Blown out of all proportion because Moseley wanted to get his own back on Dennis.
Plenty of teams benefit from moving team members taking information from one team to another.
It is something I would never do, maybe foolishly, since I believe what is in your head is the only thing you can fairly keep, but I know of two very well known engineers who came with complete sets of drawings, and one of them trunks full of actual parts.
The Coughlan/Stepney thing was a witch hunt of McLaren.
Ironically I have been told that the two of them originally hoped to get well paid jobs from another team by bringing both McLaren and Ferrari data, and Mike already had been given the Ferrari data by the time they were refused.
It is true that people push the rules as far as they can, daft not to as long as one stays legal.
As an example, 1mm of front ride height lower is about 0.1 secs quicker so people run as low as they can.
The wooden rubbing strip under the car has an allowable amount of wear, which is checked frequently now the FIA scrutineers know this (they werenât as exigent beforeâŚ).
The rules originally specified the floor should be rigid, but of course nothing is, and as long as it didnât move when the scrutineers heaved on it, it would pass. Using a sprung stay pre-loaded by about 30kg passed but allowed a front ride height worth 0.7 secs per lap to be run compared to a solid strut. Later there was an automated measuring jig produced which loaded the strut by more than 30kg, showing the front wing as too low in scrutineering so a bit more preload was needed, and so on. The principle being if the car passed the tests it was legal. Nowadays there are loads of load deflection tests specified.
For as long as Iâve followed F1 (since 1975ish), there have been people claiming there is cheating going on when their team is being beaten. Little or nothing of any worth has been proven. If a team has beaten you, suck it up and do better. Donât bleat about an unfair advantage. Itâs bollocks. Youâre jut not doing a good enough job.
In the current climate, the money is so significant and the scrutiny so tight, that trying to nobble one driver in favour of another is just not worth the risk to reputation.
If you insist on wearing a tin-foil hat then get to fuck !!
Th Coughlan Stepney saga was really funny for those in the industry. There was not going to be anything in those drawings to tell you how to make a fast car. I am surprised that any team would even want to look at them.
My experience is different to Frankâs as the only thing that someone once tried to show me from another team was a set-up sheet, which was of no interest to me as for it to be useful you would need to have worked at that team to understand what was behind it. So I donât understand why they would want to show it to me in the first place. I guess if it is left to people like Jonathon Neale (he should have lost his job for allowing this to happen and spin out of control), who have zero technical knowledge, then they may think that there is significant value in drawings from another team, along with very low risk of getting caught.
Nowadays bending of the rules is very difficult because of all the checks that take place and also because when people move teams, if someone is cheating it is likely to be found out.
The Honda fuel tank was an interesting one as we originally thought that David Greenwood, who had moved to Renault F1 around that time had let them know what was going on. But I think that it uncovered by another path due to a mistake that someone made. And someone seeing the result putting 2 and 2 together.
Ian - I woudlnât have the slightest reason to doubt your first para ⌠but IIRC the emails between Alonso, De La Rosa and Coughlan clearly showed that - regardless of the usefulness of their Ferrari info - they were nonetheless trying them out on the simulator and in testing.
Plus there was the issue of C02 tyre inflataion, aero map and Stepney blabbing about when the Ferrariâs would be stopping, which struck me as being pretty concrete info. But I assumed those latter aspects were commonplace than was made out.
Either way, the subsequent Renault case seemed infitely more damming than Mclarenâs (though your shonky fuel tank probably still takes the biscuit )
In 14 they had equally poor reliabilty, and the title went down to the last race, which Lewis won fair and square. In 15 it was more finely balanced before the summer break, then it went tits up for Rosberg afterwards with two straight DNFâs.
I donât recall Rosberg getting all Tin Foil Hat at the time, and I certainly donât recall him belittling the title which Lewis subequently won.
From what I remember the emails between Alonso, De La Rosa and Coughlan talked about trying different weight distributions because Ferrari were running in a different area.
For anyone who understands vehicle performance, this is something that would have been investigated widely around the vehicle concept time and then in a finer tolerance window as it became clear what the tires needed (i.e. this would commonly be looked at in the simulator / in simulations for each circuit). Once the base aero concept had been determined that would narrow the window down where the weight distribution would work with the aero. If the tires had changed considerably from what was predicted / anticipated then moving the weight distribution to a different area would most likely start to compromise the aero.
I can talk from experience in this area as when Renault was winning it was very clear that they had a very different weight distribution. At the time we did not have a technical director (2005 I think, well after the fuel tank mess) and the CEO decided that as we were not really competing at the front, despite having done so in 2004, that we had to try to make the car work like the Renault with a much more rearward weight distribution. We advised that this was a very bad move as aero performance (efficiency and characteristics) would drop off and it might take a couple of seasons to make the car work like the Renault, and even then it might require Alonso to drive it to its potential. But he knew best and we suffered for sometime after that!
I like the shonky fuel tank. Gave you an advantage in the middle stint of the race, and as far as we could calculate (which was pretty accurate but obviously could not weigh the car in the race art that point on the FIA scales)), the car never ran underweight!
Ian: thanks for a great reply on weight distribution.
Just been refreshing my wiki-memory on the 2005 season. There are a few names one hasnât read about for some timre: Geoff Willis, Nick Fry. I assume the latter is still counting his wads of cash and pinching himself
Geoff Willis reports to Paddy Lowe at Mercedes F1, in charge of the Aero department and maybe Controls, with a job title something like Technology Director.
Not sure about Nick Fry. Whilst he made the big mistake of directing the team to try and follow the Renault approach in 2005, he had a good grip of what was required to win. He was also instrumental in setting up the management buy out in 2009 that resulted in Brawn winning the championship. Many people have said that they thought that it was an obvious thing to do, but it wasnât that obvious at the the time that we had a very fast car, nor that we could fund the season in the severe economic climate that existed at the time. It was going to be a quick car but was never going to win without a much better engine on the back (a possibility was to use the Honda engine that year).
It wasnât racing. It was a cheap way to try and get Rosberg in trouble. It was petulant and childish, and at least the team had the decency to be pissed off with it.
I disagree; when your only option is for others to overtake your opponent, itâs the only thing you can do. If heâd run him off the road then that would be a different kettle of fish, but hard to argue with straight strategy.
so a bit more preload was needed, and so on. The principle being if the car passed the tests it was legal. Nowadays there are loads of load deflection tests specified.
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