6.8. Mackereth also admits showing the drawings of the McLaren mass damper and the ‘J-damper' to a further three Renault engineers, one of whom also admitted photocopying the drawings so that he could study them at home. He returned the originals to Mackereth and later destroyed the copies he had taken.
6.9. In the context of its concerns about the legality of
McLaren's damper system, Renault admits reviewing the drawing of the ‘J-damper' with the intention of trying to understand how it worked and asking the FIA to confirm whether the McLaren system, as understood by
Renault, was legal or not with a view to having the McLaren system excluded (there is nothing to suggest that Renault intended to try to copy the system).
6.10. Renault subsequently submitted a question about the system it thought the ‘J-damper' drawing depicted – a spinning mass damper – to the
FIA. The FIA confirmed that the damper system described in Renault's hypothetical request would be illegal if used. However, the question put by Renault reveals that it did not understand certain fundamental aspects of the McLaren system.
6.11. The assessment by the FIA technical department concluded that the ‘J-damper' drawing shows a particular type of damper that, “has not been used, nor will it be used, on the Renault car. All dampers on the Renault car of conventional design and come from an outside supplier.”
6.12. The WMSC has seen no evidence that suggests that the mass-damper drawing even could have influenced or had any impact on Renault's design approach or the development of its
F1 cars because this type of damper had been banned. Although the ‘J-damper' drawing was taken into account by Renault in trying to have a McLaren system declared illegal, the evidence strongly suggests that the ‘J-damper' drawing did not reveal to Renault enough about the McLaren system for the Championship to have been influenced as even after seeing the drawing Renault continued to believe that McLaren operated quite a different system.
7.
E-mailed file ‘21aspec.tif'
7.1. Even though the four documents described above were the only ones disseminated within Renault, the WMSC feels that it is worth mentioning one other confidential McLaren document taken to Renault by Mackereth – the file called either ‘peak2.tif' or ‘21aspec.tif'.
