23/03/2018
NEWS STORY
Still smarting from Renault's recruitment of the FIA's technical chief Marcin Budkowski, it was anticipated that today's press conference, which featured Maurizio Arrivabene, Toto Wolff and Christian Horner, would witness an amount of hostility from the Red Bull boss over Ferrari's poaching of the sport's governing body's deputy race director and safety director, Laurent Mekies.
Earlier in the week Horner and McLaren's Eric Boullier accused Ferrari of breaking a gentleman's agreement in signing the Frenchman, especially in terms of the amount of gardening leave he would need to serve before taking up his new (unspecified) role.
Following the recruitment of Budkowski, it is claimed that at a subsequent meeting of the Strategy Group a gardening leave period of at least twelve months should be the norm, but Mekies is to join Ferrari after just six months.
"There is nothing wrong with that because we were absolutely respecting the local law, the Swiss local law where Laurent was hired," argued Arrivabene. "And afterwards we went even further than that, because we gave him six months of gardening (leave).
"Having said so, normally what we discussed before the strategy group, we signed a confidentiality agreement, that means that we are not allowed to discuss or to share in public what we discussed there," he added, referring to the disclosures from Red Bull and McLaren. "Having said so, I heard comments related to us, supposedly, also called a gentleman's agreement. I think they are comments because a gentleman's agreement on libel law is illegal. I thought that they were comments… just comments, no more than that, I hope."
"First of all, I didn't see any gentlemen in the room when we discussed it," said Toto Wolff. "Second, for me the situation is completely different to Marcin, both intelligent engineers but Marcin was involved in issuing technical directives just a few weeks before he decided to join a team and had a lot of inside information, and Laurent was involved in totally different activities that are not as sensitive, in my opinion, as with Marcin. He's joining the team in seven or eight months from now and for me it's not a big deal."
"For me it is a big deal," insisted Horner, "because I think the disappointing element about this is that we have a thing called the strategy group where the FIA, FOM and all team principals attended and we discussed the Marcin issue where there was great unrest about a key member of the FIA going to a team, in which case this was Renault.
"Renault diluted that by putting him on an extended gardening leave but then ensued a conversation about it's unacceptable. Every team found it unacceptable.
"Of course you're dealing with employment laws across different states, different countries and to try and police legally something like that, it was agreed in the room all the lawyers in the world couldn't come up with a contract that could police it. But there was an understanding and a clear statement by the teams to say 'right, let's have a clear position that there should be at least a period of 12 months in the garden for a member of a team going from either FOM, FIA to a team or a team going vice versa'. Certain teams were pushing for that period to be three years but in the end it was agreed upon being 12 months.
"What's disappointing is that that meeting was less than six weeks ago; arguably, discussions were probably happening at that time and it almost makes those meetings pointless if we can't agree on something and action it. Of course you can hide behind 'well it's not in the regulations' but as a group we agreed something, it hasn't been adhered to and so one questions… what's the point of having those meetings?"
"Because we gave a mandate," said Arrivabene, "that's the main thing, we gave a mandate to the FIA, to the lawyer of the FIA to check national law and to come back to us in the next strategy group and this is what the FIA is going to do in the next strategy group which is on April 17."
"What's most disappointing about it was that it was Ferrari or Sergio who was pushing for a three year period," argued Horner. "On one hand you get a team pushing for a three year gestation and then a few weeks later, we're in this situation, so as I say, it makes discussions at that forum more or less a waste of time."
"That was the discussion but then the conclusion was to give mandate to the FIA to come back… to the lawyer of the FIA to come back with a proposal," insisted the Ferrari boss.
"I've said my piece," sighed Horner.
It's understood the FIA is to look into the issue... assuming there's anyone left there.
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