Until it all went wrong, Nigel Stepney was celebrated as the chief mechanic of the Ferrari grand prix team during the era in which Michael Schumacher was breaking records with a run of five consecutive world titles in the Italian cars. But the career of Stepney, who has died aged 55, after being hit by a lorry on the M20 in Kent, will be most vividly remembered for his part in the "Spygate" scandal of 2007, in which 780 pages of highly confidential Ferrari technical documents found their way to a member of the rival McLaren team.
The pages were discovered in a photocopying shop in Surrey, where they had been inadvertently left by the wife of Mike Coughlan, a McLaren designer. Stepney was identified as the source, and was interrogated by the Italian police. The documents were found to be in McLaren's possession and the English team was fined $100m by the FIA, the sport's governing body. The Italian authorities brought criminal charges and in 2010 Stepney was sentenced to 20 months in prison, but the punishment was not carried out.
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