I see Arknors wiki page copy and paste and raise him an Article by Lawerence a respected journo who I rate higher than wiki...
Note mclaren also had something to hide
Quote from M.Lawrence:
"...In 1994 Benetton had traction control on its computer program, yet traction control had been outlawed. There is no question about this, it was discovered by the FIA and admitted by the team. Benetton claimed it was only used in testing. Of course, Flavio, of course, teams regularly waste time, and bins full of cash, testing outlawed systems they do not use in races. “
When Ayrton Senna retired from the 1994 Pacific Grand Prix at Aida, he stood with his car for about 15 minutes and went back to his pits and reported that Benetton was running different cars. Senna knew that Schumacher was using traction control. ...In his eyes it was a British team that was cheating and Michael went along with it.
To activate the traction control, or 'launch control' as Benetton claimed it was, the driver had to go through a specific and complicated procedure on the parade lap, the driver activated the system so there is no way that Schumacher was an innocent..."
In short:
1. "The FIA cast a further shadow over Schumacher's aspirations when it announced that Benetton was found to have a computer system capable of breaching the regulations"
2. "...Charlie Whiting indicated his belief that the Benetton team had the facility to run an illegal launch (automatic start) control..."
3. " Senna, for one, was extremely suspicious about the Benetton's performance out of slow and medium speed corners. On several occasions, in private, he voiced the view that there was something about the Benetton which worried him....he suspected that the B194 might have some sort of illegal traction control system."
4. "Whiting's Imola report which confirmed the presence of 'launch control' - an automatic start system - in Schumacher's Imola black box."
5. "Launch control could in fact be switched on using a lap-top...Benetton indicated that the availability of this feature came as a surprise to them...The menu was so arranged that after ten items, nothing further appeared. If, however, the operator scrolled beyond the tenth listed option, to option 13, launch control can be enabled, even though this is not visible on the screen. No satisfactory explanation was offered for this attempt to conceal the feature."
6. "...it was pointed out that the driver had to work through a particular sequence of gearshift paddle positions, in order to activate the system."
Brazil 1994
The 1st year of the drivers-aid ban, Aryton Senna who drove with the system and officially is the LAST winner of a driver who used a traction controlled car [in Adelaide 1993], while Senna strongly started to suspect the Benetton from Schumacher, because the traction of that car was huge. Keep in mind they’re team tacitcs were very flexible because of the removal of the fuel ring, what gained several seconds (!!!) in the pits, winning loads of place and time on track. (This they had untill the German GP in the 1994 season.)
Pacific GP 1994
This GP he was sure about his suspicion, he was quoted: "I’m sure of it, I have to fight against an illegal car, therefore I need to go over the limit." He only talked with friends of him about this, but Senna who knows how the system works and how a car acts when such system is in use, surely is not a person who would joke about these kind of things. His accusations never have been proven, a couple of weeks later we all know what happened.
France 1994
At the French Grand Prix in late June, Schumacher beat Hill with a strart so flawless that it hardened the suspicions lurking in many minds. This was the kind of get away that had been seen many times in the previous two seasons when the teams had enjoyed the benefit of the now proscribed traction control systems and fully automatic gearboxes.
Announcing it's ban on most kinds of computer controlled devices, the FIA had been loud in it's insistence that the new regulations would be regularly and strictly policed. In July, shortly after the British Grand prix, the FIA"s technical commision produced the findings from a software analysis company, LDRA of Liverpool which it had hired to conduct it's spot checks into computer progremas being used by Ferrari, Benetton and McLaren.
To enable these checks to be made, the teams had to first agree to surrender the source codes: the means of access to their computer programs. Ferrari, spooked by the unpunished discovery of their use of a variation of traction control at Aida, readily complied; their cars were found to be clean. McLaren and Benetton however refused to produce the source codes, claiming that to do so would first compromise the commercial confidentiality and second infringe the intellectual copyright of their software suppliers. When it was pointed out to them that LDRA is often enlisted by the British government to look into military soiftware whose confidentiality is covered by the Official Secrets Act and carries weightier consequences than a silver cup and a few bottles of chjampagne and the further inflation of over inflated egos, they gave in.
Both teams were fined $100 000.00 for attempting to obstruct the course of justice. And when the findings emerged, both appeared to have something to hide. In McLarens case, it was a gearbox program permitting automatic shifts. After much deliberating, and to the surprise of many, the FIA eventually decided that it was not illegal. But Benetton had something far more exciting up their sleves...
When LDRA's people finally got into the B194s computer software, they discoverd a hidden program, and it was dynamite: something which allowed Schumacher to make perfect starts merely by flooring the throttle and holding it there, the computer taking over to determine the correct matching of gear-changes to engine speed, ensuring that the car reached the first corner in the least possible time, with no wheel spin or side slip, all it's energy concentrated forward. Before the winter, this combination of traction control and gearbox automation would have been legal. Now, although it was strictly outlawed by the regulations, it was still there. If you knew how to find it. Because it was invisible.
It took LDRA's people a while. What you had to do was call up the softwares menu of programs, scroll down to the bottom line, put the cursor on an apparently blank line, press a particular key (no clues to that, either) and - hey presto - without anything showing on the screen, the specila program was there.
They called it "launch control" and LDRA's computer detectives also discovered the means by which the driver could activate it on the way to the starting grid. It involved a sequence of commands using the throttlle and clutch pedals and the gear shift paddles under the steering wheel. Benetton couldn't deny it's existence, but they did claim that it had not been usde since it had been banned. So why was it still there and had it's existence been so carefully disguised?
It had remained in the software, they said, because to remove it would have been too difficult. The danger was that in the purging of the program, others might become corrupted. Best leave it be. But, so that the driver couldn't accidentally engage it, and thereby unintentionally brealk the new rules, "launch control" had been hidden carefully away behind a sereis of masking procedures.
"That's enough to make me think they were cheating", and experienced software programmer with another F1 team told me. "Look, we purged our own software of all illegal systems during the winter. I did it myself. OK, our car isn't quite as sophisticated as the Benetton, but it only took me 2 days. Perfectly strightforward. And the fact that they disguised it is suspicious"
