Bernie: Impossible to stop spying in F1
Wednesday, 28, November, 2007, 12:35
Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone believes it is impossible to stop the transfer of information between teams in the sport.
As F1 braces itself for next week's World Motor Sport Council meeting in which Renault faces charges of holding confidential McLaren information, Ecclestone claimed that spying has always taken place in F1 and that it would be difficult to stop individuals taking information from one employer to another.
"There has always been spying ever since I have been in Formula 1," he said in an interview with German magazine Auto Motor und Sport posted on F1's official website.
"It is a little bit more sophisticated than it was. In the old days, one guy would employ somebody and they would take the information he brings with him.
"In a way, it is still happening today."
"Red Bull employed Adrian Newey. Why did they do that? They took him on board, because he?s got years of information about what to do and what not. I do not imagine he came with any drawings, but he came with all his knowledge in his head."
"We cannot stop that," he added.
"If I am running a private hospital, I would engage the best surgeons I could find.
"If I hear about a guy who had done 30 heart transplants successfully somewhere else, then I am going to employ him, because he has proven that he can do it.
"You haven't bought anything except knowledge. I cannot tell you to forget everything you have done."
Ecclestone did suggest however that the issue of spying was not a matter for the sport's governing body, the FIA, but rather that information theft should be dealt with by police authorities.
He even revealed that he had advised Ron Dennis to inform the police when the original 'Spygate' scandal engulfed Formula 1.
"They [the FIA] should keep out of it," he said.
"I did tell [McLaren team principal] Ron Dennis, when the whole mess started to report to the police that there was a case of theft. Tell them that there is an employee in the house, who is receiving or purchasing stolen property.
"If it was dealt in that way, we would not have had the problems we faced this year.
"It should be a matter for the police and the court. They have much better tools to find out the truth."
Dennis's McLaren team was eventually fined $US100m and thrown out of the 2007 constructors' championship for its role in possessing a confidential 780-page Ferrari dossier.
But Ecclestone reckoned that 'Spygate' could have been resolved with significantly less fuss while not exposing the sport to a potentially damaging scandal.
"When the information became available to Ron Dennis that something was going on in his company, he should have called Todt and said ?Listen [Ferrari CEO] Jean [Todt], something funny is going on, let's get together?," he said.
"They would have met, both would have informed the police, who then would have investigated the matter and we would have known what really happened.
"I talk often about the good old days, and probably they weren't good old days," he added.
"But at least in any event we used to sort these problems out by ourselves. Nowadays every team has got five lawyers, three doctors, two masseurs, a psychologist, and all of them want to work. So if there is the chance to cause trouble, they do cause trouble.
"Without all these people, the teams would not need to do all this and we would have solved the problems internally."
Asked whether he thought Renault was in trouble when it faces the WMSC next week, Ecclestone said that he thought there were significant differences between this case and the one involving McLaren and Ferrari.
"I do not know the extent of what they have done and what they have not done," he said.
"I think the difference between them and McLaren is that McLaren were getting information over a person, rather than somebody has stolen a lot of drawings in one go."
Renault are just as guilty if not even more so of exactly the same actions Mclaren took.
