1.4. At the 6 December WMSC meeting, oral submissions and explanations were made on behalf of Renault and McLaren and evidence from a number of witnesses was heard (including from Mackereth himself). WMSC put questions to those concerned and opportunities were also offered and taken up for Renault and McLaren to cross-examine each others' witnesses.
2.
Summary of main findings
2.1. It emerges from the written and oral submissions made (and it is admitted by Renault) that different Renault engineers received and considered four confidential McLaren drawings from Mackereth. In this regard Renault admits a breach of Article 151(c) of the International Sporting Code.
2.2. Mackereth took a much more significant volume of information from McLaren including some confidential information, some information that was not proprietary to McLaren and some personal financial information. The WMSC can be concerned only with what Renault had access to (rather than what Mackereth took) from McLaren as only the former could impact the
FIA Formula One World Championship (“the Championship”).
2.3. The WMSC has concluded that of the four drawings actually viewed by Renault's engineers, three were either of no use to Renault or were not in fact used by
Renault. The fourth drawing (a drawing of McLaren's so-called ‘J-damper') was used by Renault to try to have the system that they thought McLaren was using declared illegal. This failed because Renault had certain fundamental misunderstandings about the operation of the 'J-damper' system. This suggests that Renault's sight of the 'J-damper' drawing did not give Renault enough information to understand how it worked. In these circumstances, an affect on the Championship cannot be established.
2.4. Some of the key elements that the WMSC has considered are set out below. In light of the strong imperative in the interests of the sport to issue a swift ruling, the following does not constitute an exhaustive list of the elements considered nor does it purport to be a summary of all of the evidence put before the WMSC.
3.
Taking of information from McLaren
3.1. The evidence before the WMSC is that prior to leaving McLaren and before he joined Renault in September 2006, Mackereth took personal possession of certain information and materials. This included confidential McLaren information as well as materials which were copyrighted to other parties (e.g. materials received while on external training courses) and some personal materials. In particular he copied 33 electronic files onto 11 floppy disks and took them to his home. These 33 electronic files included 18 drawings as well as Mackereth's personal financial information. He also e-mailed a file called ‘peak2.tif' to his home computer.
