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Silas Talbot

Mclaren Stealing Ferrari Secrets?

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I saw this picture many times: since 1976 season with Lauda vs. Hunt there is a silent and no so silent war between McLaren and Ferrari with disqualifications and many many cheating actions from both teams. So Ferrari and McLaren guys give us a break and stop cheating!

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2 scenarios I suppose. 1. He let them in which begs the question, why? 2. The house was searched without his knowledge which of course is illegal.

"Ferrari then made an urgent application to the High Court in London on 2 July for the court's assistance."

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Well, they got the information by april they tested by may and they applied it by june. They had time enough to study and find how to get benefit of it on their cars. FIA has to do something if they want to keep F1 credit as a sport and not only a dirty business.

How is it that Canada and much more USA were Ferrari circuits but this year those have been clearly for McLaren. Do you remember Italian football last year? Should Juve and Milan have been penalized or only the members involved? It is not only a matter of using that information but first steeling it. Then probably use it or at least try to do it. Using that info is not as easy as a copy-paste thing but a good engineer can study it and find they way it could be applyed on a different car.

Do we have to believe that Coughlan got that valuable info from Stepney just because they were friends? Could he get that info without any help (payment) from McLaren? It is important to know wether they used it or not but do you think not important that they at least tryed? Should McLaren be penalized if Ron Dennis knew about that info or just penalize RD only? They are a team and a dirty action from one member is enough to get benefit or to get punishment.

ok, abit of speculation, but I actually quite like your perception of the matter

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"Ferrari then made an urgent application to the High Court in London on 2 July for the court's assistance."

Ah. The Anton Piller order. Ben should be able to enlighten us on that one.

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More details on the F1 espionage scandal

The complicated allegations regarding Ferrari's Nigel Stepney, his connections with an officially unnamed senior McLaren engineer - and the details of the investigation into their supposed activities have led to much confusion in Formula 1 circles.

In an effort to reduce the speculation going on, Ferrari issued a press statement on Thursday at Silverstone explaining that the English police have "so far not been involved in investigating the theft of technical information".

According to Ferrari the alleged theft was brought to its attention by a third party "outside F1 racing" who suggested that McLaren might be in possession of "highly sensitive Ferrari information".

Ferrari immediately consulted a London law firm and then made an urgent application to the High Court in London to obtain a court order to conduct a search of the McLaren engineer's home.

In English law the police are usually involved in the issuing and carrying out of search warrants but they do not have to be. There is a process that allows for what is known as an Anton Piller order which can be used in civil actions in order to prevent the destruction of incriminating evidence. It is named after a German company which won the first such order in a British court in 1976.

Anton Piller orders are only used in exceptional circumstances and the accusers must have very strong evidence that there are incriminating evidence that could be destroyed and must prove that there is serious potential damage if the documents change hands.

The first thing that a defendant would know about the process would be when a lawyer turned up with the order at his house. The defendant has no choice but to cooperate.

Our sources suggest that a package of technical information was handed to the McLaren individual at Port Genesta in Spain at the end of April when both Ferrari and McLaren were testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.

The question of who informed Ferrari remains a mystery but there are stories in the F1 paddock that Ferrari may have been alerted to the problem when an attempt was made to photocopy the information at a commercial printing shop.

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Ferrari problems?

We are not talking about Ferrari problems we are talking about some documents that have been found in Mike Coughlan's house. A McLaren boss developer engineer. That's not a rumour that is a fact as well as some strange powder found in Ferrari's fuel tank in Monaco.

I'm trying to behave in the same way I would do if that documents had been found in a Ferrari engineer's house and those documents had been stolen from McLaren.

:unsure:

I know we are not talking about Ferrari's problems, I was just pointing out the fact that Mclaran had nothing to gain so far, the reason why they were faster than Ferrari was because Ferrari were having problems!

Why do some guys be so surprised that there is a team that is capable of Beating Ferrari! Phiew!

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Why do some guys be so surprised that there is a team that is capable of Beating Ferrari! Phiew!

Why do some guys be so quiet when all that things have happended? Why do they try to grab the focus of the conversation out of target?

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Maybe what I am going to say will sound completely idiotic but: why did they went through all the cumbersone "lets-meet-in-some-deserted-place-so-I-can-give-you-a-suspicious-package-with-hundreds-of-pages-you-must-photocopy"? Don't they have a digital copy of those things? Is it all hand drawn? Wouldn't it have been easier to handle him just a CD or send an e-mail?

