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An engineer has alleged that several teams broke the "gentleman's agreement" governing factory shutdown rules during Formula 1's August 2012 break.
Under an unofficial cost-cutting pact, the 12 competing teams agreed to close their doors for 14 days during which period they pledged to conduct no official F1 business, not even sending emails.
'CHEATING VERY SIMPLE'
According to an unnamed engineer, certain teams broke the agreement. The anonymous source told El Pais' correspondent Oriol Puigdemont at Spa: "The factories were, for the most part, closed.
"What was that was done was put in the hands of suppliers, who continued to make parts in August. I know first-hand that some teams - Sauber and Williams, for example - told their workers to shut down their computers on the last day of work and leave them at the factory.
"But there were others, such as Ferrari, which never did that. The restrictions (of the shutdown) were very vague and cheating very simple. You could just create a parallel email account.
"Also, if someone looked at the log of communications and you have talked to one of your colleagues, you could just argue that it's just your friend who is in the same team," the source added.
Under an unofficial cost-cutting pact, the 12 competing teams agreed to close their doors for 14 days during which period they pledged to conduct no official F1 business, not even sending emails.
'CHEATING VERY SIMPLE'
According to an unnamed engineer, certain teams broke the agreement. The anonymous source told El Pais' correspondent Oriol Puigdemont at Spa: "The factories were, for the most part, closed.
"What was that was done was put in the hands of suppliers, who continued to make parts in August. I know first-hand that some teams - Sauber and Williams, for example - told their workers to shut down their computers on the last day of work and leave them at the factory.
"But there were others, such as Ferrari, which never did that. The restrictions (of the shutdown) were very vague and cheating very simple. You could just create a parallel email account.
"Also, if someone looked at the log of communications and you have talked to one of your colleagues, you could just argue that it's just your friend who is in the same team," the source added.