(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-06 09:45

LONDON, Dec 5 - McLaren have had to clarify allegations of spying against Formula One rivals Renault on the eve of a hearing in Monaco that could impose heavy sanctions on the French team.

The team said on Wednesday they had been asked by the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) to correct 'certain factual errors' in a background briefing to British reporters.

"In our briefing, we stated that there were 18 witness statements from Renault employees admitting that they had viewed McLaren confidential information," said a statement.

"To the extent that this implied that 18 different Renault employees admitted viewing McLaren confidential information it was inaccurate.

"Thirteen Renault F1 employees provided 18 witness statements and nine of them have so far admitted they viewed and discussed the confidential technical information belonging to McLaren."

McLaren said it was also wrong to say that the information was loaded onto 11 Renault computers. In fact, it was copied onto 11 computer disks by former McLaren employee Phil Mackereth.

"A back-up copy of the material on Mr Mackereth's personal directory was made onto an unknown number of Renault's back-up servers/tapes," it added.

MCLAREN ERROR

Only two Renault employees, one of them Mackereth, admitted to viewing the McLaren information on a computer screen. The others said they saw it on print outs or hard copy documents.

McLaren said it erred in claiming the information taken to Renault by now-suspended Mackereth included 780 individual drawings on computer disks.

"This was an error. The information taken by Mr Mackereth on floppy disks, in hard copy form and by email amounts to 762 pages when printed out. The 11 computer disks included 18 individual technical drawings," it said.

"Mr Mackereth also admits that he took hard copy drawings of McLaren's dampers."

McLaren distanced themselves too from a claim that the information found at Renault amounted to the "entire technical blueprint of the 2006 and 2007 McLaren car".

"This requires clarification," the team said.

"The position is that the McLaren drawings plus the information in a confidential MP4-22A Specification document taken by Mr Mackereth constitute a technical definition of the fundamental layout of the 2007 McLaren car and the technical details of its innovative and performance enhancing systems."

Renault will attend a hearing of the FIA's World Motor Sport Council on Thursday on a charge of having unauthorised possession of confidential McLaren technical information.

McLaren were fined $100 million and stripped of their constructors' points after a similar spying controversy with Ferrari earlier in the year.