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Maybe what I am going to say will sound completely idiotic but: why did they went through all the cumbersone "lets-meet-in-some-deserted-place-so-I-can-give-you-a-suspicious-package-with-hundreds-of-pages-you-must-photocopy"? Don't they have a digital copy of those things? Is it all hand drawn? Wouldn't it have been easier to handle him just a CD or send an e-mail?

good point Andres! Problem is that I dont know how to reply! :P

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Why do some guys be so quiet when all that things have happended? Why do they try to grab the focus of the conversation out of target?

Ho Alehop! Stop acting like Shane's pussy! :lol:

I was just referring to some guys in general, I dint point my finger specifically on you. You should have noticed that I left enough space. I didn't change the topic in anyway. It is just that you have some problem in trying to understand my post? Didn't understand? READ IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN! :P

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Ho Alehop! Stop acting like Shane's pussy! :lol:

I was just referring to some guys in general, I dint point my finger specifically on you. You should have noticed that I didn't leave enough space. I didn't act like Shane's pussy in any way. It is just that you have some problem in trying to understand my post? Didn't understand? READ IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN! :wacko:

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Ho Alehop! Stop acting like Shane's pussy! :lol:

I knew that Shane was a girl.

Why are we wasting effort on speculative sensationalism? We could predict/guess/start a rumour that Stepney and Couglan are gay lovers. Until the photos of them in bed together are shown it's a waste of time.

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Of course it is obvious. The yet unconfirmed rumour tells, that those documents actually include COMPLETE DESIGN DRAWINGS of the ferrari car. This means, that those documents include most of the long-period work Ferrari has done. When Mclaren got this kind of information, they also stole months of design efforts of their rival team. It is enormous benefit, worth of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Possibly true but it the package was given to Coughlan in April..that is far too late to benefit the current car. I'm sorry to be so frank about this, but anyone who believes that parts can be taken from this year's Ferrari and put on this year's McLaren and see an immediate benefit would be woefully lacking in F1 knowledge.

And when we are talking about intellectual property, we must remember that IPR laws consider normal companies in general society. It is different issue, when we are talking about specific, closed high-tech F1 environment. There is no restriction, that Formula one could't define their own regulations considering stealing IPR from other team.

Every F1 team is a corporation/company in it's own right, with intellectual property rights to anything it's employees design. The same laws apply to the teams as they do to any other corporation.

If they deside to ban a team, that has stolen all the design documents of other team's car, they certainly can do it.

If by 'they' you are talking about the FIA, you are almost right. The FIA can only punish a team if it violates the F1 or Sporting Regs and stealing another team's IP isn't in those rules. Using a part designed by another team is against the rules. There's a difference there that matters a great deal to McLaren F1. As I have said before, McLaren are clean because no part of their car can possibly have a part on it that was designed by Ferrari. Quote me on that.

Look at the McLaren body, elephant nose, crazy front wing... The McLarens are designed to corner, and the Ferraris are designed for straight-line speed. The MP4-22 is like 10 kph slower in 7th gear @ 19000... I don't agree with raikkonen_dominates about the direct application of Ferrari's designs to McLaren's car. They are so far out there at McLaren, anything from a Ferrari would slow them down...

However, the design drawings would be very useful at helping McLaren to guide their development efforts into new areas. "Where are we weaker than Ferrari? Where can we focus our research efforts to get the biggest bang for the buck? Where will the F2007 be weak, and how can we capitalize?"

These things won't show up in an FIA inspection of the car, but with all the scrapping for tenths that goes on in F1-- the myriad levels of competition-- there is no way that these documents are NOT useful in some way. Anyone who suggests McLaren wasn't using this to some kind of advantage is living in a fantasy world.

What a disgrace.. Say it ain't so, Ron. Say it ain't so.

All I can say at this point is... poor Lew Ham. =(

Why 'poor Lew Ham.'? If McLaren have used the information like you suggest, why were they slower than the Ferrari in France? I would have expected them to dominate Ferrari, considering they (according to you) have the McLaren's strengths and the Ferrari's strengths to paper over the McLaren weaknesses. Your argument makes no sense to me.

