “Stop”. I went out, brought Mr Whitmarsh him in, and Fernando said everything again, in front of his manager. When he had finished, I turned to Martin Whitmarsh, asking what we should do with this particular part of the conversation. Martin said we should find Max. After Martin and Fernando left, that is exactly what he did. I recounted the entire conversation to Max. I was upset and angry, but mainly upset. Max calmed me down. He said that I should do nothing. I started to calm down. Then, prior to the race, Fernando’s manager came and said that he had lost his temper and completely retracted everything he said. When I phoned Max, Max was understanding and said things to me that are irrelevant here, though I would be more than
comfortable sharing them. He was completely understanding and said that, on the basis of what I told him, if he felt there was any real validity in what Fernando had said, he would contact me prior to taking any action.
I, however, on the basis that this was an engineering matter, I asked Martin whether he thought something was amiss in that area. He told me, “We have been too thorough in talking to the engineers; he cannot have been telling the truth.” We subsequently had a reasonable Grand Prix. Fernando came to me. He had come in 3rd. He apologised for the outburst and I put it down to the heat of the moment, in which he was angry. That is how I took it. Other than following up with Martin, the matter ended there, until 26 days later, when the drivers received a letter. What took place between those times, I do not know. I do not know what circumstances brought that into the public domain.
Nigel TOZZI
That is not quite right. You know what Mr Mosley said in his letter dated 6 September 2007. You know what the explanation is: Mr Alonso apparently showed some information to someone else.
Ron DENNIS
I have not seen anything anywhere indicating who said what to whom. To this day, I do not know how this came to Max’s attention, apart from my telling him. Only Bernie may said that he had seen something and said he would pass it to Max. I do not know what that is. I do know that Bernie
said it was in Spanish, but I do not know how this material came to the knowledge of the FIA. Most certainly, I advised Max of this. I am pretty sure I said to Max that there was reputedly …
Specifically in that conversation with Fernando, Martin said, “You mean, your engineer on the car”. He said, “No, I don’t mean your engineer on the car.
Nigel TOZZI
After matters had calmed down with Mr Alonso and you were once again on speaking terms, you did not ask him then…
Ron DENNIS
We are not on speaking terms, but that does not matter.
Nigel TOZZI
You did not ask him, in a calm and measured way, whether his suggestion that he had e-mails was correct on the basis that, if he did have them, he should have told you about them, rather than keep them up his sleeve. You did not have that conversation, did you?
Ron DENNIS
We have not had any conversations since that point.
Nigel TOZZI
And you did not inquire of Mr de la Rosa, whether he knew?
Ron DENNIS
Why would I talk to drivers, when the conversation with Mr Alonso was subsequently retracted in full, through his manager. Why would I deal with that? And if I were trying to conceal something, would I have called Max?
Nigel TOZZI
Let us put that in context. You started that conversation by saying, “We have never had this conversation”, did you not?
Ron DENNIS
To Max?
Nigel TOZZI
Yes.
Ron DENNIS
I said, “in the strictest confidence”. I do not know that I used the phrase, “We have never had this conversation. I am not disputing that Max’s recollection may be more accurate than mine. The fact
remains that I was speaking to the President of the FIA. Max will tell you that we have a difficult relation. It is not a great relationship, due to various issues in the past years over which we have had differences of opinion. To call him on the telephone and tell him what had taken place clearly indicates that there was absolutely no effort on my part to hide what had happened. There was no such effort at all. It was subsequently retracted and put down to one of our engineers. I had absolute confidence that the information passed to our engineers had not been involved in it. That gave me the confidence that he was not telling the truth. And he retracted it.
Nigel TOZZI
If Alonso had not shown the documents to Mr Ecclestone, and Mr Ecclestone had not alerted Mr Mosley, who then wrote to the drivers, we would not have found out about these e-mails. Is that not so?
Ron DENNIS
The simple fact is that they did not even exist, as far as I was concerned. Nothing existed, because he said that he retracted it, that it did not happen. I phoned Max and said that he had retracted it and calmed down.
