THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MONTE CARLO, Monaco — Renault escaped punishment for possessing confidential information about Formula One rival McLaren because the material was of no use to the team, the sport’s governing body said Friday.
The World Motor Sport Council said the unauthorized possession of four technical drawings was not serious enough to merit a penalty similar to the record US$100-million fine imposed on McLaren in September for using confidential data from Ferrari.
In a statement on its website, the sport’s governing body, which found Renault guilty of breaching rules on Thursday, said there was no evidence that images of a fuel system schematic, gear layout and mass damper influenced any Renault design.
Renault used the remaining drawing of a so-called "J-damper" only to have the system it thought McLaren was using declared illegal.
"This failed because Renault had certain fundamental misunderstandings about the operation of the `J-damper system,"’ FIA president Max Mosley said. "This suggests that Renault’s sight of the `J-damper’ drawing did not give Renault enough information to understand how it worked. In these circumstances, an affect on the Championship cannot be established."
The FIA said it was lenient because Renault’s senior management acted correctly when it was made aware of the drawings. Renault technical director Bob Bell carried out a preliminary investigation on Sept. 6 and sent the results to McLaren and the FIA.
Phil Mackereth, a former McLaren engineer, took several CDs of data with him to Renault after he joined the team in September 2006. Of the 762 pages of information taken from McLaren by Mackereth, 111 contained McLaren information and were transferred to Renault’s computers or offices.
McLaren’s hopes of having its rival punished seemed to diminish Wednesday when it was forced to admit it had exaggerated the scale of the allegations against Mackereth and Renault.
The FIA made McLaren acknowledge there were only 18 technical drawings of its cars on the 11 computer disks it said Mackereth had, not 780 outlining the entire blueprint as it had previously leaked to the press.