Ferrari's arch-rival McLaren has accused it of winning the season-opening Australian Grand Prix with an illegal car.
In the latest chapter of the 'spy' saga hanging over the Formula 1 world championship, McLaren CEO Ron Dennis has also accused Ferrari of spreading "misleading" information about the details of the affair.
Dennis lashed out in a letter to the head of the Italian motorsport authority, Luigi Macaluso, whose protest to Formula 1's governing body FIA prompted it to put a recent ruling on the spy charges to appeal.
The McLaren boss said he wanted to lay out the "true facts".
One of these, he said, was that Ferrari cars ran in Melbourne with a floor device that according to FIA was illegal.
"In the interests of the sport, McLaren chose not to protest the result of the Australian Grand Prix even though it seems clear that Ferrari had an illegal competitive advantage," Dennis wrote in the letter dated August 1.
After the Australian Grand Prix, won by Ferrari newcomer Kimi Raikkonen, McLaren drew the FIA's attention to the floor attachment. FIA confirmed it was illegal and Ferrari did not use it again.
The McLaren boss confirmed in his letter that knowledge of this floor device was leaked to his team by former Ferrari engineer Nigel Stepney, one of the two men at the centre of the spying controversy.
Dennis praised Stepney for "blowing the whistle" and said this sort of action should be encouraged.
"Were it not for Mr Stepney drawing this illegal device to the attention of McLaren, there is every reason to suppose that Ferrari would have continued to race with an illegal car", he said.
Dennis stressed that the floor device was the only piece of leaked Ferrari information that the British team was ever aware of.
'NO KNOWLEDGE'.
He drew a firm line between this information and a 780-page dossier on the Ferrari cars that Mike Coughlan, McLaren's suspended chief designer, received from Stepney at the end of April.
"McLaren management and staff had no knowledge whatsoever about that".
Dennis then criticised Ferrari over the way it has presented the case in the media. He implied it was ridiculous for Ferrari to refer to details of visible parts of the car as "confidential information".
He challenged Ferrari claims that several members of McLaren knew about Coughlan's Ferrari dossier, saying the Italian team had "no evidence for these offensive allegations".
He also said a "grossly misleading" report prepared for last week's FIA hearing in Paris appeared to have been leaked to the Italian press. He denied that Ferrari had been unable to put its case at the Paris hearing.
"McLaren's reputation has been unfairly sullied by incorrect press reports from Italy and grossly misleading statements from Ferrari," Dennis wrote.
A FIA appeals court is to review the controversial ruling with which the governing body's World Council last week let McLaren off the spying charges levelled at it.
After two weeks of increasingly tense exchanges, Ferrari and McLaren meet on the race track this weekend for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
McLaren rookie Lewis Hamilton currently leads the drivers' standings, two points ahead of team-mate Fernando Alonso and 11 points clear of Ferrari's Felipe Massa. In the constructor's contest, McLaren lead with 138 points to Ferrari's 111.
As preparations for the race weekend began on Thursday, McLaren officials and drivers avoided making any remarks to the press.
