Rambling on…

Now it appears that Ron Dennis was the one that notified the FIA of the email exchanges between de la Rosa/Alonso and Coughlan.

This says a few things:

• Ron Dennis wants to show that the spying scandal happened without the knowledge of the top management, and by extension, McLaren itself.
• By showing that Alonso was part of this exchange, McLaren has further distanced itself from Alonso. Alonso will definitely not be seeing out his contract with McLaren

I don’t think this is over.

As for the actual details of the case, here James Allen sheds some light:

• McLaren would have received around $60-70 million in prize money for their constructors’ championship position, so that money goes directly from Formula One Management to the FIA and McLaren will have to write a cheque for the remaining $40 million or so themselves.
• But in terms of net cost to them, it is $100 million because that is the hole it will leave in their budget.
• They will also have to spend more money next year on freight and travel costs because they will be the 11th team on the grid.
• In addition they will find that instead of their current allocation of five garages, they will have two, and instead of their generous allocation of VIP paddock passes for sponsor guests, they will have a limited amount.

He goes on to say:

This episode does illustrate that both Jean Todt and Ron Dennis have become quite remote from their teams; Todt did not know that Stepney was plundering Ferrari’s secrets and Dennis did not know that McLaren’s legendary sense of fair play was being so badly breached.

And critically:

Alonso’s relationship with the team has now totally broken down and it is impossible to imagine him driving a McLaren next year.