I have been quiet on the Toyota/Ferrari story of late, because everything has gone quiet. If there are any moves afoot which are known to the senior management at Toyota Motorsport, my sources are not so well connected as to be privy to them. I have gone to direct sources, not press releases, and I have not forgotten the story. Neither pitpass nor I have any intention of giving up on it.

When I first explored the topic of the possible theft of intellectual property, I looked at it as a general issue, the way we all copy someone else's music tapes and so on. I said that I would be really cheesed off if one of my articles was taken without my permission. It had never happened so I did not know just how cheesed off I'd be, until it did happen. I am spitting razor blades and here is the ironic thing, it was an article about Toyota stealing from Ferrari.

Most motor racing websites exist almost entirely by trawling the Net to pick up their news items from other, better-founded sites. In the past, pitpass has occasionally run a completely fictitious story and sat back to see which sites picked it up and ran with it. The answer is most of them.

It has never been an important story, it has always been along the lines of aerodynamist, Charlie Whippingtop, is rumoured to be moving from Minardi, when no such person has ever worked for Minardi. Most readers won't give it a second thought and, even at Minardi, the Italian arm of Minardi will think that Whippingtop works in England, while the English arm assumes that he is in Italy.

This sort of story is of no interest whatsoever to the average reader, it will be forgotten as soon as read. We are careful to put in something like rumoured so it will never impinge on motor racing history. It is of no interest either to the better class of website, because the serious operators all have their own sources. Many is the time I have said to our editor, 'Did you see such-and-such on so-and-so's site?' His response has always been the same, 'Good for so-and-so, he has a scoop. We do not copy.'

I get the feeling that the handful of elite websites, and it is only a handful, operate to the same rules. Atlas-F1 or grandprix.com would never pick up on a rumour about Charlie Whippingtop. I have just named two rivals to pitpass, and why not? The three of us have different styles and different agendas, but I'd be a very poor writer, and a very poor human being, if I could not recognise excellence in others.

When we pick up information from the print medium. We always acknowledge the source. On a few occasions, when writing a feature, I have always acknowledged the source of a news item which has appeared on another website. There is, however, a world of difference between writing a feature of perhaps 2,000 words and being prompted to do so by a short news item. Still, I always acknowledge the news source which prompted the feature.

The only people to whom a rumour about Charlie Whippingtop is of the slightest interest are those wretches whose job is to trawl the net and steal other people's stories.

Since I am still on the Toyota/Ferrari case, I sweep the Net as well as writing to my sources and anyone else who may help. Imagine my surprise then, when I located a Canadian website which was leading with words familiar to me. They were familiar because I had written them, yet I had never previously heard of the site.