

Nigel Stepney has spoken out for the first time regarding the industrial espionage scandal that rocked F1 in 2007. The Englishman who now runs the successful JRM sportscar team, was accused and convicted of passing Ferrari’s technical secrets to the McLaren team. He received a suspended jail sentence and McLaren was hit with a record fine of $100,000,000.



Stepney still largely denies wrong doing in the case, in an interview published in the latest issue of Racecar Engineering he puts his side of the story across for the first time, “I like to try to win on a fair basis but when I was there I disagreed with something that was going on within Ferrari” he explains.

At the opening round of the 2007 season in Melbourne, Australia Stepney had an informal chat with his former colleague Mike Coughlan then at McLaren. They discussed the rear wing and moveable floor fitted to the Ferrari F2007, both of which Stepney felt were outside of the regulations.

“I thought it was not correct, and although I was wrong to discuss it, winning until you get stopped was not the correct way. It went against the grain” he explains.

Coughlan then reported the conversation to his bosses with McLaren, which investigated the claims and found that they were correct. McLaren then asked the FIA for a clarification on the legality of these parts, the wing was deemed legal but the floor was not. McLaren did not protest the result of the race which Ferrari won. A letter from McLaren boss Ron Dennis written to the Italian motorsport authority at a later date and recently shown to Racecar Engineering states that “We chose not to protest the result of the Australian Grand Prix even though it seems clear that Ferrari had an illegal competitive advantage.”

Stepney was later accused of passing a dossier of technical information which Mike Coughlan was found to have in his possession but it is something he strenuously denies “as far as information passing when they showed me the document I had not seen 90 percent of the information on it.”

The resulting information that leaked out revealed Ferrari’s use of a buckling floor stay, trick tyre gasses to reduce degradation, brake balance adjustments and many other technical secrets. Racecar Engineering released much of this information in 2007 after un-redacted documents were sent to its London office (2007 Ferrari F1 secrets revealed).

After the scandal broke the FIA advised against any team from employing Stepney, but later the situation changed and the governing body even wanted to recruit him. “I think six months later Mosley retracted the advice not to employ me and said that there more behind the scenes that meets the eye. I also have a letter that shows that I got a job offer from the FIA. I refused.”

Read the full interview in the December issue of Racecar Engineering.