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Evan Short started working at Ferrari in 1999, at the time of the Scuderia’s tense rivalry with McLaren in Formula 1, and describes in the new book Inside Mercedes F1 how the Italian team used to monitor radio communications between members at the time of the Woking team.
F1’s history book is littered with scandals, with immorality, with illegalities – even with a chicane race or the complete interception of the entire technical file of one team’s car (Ferrari) and its sale to another (McLaren) by an engineer (Nigel Stepney, in 2007).
One of these scandals, where teams cross the lines not only of ethics but also of the Law, has now been revealed by Evan Short, head of electronic systems at Mercedes F1 in the new book “Inside Mercedes F1” by author Matt Wyman.
Short went to Maranello in 1999, at a time when the Scuderia was locked in a tense duel with McLaren, against Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, in a bid to win Sumi’s first championship since 1979.
2000 Japanese GP winner Michael Schumacher on the podium with Scuderia director Jean Todt and then-McLaren drivers Mika Hakkinen (left) and David Coulthard
AP PHOTO/SHIZUO KAMBAYASHI
Speaking about that time, Short remembers very well one of the tactics used by Ferrari at the time. The Italian team were trying to intercept radio communications between McLaren members to gain critical information – but the English team soon found out.
“My first job was a radio communications spy”explains Short. “The communication channel was not open as it is today. Teams like McLaren encrypted their radio communications. Since they were Ferrari’s main competitor, my job was to find a way to steal them.
Undoubtedly, it was something absolutely prohibited. At the time, analog encryption was based on continuously changing the frequency through a series of predetermined radio signals. One of McLaren’s sponsors was a crypto company, and I knew they used a limited number of combinations.
So I built a system that could track every combination. McLaren used the same combination for the entire race weekend. This meant that once I found him, I could monitor the communication.”adds Mercedes’ current head of electronic systems.
Scuderia Ferrari’s then technical director Ross Bron congratulates Eddie Irvine on his 1999 Austrian GP victory, as does McLaren’s David Coulthard
AP PHOTO/JEROME DELAY
And he concludes: “We did it for about two years before McLaren caught on. We were reacting to things on the track that we couldn’t have known any other way. They had an engineer, the Tyler. He suspected we were being watched and started sarcastically saying ‘good morning’ over the radio to my boss.”
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