BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Fired Ferrari engineer Nigel Stepney will get a chance to clear his name in last year’s spy scandal at a FIA hearing next month.
Stepney was accused of leaking a considerable amount of confidential Ferrari information to McLaren’s Mike Coughlan.
“No one can be sentenced without having first had the opportunity of defending himself,” FIA President Max Mosley said in a letter to Autosprint magazine. “This is a fundamental legal principle.”
If found guilty, he could be banned from FIA-sanctioned events for a period of time, but Stepney welcomes the opportunity to finally tell his side of the story.
“Despite having to endure months of unfounded allegations, Mr. Stepney has maintained a dignified silence, secure in the knowledge that he would, one day, be able to explain his position and offer a perspective based on more than 30 years as an F-1 ‘insider,’” Stepney’s lawyers said in a statement.
“He was ready to do this at the FIA disciplinary hearing scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 7 in London. Unfortunately, the FIA’s legal team was unable to attend this hearing, citing ‘flight difficulties’ in Geneva as a reason. The hearing will now take place at some stage after March 7, 2008.”
Unconfirmed reports claim that McLaren’s Coughlan has already had his hearing with the FIA for his part in the scandal, but the FIA declines to make any comments at the moment.

• Officials from the Bahrain Grand Prix have denied stories that they are considering holding their race at night. Malaysia, however, could do so as early as 2009.

• Force India test driver Tonio Liuzzi has been negotiating with several teams, including Peugeot (that did not put his name on its recently announced roster of eight ex-F1 drivers) to race in the Le Mans 24 Hours.

• McLaren chief Ron Dennis and his wife, Lisa, are separating after 22 years of marriage. “Inevitably, the process is a difficult one for us and our three children, and we hope and trust that the media will respect that it should also therefore remain a private one,” they said in a statement. “Neither Lisa nor I will be making any further statements on this matter.”

• A new $290 million track under construction in Portugal’s Algarve region will, the government hopes, bring an F-1 race back to the country for the first time since Estoril last hosted a GP in 1997. The FIA- approved track will be used for F-1 testing and will hold a Superbike championship race in November.

• Although the 2008 BMW Sauber F1.08 was not all that quick in its first tests, Nick Heidfeld believes that the team has now found a much better balanced set-up for the car.
“The car is most definitely better than last year’s,” he said. “I said the old car was better balanced, but you shouldn’t forget that we had an entire year to find this balance. Since then, we’ve had time to improve the new car’s balance too, and it is also equipped with new components.”

• The hearing an Italian prosecutor was to have with senior McLaren regarding last year’s Ferrari spy scandal has been indefinitely postponed.

• Nelson Piquet is getting in the groove at Renault. “We’re definitely seeing the results of the hard work from everyone back at the factory on the track,” Piquet said at the Jerez test. “Overall, a good three days for me and I definitely feel I am getting more used to the physical demands of F-1.”

• Initial demand for tickets for the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix was so high that the on-line booking system overloaded and even shut down when they first went on sale.

• Jarno Trulli recently said that he didn’t think that the Toyota TF108 has the speed to get the team on the podium this season. But Toyota’s chassis technical director Pascal Vasselon believes that the team has made considerable progress.
“It has been very obvious from the first test that the TF108 is a different animal compared to the TF107, with much better stability and an all-around much better basis to work on,” he said. “Our drivers feel a lot more confident in the car and they are able to push more. We have found that set-up work is much more straightforward and it is much easier to make progress in that area.”

• Super Aguri has postponed the launch of its SA08 car, scheduled for Feb. 19 in Barcelona, as the team is still finalizing its driver line-up and sponsorship.

• All the teams except Ferrari and Toyota [who had just wrapped up testing alone in Bahrain] went testing at Spain’s Jerez circuit last week.
Mark Webber was fastest on day one [when only Red Bull and Williams Toyota were present], and when the official test got underway the following day Lewis Hamilton was quickest in his McLaren Mercedes. Webber and Red Bull were back on top on day three, and then Heikki Kovalainen’s McLaren took the honors on the final day.
Although Honda never made it into the top 11 in the lap time department, Jenson Button was optimistic.
“We have made good progress this week in understanding the car,” he said, “addressing the issues that we experienced at the last test and getting the car balanced for long runs. There is a great deal of work to do over the two remaining tests before we head to Melbourne, but I am now happier in the car and have more confidence to push it to the limit.”
Williams Toyota continued to impress with Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima consistently in the top four.