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  Ford boss Marin Burela's leaked email makes the mistake of saying that ‘each year Triple 8 chose to defy that contractual obligation and paint their cars red’.

A blue over colours has erupted between TeamVodafone and Ford after the V8 Supercar champion team announced last week it would switch to Holden next season.

TeamVodafone principal Roland Dane has accused Ford boss Marin Burela of delivering ‘a pack of lies’ in an email sent to Ford staff after the announcement. Burela's leaked internal email said Ford "spent a considerable amount of money sponsoring Triple 8 for a number of years".

"We honoured every single aspect of our sponsorship arrangement with them and in return, we asked for one thing - that they respect our brand by painting their cars blue."

TeamVodafone cars have featured their sponsor's orange and chrome livery for the past two seasons. Ford last year dropped its support for TeamVodafone, citing the paintwork as too close to Holden's red. Burela's leaked email makes the mistake of saying that ‘each year Triple 8 chose to defy that contractual obligation and paint their cars red’.

Dane points out that the cars were orange and chrome over the past two seasons and that they were predominantly yellow, silver and blue before that. He claimed Ford marketing department personnel had approved their Vodafone livery for the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

"During the same period that you accuse Triple Eight of failing to run a blue car, your lead factory car at FPR sported a black and yellow colour scheme and one of the cars at SBR sported a green colour scheme," Dane's email said. "Both teams enjoyed considerably higher investment from Ford than Triple Eight," it points out.

Burela's email to staff says they will continue to support motorsport through direct sponsorship of FPR and SBR and provide ‘significant in-kind support’ to other teams such as Dick Johnson's DJR team.

Dane fired back that TeamVodafone, which won the last three Bathurst races and last-years' championship, had ‘delivered more race wins during the life of the contract than all the other Ford teams put together’.

"Your (Ford's) sponsorship and marketing departments have done the damage to your brand - not us," Dane's email concludes.

Ford would not publicly comment yesterday on the emails and Dane confirmed he had not yet had a response from Burela. Dane said the presence of mistakes in Burela's email showed he had not been briefed correctly by staff. "People of that level don't normally make mistakes like that," he said.

"I haven't decided to take the issue any further, but I had to respond to his email so that my own staff understood my position. We're now just head down and going racing; that's what we're here for."