RON ACCUSED

Byron Young At Spa, sundaymirror.co.uk 16/09/2007

FORMULA ONE: THE BELGIAN GRAND PRIX

Max Mosley accused McLaren boss Ron Dennis of a cover up as Grand Prix racing went into self destruct over the £50million Ferrarigate spying saga.

The future of the boss of Britain's most successful Formula One team hung in the balance last night as the second most powerful man in world motor sport went on the attack.

For the first time, Dennis admitted world champion Fernando Alonso and test driver Pedro de la Rosa colluded with suspended Ferrari 'spy' Nigel Stepney.

But he denied his engineers were involved and said Lewis Hamilton was innocent.

The racing was all but forgotten but it must have taken its toll as Alonso starts third and Hamilton fourth for today's Belgian Grand Prix with Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa first and second for the first time this season.

Furious FIA president Mosley said there was an argument for chucking McLaren out of F1 for two years for "polluting" the sport.

Dennis claimed he blew the whistle on his own team after being threatened by Alonso, who said he had emails proving they spied and wanted to leave.

Mosley, however, responded to the claims with incredulity.

He said: "Ron rang me and said, 'Alonso has told me he's got information and is threatening to give it to the federation'.

"So I said, 'What did you say Ron?' He said, 'I said 'go on and hand it over'. But there isn't any information. There's nothing to come out'.

"I've known Ron for 40 years so when somebody I've known that long looks me in the eye and says, 'I'm telling the truth with complete sincerity', you believe him.

"It was only when I got a list from the Italian police showing 323 SMS phone calls over three months between McLaren's suspended chief design Mike Coughlan and Stepney, I concluded there had to be more to this."

Dennis has always insisted his team are innocent and Coughlan was a "rogue employee" working on his own with Ferrari's disenchanted technical manager Stepney to engineer a job at Honda or Toyota. Dennis said yesterday: "I was a little surprised by what Max said. I am working hard to get closure on a very unpleasant experience McLaren has had.

"I just want to make it very clear that at no stage did I lie to anybody."

Stepney maintains he has been framed but Coughlan has issued a passionate apology to his team, Ferrari and the sport.

Alonso's future at McLaren is looking increasingly bleak.

THE GRID

1. RAIKKONEN Ferrari

2. MASSA Ferrari

3. ALONSO McLaren

4. HAMILTON McLaren

5. ROSBERG Williams

6. HEIDFELD BMW

7. WEBBER Red Bull

8. TRULLI Toyota

9. KOVALAINEN Renault

10. FISICHELLA Renault

11. SCHUMACHER Toyota

12. COULTHARD Red Bull

13. BUTTON Honda

14. LIUZZI Toro Rosso

15. KUBICA BMW*

16. WURZ Williams

17. VETTEL Toro Rosso

18. BARRICHELLO Honda

19. SATO Super Aguri

20. SUTIL Spyker

21. DAVIDSON Super Aguri

22. YAMAMOTO Spyker

* after 10-place penalty for engine change

HOW THEY STAND

Lewis Hamilton 92

Fernando Alonso 89

Kimi Raikkonen 74

Felipe Massa 69

Nick Heidfeld 52

Robert Kubica 33

Heikki Kovalainen 21

Giancarlo Fisichella 17

Alexander Wurz 13

Nico Rosberg 12

David Coulthard 8

Mark Webber 8

Jarno Trulli 7

Ralf Schumacher 5

Takuma Sato 4

Jenson Button 2

Sebastian Vettel 1