I agree that Toyota was never found to be responsible in a court of law. The FIA never got involved period. Why? Who knows, but that is not the point. The point is Toyota was clearly proven to be in possession of the stolen software. How much use could it have been? Nobody knows. It is still fact that thousands of pages of stolen software code from Ferrari was loaded into the Toyota wind tunnel. I'm not an aero engineer so I can't say how useful that information could have been to a new team starting up in F1.

The excuse Toyota made in court was that yes, they have the stolen Ferrari software, but it now has too much Toyota software code mixed in, so they can't give it back to Ferrari because it will offer Ferrari an unfair advantage over Toyota because Ferrari will not be getting back more than what was stolen from them in the first place. This was there argument in court. It doesn't really matter if the information learned was outdated, of no use, or really did help the team in some way. It is stolen material and two people went to a real prison for it. To believe that someone can load that much software code into the teams wind tunnel and nobody suspected or knew about any of it is far fetched too me. Obviously there are people on both sides of the fence. I happened to believe it is too unbelievable that only these two convicted people knew about this. Others believe Toyota had no clue what was going on in their F1 garage at that time.

 

If all the evidence is indeed true, I agree that McLaren, and especially Alonso, got off too easy.

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/m...rens-cheating/

FIA delivers the shocking proof behind McLaren’s cheating

Emails between Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa were central to the evidence that led to the disqualification and $100m fine imposed on McLaren. The FIA revealed a 15-page dossier of the evidence to the media at Spa-Francorchamps on Friday, which showed that the confidential Ferrari information sent by Nigel Stepney to Mike Coughlan had indeed been used by the Woking based team.

“All the information from Ferrari is very reliable,” test driver de la Rosa wrote in one email to world champion Alonso. “It comes from Nigel Stepney. He’s the same person who told us in Australia that Kimi (Raikkonen) was stopping on lap 18.”

In another email, this time to chief designer Mike Coughlan, de la Rosa writes: “Hi Mike, do you know the Red Car’s weight distribution? It would be important for us to know so that we could try it in the simulator. Thanks in advance, Pedro.”

Coughlan replied to the email with a text message, and de la Rosa forwarded the information to Alonso, who emailed: “(The weight distribution) surprises me; I don’t know if it’s 100 per cent reliable, but at least it draws attention.”

The evidence also reveals that the drivers discussed Ferrari’s flexible wings, aero balance, tyre gas, braking system and strategies. The FIA said Coughlan and Stepney sent 288 text messages to each other and talked on the telephone at least 35 times.

Rumours are swirling in the Spa paddock that Alonso, unhappy at McLaren this year and reportedly keen to break his contract, threatened to take the emails to the FIA before Ron Dennis pre-empted him.