21/01/2008
NEWS STORY
As Ferrari continues its (criminal) case against those it believes responsible for last year's spy saga, the Italian outfit's disgraced (former) chief engineer, Nigel Stepney, has broken his silence, saying that he feels no responsibility for the affair which saw McLaren fined $100m and excluded from the 2007 Constructors' Championship.
"I don't feel responsible in any way at all for what happened at McLaren," Stepney told Sky Sports.
Clearly referring to the approach he and (McLaren designer) Mike Coughlan made to Honda, he added: "My ideas were to make contact with somebody but not to benefit. It was to talk about and see what I could do somewhere else."
Ironically, it was his close friend and former Ferrari Technical Director, Ross Brawn, who was to subsequently join the Brackley based outfit.
Referring to the documentation leaked to Coughlan, and thereby McLaren, Stepney insists that it had been misused. "It got a bit sensitive and somebody used information more than I actually thought," he said. "It should never have been used in that, to that extreme.
"It is very difficult to walk into one team with a thousand people and make an impression," he added. "I've never walked straight into a winning team, but the results have been achieved not just by me, but by a group of people, good results, whether it was Lotus, Benetton or Ferrari. You need a group of people and the intention was to put a group of people together and talk."
Interestingly, having previously claimed to know where the bodies are buried at Maranello, Stepney, when giving his thoughts on last year's saga doesn't point the finger at Ferrari, but rather McLaren.
"There is a lot being said, but I think there is a lot underneath that hasn't been said that should have been," he Stepney. "It's been dramatised for various other reasons, which we will have to go into at a later date.
"Some stuff has been done politically," he added. "Some stuff should have been brought out probably in a different way. There's a lot of politics at McLaren with the drivers there."
The Englishman, who may have to wait another year before Ferrari's case is presented, is unlikely to have F1 teams queuing up for his services, however, he insists that this is not a problem.
"I think I've got a lot of other more interesting opportunities and going back into the grass roots of motor racing," he said.