8.5. About 15% of what was taken by Mackereth contained McLaren confidential information and was in Renault's control or technical possession. Mackereth uploaded 33 electronic files (including 18 drawings and personal information) to an area on the Renault computer system which was accessible only to him. In addition, he e-mailed one file (a ‘screen grab' of a drawing) to his Renault e-mail account and brought in two hard copy drawings. However, there is no evidence of any McLaren documents or files being viewed or considered by anyone at Renault other than the four drawings referred to above.
8.6. While McLaren is right to be extremely concerned about its employee taking information upon his departure, the concern of the WMSC is not with what Mackereth took. This is a matter between McLaren and its former employee. The WMSC is concerned with what Renault had access to or was influenced by as only this could have had an impact on the Championship.
8.7. 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 in that Renault admits taking it into account in preparing a request to the
FIA for a clarification of whether a particular hypothetical system was within the rules (rather than for the purposes of copying it). The fact that Renault fundamentally misunderstood the operation of the system suggests that the 'J-damper' drawing did not reveal to Renault enough about the system for the Championship to have been affected.
8.8. The McLaren confidential information brought to Renault was in the context of an
F1 engineer changing teams. It was not ‘live' information in the sense that there is no evidence of a flow of current information between competing teams. After leaving McLaren, Mackereth had no further access to current or updated McLaren information. Nor is there any evidence that Renault encouraged Mackereth in any way to bring the confidential information from
McLaren.
