Spygate | When Alonso and Hamilton were fined $100 Million

Fernando Alonso won the Formula 1 Drivers world championship in 2005 and 2006. Lewis Hamilton won his first world championship in 2008.
But today, I’m going to tell a story about the 2007 season, where Kimi Raikkonen beat both of these drivers to claim his world championship. And how Alonso and Hamilton changed Formula 1 Forever.

The key players in this story are:

Nigel Stepney: A Ferrari mechanic ($1 million a year)
Mike Coughlan: A Mclaren engineer ( $600k a year )
Ron Dennis: Mclaren Team boss
Max Mosely: The FIA president
Pedro de la Rosa: Mclaren Test driver
Fernando Alonso: a double world champion who had newly joined Mclaren
Lewis Hamilton: a rookie who finally joined Formula 1
Kimi Raikkonen: Formula 1 Driver, Cool as a cucumber

So for a bit of background. The Ferrari Mechani Nigel Stepney worked with Michael Schumacher during the Glory days of Ferrari. And when the time came for a shake-up, he thought he was going to get a promotion. But he didn’t and the management chose Mario Almondo, who had a degree, unlike Stepney.
Stepney was pissed. And he then confided in a good friend of his. Who happened to be Mike Coughlan. yes, the McLaren mechanic.
And then Stepney, who worked for Ferrari, gave Coughlan a 780-page dossier that contained everything from diagrams and classified data and pictures of Ferrari Engineering.

Formula 1 cars are highly confidential. Teams dont want others to know how they make their cars go so fast. So Someone leaking this information is a pretty big deal. Both men wanted to use that information to get a better job. They were mechanics and designers. but they wanted to be team bosses. And perhaps, they flew too close to the sun.

The way this whole incident came to light is funny. Coughlan’s wife went to scan the 800-page documents onto a CD. She gave it to a small photocopy shop. But the dude who worked there was a Ferrari fan. And he saw that the documents were confidential and immediately informed one of the Ferrari Bosses about what was up.

So when Ferrari Came to know, they launched an internal investigation against Stepney and fired him. And they also launched an investigation about a Mclaren engineer, who was Coughlan. Mclaren Fired Coughlan and their houses were raided in search of evidence, which they did find.
Then FIA Intervened. And they searched through the entire McLaren team. The point is.
They found the Mclaren Team guilty of having Ferrari documents. But they said that it wasn’t very widespread, it was just that one person who had the drawings. So McLaren was basically off the hook.
Although, the FIA did warn them that they would continue the investigation if anything came to light.
Mclaren was sort of victorious, and Ferrari was furious. Mclaren was leading the world championship. They had two fast drivers in Hamilton and Alonso. And Ferrari was second in the championship. This was at the end of July after the race at the Nurburgring.

The Hungarian GP is the main tipping point of this story.
Alonso and Hamilton had been fighting each other all season long, even though they were teammates. And their petty fight got onto the track when Alonso blocked Hamilton and didn’t allow him to make a final qualifying run. The FIA noticed this and penalised Alonso.

Alonso was pissed and he threatened Ron Dennis, the team boss that he would release emails proving McLaren was lying about the Ferrari scandal

From there on we got another investigation. The FIA assured Hamilton and Alonso that if they cooperated, they would be no charges against them.

And they opened up and submitted emails about how their information was being shared. Not just by the two engineers, but by the drivers, other designers and a lot of guys. They knew that Stephney was a mole and that he would help them fight Ferrari.

This was the ultimate nail in the coffin. The FIA found Mclaren Guilty and stripped them of all their constructor’s championship points. The drivers were allowed to keep theirs though. And Hamilton was leading the championship. The FIA also fined McLaren 100 million dollars. Which to this day is the most expensive sporting fine ever.

2007 BELGIUM

McLaren were found guilty of industrial espionage, meaning they were disqualified from the 2007 constructors’ championship & fined $100 million. #Spygate

Fernando Alonso & Lewis Hamilton kept their points and were eligible to continue fighting for WDC #F1 pic.twitter.com/LQ6wMxKQNO

— Motorsports in the 2000s 🇭🇰🇬🇧 (@CrystalRacing) September 15, 2020

Hamilton was leading the world championship going into the last race, but he suffered gearbox issues in that race, and Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari won the race. He also won the world championship, By 1 point. He finished with 110 points, and Hamilton and Alonso were second and third with 109 points each.

So that was the story of one of the biggest scandals in Formula 1. It probably involves your favourite driver, but hey, the facts are the facts.

“It was unfair in the way that Fernando was blamed for something that I don’t think he did.”

Pedro de la Rosa feels Fernando Alonso was somewhat of a scapegoat in the McLaren ‘spygate’ scandal.https://t.co/u1KkEOLNAM #F1 pic.twitter.com/5iFeC6VLCY

— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) March 18, 2020