25/09/2007
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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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.
Alonso joins the team and nobody could fail to be excited by that. Fernando is a back-to-back World Champion and he is wonderful to watch at the wheel. You would want to please such a man.
Remember, when Michael Schumacher went to Ferrari, he was able to recruit Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne who were paid salaries beyond their wildest dreams. If you can, you hitch your wagon to a passing star.
When all the Stepney thing began, Lewis Hamilton was an unknown quantity. His race at Melbourne was promising, but I can think of a lot of drivers who have had promising debuts. Hamilton was in a top car and didn't hit anything. For a debut, that was good, but not exceptional.
Imagine that Coughlan had an understanding with the two best drivers to have ever come from Spain. Pedro did a decent job last year as an understudy. It is easy to imagine that, with the security of a contract, and a whole season to show his paces, he could have developed. Look how Felipe Massa has grown in stature.
A deal was done with Stepney and then Lewis had his second race, and his third. He becomes the hottest story in sport around the world. He is the first black man in a white man's sport and the comparison with Tiger Woods is inevitable.
Hamilton also has star quality. Alonso does not have it. Look at his body language when he speaks in Spanish, it's much the same as when he speaks in English. You listen to the man, but you don't feel compelled to look at him.
Naturally, Shakespeare got it right.
As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious.
(Richard II; V, ii, 23ff.)
Alonso is a fine driver, but he is not a star, while Lewis is 'well-graced'. I bet that Fernando could not imagine other than that he was Michael Schumacher's heir. The thing is, however, that Michael has more than his fair share of tinseldust. You could not ignore Michael in a crowded room of strangers, but I could pass Fernando in the street and maybe I have, he previously lived in Oxford, a city I often visit.
We know that Alonso tried putting pressure on Ron Dennis after Hungary. He hoped to secure his long-time future at McLaren by threatening to tell the FIA about the dossier unless he was given the preferential treatment that was never promised him.
What a silly boy. Ron Dennis was the man who brought together Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. They had issues between them, but I do not recall either claiming that Ron gave the other preferential treatment.
There was a time when Ayrton Senna was negotiating a deal with Ron and it came down to the odd million dollars. Both were implacable and eventually Ron suggested that they toss a coin. Senna won and Ron paid. Ron paid a million dollars on the toss of a coin because that is the man that he is.
Apparently, Alonso later apologised for his outburst. I call it an outburst because 'blackmail is an ugly word' and I note that it was his manager who talked about the duration of Alonso's contract. No implied threat there, then.
I would not want to go to the wall with Ron. Fernando tried it and he missed a point, he is very good, but he is not Ayrton Senna.
Alonso was granted immunity by the FIA, but he was absent from the hearing in Paris. Hamilton turned up to support Ron, if necessary, even though there has never been a whiff to suggest that he has ever knowingly benefited from the dossier. It is anyway believed that Alonso's side of the garage does not share data with Hamilton's. The retinue of each driver is on a scale of bonuses.
I see that failed F1 driver, Juan Pablo Montoya, has had to throw his sixpennyworth into the ring, but it is not a show without Punch. Montoya has opined, as though anyone is interested, that Hamilton gets preferential treatment. Montoya claims that Lewis is the son that Ron is missing.
No, Juan Pablo, it was Alonso and de la Rosa who got preferential treatment, from a rogue employee. You were there, Montoya, you had a drive with McLaren, you were with the most loyal team boss in F1 and you blew it. Do us a favour, shut up.
I feel better for having said that.
Coughlan was silly to even contemplate touching a Ferrari dossier, but he gave way to temptation, if we are to take his version at face value. The trouble is that his version does not bear close scrutiny. There was that overture he and Stepney made to Honda which resulted in a meeting with Nick Fry who rejected whatever they had to offer.
I may not rate Nick Fry as a Formula One boss, but I have never thought him dim. Look at the venue, Heathrow, it was not chosen because of the excellence of its cuisine.
Coughlan and Stepney had substantial reputations, once. Honda was deep in doo-doo and known to be recruiting. Had I been in Nick's position, I would have listened to them. It is possible, however, that Nick had picked up the buzz. As spies, which is what they are, Stepney and Coughlan are poor jokes. Fry chose the venue with care. The thing about an airport is that you have an excuse to leave a meeting because the big silver bird is about to take to the sky.
People like Coughlan and Stepney think that a meeting at an airport is important. It carries a message, busy, busy, busy. Wrong! A meeting at an exclusive club is important. A long lunch is an important lunch. Nick gave the scamps a few minutes of his time and that is all. Nick Fry made sure that he had an excuse to leave.
I speculate that Coughlan and Stepney were desperate by that point, the roof was falling in.
One reading of what we know for certain could be that Coughlan was pressured and he panicked. He felt the need to dispose of the original dossier which was as fat as a Family Bible.
We know the identity of one person who was prepared to bring pressure in the case: Fernando Alonso. We do not know who else knew of the dossier and was prepared to use that knowledge, though Pedro de la Rosa is one who knew about the dossier.
There has never been any suggestion that Pedro tried to use that knowledge to bring direct pressure at McLaren, though Alonso did. I'd say that Pedro being able to improve his performance as a test driver is not the same thing. He was after Hamilton's seat, but name me a driver, apart from Kimi and Felipe, who was not after the seat.
