In a spot of bother, Lewis Hamilton and the Mclaren team contained Ferrari data causing chaos in the motor sport industry.
Lewis Hamilton's McLaren team can look forward to next season with the spy controversy now resolved.
Lewis Hamilton's McLaren team can look forward to next season without the threat of a further points penalty after the sport's governing body closed a spy controversy yesterday.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) said in a statement that its World Motor Sport Council had agreed to cancel a hearing scheduled for February 14 in Paris to assess McLaren's 2008 car.
FIA president Max Mosley proposed the cancellation last week after McLaren apologised for having Ferrari data in its possession and recognised that it had penetrated deeper into the team than it was first suspected.
The hearing had been called after FIA's technical report raised suspicions some of the systems in the 2008 McLaren design could be influenced by the leaked Ferrari information. McLaren was stripped of all of its constructors' points and fined $US100million ($116.52m) this year for the spy saga, and the proposed meeting in Paris threatened to prolong the agony with the possibility of a further sanction.
The team, which saw British rookie Hamilton lose the championship by a single point to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, has offered to freeze development of the suspect systems.
Ferrari has agreed to close the controversy on a sporting level but is to continue legal action against individuals in Italy and Britain.
The 2008 season starts in Melbourne in March.
McLaren was also involved in a second controversy when former champion Renault was found at a hearing this month to have had McLaren data in its possession since last year.
Renault, which failed to win a race in 2007, was not punished because FIA ruled there was insufficient evidence that the championship had been affected.
In a 77-page transcript of that hearing published on the FIA website, the French manufacturer argued that the case was one of simple stupidity rather than any deliberate intention to cheat.
It denied gaining any advantage and said former McLaren engineer Phil Mackereth, who took technical information with him when he joined Renault, had acted for personal reasons.
“His actions in this situation were stupidity, naivety and a degree of recklessness; and little more than that,” the transcript recorded Renault's technical director Bob Bell of telling the hearing.
“There is no malevolence, there is no intention to deliberately do wrong or to cheat. That is not in his make-up.”
Renault's lawyer described Mackereth, who appeared at the hearing, as being like “a rabbit in the headlights.”
“He is a very unhappy, very guilty and a very contrite man,” he said.
