Mosley ‘surprised’ At Hamilton Innocence

FIA president Max Mosley has stated that it would be ‘very surprising’ if Lewis
Hamilton knew nothing about the spying of Ferrari by McLaren engineers but that
was there was no evidence to prove the British driver’s involvement.

The spying row which overshadowed the 2007 F1 season saw McLaren docked all
their points in the constructors’ championship and fined $100m after an
independent court discovered that the team was in possession of confidential
Ferrari documents.

However, Hamilton and fellow McLaren driver Fernando Alonso were not docked
their individual points as no evidence could be found of their direct
involvement.

Mosley said: ‘Hamilton is not a known quantity to me. It would be surprising
if he didn’t know something of what was going on, but I’ve got absolutely no
evidence that he had. On that basis it would be wrong of me to suggest that he
had.’

The FIA boss also stated the make-up of the McLaren car for the 2008 season
would be heavily scrutinised to ensure that it did not include any Ferrari
components in it.

‘That Ferrari data was in the hands of the chief designer at precisely the
moment he was designing the 2008 McLaren. The difficulty we have is that you’re
not going to find on the McLaren a part that was designed by Ferrari.

‘What you may find are ideas and at this level of technology at this level of
motorsport, if the idea is given to the chief designer he will make a component
utilising that idea which bears no relation at all to the component perhaps
being used by the other car.

‘So we will be looking for the ideas. The investigation will be thorough, it
will use outside experts and we will do everything we possibly can to make sure
that either of the McLarens has no element of Ferrari intellectual property in
it or if it does we will then have to consider taking some sort of action.

‘That would not necessarily be preventing them from running. It would be more
likely that they would be given a negative point allocation.

‘Finding something will not be easy. On the other hand, there are sources we
are going to deploy who will give us as good a chance as it’s possible to have
to find it.’