Ecclestone gets involved in the new espionage scandal

Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 boss, has called a crisis meeting this Friday, November 9, due to this new espionage scandal that has come to light.

The 76-year-old man, who is a close partner and friend of Flavio Briatore, asked key members of the F1 world to gather in his London office as Renault recently admitted to having possessed secret information belonging to McLaren.

The Daily Telegraph reported that every team, except Renault, Ferrari, and McLaren, which are the three teams involved in espionage scandals, attended Ecclestone’s meeting to establish the nature and extent of espionage in F1 and to put an end to any new attempts.

At first glance, the Renault case as a new espionage affair seems potentially worse than the Stepney case, due to the duration of possession and the detailed nature of the secrets that have been revealed.

In a press release published this Friday, Renault stated that the engineer in question who was in contact with McLaren’s data, namely Phil Mackereth, has been suspended from his duties.

Renault adds that the information had been introduced within the team by the system’s computer via a disk, but because of Mackereth, some of our engineers know secrets.

It was later reported that nearly 15 people from the French team were ultimately in contact with this information foreign to the team.

The Telegraph claims that even high-ranking officials such as the chief designer, the deputy chief designer, the deputy technical director, the head of research and development, and the head of vehicle performance were aware of this data.

However, Renault insists that although some engineers were briefly in contact with the drawings, McLaren’s information was not used in decisions related to the design of the Renault car.