Nigel TOZZI
Why is Mr Alonso not here?
Ron DENNIS
Mr Alonso is not here because he does not want to be here. He does not speak to anyone much. He is a remarkable recluse for a driver. He is not here by choice. Moreover, he said he had other things to do by previous arrangement. I cannot force him to come. We asked him to come.
Nigel TOZZI
Would it be fair to say that it would not be as supportive of McLaren’s case as your other witnesses?
Ron DENNIS
I presume that what he has written in his statement is the truth. If our relationship is as it appears to be, why would he make the statement? The statement is the truth. That is what statements are about.
Nigel TOZZI
In your witness statement, Paragraph 3, Sub-paragraph 5, in the context of the investigations carried out, you stated that you offered access to Quest. Ferrari’s experts carried out similar searchers. You say they found nothing. They actually found that the Ferrari dossier – the documents which Coughlan had downloaded onto the CD – had been viewed by him on a computer at McLaren’s premises.
Ron DENNIS
No.
Nigel TOZZI
Are you saying that this did not happen, Mr Dennis?
Ron DENNIS
I cannot exactly remember, but as far as I can recall, there was a reference to material having been looked at, but they did not know what it was. As far as I know, that was consistent with what Coughlan said. Where it happened, nobody knows, because it was on his laptop, which he took back and forth from his home. I therefore have no clue where it happened, nor do I know what he was looking at. It is an assumption that he could have been looking at that material. There was no evidence that he was; that was but a shadow.
Nigel TOZZI
That was a McLaren-owned laptop, was it not?
Ron DENNIS
And it drives home in a McLaren car. Yes, at the end of the day, it was a McLaren computer. But, like many others owned by engineers, it went backwards and forwards. We trust the engineers and believe them to be correct people. But we cannot require them to leave their laptops at the office.
Nigel TOZZI
The computer searches carried out by both your experts and ours did not turn up the e-mail exchanges which Mr de la Rosa and Mr Alonso have now disclosed.
Ron DENNIS
Nor was anything found on the computers that you held on the morning of the 3rd.
Nigel TOZZI
Thus, if there are other e-mail exchanges that have not been disclosed, it is quite likely that they will have been missed by the computer experts as well. Is that not so?
Ron DENNIS
Is that not a double-negative? How can we assume what someone did or did not do? Either it exists or it does not. The forensic nature of those processes, as I understood, was not only very detailed, but could reconstruct most of the material held in a computer. That is why they are
experts. They did reconstruct a great deal of material, as I understand it.
Nigel TOZZI
We can test that in this way. As you told us, on 26 July, when you came before this Council, as far as you were concerned, the e-mails which we have now seen disclosed by Mr de la Rosa and Mr Alonso did not exist.
Ron DENNIS
Can you say that again?
Nigel TOZZI
I am quoting you. You said that, as far as you were concerned, on the 26th of July, when you came before this Council, the e-mails we now have did not exist.
Ron DENNIS
I had absolutely no knowledge of them. How could I? 1 300 people work for our group. How on Earth could I know all about what moves amongst my employees? How do you expect me to know that? I certainly did not know anything about the e-mails moving between our drivers.
Nigel TOZZI
Mr Dennis, I agree with you. This puts into context any categorical assurances, however.
Ron DENNIS
You can only give categorical assurance about knowledge: what you do know, not about what you do not know.
Nigel TOZZI
Thank you, sir.
Max MOSLEY
Do you want to ask Mr Dennis further questions?
Ian MILL
No.
Max MOSLEY
That is all, then, as far as Ron is concerned.
Click here for the full transcript of the 13th of September (in PDF)
Click here for the full transcript of the 26th of July (in PDF)
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:24 am
McLaren have decided not to appeal the FIA decision. The team released a statement that read:
McLAREN TO FOCUS ON FUTURE
McLaren Racing has notified the FIA of its intention not to appeal the verdict of the World Motor Sport Council, as announced on 13th September 2007.
