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 Maranello
A 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...
Ferrari HQ in Maranello
A 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...