Still, Pedro exploited, with knowledge, information which he knew was illicit. He has been named by the FIA. Aiding and abetting an illicit act carries a lighter punishment, but it still carries a penalty. Pedro, nobody wants a fairy when she's old and fat. You have no future in Formula One.
Alonso and de la Rosa, with knowledge, exploited Coughlan's possession of the dossier, they asked questions of it.
Put yourself in Coughlan's position, he was in place to be Best Buddy to the world's top driver. Despite his fancy title. Stepney has only ever been top wrench at Ferrari, boss mechanic, and he is on nearly three times the pay. I bet that Mrs. Coughlan, Trudy, could not help but remind him of that because that is what wives do, especially in the Stockbroker Belt.
Trudy Coughlan has been over-looked, but she was complicit. It was she who took the dossier to be scanned. She is named in the High Court action brought by Ferrari. This could be interesting because the English legal system brings things into the open.
She took a dossier, now valued at US$100 million plus exclusion from the Constructors' Championship, to a local shop to be scanned. She must have had some idea what she was doing, that was a heap of paper to lug around between the gym and aromatherapy.
All over the world there are places known by local industry, like 'steel towns'. One small section of Surrey means motor racing and aviation and has done for 100 years. The Brooklands Track opened in 1907. Get an atlas and look at the area, go no further than 20 miles, you will find Brabham, Connaught, Cooper, HWM, Ralt and Tyrrell. You will find the Sopwith Camel, the bouncing bomb and Concorde and I have yet to scratch the surface.
The one place in the world where you do not announce that you have an illicit Ferrari dossier is Woking, apart from Maranello, of course. Trudy is so dumb that she had the dossier scanned to CD in Woking.
Her husband had stolen the Crown Jewels and she took them to a pawnbroker. I bet that she wears sunglasses on the top of her head even in Winter.
It was Alonso and de la Rosa who consulted the dossier. It was Alonso who tried to bring pressure on Ron and that is on record. My guess is that Alonso brought pressure on Coughlan as soon as he realised that Hamilton was no mere rookie.
Another guess is that Coughlan thought that Alonso was a nice guy, but no top sportsperson is pleasant when it comes to the job. I have known a fair few GP drivers who have been charming out of the car. but I would not want to meet them when they are in racing mode and most of them have had the courtesy to agree.
We know that de la Rosa and Alonso did not only use the data, they were so far in the conspiracy that they could ask specific questions. Every so often, I use an air machine at a local filling station, I do not ask what gas is being used. They asked what gas was being used by Ferrari
Alonso and de la Rosa appear to have been on better than nodding terms with Coughlan. Then Lewis Hamilton struts his stuff. de la Rosa knows his place, he knows he is not of the class of Hamilton but Alonso believes that he is World Number One. Lewis is out of the ordinary. He is The Real Thing.
Coughlan must have been desperate to send the wife to get 780 pages scanned to CD, then buy a shredder, then burn the remains. He had been in possession of the dossier for weeks and then something, or someone, makes him panic. Coughlan has claimed that he hardly looked at the dossier, but the FIA has seen e-mails which contradict this. The dossier was so inconsequential to him that he destroyed it, so he says. That is like burning a painting by Van Gogh. He had it scanned in case Stepney, whom he hardly knows, ever needed a copy.
What I hate about people like Coughlan is the stories they tell when they are found out. You and I are held in contempt by Coughlan or he would not tell us the stories that he does. Do not forget that he holds you in contempt, but it is he who is about to lose his house.
He had the dossier and he had to be smart, he had to show it to people and he has been ruined. He could have got away with, 'I have inside information' and a touch to the nose. The daft man had to show the dossier around. He had it scanned to CD, had he kept it on paper it could not have been traced unless he was very careless.
Not only is he unemployable in Formula One, but Nigel Stepney whom Coughlan hardly knows, could face time in prison.
I have no idea how Stepney came to be involved. He was on a salary beyond what he ever could have imagined, he is paid more than most winners of a Nobel Prize. He knew that Ross Brawn was going to take time out from Ferrari, he knew that changes would take place. Italians would want to take over their team after the Anglo-Saxons had gone. That is natural. Ferrari will, of course, revert to it usual chaos.
Stepney is a mechanic who got lucky, he has not found a cure for cancer, but he has won the lottery. I have no idea what grievances drove Stepney, but he claims to know where the bodies are buried and that holds my interest. I would like to hear more on that.
Stepney has made that boast and he faces trial. I wonder how big his balls are. We shall see. Stepney faces ruination, but he can go out a small man or a big man. My money is on small, I bet that he will want to make excuses.
It was from Stepney that the documents originated. Ferrari has cases against him and there is at least one criminal case as well as civil cases. Ferrari had a rogue employee.
McLaren has been hit hard. Ron Dennis is not going to take that lying down and he has a long purse.
Ron is innocent of any wrong doing. As soon as he became aware of what Coughlan had been up to, with Stepney, Alonso and de la Rosa, he went to the FIA.
What would you do in his position? Me? I'd go for the bastards.
There are court cases on the horizon, in Italy and the UK. I would want to see Alonso and de la Rosa called as witnesses. The FIA may have been able to have disguised the part they have played, but a court would not and Max Mosley knows that.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
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