Having now had time to study the judgement of the World Motor Sport Council with its lawyers and shareholders, McLaren thinks it is in the best interests of the sport, and its goal of winning races and world championships, not to appeal.
It is clear from the full judgement that the World Motor Sport Council concluded that the charge that a McLaren employee had "unauthorised possession of documents and confidential information" was proven.
Despite the existence of no evidence that the information was applied, tested or shared with the engineering team (which it was not), this possession constitutes a breach of the Code. To our regret and embarrassment, the content of the previously unknown emails demonstrated possession not being limited to a single person, albeit unsanctioned in any way by the team. For this breach of Article 151c, a very heavy penalty has been imposed on the team.
The major principle of the issue for McLaren is: this information was not used to gain advantage on its cars.
Moving forwards, and in consultation with our shareholders, we will now review and further strengthen our internal compliance structures and processes.
Ron Dennis said: "We believe the time has come to put this huge distraction behind us. McLaren wants to win races and world championships. We are fortunate to have, and continue to receive, unwavering support from our employees, sponsor partners and Formula 1 fans across the world – all of whom are equally keen that we totally focus on winning this year's Drivers' Championship and the remaining three races of the season."
McLAREN TO FOCUS ON FUTURE
McLaren Racing has notified the FIA of its intention not to appeal the verdict of the World Motor Sport Council, as announced on 13th September 2007.
Having now had time to study the judgement of the World Motor Sport Council with its lawyers and shareholders, McLaren thinks it is in the best interests of the sport, and its goal of winning races and world championships, not to appeal.
It is clear from the full judgement that the World Motor Sport Council concluded that the charge that a McLaren employee had "unauthorised possession of documents and confidential information" was proven.
Despite the existence of no evidence that the information was applied, tested or shared with the engineering team (which it was not), this possession constitutes a breach of the Code. To our regret and embarrassment, the content of the previously unknown emails demonstrated possession not being limited to a single person, albeit unsanctioned in any way by the team. For this breach of Article 151c, a very heavy penalty has been imposed on the team.
The major principle of the issue for McLaren is: this information was not used to gain advantage on its cars.
Moving forwards, and in consultation with our shareholders, we will now review and further strengthen our internal compliance structures and processes.
Ron Dennis said: "We believe the time has come to put this huge distraction behind us. McLaren wants to win races and world championships. We are fortunate to have, and continue to receive, unwavering support from our employees, sponsor partners and Formula 1 fans across the world – all of whom are equally keen that we totally focus on winning this year's Drivers' Championship and the remaining three races of the season."
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:30 am
Ferrari followed by a statement that read:
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro has won the 2007 Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship, taking its tally in this competition to fifteen, seven of them in the last nine years.
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has actually chosen not to appeal against the decision of the FIA World Council taken on 13th September last, thus accepting the sentence handed out for violation of article 151c of the International Sporting Code.
Ferrari will now invest all its efforts over the final three races of this championship in trying to also win the Drivers’ world title.
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro has won the 2007 Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship, taking its tally in this competition to fifteen, seven of them in the last nine years.
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has actually chosen not to appeal against the decision of the FIA World Council taken on 13th September last, thus accepting the sentence handed out for violation of article 151c of the International Sporting Code.
Ferrari will now invest all its efforts over the final three races of this championship in trying to also win the Drivers’ world title.
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:02 am
It all points to one thing.
I will not need reminding to never present my back to FerstabbiningintheBack Alonso. I can understand PDLR's motives, and he probably still does not realize that he was the Monkey to Alonso's Organ Grinder, but.........in F1, or any field of life,
If you hold your hand out for your pay cheque, you owe allegiance to those who pay you. If you have a problem, you say, "no thanks" and you walk away.
You DO NOT betray those who brought you in to their fold.
Only Ferrari, or Renault, on Ferrari's orders will employ this man ever again.
The Constructors is so much more important to the TEAM, than the WDC, for sponsor dollars, obviously all teams want the double cap.
