Revisited: Ecclestone hits out at Dennis over spy-gate

It is without doubt one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of F1, one that nearly brought McLaren to the brink of extinction. 

The story of spy-gate is well known. Ferrari's Nigel Stepney shared private design documents with McLaren's Mike Coughlan, a fact that only came to light when Coughlan's wife Trudy took the stash to a photocopier shop in Woking - only for the owner, a Ferrari fan would you believe, to notify Stefano Domenicali immediately after his suspicions were aroused.

McLaren was eventually cleared of the charge, but later in the year, as the Fernando Alonso/Lewis Hamilton dynamic exploded in Hungary, Alonso threatened Ron Dennis by telling him he would go to FIA president Max Mosley and produce more emails about the case.

McLaren had claimed that Coughlan was a bad egg and only he used the secretive Ferrari data, but these emails proved otherwise, with Alonso and test driver Pedro de la Rosa talking in the new messages.

Dennis went straight to Mosley to tell him about these new messages, but Mosley already knew about them, with McLaren summoned once again before the FIA.

This time, it copped a $100 million fine - the largest to this day levied against any sports team - and was booted from the constructors' it would have won by nine points. Both Hamilton and Alonso kept their drivers' points after coming forward as witnesses - no doubt encouraged by one Bernie Ecclestone who was trying to keep alive a three-way championship battle...

Renault was also later found to be in possession of McLaren documents but was not punished by the FIA after there was no evidence they had actually used the information.

As the dust settled, on this day in 2008 (February 2nd), Ecclestone summed up what had happened, in his view.

"What happened last year has been going on in F1 for years," he explained. 

"If McLaren had come clean and owned up none of it would have happened the way it did. He is a good friend of mine but Ron was six months pregnant and said he was a virgin. He knows he got off cheap."

That was a far more diplomatic reading of events than the good cop to Ecclestone's bad cop from Mosley, who memorably added in his own time: "Ron was fined $5m for the offence and $95m for being a ****'.

The missing four-letter word starts with a t and ends with one as well.