Nigel Stepney is dead
The British engineer, involved in the espionage scandal between McLaren and Ferrari in 2007 and retired from Formula 1 since, passed away today in a car accident. He was 56 years old.
Former engineer for Benetton and Ferrari, and a key figure in the Schumacher-Todt-Brawn era, Nigel Stepney, who had been out of F1 since 2007, died in a car accident in England.
After starting with team Shadow in 1970, he moved to Lotus, where he worked from 1980 to 1988, alongside Ayrton Senna, before joining Benetton until 1991. There, he met Nelson Piquet, who hired him as the team director of F3000 Piquet Racing. The experience ended in 1993, and the British engineer returned to Formula 1 with Ferrari. He quickly became the chief mechanic, then manager of the racing and test teams. He was one of the key figures in the Scuderia’s success, alongside Jean Todt, Ross Brawn, and Michael Schumacher.
In the 2006-2007 off-season, he expressed dissatisfaction with the changes in the Italian team’s organizational structure. This situation led him to consider leaving Ferrari, before deciding against it; he was then reassigned to a different position, which would no longer allow him to attend Grand Prix events. In the summer of 2007, he was suspected of having played an active role in an espionage affair, by having provided confidential information to McLaren, through Mike Coughlan, the chief designer of the Woking team, about Ferrari and its settings. The Italian team dismissed him following an internal investigation. In 2010, he was convicted by the court for these actions.
His death was announced by JRM Racing, a Grand Touring team, of which he had been the director since 2010.