Betray a team in F1 and it is driverscide. I cannot remember a more flawed personality in F1 than Sweet FA, brilliant driver,...........
I am disgusted.
I will not need reminding to never present my back to FerstabbiningintheBack Alonso. I can understand PDLR's motives, and he probably still does not realize that he was the Monkey to Alonso's Organ Grinder, but.........in F1, or any field of life,
If you hold your hand out for your pay cheque, you owe allegiance to those who pay you. If you have a problem, you say, "no thanks" and you walk away.
You DO NOT betray those who brought you in to their fold.
Only Ferrari, or Renault, on Ferrari's orders will employ this man ever again.
The Constructors is so much more important to the TEAM, than the WDC, for sponsor dollars, obviously all teams want the double cap.
Betray a team in F1 and it is driverscide. I cannot remember a more flawed personality in F1 than Sweet FA, brilliant driver,...........
I am disgusted.
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:07 am
F1 Greyhound: I hope I'm not naive because I am disappointed by the FIA's tortured reasoning. As I said from the beginning of this affair, the only way to make ANY sense out of it is to follow the money. And if having to do that doesn't spoil an otherwise exciting, almost four way title fight, I don't know what does!
Julian: I have to say, Fernando doesn't look good in the limited glimpse we have been able to see behind the scenes in these transcripts. Not because he took advantage of information offered him about the competition. I think Pedro delaRosa is correct when he says that every one in F1 is always trading rumors and scraps of information trying to get an advantage in any way possible.
But
if it is true, as it APPEARS to be true from the testimony of Ron Dennis, that F.A. tried to blackmail his team principal, then no matter how brilliant a driver he is, I don't want him on my team. As I said before (and Jay Vee added my quote to her signature) "Any Car is lucky to have Fernando driving it." I don't see any reason to change that. But I CAN'T say "Any Team is lucky to have him driving for them." At least not until I know more...
On Jay Vee's side, though, let me hasten to add that we haven't heard from either Fernando or his representatives and agents. And Ron Dennis, as I have often said, is NOT my favorite F1 personality. Everything --and I have to stress this, EVERYTHING he says is, [like Bernie E. and Mad Max], designed to put HIM (Mr. Oh so Correct Dennis) in the BEST POSSIBLE LIGHT!
When you hear any these guys going on, if you aren't careful, you could be convinced that they are all guided by nothing more than sweetness and logical light. In fact, they are all about Money.
At least the Flav, for all the reasons one has to envy him (his money, his women, his evident love of life and fun), favors a good show and likes nothing more than winning races.I was, obviously, wrong big-time, earlier on in this scandal, when I said that Mercedes Benz had cut a deal and we wouldn't hear any more about it. But it appears to me, now, that the Teutonic ones and the bankers didn't reckon on Ron's fiery Spaniard in the works.
It all makes for publicity, though. And, as Mad Max and Bernie know, ANY publicity is GOOD publicity. There will probably be more viewers for the balance of the season than there would have been without the scandal. For one thing: WILL Fernando go back to Flavio? Will Flavio take him back? Or will he join Juan Pablo pushing a "rice-burner" around for NASCAR? Maybe he'll go to Toyota; that would be cruel and unusual punishment indeed.
I know, I, for one, will be eagerly watching and nursing my beer! Maybe, at last, next year we'll have a knuckle busting season with three or FOUR manufacturers in the hunt!
By the by, I hope somebody who keeps track of numbers will keep track of what the REAL constructors' championship points are. It seems to me that if the drivers for McLaren are not penalized points, then neither should the team be. And, if the team is penalized financially, why aren't the drivers?
cheers:
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 8:41 pm
I see the Alonso bashing continuing 
First he is a liar (who didn't lie) and now he is a backstabber and poor Ron is really suffering from this disgusting person.
