Lewis Hamilton made his Formula 1 debut for McLaren, in a season which was marred by scandal, spying and blackmail.
On the 13th September 2007, McLaren were officially stripped of their constructors’ championship points and fined $100 million (£49.2m), although Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were cleared to continue to fight for the drivers’ title.
The fine became the FIA World Motor Sport Council’s largest fine that has ever been given to a team, following new evidence that had surfaced.
Despite both Hamilton and Alonso avoiding punishment from the ‘spygate’ scandal, the intense rivalry between the drivers was the catalyst for McLaren’s heavy punishment.
What is the McLaren ‘spygate’ scandal, and who was initially involved?
The McLaren ‘spygate’ scandal began when Ferrari made accusations that the Woking-based team were in possession of a confidential 780-page document that belonged to them.
Ferrari claimed that former employee Nigel Stepney had shared the document with senior McLaren engineer Mike Coughlan and his wife Trudy Coughlan. Stepney was described as a “disgruntled” former employee, who decided to steal the confidential technical document and hand it to the team’s biggest rivals, McLaren.
Trudy was found to have taken the document to a local photocopy shop, where the employee contacted Ferrari to reveal what had happened.
An initial FIA hearing took place on 26 July 2007, and although McLaren were found guilty of fraudulent conduct, insufficient evidence meant that the team avoided being handed a penalty.
Shocking new evidence sees ‘spygate’ scandal erupt in Hungary
Despite McLaren avoiding a penalty in July, the scandal came to a head again following the Hungarian Grand Prix in early August.
Hamilton led the drivers’ championship ahead of his McLaren teammate Alonso, heading into the weekend, and the intense rivalry began to bubble over. Hamilton double-crossed Alonso during the qualifying session and refused to follow a team order to let the Spaniard by.
Alonso felt his chances for pole were compromised, and when both McLaren drivers did their final pit stops, he stayed in the pit lane long enough to prevent Hamilton from making it onto the track in time for a final lap.
McLaren team boss Ron Dennis was furious with the situation, and the incident was sent to the stewards. Alonso was handed a five-place grid penalty and the pair faced a heated argument the morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Alonso felt the team must make the situation right and demanded Dennis force Hamilton’s McLaren to run out of fuel during the race. He also threatened that if the team did not meet his demands, he would give the FIA emails which were relevant to the ‘spygate’ case.
The McLaren bosses wanted to sack Alonso on the spot and not allow him to finish the 2007 season. Dennis phoned FIA president Max Mosley and insisted that the emails would not reveal anything incriminating.
A second ‘spygate’ hearing rocked Formula 1 forever
It was widely believed that the phone call between Dennis and Mosley triggered the FIA’s calling of a second ‘spygate’ hearing in September. However, in 2021, Mosley revealed that this was not the case.
Mosley shared with the BBC that he was already aware of the emails, suggesting Alonso’s manager Flavio Briatore had Bernie Ecclestone, and that had been passed on to the FIA president.
When the second hearing was announced, many fingers were pointed at Alonso, who was blamed for leaking the emails. However, Pedro de la Rosa, who was McLaren’s test driver, told the Beyond the Grid podcast: “The fact the FIA knew about it raised many questions over who had passed this information to the FIA. And everyone seemed to blame Fernando for something that we didn’t know and we have zero evidence that he did.
“But the FIA knew, it could be from Ferrari, it could be from any anyone because there was many people in the team that knew about the weight distribution of Ferrari or whatever. So it was it was unfair in the way that Fernando was blamed for something that I don’t think he did. So it was the it was the divorce point, because he was looked at someone that had damaged McLaren.”
The second hearing re-analysed the evidence that Ferrari claimed had given McLaren a technical advantage over their car.
McLaren were ultimately once again found guilty of fraudulent conduct, but with the new evidence gathered from a number of emails between different team members, the team were handed a $100m (£49.2m) fine and were excluded from the 2007 championship.
Despite the massive punishment for McLaren, Hamilton and Alonso’s points were unaffected, and the pair were allowed to continue to contest the drivers’ championship.
Lewis Hamilton loses debut season title at the final race in Brazil
The drivers’ title fight came down to the final race of the season, with Hamilton leading Alonso by just four points and seven ahead of third-place Kimi Raikkonen.
Raikkonen in the Ferrari needed to outscore the McLarens in order to take the drivers’ championship, during one of the dramatic season finales in Formula 1 history.
Hamilton suffered from a gearbox problem in the early stages of the race and Raikkonen was able to keep Alonso behind him to win the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix.
The victory for the Finn saw him win the championship by a single point, with Alonso and Hamilton’s 3rd and 7th place finishes, respectively, tying them in second place.