FIA Reveals Details of McLaren Ferrari Scandal

The FIA has released details of the email conversation between Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa that led to McLaren being excluded from this year’s Formula One constructor’s championship amid accusations of spying. Interestingly, the emails which were exchanged over the course of three months centred Ferrari’s tyre inflation gas, brakes and weight distribution.

According to the FIA, de la Rosa emailed Alonso on 25 March identifying identified an unspecified gas that Ferrari uses to inflate its tyres to reduce the internal temperature and blistering. The e-mail concludes with the statement (in relation to the gas) that “we’ll have to try it, it’s easy!”

Alonso replied that it is “very important” that McLaren test the gas that Ferrari uses in its tyres as “they have something different from the rest”, and “not only this year. There is something else and this may be the key; let’s hope we can test it during this test, and that we can make it a priority!” de la Rosa replied stating the following: I agree 100% that we must test the [tyre gas] thing very soon.

Although the e-mail exchange between Mr. Alonso and Mr. de la Rosa makes clear that they both were enthusiastic about trying the gas apparently used by Ferrari in its tyres, Mr de la Rosa’s evidence to the World Motor Sport Council was that he, on his own, decided to explore with a Bridgestone engineer whether the McLaren team should try this gas. He states that he had no other conversations with any other specialist staff within McLaren.

His evidence is that the Bridgestone engineer in question doubted whether the gas would confer an advantage upon McLaren. According to Mr de la Rosa, without further consultation with anyone else at McLaren, and despite the fact that this had apparently been successfully used at Ferrari, the idea was dropped and no actual attempt was made to test the gas in the tyres used by McLaren.

And in order to demonstrate that the drivers knew where the data they were discussing was coming from, the FIA quoted the following passage from the email exchange. “All the information from Ferrari is very reliable. It comes from Nigel Stepney, their former chief mechanic – I don’t know what post he holds now. He’s the same person who told us in Australia that Kimi (Raikkonen) was stopping in lap 18. He’s very friendly with Mike Coughlan, our chief designer and he told him that.”