Ferrari Sent Letter on Hakkinen Hearing

McLaren chief Ron Dennis fuelled a new row between his team and rivals Ferrari on Saturday when he said the Italians had tried to get both of his outfit's cars disqualified following the Austrian Grand Prix.

Dennis told a news conference that Ferrari had sent a letter to the FIA's stewards to try to influence the outcome of the hearing into the case of a missing seal on defending world champion Mika Hakkinen's winning car.

The letter, signed by Ferrari's sporting director Jean Todt, urged the stewards to exclude both McLaren cars from the result of the Austrian Grand Prix in which they had finished first and second, said Dennis.

Finn Hakkinen won and Briton David Coulthard came second in the Austrian race after which the scrutineers found that the seal was missing on Hakkinen's car and that this contravened the technical regulations.

The hearing ignored the letter from Ferrari, but found that the McLaren car driven by Hakkinen did not comply with the sport's strict technical regulations.

McLaren were fined $50,000 dollars and lost the 10 constructors' championship point they won, but Hakkinen kept his 10 in the drivers' title race.

An angry Dennis, clearly upset at Ferrari's attempt to influence the case said: "There is no mechanism in the regulations for a letter like this to be forwarded, but any top team is more than capable of knowing what it is doing in forwarding such a letter to the stewards."

Dennis went on to draw comparisons between the episode and previous incidents, citing last year, when Ferrari appealed successfully following their disqualification in Malaysia.

"Some people will go to any lengths to win, but for us that would devalue the win itself," he said.

Dennis said he sympathised with the stewards who had to deal with the case of the missing seal on Hakkinen's car and said he did not see any point in appealing against the decision.

But his remarks are certain to trigger another episode of ill-will and bitterness between the two teams following years of strained relations.

These were intensified after the so-called 'Jerezgate' tapes affair in 1997 when Ferrari accused McLaren and Williams of collusion in an effort to fix the outcome of the European Grand Prix.

Their difficulties continued last year when Ferrari were cleared of technical infringements with their bargeboards in Kuala Lumpur following a controversial appeal decision in Paris.