Letter From McLaren Restarts Spy Row

McLaren boss, Ron Dennis, has reignited the spy row between McLaren and Ferrari after it emerged he had accused Ferrari of winning the Australia Grand Prix this year with an illegal car, in a letter he wrote to the FIA. It was an open letter to the FIA which is Formula One's governing body.

The row initially blew up when Mike Coughlan, McLaren's chief designer, was found with 800 pages of Ferrari documents in his house.

The world motorsport council found McLaren guilty of posses confidential documents that belonged to Ferrari, but believed there was not enough evidence to prove that McLaren had used this information for their own gain. Ater this though a strongly worded letter came from the Italian motorsport President, Luigi Macaluso, to Max Mosley, the haed of the FIA. This letter then prompted the FIA to send its verdict not to punish McLaren to its court of appeal.

FIA regulations state that a 'flexi' floor in the car is proven to be illegal.

In Dennis' letter he writes that McLaren was informed that the Ferrari car had a 'flexi' floor by Nigel Stepney, the now axed Ferrari performance director, and had McLaren not brought "it to the attention of the FIA, there is every reason to suppose that Ferrari would have continued to race with an illegal car."

Dennis goes on to say: "It is in the interests of F1 that whistle-blowing is encouraged and not discouraged. If team members think that their identity will be revealed they will not whistle-blow."