Auto Racing

The sabotage/spying accusations involving McLaren and Ferrari bring to question whether the free sharing of information in Formula 1 circles has been a new development in the category. The fact is that when Formula 1 was not a big buck business, team designers would often freelance outside the team, to make a few bucks, after all teams did not pay designers (or drivers...)much about 30/40 years ago. For instance, when Gordon Murray was already in Brabham's staff as a designer, he was commissioned to modify a former Brabham BT 33 chassis, owned by Ecurie Evergreen, into a Le Mans challenger, which became known as the Duckhams Special, and later on, as De Cadenet. Of course, we are talking about an era when Brabham's whole staff was around 35 people, and the company still manufactured customer Formula 2 and 3 cars, in addition to running a team of 3 cars in Formula 1. All was done in innocence, and Murray did not apply any improper design ideas to the prototype. This type of thing would obviously not happen today, an age where inventors almost no longer exist, and most patents are filed by universities or companies.