For a guy who was a ski instructor turned F1 driver agent to team boss to engine manufacturer, you have to hand it to Craig Pollock…he’s living the dream. Once a manager for world champion Jacques Villeneuve, the man has certainly moved beyond his station in life to become the head of Propulsion Universelle et Recuperation d’Energie (PURE) which will create engines for the F1 series.

Part of making engines is having people who can actually design them and who better than FIA’s director of power train and electronics Gilles Simon? You may have caught the announcement last week on AUTOSPORT but the magazine caught up with a team bosses this weekend and they are none too happy about the appointment. According to Lotus Renault GP boss Eric Boullier, Simon saw a lot of information that is sensitive. AUTOSPORT has the story:

“For me it is an issue. He had access to a lot of IP and a lot of information, as he was talking to a lot of engine people. The FIA should release people at least with a gardening leave period long enough to make sure there is no transfer of technology.”

Equally vocal about the situation was Renault’s Rob White and Pollock told AUTOSPORT that he had a sit-down with the White in order to discuss the situation:

“I had a long chat with Rob White, and I purposefully pulled him out because he had made a statement in the FIA press conference.

“I can understand what he is saying, and I suggested Rob also discusses that directly with Gilles Simon. Rob has made it clear, however, that the problem does not lie with myself and PURE, the problem actually lies within the system and the FIA.

“If somebody wants to leave a position, then there are certain ways they can do that – and it depends on the contract. Gilles was free to leave the FIA without any blockages, without any gardening leave and it was done all above board.”

So here is the crux, if the FIA hires talent from the F1 community to help develop regulations and technical parameters that are applicable to the teams, then perhaps there is an issue with the FIA’s contractual verbiage that would secure the intellectual property of the teams in just such a case. On the other hand, you cannot suggest that this doesn’t happen within the teams themselves as an event like Pat Fry leaving McLaren for Ferrari may prove. Surely you cannot pretend that an engineer will forget everything he knows. They apply their craft at whatever employer they happen to be with.

Flavio Briatore once suggested that this is the best way to progress, hire engineers and the IP comes with them. The 2007 saga known as spygate revealed a deeper, more insidious situation where technical manuals were stolen from Ferrari but can one be expected to not apply their life’s work on a new project? Surely Pat Fry has started to benefit Ferrari and few could argue that Red Bull technical boss Adrian Newey hasn’t had a major impact no matter where he goes and the team he leaves suffers the loss.

In the end, Simon may have seen technical details of the teams but I am unclear what Pollock is leveraging when he told AUTOSPORT that it is really an FIA problem due to their weak employment contract verbiage. The teams surely know that Simon knows their secret sauce and this is concerning but then Williams F1′s newest employee, Mike Coughlan, certainly knows Ferrari’s secret sauce as well. Not sure how you can prevent PURE from benefiting from the data in Simon’s melon but I guess the FIA could and should have a gardening leave clause for their employees as the IP they are exposed to is of a highly secretive nature and PURE seems the better for it.