The news that Force India is supposed to be taking legal action against Lotus on the basis that the latter’s car is based on a wind tunnel model of the former’s 2010 challenger makes no sense at all – and clearly suggests that there is much more to this story than the headlines suggest.

The key point is that the Lotus is way off the pace of the Force India and so if there was any copying going on one would have expected a better result. Given that Force India stopped using the Italian wind tunnel at the end of 2008, it is pretty hard to make the claim that the 2010 Lotus is a copy of the 2010 Force India. One might try to argue that the Lotus could be a copy of the 2009 Force India car, but one needs to remember that the 2010 cars are very different from the 2009 versions because of the rule changes which banned fuel stops. This had a dramatic effect on the design of the cars, with much longer wheelbases.

Investigation into the affair reveals that there IS a great deal more to this than meets the eye, not least the fact that Force India boss Vijay Mallya has a less than solid relationship with Mike Gascoyne, the technical boss of Lotus, who once led the technical team at Force India. We have heard stories that suggest that Gascoyne may feel that Force India still owes him money. There is also an ongoing legal action between Force India and Fondtech. Fondtech is an Italian aerodynamic operation which is run by Frenchman Jean-Claude Migeot.

Migeot and Gascoyne have been working together on and off since 1990 when they created the radical Tyrrell 019, which introduced the raised nose into F1. In 1994 when Gascoyne returned to Tyrrell after a period elsewhere he instigated an aerodynamic development programme with Migeot’s new operation, which was then called Fondmetal Technologies. At the end of 1995 Fondmetal did a deal with Benetton (now Renault) and it was not until Gascoyne moved there in 2001 that the relationship with Migeot was revived. In 2003 Aerolab was established as a joint venture between FondTech and Dallara Automobili. The project was conceived and managed by FondTech but partially funded by Dallara. The new tunnel was opened in 2004 and was larger and faster than the original Fondtech tunnel. Initially it was used by Toyota, as Gascoyne had joined the Cologne team in December 2003. He instigated the construction of a second windtunnel in Germany and in the middle of 2005 Toyota moved out of Aerolab and Renault moved in. Fondtech then embarked on the construction of FondTech2, an identical wind tunnel to Aerolab. This was opened in 2007 and used by Force India, where Gascoyne ended up after being dropped by Toyota. Gascoyne’s stay at Force India was relatively short and he departed at the end of 2008 and only returned to F1 in 2009 with Lotus. Mallya has by then fallen out with Migeot over money which ended up in the Italian firm taken legal action against the team at the end of last year for “not fulfilling its obligations”.

When Mallya began making claims about Migeot and Lotus, the Frenchman issued a statement that said “these rumours are designed only to tarnish the company’s reputation and professionalism and to divert attention away from the facts”.

A dispute over money or a spy scandal? The first option seems the more likely…