Renault has denied any wrong-doing in the latest spy scandal to rock Formula 1 and has moved to clarify its role in the controversy surrounding its FIA summons to explain charges of possessing confidential McLaren intellectual property.
In a statement released Friday, the team admits that McLaren proprietary information was brought into the team by former McLaren engineer Phil Mackereth when he joined Renault in September 2006, but vehemently denies using the information on its 2006 or 2007 race cars.
Renault claims to have kept both McLaren and the FIA fully informed of its investigation, cleansed its team’s computers systems of the relevant information and impounded the disks with its solicitors for return to McLaren. ITV.com
Following the announcement of an FIA investigation into Renault yesterday the ING Renault F1 Team has issued a statement “to clarify the situation”. The team admits that on September 6 2007 it discovered that engineer Phil Mackereth, who joined the team from McLaren in Sept 2006, had “brought with him some information that was considered to be proprietary to McLaren”.
The team went on to say that this was contained on floppy discs and included copies of some McLaren engineering drawings and technical spreadsheets.
Given what Renault has admitted it is fairly clear that the team is in at least as bad a situation as was McLaren - something which Flavio Briatore denied when the first rumours emerged about the problem.
On the face of it, therefore, the least that Renault can expect is a similar punishment to McLaren: a fine of $100m and the loss of all the team’s points for 2007.
For the punishment to be anything less than that - given what the team has admitted - would not be fair. GrandPrix.com
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