Coughlan backs Dennis's claims

MOTOR SPORT/Formula One Championship:McLaren's suspended chief designer, Mike Coughlan, has broken his silence on the Ferrari "spying" dispute to back up Ron Dennis's claims that none of the information he received had served to improve his own team's performance.

Dennis, McLaren's chairman and chief executive, stated in an open letter last month that Coughlan had exercised no "responsibility for the performance enhancement of the car". Coughlan was suspended from his McLaren role in July.

Dennis's letter was written after Ferrari launched a civil case against Coughlan in the high court. In its particulars of claim the Italian team accused McLaren of deriving an unfair advantage since their chief designer had been provided with "confidential" details about their car.

In the defence papers lodged at the high court Coughlan acknowledges that documents allegedly leaked to him by Ferrari's then chief mechanic, Nigel Stepney, related to the Italian team's 2007 car. He admits also that he realised "some at least" were "likely to comprise confidential information belonging to Ferrari". However, he denied he had "reviewed the Ferrari documents in their entirety or in any way which enabled any proper appreciation or assessment in engineering terms of their contents".

Coughlan insists throughout his defence that all the documents he allegedly received from Stepney were "unsolicited" and, importantly, he states that he looked at the documents "on only two or so intermittent occasions".

Nevertheless, Coughlan admits he told McLaren's managing director, Jonathan Neale, about the emails he had received from Stepney in mid-March. He also admits to having "very briefly" shown "two or so digital mock-up images" to Neale at a breakfast meeting on May 25th. He had received the images among a bundle of documents passed to him by Stepney after they met in Barcelona on April 28th.

McLaren stated on July 16th that it "was not known to any other member of the team prior to July 3rd 2007" that Coughlan "held at his home unsolicited materials from Ferrari". But at a world motor sport council hearing held by formula one's governing body, the FIA, on July 26th Neale admitted to having seen the images but said he did not know they related to Ferrari. It was announced on Wednesday that the case will be considered by a new world motor sport council hearing next Thursday after "new evidence" emerged.

Meanwhile, the FIA yesterday revealed the contents of the letter sent to the McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa on the subject of whether or not the British team was in possession of confidential Ferrari technical information. "In the interests of the sport and the championship," wrote the FIA's president, Max Mosley, "it is important that the FIA as the regulator establishes unequivocally and rapidly whether or not this allegation has any basis in fact." Mosley went on to make it clear that the drivers should submit copies of any relevant documents to the sport's governing body without delay. He explained: "For these purposes 'documents' includes all written materials such as emails, letters, electronic communications, text messages, notes, memoranda, drawings, diagrams, data, or other material stored in any physical 'hard copy' or electronic form."

There followed an undertaking from the FIA that the drivers would effectively be offered an amnesty from prosecution under the formula one regulations if they offered the requested assistance, "but if it comes to light that you have withheld any potentially relevant information, serious consequences could follow".

McLaren issued a statement saying that they intended to make "a strong set of submissions" at Thursday's hearing in Paris but could not comment further for legal reasons.

Part of the fresh evidence being considered by the FIA was supplied by Italian police following analysis of computers seized from Stepney, an Italian newspaper reported yesterday. Ferrari fired Stepney in July and have launched legal proceedings against him in Italy, accusing the Englishman of supplying the confidential Ferrari documents to Coughlan.

La Repubblica stated that clues gleaned by the police from Stepney's emails have been passed on to the FIA, possibly via Ferrari officials. The same information is also to be considered by the Modena magistrate Giuseppe Tibis, who may now extend his investigation in Italy into the alleged espionage to Coughlan and six other people, employed by McLaren and other teams, wrote the newspaper.

Stepney's lawyer, Sonia Bartolini, said yesterday that Stepney was now back in England.

"He is considering new job offers that have been made, connected with engineering, but outside the world of formula one," she said.