No secret who from Mercedes made Ferrari complaint, says Whiting

FIA race director Charlie Whiting says he didn't think it was "any secret" which Mercedes Formula 1 team members raised the complaint about Ferrari's energy recovery system despite Toto Wolff's concerns about their public naming last week.

The FIA investigated Ferrari's ERS during practice for the Monaco Grand Prix on Thursday following a concern raised in Baku by Mercedes, with Whiting confirming one day later that officials had been "satisfied" nothing was being done wrong.

Whiting named current Mercedes technical director and former Ferrari official James Allison as having brought the complaint to him, and alluded to a "Ferrari engine man", later identified as Lorenzo Sassi, who also made the move to Mercedes.

Mercedes F1 boss Wolff said he found it "disturbing" that the FIA had named Allison and made reference to Sassi, feeling the team had been thrown under the bus by the sport's governing body, but Whiting didn't see any major issue.

"I had a chat with Toto this morning," Whiting said on Sunday. "I didn’t think it was any secret. I think in fact when we had a little chat with the guys yesterday, it was they who came up with the Ferrari man’s name. I don’t think it was any secret.

"It was wrong to say that James was a whistleblower or something like that. He just, as many engineers do, came up to us and said ‘this guy started working for us and he says this team might be doing that’, and we go and check, and it’s not the case.

"This is a regular thing. It was just one of those normal conversations that you have with somebody: ‘We think Ferrari may be doing this, this and this because of that’, and we went and checked, and we thought ‘actually they could be doing that, so let’s have a check and make sure’.

"It’s taken us a little while to get to that, but as I say, it’s a pretty routine kind of thing for us, for people to come to us, especially when they’ve had staff members come from another team.

"Don’t forget Lorenzo, his information is at least eight months old, which in Formula 1 terms is quite old."