Oh man.
The following is based on the available contents of Paddy Lowe's confidential submission to the WMSC hearing on September 13th.In an email dated 14 April 2007, 14:40 which was a reply to de la Rosa's email from 12 April 2007 10:28 Coughlan sent him a simplified description of Ferrari's brake balance system which was confirmed to be correct by Jean Todt in his email dated 06 September 2007, 18:29. Infact Coughlan's reply included the level of specific brake balance produced at varying levels of brake pedal pressure.
Now you will see why the bit of news above is very important to the outcome of the world championship. McLaren's curiosity about Ferrari's braking system is explained by the change to Bridgestones for 2007. Contrary to the popular view that McLaren were instantly competitive despite the change, McLaren did have problems with locking up of inside tires. Accrding to Lowe's submission "too much braking load was being placed on the front of the car towards the later stages of each individual braking maneuver as the car started to turn into the corner."
Mclaren did consider adapting a system which allowed to adjust the brake bias for every corner but discarded the idea as a system which allowed the load
during braking to be adjusted was needed. According to Lowe this was determined as early as 4th December 2006.
Pat Fry was selected to head a team of people created to address the problem. According to Lowe Fry had several brainstorming sessions with Coughlan and specialist engineers during December-February. Instead of merely managing the design office like McLaren claimed at the hearing, Coughlan was one of the most important people in the project.
As late as March 7th after trying two mechanical solutions McLaren were still unable to find a breakthrough. Lowe came up with an idea to use a hydraulic device to solve the problems. After studying and lab-testing the new idea, a team was created to oversee the installation of the device. Coughlan was not part of that team, but his design office did the engineering drawings.
The solution was tested on the simulator on March 22nd but at the Sepand test prior to the race showed that the characteristics were incorrect and a redesign was needed. According to Lowe there were 6 design parameters associated with the device which needed to be different. In the end the system was first raced in Spain and has been used ever since.
In an email dated 25 March 2007 01:43 de la Rosa mentions that the system brought McLaren an improvement of 2-3 tenths in the simulator. But more importantly certain specific details (which are impossible to obtain by any means other than a mole) about Ferrari's braking system were also mentioned.
The period prior to the email exchange mentioned in the beginning of my post also included one of the most intense exchanges of text messages between Coughlan and Stepney. Furthermore during the meeting in Barcelona, Coughlan was given 3D CAD images of the complete brake system layout and installation and a diagram of the brake system and a related spline drive and discussed how the system worked. Later in London Coughlan also received a number of pages of information about Ferrari's brakes.
Critically, according to Lowe the race-ready brake bias control system was produced only shortly before the Spanish race,
after the information about Ferrari's brakes was given.
Coughlan's
discredited affidavit mentions that Rob Taylor was shown one of the Stepney's drawings as a matter of historical interest, while at the hearing it was found that the drawing was a proper engineering rendering done by Coughlan on the basis of Stepney's sketch. Taylor was working at Ferrari in the 90's where he designed a hydraulically actuated brake balance system, but surprisingly his name is not mentioned by Lowe as part of the team involved with the brake project in 2007. It's reasonable to conclude that the discussions with Taylor weren't done for historic reasons, Coughlan needed a person familiar with the previous systems used by Ferrari to better understand how the current one operates.
It's only reasonable to conclude comparing the timeline of McLaren's problems with implementing their system and the information learned by Coughlan in the same period that it's entirely plausible that a potential championship by Hamilton or Alonso is indeed tainted.
Credit to racefax.com
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2007 02:13PM by tripleM.