But by Ron Dennis's standard, what Alonso did was the 'right thing'
This is what Ron Dennis said during this ordeal (defending Stepney's actions):
He acted properly and in the interests of the sport in "blowing the whistle" about this. No team can expect their employees to keep quiet if they suspect - correctly in this case - that their employers are breaching the rules of the sport.
He also said: "It is in the interests of Formula 1 that whistle-blowing is encouraged and not discouraged."
I raise the question again, why wasn't Alonso fired ? Why wasn't de la Rosa fired ? Alonso is still winning and de la Rosa is still testing.
Why didn't McLaren appeal ?
They knew, they all knew what was happening and kept quiet.
And how dare Alonso say anything!
Lets not be sheep and just follow what the British media likes to tell us. We have brains so we can use them to think and make our own judgements.
But putting all this aside, I am amazed, just amazed by this person who has no support from his team yet goes out and finishes the last 3 races on the podium winning one and beating his golden child team-mate at every one of those races.
This guy is something and I am glad to witness what he is going through.
I just hope they don't hurt him cause nothing will stop him from winning his 3rd title in a row now. Not even Ron Dennis
Go Alonso The Cute - May the force be with you
First he is a liar (who didn't lie) and now he is a backstabber and poor Ron is really suffering from this disgusting person.
But by Ron Dennis's standard, what Alonso did was the 'right thing'
This is what Ron Dennis said during this ordeal (defending Stepney's actions):
He acted properly and in the interests of the sport in "blowing the whistle" about this. No team can expect their employees to keep quiet if they suspect - correctly in this case - that their employers are breaching the rules of the sport.
He also said: "It is in the interests of Formula 1 that whistle-blowing is encouraged and not discouraged."
I raise the question again, why wasn't Alonso fired ? Why wasn't de la Rosa fired ? Alonso is still winning and de la Rosa is still testing.
Why didn't McLaren appeal ?
They knew, they all knew what was happening and kept quiet.
And how dare Alonso say anything!
Lets not be sheep and just follow what the British media likes to tell us. We have brains so we can use them to think and make our own judgements.
But putting all this aside, I am amazed, just amazed by this person who has no support from his team yet goes out and finishes the last 3 races on the podium winning one and beating his golden child team-mate at every one of those races.
This guy is something and I am glad to witness what he is going through.
I just hope they don't hurt him cause nothing will stop him from winning his 3rd title in a row now. Not even Ron Dennis
Go Alonso The Cute - May the force be with you
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:40 pm
DMT.... Dead Man's Territory.
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 1:03 pm
Sorry jacfan if what I said sounds too harsh but this is exactly how I feel.
When James Allen and his likes tell us Alonso touched Hamilton and that Hamilton's poor performance at Belgium could be due to a damaged sidepod and we go and repeat that, what is that called ?
James Allen and most of those in the British media applies no logic or sense whatsoever when it comes to a British driver so how can we beleive what he says without checking out what actually happened. We know that none of that actually happened. They didn't touch and Hamilton just couldn't match Alonso, that simple.
Yet at the Nurburgring when Massa drove into Alonso and actually did damage the sidepod of Alonso's car, did anyone cry foul ? did anyone call Massa any names.
Why is it that some just want to knock down Alonso at any given chance.
Now the British media is again making it all sound that Alonso is the bad guy yet the British team's boss supports whisltle blowing in F1 so why didn't anyone call Alonso a whistle blower ? Cause it is OK to whistle blow on an Italian team but not on a British team.
Alonso told Dennis he had some emails, Ron told Max then Alonso apologised for what he said and retracted his comments, Ron told Max that their was nothing!
As a boss of a team and as a person who has integrity, shouldn't he conduct a very thorough investigation to find out himself if these emails actually exist and who knows about them ?
What did he do ? Absolutely nothing, not even ask the drivers!! That is hard to beleive. They just didn't want to uncover anything more.
Even the letter that was signed by all the engineers at McLaren, what did they sign on ?
This is from the transcript:
They have signed on three principle points:
- that they have not seen any of the technical information
- that they have not incorporated any of the information
- that the car that we built this year and the car we will build next year is wholly derived from their own work.
