R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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Holm86
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Joined: 10 Feb 2010, 03:37
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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Obituary: Nigel Stepney 1958-2014

Nigel Stepney was a key player in Ferrari's dominance of Formula 1 during the Michael Schumacher era but achieved notoriety for his involvement in the spy scandal of 2007.

Stepney's first role in motorsport was with the Broadspeed touring car team as an apprentice mechanic.

There, he worked on Broadspeed's successful touring car programmes before moving into F1 with the Shadow team.

In 1979, he began a long association with Elio de Angelis, following the Italian to Lotus the following year as number one mechanic.

When de Angelis moved to Brabham in 1986, Stepney stayed at Lotus where he worked with Ayrton Senna.

Stepney moved to Benetton ahead of the 1989 season, staying at the team for four seasons, during which he worked with Nelson Piquet and Michael Schumacher.

He worked outside of F1 in 1992, running the Piquet Racing squad that ran Olivier Beretta in Formula 3000, but after an unsuccessful season returned to F1 with Ferrari.

Stepney played a crucial role in turning Ferrari into a well-organised squad, a process accelerated by Jean Todt's appointment to run the team in mid-1993.

In 1994, Stepney was one of the Ferrari mechanics struck by the wheel shed by Michele Alboreto's Minardi in the pits during the San Marino Grand Prix.

Six years later, during the Spanish GP, he was involved in another pitstop incident when Schumacher was released before Stepney had detached the refuelling hose.

Stepney was dragged to the floor, sustaining ligament damage, but soon returned to work.

He held the key roles of chief mechanic and race/test technical manager at Ferrari before being appointed head of performance development late on.

Stepney admitted to being unhappy with Ferrari in early 2007 and his time with the team came to an end when he became embroiled in the McLaren spy scandal.

He was accused by the Scuderia both of sabotaging the team's cars and passing its intellectual property to rival squad McLaren and was dismissed by the team in July that year.

Stepney admitted to the FIA that he did pass on sensitive information to McLaren but later downplayed the scale of his involvement.

He escaped any sporting censure beyond it being recommended teams should not associate with him.

He was sentenced to 20 months in prison for his part in the affair by an Italian court in 2010 but did not serve any time.

By then, he had already returned to motorsport, in 2008 joining on-board camera specialist Gigawave, which also fielded a sportscar team.

In 2010, he joined the JRM team, running factory Nissan equipment in sportscars.

There, Stepney worked as technical director, leading the team to victory in the FIA GT Championship in 2011 with Michael Krumm and Lucas Luhr.

The squad then moved into prototypes in the World Endurance Championship, running HPD machinery to sixth in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2012 with David Brabham, Peter Dumbreck and Karun Chandhok.

The JRM-developed Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 took Lucas Ordonez to last year's Blancpain Endurance Pro-Am Cup championship title and the outfit continues to support customer squads this year.
Obituary by Autosport
https://twitter.com/autosport/status/462253334875762688 https://twitter.com/karunchandhok/statu ... 4229908480 https://twitter.com/adamcooperF1/status ... 1888998401 https://twitter.com/NobleF1/status/462250478412505088
Last edited by Holm86 on 04 May 2014, 17:24, edited 2 times in total.

timbo
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Joined: 22 Oct 2007, 10:14

Re: R.I.P Nigel Sepney

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Sad news. Behind all controversy he was a significant figure in motorsport.
RIP

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mikeerfol
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Joined: 20 Apr 2013, 22:19
Location: Greece

Re: R.I.P Nigel Sepney

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RIP :(


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FrukostScones
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Joined: 25 May 2010, 17:41
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Re: R.I.P Nigel Sepney

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tragic, RIP!
Finishing races is important, but racing is more important.

gridwalker
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Re: R.I.P Nigel Sepney

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Sad news indeed. For his flaws, he was still a man who'd had a massive influence in the history of the sport.

I can' help but feel that the nature of his death was strange; for a man to have spent so much of his life in the pit lane, being hit by oncoming traffic after parking his car at the side of the motorway seems like an odd way to go. If any occupation was going to make you aware of the dangers of oncoming vehicles, a career in racing would be it ... I'm not saying any foul play was involved (Mr Stepney was involved in enough conspiracy theories for a lifetime) but it doesn't feel like the right way for such a man to pass on.

I just wish that we could have heard his side of the story in detail. He'd always hinted that there was much more to his demise at Ferrari than was told publicly (mentioning car chases and private investigators), plus the sabotage story involving white powder in the pitlane was never fully explained. I guess we'll never know now.

My thoughts are with his family.
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine ..."

SamH123
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Joined: 12 May 2012, 12:18

Re: R.I.P Nigel Sepney

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gridwalker wrote: I can' help but feel that the nature of his death was strange; for a man to have spent so much of his life in the pit lane, being hit by oncoming traffic after parking his car at the side of the motorway seems like an odd way to go. If any occupation was going to make you aware of the dangers of oncoming vehicles, a career in racing would be it ... I'm not saying any foul play was involved (Mr Stepney was involved in enough conspiracy theories for a lifetime) but it doesn't feel like the right way for such a man to pass on.

My thoughts are with his family.
Do you think it sounds like suicide?
Suicide always disturbs me :|

Shame the media have only referred to him as involved in spygate rather than the rest of his career
RIP

beelsebob
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Joined: 23 Mar 2011, 15:49
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Re: R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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It does sound a lot like suicide, but I would caution everyone to keep an open mind until after the investigation is finished.

lebesset
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Joined: 06 Aug 2008, 14:00

Re: R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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maybe he had a few in memory of senna , with whom he had been quite close
to the optimist a glass is half full ; to the pessimist a glass is half empty ; to the F1 engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be

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mikeerfol
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Re: R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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But isn't that a "strange" way of suiciding?

timbo
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Joined: 22 Oct 2007, 10:14

Re: R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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There could be a number things. a sudden panic attack, a stroke, neurological condition which might have caused him to loose orientation.

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WhiteBlue
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Re: R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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RIP Nigel whatever happened.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

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crbassassin
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Re: R.I.P Nigel Stepney

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I suspect it wasn't a suicide.

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