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I was just referring to some guys in general, I dint point my finger specifically on you. You should have noticed that I didn't leave enough space. I didn't act like Shane's pussy in any way. It is just that you have some problem in trying to understand my post? Didn't understand? READ IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN! :wacko:

So you do admit that you are SHANE'S pussy! :o:P

SO. what makes you say that SOME GUYS are trying to change topics?

If you havn't noticed, there is virtually no thread in this forum in which the main subject/topic hasnt been diverted. KINDLY ADJUST!

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I knew that Shane was a girl.

Why are we wasting effort on speculative sensationalism? We could predict/guess/start a rumour that Stepney and Couglan are gay lovers. Until the photos of them in bed together are shown it's a waste of time.

:rofl::lolroll:

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So you do admit that you are SHANE'S pussy! :o:P

Where?

If you are in love with someone you should tell him.

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I knew that Shane was a girl.
You know I did start PMing him today & he said he could'nt be bothered to post anymore! Oh yeah, he got IP banned & created a new account (Shane3).

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You know I did start PMing him today & he said he could'nt be bothered to post anymore! Oh yeah, he got IP banned & created a new account (Shane3).

Jaws was a great film. Jaws 3 was utterly hopeless.

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Possibly true but it the package was given to Coughlan in April..that is far too late to benefit the current car. I'm sorry to be so frank about this, but anyone who believes that parts can be taken from this year's Ferrari and put on this year's McLaren and see an immediate benefit would be woefully lacking in F1 knowledge.

It is not just about copying parts from one car to another, but about the technical solutions. Every car designer is struggling with the same problems, considering aerodynamics, heat dissipation, strengthness of the body parts etc...

When they see the pictures of rival car, they very fast understand, what are the technical solutions used to these common problems, and they certainly can take advantage of those solutions, they don't just have to copy exactly the same parts to their car...

Those solutions to the common problems are the most valuable part of the design drawings, they are the output of the long-term design efforts of Ferrari, and Mcralen certainly knows how to benefit from them.

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Every F1 team is a corporation/company in it's own right, with intellectual property rights to anything it's employees design. The same laws apply to the teams as they do to any other corporation.

That is certainly true. However, F1-world is very different when compared to 'normal corporations'. The design cycle is impossibly fast, and there are so many contractors / subcontractors involved in car design, that they really must have made their own rules, how to handle the ipr problems. And the law actually allows that, any company can do that.

I have also tried to find out the patent publications considering F1 area, but it seems to be almost impossible to find any. Which means, of course, that there must be some other 'silent agreements' considering this area.

This area actually interests me also professionally.

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Some people say that McLaren has not been able to apply 2007 Ferrari solutions to his own car. They suggest McLaren could apply those 2007 Ferrari solutions to 2008 McLaren car. They think we all the rest have poor F1 knowledge. God!

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It is not just about copying parts from one car to another, but about the technical solutions. Every car designer is struggling with the same problems, considering aerodynamics, heat dissipation, strengthness of the body parts etc...

When they see the pictures of rival car, they very fast understand, what are the technical solutions used to these common problems, and they certainly can take advantage of those solutions, they don't just have to copy exactly the same parts to their car...

Those solutions to the common problems are the most valuable part of the design drawings, they are the output of the long-term design efforts of Ferrari, and Mcralen certainly knows how to benefit from them.

McLaren F1 has made available to the FIA all it's design and update drawings detailing each change to the car since April. As long as no part designed by Ferrari is on that car, there is no infraction of the rules. Talk design philosophy all you want, but the rules are clear: no part designed by another team can be on a competitor's car. Going deeper into design philosophy, when a person leaves one team and is employed by another team, he is taking the former team's design philosophy to the new team. That is legal. Using a copyrighted part owned by another team is not legal.

That is certainly true. However, F1-world is very different when compared to 'normal corporations'. The design cycle is impossibly fast, and there are so many contractors / subcontractors involved in car design, that they really must have made their own rules, how to handle the ipr problems. And the law actually allows that, any company can do that.

I have also tried to find out the patent publications considering F1 area, but it seems to be almost impossible to find any. Which means, of course, that there must be some other 'silent agreements' considering this area.

This area actually interests me also professionally.

Talk 'silent agreements' all you want, but ownership is ownership and the F1 teams' designs are owned by the team, or by the corporation that owns the team. Period.

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