Originally posted by F1Obsession
Like I said, they never copied it. The systems were similar. In F1 several engineers can come to the same solution independently. They found no evidence that it was copied. McLaren have voluntarily suspended those projects.
Anyway, I wonder what you have to say about Ferrari breaking into Williams garage.
Firstly, nobody here can say with any certainty whether McLaren copied it or not from the information they received via Stepney. Why? because none of us work for McLaren, only those within the team will ever know where exactly they got their inspiration for these 'similar systems'. The FIA technical report concluded that it was
likely they had copied 3 systems from the Ferrari information.
Yes it is entirely possible they had been working on similar systems already themselves, but it could be just as likely Coughlan could have piped up over lunch "hey I've got a fantastic idea for our car why don't we do x, y and z?" and they could have set to work on the project none the wiser where that particular idea came from, or they could have knowingly copied the idea from the information they received.
Teams in F1 quite often copy each other knowingly. They send their engineers and senior technical staff off down the pitlane and grid formation to "study" each others cars for any new ideas and to see what the opposition are upto.
It's a bit daft for us to sit here saying oh my team would never do something like that, when history in the sport has shown they all blooming well do, it's part of the game.