10/11/2003
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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Angelo Santini, who worked for Ferrari from 1995 until February, 2002, has been named as the engineer at the centre of allegations of industrial espionage prompted by Ferrari against Toyota. Santini is reported to have told an Italian newspaper that, sure, the 2003 Toyota looks remarkably like a 2002 Ferrari, but there are many differences, among them the engine.
In Santini's favour is the fact that the engine plays an enormous role in a car's package, other than supplying power. The 2003 Renault, for example, had a 111-degree V10 in order to lower the centre of gravity. That made an enormous difference to Renault's package, but what the Renault R203 lost in grunt it made up in other ways.
In the 1970s, there were times when Ferrari had the upper hand over the teams which used the Cosworth DFV. Ferrari had a flat-12 engine and benefited when rules governing the height and size of the rear wing were changed because the DFV was, by comparison, a tall unit. It was also a narrow engine so came back into its own when ground effect arrived.
The fortunes of teams using the Cosworth DFV varied not so much on power output, but how the shape of the engine fitted aerodynamic packages. This would appear to be evidence which Signor Santini might consider summoning to his defence.
Consider this, however, teams ballast their cars by up to 100 kgs to obtain maximum performance from the chassis. It would seem to me that if Ferrari is to have its suspicions proved about stolen data, then weight distribution must also enter the equation. If I can think of that, then Ross Brawn was there long before me, so it may be that the current case is a tad more complicated than just looking at the shape which, in any case, could be copied from photographs.
You do not need industrial espionage to get the shape of a 2002 Ferrari, you can get it exactly if you have plenty of images plus one known dimension, such as the exact size of a wheel. The tricky part comes with that which is hidden, which means the exact weight distribution.
So far, everyone who has reported the arrest of Angelo Santini has been careful to distance Toyota from him, but who built the Toyota TF103? Are we really to believe that nobody in Cologne noticed that their car bore more than a passing resemblance to the Ferrari F2002?
Who signed the order which allowed the moulds to be cut? We speak here of multo clams. A copy of a Ferrari F2002 does not come into the world as a result of spontaneous combustion.
Someone signed the order which caused the car to be made and I bet that it was not Angelo Santini.
I don't know why, but an unworthy thought has entered my head. I believe it is true to say that only one manufacturer's works team has been disqualified from the World Rally Championship for an entire season for cheating. If memory serves me right, the team which was preparing the cars for this manufacturer discovered an ingenious method of by-passing the air restrictor on the turbocharger.
Others will know better than I exactly what was done, but there is no disputing the name of the manufacturer; it was Toyota.
Toyota was excluded from the World Rally Championship because its works-sanctioned team was caught cheating. The guys in the front-line took the shots, can anyone help with how far up the ladder the cheating went?
What is the position of Ferrari, if Toyota actually copied its 2002 car for 2003? In 1988, Adrian Newey and Nick Wirth designed the March 881, with a narrow cockpit and high nose, come 1989 and half the cars on the grid looked like the March. Copying is endemic in motor racing, in fact, you can tell how good a design is by how widely it is copied.
(For historical background, Enzo Ferrari was once an industrial spy for Alfa Romeo, he admitted as much. When Ferrari considered making a mid-engined F1 car, it bought a couple of Cooper T51s, fitted them with Ferrari Tipo 555 'Super Squalo' engines and created a fictitious private team, Scuderia Eugenio Castellotti, to gain experience of running mid-engined cars.)
If I build a model of the Ferrari 2002 for my own pleasure, that is okay. If I wish to sell models of the 2002, I must obtain a licence to do so and it is right that Ferrari has control over its intellectual copyright. It is right that Ferrari, and any other team, should be able to prevent some cowboy selling an inferior product on the back of the team's name. The same applies to clothing, watches, aftershave, whatever. If you have a great brand name, you must be able to protect it at every level.
What if I made model kits of the Ferrari 2002 and did not mention Ferrari at all, but sold them painted black, with no decals, and described them merely as 'racing cars'? I think I could get away with that.
