At the French Grand Prix in late June, Schumacher beat Hill
off the line with a start so flawless that it hardened the
suspicions lurking in many minds. This was the kind of
get-away that had been seen many times in the previous
two seasons, when the top teamshad enjoyed the benefit of
the now proscribed traction control systems and fully auto-
matic gearboxes.
Announcing its ban on monst kinds of computer-controlled
devices, the FIA had been loud in its insistence that the new
regulations would be regularly and strictly policed. And in
July, shortly after the British Grand Prix, the FIA's technical
commision produced the findings from a software analysis
company, LDRA of Liverpool, which it had hired to conduct
its spot checks into computer programmes being used by
three teams: Ferrari, McLaren and Benetton.
To enable these checks to be made, the teams had first to
agree to surrender thei source codes: the means of access to
their computer programmes. Ferrari, spooked by the unpun-
ished discovery of their use of a variation on traction control at
Aida, readily complied; their cars were found to be clean.
McLaren and Benetton, however, refused to produce the
source codes, claiming that to do so would first compromise
the commercial confidentiality and second, infringe the 'in-
tellectual copyright' of their sofware supplier. When it was
pointed out to them that LDRA is often enlisted by the British
government to look into military software whose confidenti-
ality is covered by the Official Secrets Act, and carries weigh-
tier consequences than a sliver cup, a few bottles of
champagne and the further inflation of a few already oversized
egos, they gave in.
Both teams were fined $100 000 for attmpting to obstruct
the course of justice. And when the findings emerged, both
appeared to have had something to hide. In McLaren's case it
was a gearbox programme permitting automatic shifts. After
much deliberating, and to the surprise of many, the FIA
eventuallydecided that this was not illegal. But Benetton had
something far more exciting up their sleeves.
When LDRA's people finally got into the B194's computer
software, they discovered a hidden programme, and it was
dynamite: something which allowed Schumacher to make
perfect starts merely by flooring the throttle and holding it
there, the computer taking over to determine the correct
matching of gear-changes to engine speed, ensuring that the
car reached the first corner in the least possible time, with no
wheel spin or sideslip, all its energy concentrated into forward
motion. Before the winter, this combination of traction con-
trol and gearboxautomation would be legal. Now,
although explicitly outlawed by the regulations, it was still
there. If you knew how to find it. Because it was invisible.
It took even the LDRA;s people a while. What you had to do
was call up the software's menu of programmes, scroll down
beyond the bottom line, put the curasor on an apparently blank
line, press a particular key (no clue to that, either) - and, hey
presto, without anything showing on the screen, the special
programme was there.
The called it 'launch control', and LDRA's computer
detectives also discovered the means by which the driver
could activate it on his way to the starting grid. It involved a
sequence of commands using the throttle and clutch pedals
and the gear-shift 'paddles' under the streering wheel. Ben-
atton couldn't deny its existence, but they did claim that it
hadn't been used saince it had been banned. So why was it still
there, and why had its existence been so carefully disguised?
It remained in the software, they said, because to
remove it would be too difficult. The danger was that in
the purging of one programme, others might become cor-
rupted. Best to leave it be. But, so that the driver couldn't
accidently engage it and thereby unintentionally break the
new rules, 'launch control' had been hidden carefully away
behind a series of masking procedures.
'That's enough to make me believe tey were cheating,' an
experienced software programmer with another Formula
One team told me. 'Look, we purged our software of
all illegal systems during the winter. I did it myslef. OK, our
car isn't quite as sophisticated as the Benetton. But it only took
me two days. That's all. Perfectly straighforward. And the fact
that they disguised it was very suspicious.'
Then he told me the most interesting this I heard all year.
Here's what you can do, he said, if you want to get
away with something. You write an illegal programme - an
offspring of traction control, say, such a prescription for rev
limits in each gear for a particular circuit - and you build into
it a self-liquidating facility. This is how it works. The car
leaves the pits before the race without the programme in its
software. The driver stops the car on the grid, and gets out.
His race engineer comes up and, as they do in pre-race
period before the grid is cleared, he plugs his little laptop
computer into the car - and presses the key that downloads
the illegal programme. For the next hour and a half the driver
makes unrestricted use of it. Thanks to efficiency, he wins
the race. He takes his lap of honour, he drives back down the
pit lane, he steers through the cheering crowds into the parc
ferme where the scrutineers are waiting to establish the win-
ning car's legality, and he switches off the engine. And the
programme disappears, leaving not a trace of existence.
'It's easy,' the software man said. 'In fact, we use it all the time
in testing, when we just want to try something out without
having it hanging around to clutter up the system. And it's just
about impossible to police. The FIA came round the teams early
in the season, asking advice on what to do. But they're totally
out of their depth here, not surprisingly. It's like crime. There's
always more at stake for the criminals than for the police, so the
criminals are always a step ahead. It's a nightmare, really."
Verstappen used TC 
