[Aerkuld]

Again, I know what your saying and I'm not totally disagreeing with you. Maybe he wasn't the predominat brain, but I bet his knowledge and experience was tapped into, or his opinion was sought by Frye and Goss on more than one occasion. As for the transparency, again what paper trail shows and how the process actually works may, or may not be directly correlated. According to the paperwork here it would appear that I have very little influence over the design whereas the reality is somewhat different.
I don't think that Ron deliberately mis-stated the process if he mis-stated it at all, just don't loose sight of what McLaren were trying to show in that instance - that Coughlan didn't use Ferrari's ideas on McLaren's cars. All I'm suggesting is that somebody in Coughlan's position isn't paid to be a drawing office manager. Paper trails and org charts can show so much of how things work in theory, but the only people that are going to know for sure are the people that work in McLaren's design office.