The reason I think I could get away with that is past copyright actions brought by Ferrari itself. There have been dozens of kit cars on the market styled after the Ford GT40, the Shelby Cobra, the Lamborghini Countach and so on. The line which kit car makers walk is a fine one, they must ensure that their cars are not given names which associate their cars with the registered trademarks of other companies. One American 'Lamborghini Countach' kit was offered on a VW Beetle platform, who would that fool?
The first 'Lamborghini Countach' kit made in Britain was made by a couple of chancers who hired a Countach for three days and took moulds from it. The company which hired it was not amused by the state in which the real Countach was returned (gel on the paintwork and so on) and successfully sued the two chancers for £17,500, which was the cost of returning its genuine Countach to its proper condition.
The two chancers who had taken the mould put their kit car 'Countach' on the market. Other kit car makers bought examples of the fake bodyshell and took their own moulds from it. Some people bought 'Countach' copies, but lots more bought copies of the copy.
There was a minor industry in the US in the late 1980s in body kits to turn a mid-engined Pontiac Fiero, not a good car, into Ferrari lookalikes. The only time that Ferrari could act was if its name or badge was used.
A number of Ferrari 250 GT Lussos were altered to look like Ferrari 250 GTOs. The owners of these transformations could legitimately keep the Ferrari badge because they were Ferraris with cosmetic surgery. Provided that the cars were not passed off as genuine 250 GTOs, no offence had been committed.
Here is a conundrum. What is the position of the Toyota TF103 if it is shown to be a copy of a Ferrari 2002? It has been passed off as a Toyota, not as a Ferrari. You can build a visual reproduction of any Ferrari road car provided that you are careful with the name and badge. I do not think that the Toyota TF103 has ever had a Ferrari badge.
The Ferrari badge leads us into another area. The black prancing horse does not belong to Ferrari, it is an heraldic device. It actually appears in the coat of arms of the city of Stuttgart which is incorporated into the Porsche badge.
A black prancing horse on a yellow background with the letters 'S' and 'F' (for Scuderia Ferrari) is a different matter, and Ferrari has registered other logos, there is the tall oblong with the colours of the Italian nation flag, for example, but the prancing horse itself cannot be registered.
There is another question, can Angelo Santini, or anyone, be accused of industrial espionage by making a copy of a shape which is already in the public domain? There is surely a difference between making something along the lines of last year's car and making next year's?
Each new Formula One car is a basis for development, the design is constantly refined: look at the 2003 Williams. How much of the FW25 at the end of the season was interchangeable with the car as it first ran?
Remember the Tupolev Tu-144 which was actually the world's first supersonic commercial airliner to fly? Its maiden flight was on 31st December, 1968, beating Concorde by 61 days. It was nicknamed 'Concordski' because Soviet agents had stolen plans of Concorde, but it never entered service because it had a nasty habit of breaking up in mid-air. The British and French had got wind of their blueprints being stolen and had made it easy for Soviet agents by providing them with carefully doctored plans. That is real industrial espionage.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that Ferrari's action is based not so much on what data was used, but how it was obtained. We are talking of Computer Assisted Design (CAD) systems and that means surreptitious downloading or, possibly, hacking. Everyone who can read this is computer-literate and we all know that computers and the Internet have stretched, and redefined, laws which were originally framed for printed paper.
My guess is that Ferrari's complaint is primarily prompted by a wish to get clear legal guidance, and guidelines, and not an attempt to punish an individual or a team. That is the last thing that Formula One needs and it is in the interest of Ferrari, as a company in the marketplace, to keep the image of Formula One as brightly burnished as possible.
At the same time, Scuderia Ferrari would rather that Toyota does not win more than the odd race. The odd win by Toyota would be good all round, not as good as a Minardi 1-2, but good. A Toyota World Championship would not be good at all. When Ferrari wins, it is Fiat, which owns Ferrari. that sells cars. If Toyota won the World Championship, it would sell more examples of Toyota and Lexus models and that would not be good for Fiat Auto, which is fighting for its life and independence.
Nothing in Formula One is as it appears at first sight.
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