Motor sport's world governing body, the FIA, is to investigate alleged industrial espionage against Formula One team Ferrari in which an employee of rival McLaren has been implicated.
The FIA said on Wednesday in a brief statement that it had the full cooperation of both teams in its probe.
Earlier, McLaren said its Formula One cars did not contain any Ferrari-related alterations and invited the FIA to inspect them.
Photo: AP
On Tuesday, McLaren suspended an employee - named in British newspapers as chief designer Mike Coughlan - after learning he had personally received a package of technical information from a Ferrari employee at the end of April.
"McLaren has completed a thorough investigation and can confirm that no Ferrari intellectual property has been passed to any other members of the team or incorporated into its cars," McLaren said in a statement.
Ferrari president Luca Cordero di Montezemolo told Italian news agencies on Wednesday that "it is an incident of unheard of seriousness, but for the moment I do not want to add anything else."
McLaren said it had spoken with Ferrari about the issue and invited the FIA to conduct a full review of its cars "to satisfy itself that the team has not benefited from any intellectual property of another competitor."
Also on Tuesday, Ferrari fired British technician Nigel Stepney following an internal investigation into attempted sabotage before the Monaco Grand Prix. Ferrari also filed a criminal complaint against Stepney, who was responsible for team performance.
A mysterious powder was reportedly found in the gas tanks of the cars of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen on May 21, six days before the Monaco race.
The parts were replaced before the race and the powder was sent to the police to be examined.
Massa finished third in the race and Raikkonen was eighth.
Raikkonen and Massa finished first and second respectively in the French Grand Prix on Sunday to cut McLaren-Mercedes' lead to 25 points in the team standings after eight of 17 races.
McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are 1-2 in the driver's standings, while Massa and Raikkonen are third and fourth.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier