London: Formula One's spying controversies will rumble on into the New Year after the governing body failed to clear McLaren's 2008 car of suspicion on Friday and warned Renault they could face a future penalty.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) said in a statement that Renault had escaped punishment for having McLaren technical information because there was insufficient evidence that the championship had been affected.
However, the former champions were told that the decision could be re-visited if new evidence emerged to suggest otherwise.
The same happened to McLaren this year, with that team emerging unscathed from a hearing in July for having a 780-page dossier of Ferrari data in their possession but then being fined $100 million and stripped of all their constructors' points in September when the case was re-opened.
The after-effects of that decision, which handed the constructors' championship to Ferrari, continue to plague the sport with McLaren's 2008 car under close scrutiny to ensure it contains nothing traceable to their Italian rivals.
The FIA had been expected to clear it on Friday after receiving a technical report but, in what could prove a major setback to Lewis Hamilton's title hopes with McLaren next season, they did not do so.
Instead, an extraordinary hearing of the FIA's World Motor Sport Council was called for February 14 in Paris to discuss the report and with Ferrari and other teams allowed to make representations.
"We wouldn't have another hearing, and go through all this again and bring people from all over the world unless there was good reason to do so," FIA president Max Mosley said in Monaco.
He confirmed there was a suspicion that some of the McLaren information "could perhaps be linked to the information that came from Ferrari."
In a separate statement, McLaren acknowledged the decision and remained confident that "no confidential information has been incorporated within the team's 2007 and 2008 cars."
Four drawings
Mosley said the Renault case, involving data taken by a former McLaren designer to Renault in September 2006, was "on a completely different order of magnitude" to the earlier scandal in which a serving Ferrari employee was accused of leaking information over a period of time.
"It all narrowed down to four drawings, three of which were irrelevant," he said of the Renault affair, criticising McLaren for a behind-the-scenes briefing last month that sought to draw parallels with the Ferrari scandal.
Mosley doubted that Formula One would see a recurrence of the problems of 2007.
"I think now everyone understands the rules," he said.
"This is a long and painful process which unfortunately is not finished. We hoped it would be finished today but I think when we get through the 14th of February, that will be it."
He doubted Renault would be troubled further.
"Imagine if you find some big exchange between (Renault's Finnish driver Heikki) Kovalainen and (Italian Giancarlo) Fisichella about something that nobody has told us about," said Mosley.
"Then we could come back and have another look. But on the face of it, that is extremely unlikely."
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