Renault responds to the allegations made against it

Following the notification of a hearing by the FIA for ING Renault F1 Team representatives at the next World Council in December, the team wanted to clarify the situation.

On September 6, 2007, it was brought to our attention that an engineer (Mr. Phil Mackereth), who had joined our team in September 2006 after working for McLaren, had taken information that was the property of McLaren with him.

« This information was stored on diskettes and included copies of McLaren engineering drawings and technical files. This information was, at the request of Phil Mackereth, installed in his personal folder on the Renault F1 Team system. This was done without the consent of any of the team’s officials. »

« As soon as the situation was brought to the attention of the team’s technical management, the following actions were undertaken:

The incriminated information has been deleted from our computer system and a proper investigation has been launched.

• We immediately informed McLaren of the situation and then notified the FIA.

Since then, we have been regularly informing McLaren and the FIA of the progress in resolving this matter.

Mr. Phil Mackereth was immediately suspended from his duties.

• The original disks were retrieved and sent by our lawyers to McLaren »

« Our investigation showed that upon taking office within the team, Mr. Phil Mackereth informed several of our engineers about the existence of this information through drawings. »

« They covered four areas of application used by McLaren, namely: the inside of the fuel tank, the gearbox, a mass damper, and a suspension damper system. The engineers involved claimed that after briefly seeing these drawings, none of this information was used to influence the design of the Renault single-seater in any way whatsoever. In the particular case of the mass damper, since this system had been banned by the FIA, these drawings therefore held no interest. »

« The suspension damper designed by McLaren can in turn be called into question, and a clarification from the FIA later confirmed it, based on our interpretation of this concept. »

ING Renault F1 Team has fully cooperated with McLaren and the FIA on this matter to the point of inviting an independent body chosen by McLaren to inspect its computer systems, cars, and design records to demonstrate that it was an unfortunate incident that in no way influenced the design of its single-seaters.

ING Renault F1 Team acted with complete transparency towards McLaren and the FIA, being proactive in resolving this matter and has full confidence in the judgment of the World Council next December.

According to the ING Renault F1 Team