The 2007 Spygate Scandal - Weird and Wonderful F1

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Formula One has never been short of drama or scandal, so whilst we wait for another race weekend, I'm going to fill you guys in on a scandal that rocked the world of F1. So, get ready. Because you’ve been summoned to the Steward’s Office

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Hello everyone and welcome back to The Steward’s Office, I’m Saira and today… well, it’s not a race weekend so I thought we would take a short view into the past and talk about one of the biggest controversies that ever hit Formula One. Yep. I’m talking about Spygate.

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relate to each other. But in: 2007

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Some of the research links for this episode can be found on my website, thestewardsoffice.com. So, if you're interested and looking for more information please head over there. But let’s get into it.

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In the late: 1990

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g the team though, in October: 2006

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He wanted to make some steps forward in his career and that didn’t seem to be happening at Ferrari right now. Later that month, Ferrari announced that Stepney was going to be promoted to the Head of Team Performance Development which would mean that he didn’t have to be at the track anymore. And this came after Stepney had said he was looking at taking a sabbatical from the team. This could have also been a move from Ferrari to get Stepney away from race weekends since he’d been pretty vocal about his unhappiness

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Fast forward a few months to June. It’s the week of the United States Grand Prix and the news breaks that Ferrari have filed a complaint against Stepney and the Modena District Attorney had started a criminal investigation into their employee. Bare in mind, this came only a few months after two former Ferrari employees had been found guilty of handing over information to Toyota. So, Ferrari were not having the best time with their employees.

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The following month, Ferrari released a statement saying that they had completed their own internal, formal investigation and they decided to dismiss Stepney as a result of it. But there was still a lot of hush-hush going on at this point. All the team were officially saying that was the matter had related to some irregularities that they had found at the factory before the Monaco Grand Prix.

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What we'd eventually found out though, was that there was some strange powder that had been found in both Kimi Raikonnen’s and Felipe Massa’s cars, the two Ferrari drivers at the time. And this was only six days before the Monaco Grand Prix. Ferrari were essentially accusing Stepney of sabotage since a lot of people thought that he was disappointed not have been promoted to Technical Director after Brawn had left. And like I said, it wasn't like this guy was being quiet about his unhappiness.

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Ferrari weren’t quite done yet though. The same day they made that announcement, they also announced that they were taking action against Mike Coughlan, a McLaren engineer. And then McLaren then decided to suspend him as a result.

04:49 In their official press release, Ferrari said that it had presented its case against Stepney and Coughlan “concerning the theft of technical information”. Ferrari had applied for a search warrant with the British police to search Coughlan’s house and it had been granted.

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Coughlan was alleged to be in possession of 780 pages of Ferrari documentation. Stepney would have given Coughlan these documents and Coughlan wanted a copy of them. So, Coughlan handed over those 780 pages to his wife and his wife then went to a photocopying shop with the papers. The shop had given the copies of the documents over to her but they realised that something wasn't quite right. So, a British photocopying rang Ferrari in Maranello to give them a tip about the documents.

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The search warrant had resulted in finding those 780 pages from the headquarters of Ferrari. And after this news came out, we also heard that Ferrari had decided to dismiss Stepney earlier that same day.

06:01 On July 10th, the case went to the British High Court but after it was opened, it was pretty quickly adjourned to the next day. This was to give Coughlan the chance to submit an affidavit but that didn’t stop details of the case from being released, including his wife’s involvement.

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In the end, Coughlan decided that he wasn’t going to submit an affidavit to the court. He was worried that it could have been used against him in a court case that was also happening in Italy on the same subject.

06:34 Later that same day, however, Ferrari had managed to reach an agreement with Coughlan and his wife. The High Court case would be dropped as long as the couple gave Ferrari their full cooperation and full disclosure of everything that they knew and they both agreed to the terms.

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While all this was going on, McLaren had carried out their own internal investigation into the matter. McLaren wanted to make sure that everyone knew that no Ferrari Intellectual Property had been incorporated into their car or passed onto any team other team members. To clear their name, they had even invited the FIA to do their own inspection and have given them at the full set of drawings and development documents for their car along with any updates that they had been planning throughout the season. They were really trying to go through the route of full transparency with the FIA here.

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Regardless of all of that though, the FIA decided to summon McLaren to a Motorsport Council Meeting over a breach in Article 151C of the International Sporting code which refers to any fraudulent activity. It specifically says “Any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally.”

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On July 16th though McLaren came out to say that “no Ferrari materials or data are or ever have been in the possession of any McLaren employee other that the individual sued by Ferrari.” They also said that no team member had known that Coughlan was holding any of the documents in his home until Ferrari had decided to pursue action against him. So, at this point Mclaren were still trying to convince everyone that they had no clue. Coughlan had done this all by himself. It was all on his own accord and nobody in McLaren had any clue about it.

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It just seems a little far-fetched. Especially when McLaren are deciding to do their own internal investigation on themselves, that nobody else would know about these documents.

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The FIA weren’t going to take that as gospel, however, and McLaren faced a hearing on July 26th. And what the FIA found was that McLaren had been in possession of confidential information that belonged to Ferrari so they were in breach of the International Sporting Code. But! The FIA didn’t have any evidence to say that the team had used any of that information and so McLaren escaped punishment. The FIA did say though that they had the right to reconvene on the matter if any other information came to light that said otherwise.

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Understandably, Ferrari were less than impressed with the outcome. But McLaren thought that the FIA had given a fair and balanced decision and they were happy with what had happened. And why wouldn't you be? You were found in breach of a Sporting Code but you weren't even getting a slap on the wrist. There was no evidence whatsoever. You had no penalities being given to your team. Life's pretty good. But it didn’t quite stop there though and the matter then went to the FIA Court of Appeals, with a hearing scheduled for September 13th.