It really says nothing about the team not knowing about the Stepney Coughlan affair which obviously they did.
When James Allen and his likes tell us Alonso touched Hamilton and that Hamilton's poor performance at Belgium could be due to a damaged sidepod and we go and repeat that, what is that called ?
James Allen and most of those in the British media applies no logic or sense whatsoever when it comes to a British driver so how can we beleive what he says without checking out what actually happened. We know that none of that actually happened. They didn't touch and Hamilton just couldn't match Alonso, that simple.
Yet at the Nurburgring when Massa drove into Alonso and actually did damage the sidepod of Alonso's car, did anyone cry foul ? did anyone call Massa any names.
Why is it that some just want to knock down Alonso at any given chance.
Now the British media is again making it all sound that Alonso is the bad guy yet the British team's boss supports whisltle blowing in F1 so why didn't anyone call Alonso a whistle blower ? Cause it is OK to whistle blow on an Italian team but not on a British team.
Alonso told Dennis he had some emails, Ron told Max then Alonso apologised for what he said and retracted his comments, Ron told Max that their was nothing!
As a boss of a team and as a person who has integrity, shouldn't he conduct a very thorough investigation to find out himself if these emails actually exist and who knows about them ?
What did he do ? Absolutely nothing, not even ask the drivers!! That is hard to beleive. They just didn't want to uncover anything more.
Even the letter that was signed by all the engineers at McLaren, what did they sign on ?
This is from the transcript:
They have signed on three principle points:
- that they have not seen any of the technical information
- that they have not incorporated any of the information
- that the car that we built this year and the car we will build next year is wholly derived from their own work.
It really says nothing about the team not knowing about the Stepney Coughlan affair which obviously they did.
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:38 pm
JayVee you have definitely not upset me and I don't think what you have said is too harsh.
I believe (and I am entitled to my opinion) that the British media is among (if not THE) the most biased.
IF and that is a very big IF, Alonso touched Hamilton in the fight for the corner then I believe it would be a racing incident. It was obviously a racing incident because if the powers that be had deemed to be otherwise then Alonso would have recieved a penalty... which he didn't. At that stage anything McLaren and it's drivers did was being watched very very closely. End of story as far as I am concerned.
As for knocking Alonso down, do not forget that there is always the "tall poppy" syndrome. Most people will support the underdog and if he then gets anywhere and exceeds their expectations and continues to dominate then all of a sudden they turn like a pack of wolves, baying for the carcass.
I believe PDR when he says that it (talking about other teams info) is normal practice. Why if it wasn't would anyone keep emails that incriminate themselves?????
Finally before you all fall asleep or have a complete seizure while reading this. Alonso has been accused of trying to blackmail Ron Dennis and saying that if he, as current WDC, should be number one. Well what the %^#$#^$^$ is wrong or unusual about that. Did not the previous WDC who drove the red car do the exact same thing. He had to be #1.
Cast your minds back to the days of Senna/Prost both driving for McLaren and.... hmmmm both demanding that they are the best and should be #1!!!! Get real. Any great sports person usually has the ego to match their talent at their given sport.
THE END.
I believe (and I am entitled to my opinion) that the British media is among (if not THE) the most biased.
IF and that is a very big IF, Alonso touched Hamilton in the fight for the corner then I believe it would be a racing incident. It was obviously a racing incident because if the powers that be had deemed to be otherwise then Alonso would have recieved a penalty... which he didn't. At that stage anything McLaren and it's drivers did was being watched very very closely. End of story as far as I am concerned.
As for knocking Alonso down, do not forget that there is always the "tall poppy" syndrome. Most people will support the underdog and if he then gets anywhere and exceeds their expectations and continues to dominate then all of a sudden they turn like a pack of wolves, baying for the carcass.
