Former Ferrari man Nigel Stepney has released more about his side in the whole spy scandal affair. Stepney gave a copy of a letter he sent to FIA President Max Mosley, Ron Dennis and Jean Todt to his friend, Joe Saward, of grandprix.com.
In the letter, Stepney says he first had doubts about the legality of Ferrari’s floor in January 2007, and pointed them out to Ferrari’s senior design people who did nothing.
In February, Stepney says, he sent several e-mails to the FIA’s Peter Wright about the floor, and that Wright later informed him that he discussed the system with FIA tech chief Charlie Whiting.

“Nigel Stepney was a former employee of Ferrari. We’ve had no involvement with him, we don’t intend to have any involvement with him and his involvement in this affair is a thing of the past as far as we are concerned.” - Ron Dennis, McLaren

The floor “issue” is what initially kicked off this whole affair.
In part two of the letter, Stepney gives a detailed technical analysis of the floor that was eventually banned. Then, in part three, he discusses his relationship with McLaren’s Mike Coughlan and how the Ferrari documents came into the latter’s possession.
Stepney said he was studying the Ferrari data when he met Coughlan (to talk about possibly moving to another team) and showed him several pages.
“Eventually he took a small amount of these documents and put them in his bag,” Stepney wrote.
Then, on the drive to the airport, Stepney said that Coughlan “saw some other documents (in the car) which he started to read; he then took them all and pushed them inside his back pack. I didn’t think it was a good idea and said you can’t do anything with them. He told me ‘don’t worry I won’t use any of this stuff.’
“Mike really had no reason to use any of this information at McLaren and to the best of my knowledge he never contemplated the idea. McLaren is a well-respected organization and quite capable of winning the championship without any outside help or information, gained by deceit.
“Also, you cannot take items from one concept of car design, manufacture them and expect that they are going to benefit the concept of another car design. There was never any talk or intention either of using this information in any other team.”
Stepney said that he could not prove the existence of the various emails because Ferrari has confiscated his computer.
Ferrari’s Jean Todt poured scorn on Stepney’s version of events.
“I would not commit or give any credit to this gentleman who...I say he has lost his head,” Todt said. “When a guy puts powder in the fuel tank of his team (car) I don’t think we should give credit about the letter he writes.”
Ferrari still has a legal case pending against Stepney in Italy.
Stepney also claims that the flow of information wasn’t just from Ferrari to McLaren but vice-versa as well. McLaren boss Ron Dennis declined to comment.
“Nigel Stepney was a former employee of Ferrari,” Dennis said. “We’ve had no involvement with him, we don’t intend to have any involvement with him and his involvement in this affair is a thing of the past as far as we are concerned.”
Stepney still plans to publish his biography and tell all about his side in the spy scandal. But Red Mist Books, which was supposed to publish the book, says now it will not do so.