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August rolled around and the F1 season was in full swing. Ron Dennis, who was the team principal of McLaren at the time, penned an open letter to the president of the Italian Motorsport authority. He accused Ferrari of lying about the events that had taken place. He even went as far as to say that the car that Ferrari had used to win the Australian Grand Prix that same year was illegal. Apparently, Stepney had told McLaren that there was an illegal floor device that the Ferraris were using and he had given them this information as a whistleblower. McLaren had said that Ferrari were trying to use this whistleblowing against Stepney but they still maintained that they had no clue that Coughlan had been in possession of Ferrari documents.

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That same month, at the Hungarian Grand Prix race weekend McLaren had another mess on their hands. Lewis Hamilton had decided to disobey team orders which had disadvantaged his teammate at the time, Fernando Alonso.

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So, in retaliation Fernando had decided to hold up Lewis in the pitlane during qualifying which meant that Lewis wasn’t able to go back out to set another lap time. The cameras caught Ron Dennis’ reaction as he threw his headphones on the floor and that wasn't the last time we've seen a TP do that. He ended up having what looked like a pretty serious conversation with Alonso’s trainer after the session was done… yeah, he really wasn’t too happy with what was going on with his drivers.

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But nor was Alonso. He had joined McLaren that year with a rookie Lewis Hamilton and had fully expected to be given the number one driver status having just won two back-to-back championships with his previous team. But that didn’t seem to be the way things were playing out. Lewis had come into his rookie season with more competitiveness than anyone had expected from a driver in their first year and it did not bode well with Fernando and it led to a bit of a fractured relationship with Dennis.

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The next day, the morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Fernando went to Dennis’ motorhome. Whilst he was there, he apparently had threatened his team principal, saying that he would hand in the email exchanges that had happened with Coughlan and Pedro de la Rosa who was the McLaren reserve driver at the time. But things stayed quiet for a little bit after that.

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Exactly a month after the Hungarian Grand Prix, on September 5th, the FIA said that it had new evidence so it would be re-opening the investigation on September 13th. This was going to replace the initial appeal. Now surprise, surprise. The new evidence that had come to light were drivers' emails that were sent to Ecclestone who was the F1 commercial rights holder at the time, he had then passed these on to the FIA.

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The FIA asked for the three McLaren drivers to provide evidence to help them in their investigation. In exchange, none of them would face personal proceedings under the Sporting Code or the F1 regulations but if they were found to be withholding any information that could be relevant to the case then they could be facing serious consequences.

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McLaren, with all this going on, didn’t want to be the only sinking ship here though. So, on September 11th, they approached the FIA with some questions. And these were against the Renault F1 team. McLaren made the argument that if they were guilty of anything then surely there had to be other teams that were guilty too.

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McLaren in all rounds of the: 2007

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Both Lewis’ and Fernando’s points weren’t affected in the Drivers' Championship since they had cooperated with the FIA investigation and were given immunity but whenever either McLaren driver won a race for the rest of the season, no representative from McLaren was allowed to be on the podium.

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The day after the hearing, Ron Dennis had come out to say that he had been the one to alert the FIA to there being more evidence but Max Mosley wasn’t having it. He’d said that Dennis had actually come to him to say that Fernando had decided to send the emails but Dennis had assured him that there was nothing that was incriminating in any of the emails.

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nformation in relation to the: 2006

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According to a statement that was released by the FIA, they had information about the layout and dimensions of the McLaren cars, the fuelling system and the oil cooling system, amongst a whole host of other things. And a hearing date was set for December 6th. In the end, the team were found in breach of Article 151C and much like McLaren initially, they had managed to avoid any penalty.

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After this, McLaren then decided to do a press release in the middle of December. Essentially, the press release was of the letter that Martin Whitmarsh had sent to the FIA and he was the COO of the McLaren team at the time. He’d said that the team had accepted that there were in fact a number of McLaren employees that’d had access to confidential information from Ferrari and apologised that it had taken until the FIA investigation for this to come to their attention.

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So, McLaren had really changed their tune from when this had all initially come out saying that no one but Coughlan knew. To finally admitting that yeah, there were multiple McLaren employees that knew about the information and had seen that information.

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the first place. In February: 2009

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We might not ever fully understand why Nigel Stepney had really started this chain of events. Was Ferrari really taking that much of a toll on him? Was he so unhappy that he felt the need to start leaking their secrets to their rival team? McLaren and Ferrari have had a rivalry tale as old as time in F1 so, it was a big move to be giving that many pages of documents to your direct rival. And apparently all over the fact that he just didn't get the promotion that he wanted. And whilst we won’t get answers for any of those now, all this has given us one of the biggest scandals in motorsport history paired with the biggest fine in the sporting world.

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When I first got into F1 and I was reading about F1 history, this was one of the stories that gripped me the most. You couldn't write anything better. DTS producers have absolutely nothing on this. It's just insanity to me, there are so many different stands of things that play into this story, that when I was first reading about it, it took me a couple of times to fully get my head around what had happened.

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But that is a summary of spygate which, yeah, actually happened guys. This is a real thing that happened not so long ago. Fernando and Lewis are still on the grid right now. Martin Whitmarsh is back, working at Aston Martin. I think Pedro de la Rosa is there as well. So, the whole gang is getting back together there it seems. But yeah, just an absolute rollercoaster ride.

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Thank you guys so much and diolch yn fawr for listening. Make sure you follow this podcast because next week I’ll be doing a review on the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. So, I'll see you guys the next time you're summoned to the Steward's Office.