Australian formula one driver Mark Webber, who races for Red Bull, has defended Ferrari’s heated attitude to the spy scandal.
McLaren boss Ron Dennis this week lashed out at his Maranello based counterparts for leaving his team’s reputation “unfairly sullied” by Ferrari press releases, leaks to the media and pressure to send the saga to the Court of Appeal.
But Webber, 30, wrote in a column for Eurosport that he can see where Ferrari “are coming from” after hundreds of pages of sensitive team material was found in the possession of McLaren’s chief designer.
“From what I’ve read and what I’ve been told,” he said, “it wasn’t just technical design details in the dossier that Mike Coughlan had, it was details about how the team was being run operationally.
“If that’s true, and if the dossier was seen by somebody else, then it’s a massive deal for Ferrari.”
Webber echoed the sentiment of the rest of the paddock, however, by admitting that he would prefer the focus of attention to now return to the on-track action.
He said: “It isn’t how we want people to see F1.”