I personally find nothing wrong with that. Ron Dennis has so many things to worry about that the fact that he did not investigate a few emails between drivers is in my opinion, quite reasonable. Just because they (Ron Dennis and Alonso) don't talk is not proof that either of them has done anything wrong. Ron Dennis picks his drivers (as would every other team) based on their ability to drive well and also for their ability to work with the engineers to better the car and it's perfomance. Ron Dennis and Alonso do not have to be best buds in order to work together. They may hate each other, but why would Alonso try and bring down the team he is driving for and hoping to win his third WDC with???? Makes no bleeding sense to me.Alonso told Dennis he had some emails, Ron told Max then Alonso apologised for what he said and retracted his comments, Ron told Max that their was nothing!
As a boss of a team and as a person who has integrity, shouldn't he conduct a very thorough investigation to find out himself if these emails actually exist and who knows about them ?
What did he do ? Absolutely nothing, not even ask the drivers!! That is hard to beleive. They just didn't want to uncover anything more.
I believe PDR when he says that it (talking about other teams info) is normal practice. Why if it wasn't would anyone keep emails that incriminate themselves?????
Finally before you all fall asleep or have a complete seizure while reading this. Alonso has been accused of trying to blackmail Ron Dennis and saying that if he, as current WDC, should be number one. Well what the %^#$#^$^$ is wrong or unusual about that. Did not the previous WDC who drove the red car do the exact same thing. He had to be #1.
Cast your minds back to the days of Senna/Prost both driving for McLaren and.... hmmmm both demanding that they are the best and should be #1!!!! Get real. Any great sports person usually has the ego to match their talent at their given sport.
THE END.
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:39 pm
BTW DMT was in response to an earlier comment.
Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:13 am
On another note, McLaren's decision of not contesting the fine made people frown and scratch their heads. Renault might be the next in line... Rumors are going strong. But that is material for another thread.
Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:29 am
That has possibly been averted, by Renault chipping in with Ferrari to get Alonso into a red cargkaytaz wrote:On another note, McLaren's decision of not contesting the fine made people frown and scratch their heads. Renault might be the next in line... Rumors are going strong. But that is material for another thread.
Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:41 am
It was the Australian commentators who said there was contact.JayVee wrote:I see the Alonso bashing continuing
First he is a liar (who didn't lie) and now he is a backstabber and poor Ron is really suffering from this disgusting person.
But by Ron Dennis's standard, what Alonso did was the 'right thing'
This is what Ron Dennis said during this ordeal (defending Stepney's actions):
He acted properly and in the interests of the sport in "blowing the whistle" about this. No team can expect their employees to keep quiet if they suspect - correctly in this case - that their employers are breaching the rules of the sport.
He also said: "It is in the interests of Formula 1 that whistle-blowing is encouraged and not discouraged."
I raise the question again, why wasn't Alonso fired ? Why wasn't de la Rosa fired ? Alonso is still winning and de la Rosa is still testing.
Why didn't McLaren appeal ?
They knew, they all knew what was happening and kept quiet.
And how dare Alonso say anything!
Lets not be sheep and just follow what the British media likes to tell us. We have brains so we can use them to think and make our own judgements.
But putting all this aside, I am amazed, just amazed by this person who has no support from his team yet goes out and finishes the last 3 races on the podium winning one and beating his golden child team-mate at every one of those races.
This guy is something and I am glad to witness what he is going through.
I just hope they don't hurt him cause nothing will stop him from winning his 3rd title in a row now. Not even Ron Dennis
Go Alonso The Cute - May the force be with you
I am disgusted at many things in F1, Alonso the man(not the driver) is just one.
I am disgusted that ,
Ferrari will not stop Todt Snr's personal crusade, before he gets the chop when McLaren win the WDC.
Ferrari will not sign a testing agreement.
Mad Max, Flavio and Todt are colluding, to get Renault out of a deeper pile of pooh than McLaren were in,
That drivers, engineers, and other techos, who have huge salary packages, and a life-style that I cannot even begin to imagine have absolutely no sense of loyalty to their teams,
and they and team managers simply don't give a rat's a#%& about the poor bloody fan.