McLaren Racing Statement
Paris, France, Thursday 13th September 2007
"The most important thing is that we will be going motor
racing this weekend, the rest of the season and every season.
This means that our drivers can continue to compete for the
World Championship. However having been at the hearing today
I do not accept that we deserved to be penalised in this way."
"Today's evidence given to the FIA by our drivers, engineers
and staff clearly demonstrated that we did not use any leaked
information to gain a competitive advantage."
"Much has been made in the press and at the hearing
today of emails and text messages to and from our drivers.
The World Motorsport Council received statements from Fernando
Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Pedro de la Rosa stating categorically
that no Ferrari information had been used by McLaren and that
they had not passed any confidential data to the team."
"The entire engineering team in excess of 140 people
provided statements to the FIA affirming that they had never
received or used the Ferrari information."
"We have never denied that the information from Ferrari
was in the personal possession of one of our employees at
his home. The issue is: was this information used by McLaren?
This is not the case and has not been proven today."
"We are also continually asked if McLaren didn't use
the information, what was the reason for Stepney and Coughlan
collecting all this data about Ferrari? We can only speculate
as neither Coughlan nor Stepney gave evidence at today's hearing,
but we do know that they were both seeking employment with
other teams, as already confirmed by both Honda and Toyota."
"There will be no issue for the 2008 season as we have
not at any stage used any intellectual property of any other
team."
"We have got the best drivers and the best car and we
intend to win the World Championship."
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