Surprise surprise! McLaren let off
Well, we all knew it was going to be a damp squib in the end, didn't we? Proving that McLaren had the goods was not difficult. An employee of the organisation was found with the stuff in his house and it was all genuine, therefore an open and shut case. What is much more difficult to prove is that they had used the stuff to gain an unfair advantage. Hellishly difficult. The only way I can see this being possible is if both Ferrari and McLaren were required to supply their cars for a mechanical analysis by the FIA. Even then you would struggle because the two cars would not be identical.
What is intriguing about the manner in which the story broke is that Coughlan, the McLaren engineer, and his wife were shopped by a photocopying clerk. Mrs Coughlan went to a photocopying shop in Woking, Surrey and handed over a bundle of 780 documents for photocopying. Technical bits of paper marked confidential with the Ferrari logo all over them would give the game away to even the dimmest photocopier operator. The shop phoned Ferrari to alert them and the game was up.
Now how stupid can Mrs Coughlan be? First, why go to a photocopying shop in Woking. Woking is the home of McLaren for God's sake? Even the cleaners in Woking know this. Anybody mooching around with a sheaf of Ferrari papers is guaranteed to raise suspicions. The stupid woman would have been far better advised to take the train thirty miles up the road to London where the chances of anonymity are vaster and the risk of raising suspicion significantly less. Second, could she not simply have bought a printer/copier and done the job at home? Tedious and back-breaking in the extreme, given the amount of paper, but safe from prying eyes at the very least. Third, and perhaps most importantly, why make copies at all? Keep the bally manual under your mattress and only retrieve it when you need it!
Had it not been for Mrs Coughlan's schoolgirl error, Coughlan and Stepney (his mate at Ferrarri)could have kept the game going for the rest of the season and then shared Coughlan's winning engineer's bonus. Now the pair will probably never work in F1 again because their names are mud. What a turn of events!
Gitau
26 July 2007
What is intriguing about the manner in which the story broke is that Coughlan, the McLaren engineer, and his wife were shopped by a photocopying clerk. Mrs Coughlan went to a photocopying shop in Woking, Surrey and handed over a bundle of 780 documents for photocopying. Technical bits of paper marked confidential with the Ferrari logo all over them would give the game away to even the dimmest photocopier operator. The shop phoned Ferrari to alert them and the game was up.
Now how stupid can Mrs Coughlan be? First, why go to a photocopying shop in Woking. Woking is the home of McLaren for God's sake? Even the cleaners in Woking know this. Anybody mooching around with a sheaf of Ferrari papers is guaranteed to raise suspicions. The stupid woman would have been far better advised to take the train thirty miles up the road to London where the chances of anonymity are vaster and the risk of raising suspicion significantly less. Second, could she not simply have bought a printer/copier and done the job at home? Tedious and back-breaking in the extreme, given the amount of paper, but safe from prying eyes at the very least. Third, and perhaps most importantly, why make copies at all? Keep the bally manual under your mattress and only retrieve it when you need it!
Had it not been for Mrs Coughlan's schoolgirl error, Coughlan and Stepney (his mate at Ferrarri)could have kept the game going for the rest of the season and then shared Coughlan's winning engineer's bonus. Now the pair will probably never work in F1 again because their names are mud. What a turn of events!
Gitau
26 July 2007
posted by Gitau at 6:09 pm
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