There is no point in dwelling on the verdict of the World Motor Sport Council in the 'Stepneygate' affair, but the business is not over.

McLaren had a 'rogue employee' and so did Ferrari. Ferrari is still pursuing Nigel Stepney and Michael Coughlan. Coughlan issued a public statement a few weeks ago in which he claimed to have hardly known Stepney, yet the FIA discovered hundreds of contacts via phone records.

Coughlan and Stepney appear to be the only people on the planet who do not know that phone companies keep records, yet when they receive their bills there will also be a print-out of calls made. This could be a clue to how electronic communication works.

I don't get why Michael Coughlan, a boffin, is so daft as to think he can get away with an apparently frank 'admission' that he had very little contact with Nigel Stepney who, apparently, forced a 780-word dossier on him.

You buy paper for your printer, a standard pack is a ream, 480 sheets. There is enough bulk and weight for you to notice. Imagine a pack and a half plus binding and perhaps the quality (weight) of paper I guess that Ferrari uses. That is hardly a till receipt. Imagine someone you hardly know forcing that on you in a restaurant and you knowing that even reading a page involves you in industrial espionage.

Coughlan, or his lawyer, clearly thinks that you and I are daft. I will not take that from a thief. Coughlan is a thief and now he starts to wriggle. I might have respected him had he put up his hand. I can cope with thief, I cannot cope with spineless, like a worm, or its lawyer.

I have no idea whether Coughlan has done a deal, but I do know that he issued a statement which the FIA has proven to have as many omissions as a sieve.

From here on, I am musing. What follows is the written equivalent of thinking aloud, pursuing possible lines of thought. On no account must you believe that I have any inside knowledge because I do not. I wish that I had, though I start with a true story.

Some years ago, a pal of mine, who is a Rotarian, invited me to a dinner because the speaker was Jock Clear, In 1996, Clear was race engineer to Jacques Villeneuve at Williams and he told this story.

At the 1996 Belgian GP, Jock and Jacques met up with Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) in a gentleman's comfort room at Spa and Michael gave Jacques advice on how to beat Damon Hill. Let that scenario sink in: Williams engineer and driver and Ferrari driver, in a loo, plotting the defeat of a Williams driver.

Williams engineer thinks it's a bit of a wheeze so he tells 200 people at the Langstone Hotel, Northney Road, Hayling Island. He cannot escape with the plea that he did not know that there was a motor racing journalist in the audience. Try to recall, Mr. Clear, the identity of the handsome man, suave in an ironical way, who spoke immediately before you.

Coughlan appears to have let Alonso and de la Rosa know that he had Ferrari data, e-mails discovered by the FIA indicate that. de la Rosa has been McLaren's test driver for some time and was a potential candidate for one of the race seats this year. Coughlan and he had worked together for several years.