June issue of WIRED has story on Stepneygate!!

post cliff notes for us please. i'm interested to hear their take on it.

 

I have the issue, I just need to find 5 minutes to read it. I'll try and sparknote it for yall.

 

Apparently Stepney and Coughlan were working together, Stepney kept bringing Coughlan data which finally ended up with Coughlan getting the 780 page 2007 car specification at which time Coughlan had his wife take it to the local copy shop, across the road from McLaren HQ not knowing that the copy shop owner was a fellow Tifosi... Anyway the copy shop owner does a little google action and get's Stefano's email address and sends him an email describing the document, etc. Stefano get's the email and turns it over to Ferrari security stat and then Trudy Coughlan goes to pick up the copy, it was to be burned on CD and she was to burn the document and bury the ashes in the back yard which she did. Anyway the cops show up, toss their home, get the ashes, everything....

I would say it's not long before McLaren ends up funding Ferrari F1 for a long, long time... The article is excellent, you all need to get a copy.... For those who thought McLaren wasn't guilty, well this article pretty much proves that McLaren are a bunch of thieves and thugs....

If I were McLaren I would have tried to stop them from printing it as it will really show them for who they are, scum.

Also there is detailed proof of what parts of the Ferrari car and design were stolen, it's an IP attorney's dream, if it were IBM and HP and HP had stolen this much from IBM, HP would be out of business....

 

Yeah I just got this in the mail yesterday. I just haven't read it yet. Should be good.

 

thanks for the summary. I can't wait to hear what the Mclaren lover's say in response to it.

 

???

 

If you google a little bit, you can get some email addresses.


I have had an email conversation with Pierro, Luca B, Stefano and Mario Almondo on certain topics..

 

Wired is a great magazine - this will be a must read

 

http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/16-06/ff_formulaone

 

You must have been reading a different article than I was reading. It shows nothing of the sort.

Once again where is the "proof?" Your head seems to be up in the clouds on this one.

Hardly the damming article you portray it to be. Thanks for the link.

 

Being a huge Ferrari fan; the article still gives the impression that whatever was going on in Mclaren, was kept away from Ron Dennis.
Kevin S.
Orchard Park, NY

 

Finally got my copy, great story.

 

Quote: "Once again where is the "proof?" Your head seems to be up in the clouds on this one."

Response:

Did you read it? Do you remember these paragraphs?


"After I arrived at Barcelona airport, he took me to a restaurant in the marina," Coughlan said in an affidavit. "Whilst we were having a coffee, Mr. Stepney produced, unsolicited, a diagram of a brake balance assembly used by Ferrari." Then lunch arrived. When they were finished, Coughlan asked Stepney to drive him to the airport. They got into the car, but before putting it in gear, Stepney pulled out the mother lode: a stack of 780 pages of Ferrari documents.

....

"My engineering curiosity got the better of me, and I foolishly took the documents from him," Coughlan said in his affidavit. "I casually flicked through them over the course of the 25-minutes-or-so journey it took for Mr. Stepney to drive me to the airport. I kept hold of the documents and took them home with me."

....

Coughlan once again met with Neale for breakfast "to discuss my future with McLaren and the concerns I had," Coughlan said. At the end of the breakfast, Coughlan showed Neale "two or so digital color images from the material that Mr. Stepney had given to me." It was only for a couple of seconds, but long enough for Neale to react with, essentially, What the hell are you doing with that? And Get rid of it, quick.

But Coughlan didn't ditch his trove. Instead, on June 1 he and Stepney met with the CEO of Honda's F1 team at Heathrow Airport, for Stepney "to discuss a possible career opportunity for him at Honda," Coughlan said, adding that he tagged along to see what Honda might have available for him. What were they asking for? "Silly money," one insider says. "Coughlan would be chief designer, and Stepney would be technical director, or vice versa. But they would effectively be the two chief people at Honda. Probably that move was destroyed by the fact that Nigel went in there just asking for silly, silly money."

Before either could strike a deal with a new company, however, Stepney was accused of attempting to sabotage a Ferrari car. Then Trudy Coughlan stepped into the copy shop in Surrey, and the scandal exploded into the Formula One world.

....

From McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa to Coughlan on March 21, 2007: "Hi, Mike, do you know the Red Car's Weight Distribution? It would be important for us to know so that we could try it in the simulator. Thanks in advance, Pedro. p.s. I will be in the simulator tomorrow."

De la Rosa later confirmed that Coughlan replied by text message with precise details of the Ferrari's weight distribution.

