Back to Industrial Espionage! 10/07/2007 Now that we have the British Grand Prix out of the way, perhaps we can return to the real business of F1 - the saga of the Ferrari/Stepney/Coughlan scandal. Today was supposed to be the moment of full revelation when the matter came up for hearing in the High Court. Unfortunately for the nosy observers like me, the court did little more than adjourn matters until tomorrow.Ferrari HQ in MaranelloA few new facts were revealed, however. And one of them has blown away the idea that F1 is the pinnacle of motor sport; it seems that Mike Coughlan's wife, Trudy, is alleged to have taken the Ferrari documents down to the local photocopy shop for copying. One of the shop's employees is supposed to have tipped off Ferrari that confidential documents of theirs were floating about in England.Am I alone in thinking this very odd? You are reading this on a computer that almost certainly has a printer attached to it. And the chances are that the printer has scanning capability or a scanner is also attached. You and I could run off as many copies of the documents as required in very short order indeed. Yet we are asked to believe that poor Mike hasn't a home computer that can compare to ours and has to use copying shops when he wants additional copies?My faith in the high tech world of F1 is severely shaken. I felt sure that a guy with as technical a job as chief designer at McLaren would have an all-singing, all-dancing computer set-up at home in case he wanted to do a bit of extra work over the weekend. Not so, it seems.Maybe my ideas of the take-home pay for Mike's job are way out and he can't afford to buy such a kicking computer. Somehow I doubt it, however. Far more likely is that Mike called out to Trudy as he was rushing off to work one morning, "Oh, and could you get those documents on my desk copied? I'm running late and need them pretty urgently." Perhaps Trudy is not particularly computer-savvy and decided to avoid the issue by nipping down to the copying shop.Seems fairly plausible, doesn't it? But hang on a moment; we are talking sensitive documents here, confidential Ferrari information that Coughlan would surely have been in no hurry to announce to the world as being in his possession. Would he really have asked Trudy to get them copied, knowing her dislike of computer technology?Well, it's a strange world and I guess anything can happen in it. I might be wide of the mark in my guesses but it still looks a bit odd to me. And my illusion that F1 is a world of super efficiency, cutting edge technology and dedicated, immensely intelligent minds is destroyed forever. I am crestfallen, to say the least.But hey, that means those guys are just as human as we are, doesn't it? Perhaps there is hope for us yet...
Clive
Mad Stranger and stranger... Date Added: 10/07/2007
Clive Soap opera stuff, Mad. ;) Date Added: 10/07/2007
Mad An Italian firm involved in drama? Who would have thought it! Date Added: 10/07/2007
Clive Maybe I'm weird but I find it fascinating to watch this unfold. So many strange events and complications and the thought that we may never know what really went on... Date Added: 10/07/2007
Dan M Mike Coughlan was banned from using the McLaren copy machine for making copies of his butt cheeks while on lunch break.This explains perfectly why he employed a 16 year old to duplicate these confidential and incriminating documents. In fact just last week I was in Kinkos when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad walked in because he needed "How to Destroy American Infidels" copied and collated for a meeting he had later that day. And to think people think this happened because of pure stupidity! Date Added: 10/07/2007
Clive LOL Dan, your jokes are better than mine! But the sad thing is you're right - the events unfolding seem to be on exactly the same level as the scenario you picture... Date Added: 10/07/2007
Neil Hey Clive - I just realized I didn't have you on my blogroll over at the Fastest Lap blog. That is now corrected.As for Stepneygate... as a follower of far less political forms of racing, my mind just boggles at the bizarre nature of this scandal. My gut says that it's all a storm in a teacup involving someone passed over for promotion who decides to find a new job. Date Added: 10/07/2007
Clive Thank you, Neil - an honor to be on the roll!Unfortunately, it seems politics is a part of F1 these days and the Stepneygate affair is just one example. I find it amusing at a certain level but, really, such things should not be happening in a high profile sport. Agreed that it is probably a storm in a teacup and should never have reached the courts (or even the public ear). A nasty little business all round... Date Added: 10/07/2007
Alianora La Canta Maybe Mike Coughlan does have an all-singing, all-dancing computer, but something broke on it. The wife, thinking she was being really helpful, decided to go down the local copyshop to run some copies of a few files that were going to be printed at the time the computer broke, not realising that the documents in question shouldn't have been copied at all... Date Added: 11/07/2007
Clive Certainly it's possible, Alianora. The frustrating thing is that we'll probably never know... ;) Date Added: 11/07/2007
Dan M I would imagine that with all the terror scares in the past decade the employees would have been given some kind of training on suspicious documents and what to do. Date Added: 11/07/2007
Clive What, throw them in a deep lake somewhere? Actually, if only they'd done that, none of this would have happened. I've often wondered why Coughlan wanted the documents printed out instead of just destroying them... Date Added: 11/07/2007
Alianora La Canta These days, any student doing GCSEs in IT, business studies or anything of a similar nature does get training in how to handle sensitive documents (tip for Ferrari: it involves a locked filing cabinet, document management strategies and a shredder) and CDs (ditto, except the shredder is replaced with sharp scissors), as well as suspicious document management (tip for Mike: the documents should have been sent straight back to the original owner if traceable and the police if not). However, these lessons only got introduced into the curriculum in about 1988 (in the UK, at least) when the first Data Protection Act came out. It's always more difficult to memorise something mentioned in passing during an in-service training day than something hammered into your brain repeatedly over the course of a multi-year course. Especially when self-interest or natural forgetfulness enter the equation... Date Added: 12/07/2007
Clive How true, Alianora. With a bit of decent document handling, all of this could have been avoided. Just one more to add to my list of might-have-beens in F1, I suppose... Date Added: 12/07/2007
patrick My best guess is that he may have wanted to print off files that were best viewed in A3 or A2 format. The average home printer doesn't do that (although you'd think that it might be worth the while of a chief designer to invest in something a little more specialied.)The weirdest bit is that someone at a copyshop recognised the significance of what they had been given and tipped off Ferrari. Date Added: 12/07/2007
Clive Yes, Patrick, word is now that the documents were on two CDs and you may well be right that some were more than Coughlan's home computer could cope with. It still seems a bit strange that he wanted hard copies at all, although I can think of scenarios where they would have been useful.Apparently the documents had some sort of stamp or seal on them that identified them as confidential documents belonging to Ferrari. That could be something as simple as a page header, for instance, and explains how they were recognised by the copier shop employee. Date Added: 12/07/2007
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