This year’s espionage scandal would have been dwarfed by other instances of spying in formula one that went unnoticed, according to Adrian Newey.
The Red Bull designer, who for years penned championship winning cars for Ron Dennis’ Woking based team, said the so-called Stepneygate saga involving Ferrari secrets in 2007 was “over-hyped”.
“Such things have always gone on in the industry and will always continue to do so,” the 48-year-old Briton told F1’s official website.
McLaren was excluded from the constructors’ championship and fined an unprecedented $100m earlier this year when the information in a 780-page Ferrari dossier in the possession of chief designer Mike Coughlan was found to have spread throughout the team.
Renault will appear at the World Motor Sport Council on December 6 to face the separate charge of possessing detailed information about McLaren’s F1 single seaters.
Newey said: “The fact is that there have been far bigger breaches of personnel taking info with them from one team to another in the past which have gone undetected or without penalty.
“My personal opinion is that anything anyone can take with them in their head is fair game, but anything that is written or in electronic format is not,” he added.
Newey, meanwhile, revealed that next year’s Red Bull, the RB4, will be a mechanical “evolution” of the 2007 car.
“(It) should give us a much more reliable and well understood base to work from at the start of the season,” he said.