De la Rosa later sent an email to Alonso describing Ferrari's weight distribution, to which Alonso replied on the same day with an email that included a section headed "Ferrari": "Its weight distribution surprises me; I don't know if it's 100% reliable, but at least it draws attention."

Soon after, De la Rosa emailed Alonso, passing on information from Coughlan about the CO2 Ferrari used in its tires, ending with, "We'll have to try it, it's easy!" Alonso replied that it is "very important" that McLaren give the gas a test.

De la Rosa emailed Coughlan on April 12: "Hi Mike, I hope you are well. Can you explain, as much as you can, about Ferrari's braking system ... Are they adjusting from inside the cockpit?" Coughlan replied two days later with a technical description.

And an email from one senior McLaren engineer to another: "Is the Ferrari wheelbase an accurate figure? Did it come from photos or our mole?"

Most damning of all was this email from De la Rosa to Alonso: "All the information from Ferrari is very reliable. It comes from Nigel Stepney, their former chief mechanic — I don't know what post he holds now. He's the same person who told us in Australia that [Ferrari driver] Kimi [Reäikkönen] was stopping in lap 18. He's very friendly with Mike Coughlan, our Chief Designer, and told him that."

 

None so blind as them that will not see.

From your own sub-quote: "McLaren received inside information about Ferrari's pit stop strategy, finances, personnel, and other elements* that might have given the team a few seconds' advantage on the track".

Seconds.

In a world where differences that matter are measured to the thousandths of a second.

*Aerodynamics, materials, procedures and fabrication.

 

You took the quote out of context. and it's a "MIGHT"

And it's old new's. YAWN

 

McLaren cheated, they got caught, and they will pay.... Evidence is in, people are even publishing articles about it which means McLaren knows it's true and aren't suing to stop the articles from coming so guess what.. Fat lady is going to sing...

 

Oh I never knew that remarkable..

You'll be telling me next Max gets caught with his trouser's down ...as if.

 

So I can't tell you that!! The poor old chap is getting "whipped" by the media!

 

I'm sorry, but where were you LAST YEAR when this was actually news? The fat lady sang already, in September and in December. As far as the FIA is concerned, the matter is closed and done. McLaren has already paid. Those quotes are from the affidavits collected by the FIA for their investigation. Old news, case considered and closed.

You seem to be confusing "Coughlan" with "McLaren". Yes, he was a McLaren employee - just as Stepney was a Ferrari employee, yet you don't seem to confuse "Stepney giving away confidential information" with "Ferrari giving away confidential information". What, you mean an individual is capable of acting independently of the way their employer would want? It goes both ways. Further, to your outraged quote of "Seconds!"... yes, that info could have been worth seconds over the course of a race distance - NOT seconds per lap.

 

It's now going wide spread and even local to here in the states... As for me knowing that McLaren are scum, I don't have to verify that... It doesn't go both ways in a court of law as the Judge doesn't give a blank about Ferrari as the information was stolen from them... Get it.. If you have my car in your possession without my permission, even though my son said you could, guess what, it's still theft... And guess what else... You're still guilty... Here in the states it's jail and a fine, in Turkey or other places like China, it's execution..

BTW it's not closed, the courts are still in session in Italy and the UK, the case is still being tried... So it's not closed, Ferrari has not settled.. The FIA is not a legal government body so nobody really cares what they say... I don't think they have an army or a police for either do they?

 

Not only did you take the quote out of context, and left some of it out you also have to remember that Coulhan have admitted that he gave Stepney McLaren Pit Stop info in a bit of quid-pro-quo. So in that respect Ferrari are as guilty as McLaren. Where is your outrage at that?

Oh, and Mark you still haven't shown me a quote from the article that says the information went any further than we already knew. If anything Dennis comes out looking better than he did, it does show he's the one that went to the FIA about the emails, and most of the top brass didn't want anything to do with the information.

 

Indeed: I am outraged that you or anyone else considers Coughlan's self-serving and un-substantiated accusation either "quid-pro-quo", justification, or relevant.

 

If someone has YOUR car in their possession....even though YOUR son said they could...guess what its still theft.........Perhaps in China and Turkey....but that legal conclusion is totally WRONG IN THE US!!!! Sorry!

 

Great Article, especially for the non F1 crowd to get the essence of the deal. First time I've read a concise time line of the unfolding. The threads in the racing section are v e r y long and often hard to follow. Well written and informative. The average WIRED reader is not the same as the average F1 fan.