I am always amused when people say "what is this world coming to", whenever they hear reports of crimes, accidents, basic societal decay, as if to say the world was that much better say, 50 or 100 years ago, than today. Most cities had a terrible feces smell just a relative short while back, most of the world had no running water, much less sewage lines, politicians used to put contracts on their nemesis in many parts of the world instead of bad mouthing them, and sexual crime has always been bad. Just to a name a few things.
Many people had a very unusual response to the recent Stepney-gate, the spy saga that rocked the F-1 world. As if all types of such improprieties never took place, and decay had finally arrived in the hitherto pristine waters of Formulaonedom, fifty seven years down the line!!!
The following borders on the comical, and it just goes to show that bad things happened in F1 in the past too, although this was not an "inside job".
Jean Pierre Jarier had a nasty accident in the first lap of the Argentine GP of 1974, denting the tub of his Shadow DN1 quite badly, to the point that chassis 8A would be useless for the next race in Brazil. The chassis was taken to the next stop in the calendar anyway, although Shadow had to hurriedly ship another tub from England, much to the annoyance of the Brazilian customs authorities, who could not understand the need and did their utmost to bar entry of the chassis in the country. Eventually, the replacement tub came into Brazil legally, and Jarier was ensured a place in the race.
A picture in an Autosprint magazine of the time shows the bent chassis lazying about under the scorching January sun, against the pit garage wall in Interlagos. Apparently nobody was caring much for the tub ended up being stolen. Yes, you read right, stolen.
As late as 1994, Shadow owner Don Nichols still seemed very upset with the tub's disappearance, although DN1's were not that rare, eight examples were built. But it was his property, after all.
There is no official word on the whereabouts of the missing Shadow DN1, although wild stories circulate in Brazilian racing circles to this day. Lest anyone jump to conclusions, this had nothing to do with the Brazilian formula 1 project.
So, you see, Formula 1 is not this cocoon, where every one respects each other, that some people purport to be. The theft of the DN1, as I said, was likely not an inside job at all, as Shadow was a second-year builder, the DN1 was anything but revolutionary, and people had bigger fish to fry than study the last year Shadow tub. Exchanges of drawings by disgruntled employees, illicit photographs and hiring of competitor's staff with the sole intention of finding secrets have all been reported by F1 insiders.
I will say, it is harder to hide dirty work these days, for any length of time.
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