FIA president
Max Mosley has warned that any repeat of the spying saga that dominated the 2007
Formula 1 season is likely to lead to exclusions from the sport.
McLaren was thrown out of the constructors' championship last season and hit with a record $100 million fine after being found guilty of being in possession of confidential
Ferrari documentation, which had been passed from disgraced former Ferrari employee Nigel Stepney to
McLaren's chief designer.
It also led to the FIA looking into the legality of the new McLaren MP4-23 to ensure it didn't contain any Ferrari parts before the governing body finally closed the door on the saga and Mosley warned that the consequences would be dire for any team caught in a similar position in the future.
"You can never stop what someone has got in his head, but we can stop the transfer of information in written or electronic form," he told
Formula1.com. "And if you are prepared to check - and we have demonstrated that we are - then somebody using such information would be very unwise because in a modern
F1 team you cannot do it without leaving traces, and we will find those traces.
"Next time, whoever it was, I don't think they would stay in the championship. In the case of McLaren everybody said 'oh, a hundred million dollars', but the alternative would have been to exclude them - and that would have been more expensive!"
Mosley added that he was happy with how the FIA had dealt with the scandal, from the initial hearing back in July to the final decision being taken in September to punish the Woking-based squad.
"I would say that we did it the right way at each stage," he said. "When we had the first hearing on the 26th of July we were all very suspicious. We did not really believe that the only person involved was Mike Coughlan, but we had to find clear evidence and there was not sufficient evidence to convict them.
