It's June 2007 in rural Surrey, an hour south-west of London. A woman walked into a tiny copy shop, handed over a dossier, and asked for them to be scanned onto two CDs.
As the clerk began his work, he quickly realised these were very different to the birth certificates, building plans or other dull domestic documents he was used to seeing.
They were detailed drawings of a Formula 1 car.Â
But not just drawings – there were 780 pages of financial documents, technical reports, photographs and other sensitive information all emblazoned with one of the most recognisable logos on the planet.
A black prancing horse set against a yellow shield. Ferrari.
A card-carrying member of the Tifosi, the name given to Ferrari's fanatical fans, he immediately realised these documents were surely not meant for the eyes of anyone outside the team's inner sanctum at its Maranello headquarters, some 1100km away.
The Ferrari logo on the side of a motorhome at the Australian Grand Prix. Getty
With its impressive Technology Centre in nearby Woking, Surrey is also very much McLaren country. What on earth were these documents doing here?
Smelling a rat, the clerk Googled the customer's name – Trudy Coughlan.
While Trudy was a relative nobody, her husband very much wasn't, and would benefit greatly from access to these documents.
Because Mike Coughlan was chief designer of the McLaren F1 team.
The clerk continued his Googling until he found a contact for Ferrari's sporting director, Stefano Domenicali, and he wrote an email.
Surprisingly – or perhaps it was because it was only 2007 – the email passed through all of Ferrari's spam filters and found its way into Domenicali's inbox. Equally as surprising was Domenicali actually read it, believed it, and took action, forwarding it on to Ferrari's security.Â
Back in Surrey, Trudy picked up the documents and the CDs, and once home would shred the dossier and burn the evidence as instructed by her husband.
So began what would become one of the biggest sporting espionage scandals, and would end in the biggest fine in sports history.
When the chequered flag fell on the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix earlier this month, McLaren secured its first Constructors' (Teams) Championship since 1998.
McLaren sealed its first Constructors' Champsionship in 26 years at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Getty
But if it wasn't for that clerk in that tiny copy shop in Surrey, the drought would've been only half as long.
With double World Champion Fernando Alonso and hotshot rookie Lewis Hamilton at the wheel, McLaren won eight of the 17 races in the 2007 season.
Between them, they scored more points than any team on the grid.
Except the history books show McLaren planted on the bottom of the standings with a doughnut next to their name.
This is part one of a two-part feature on the 2007 espionage scandal – dubbed Spygate – that gripped Formula 1.
The Dream Team
Michael Schumacher drove to five-straight drivers' championships with Ferrari between 2000-2004.
With chief executive Jean Todt, technical director Ross Brawn, and chief mechanic Nigel Stepney, they made up the so-called 'dream team'.
Nigel Stepney in 2006. Getty
Stepney previously had stints at Shadow, Lotus – where he was Ayrton Senna's No.1 mechanic for a brief period – and Benetton, where he first teamed up with Schumacher.
Stepney first worked with Mike Coughlan at Lotus, and then at Benetton, and then again at Ferrari. The pair were close, and spent significant amounts of time together when on the road. Coughlan left Ferrari to join Arrows in 1995.
Schumacher and Brawn arrived at the Scuderia for the 1996 season. Having been relative also-rans throughout much of the 80s and early 90s, the Italian team began its rise back to the front of the grid.
When Schumacher won his first title in 2000, he was the first Ferrari world Champion in 21 years. He would win the following four in dominant fashion.
But after the rise, came the fall.
By the end of 2006, Schumacher had announced his retirement and Brawn announced he would be taking a sabbatical.
Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn celebrate winning the 2002 Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo. Bongarts/Getty Images
Stepney was eyeing the technical director role Brawn was vacating, but had two things going against him. He wasn't an engineer, he was a mechanic. He didn't have any kind of formal technical education despite having spent 15 years working alongside Ross Brawn.
The second was his passport. It was British. He was overlooked in favour of Mario Almondo.
Stepney didn't feel Almondo had the technical knowledge to lead an F1 team. But he did have an engineering degree.
And an Italian passport.
Stepney was furious, and in February 2007 he spoke out publicly against the team.
"I'm looking at spending a year away from Ferrari," he told Autosport.
"I'm not currently happy within the team. I really want to move forward with my career, and that's something that's not happening right now."
Such an act had historically been met with instant dismissal. In 1991, four-time world champion Alain Prost told reporters his Ferrari was "driving like a truck".
He was sacked for the season-finale in Adelaide.
Gianni Morbidelli replaced Alain Prost for the 1991 season finale in Adelaide. Getty
Surprisingly, Stepney was not shown the door. In fact, when he requested a few weeks later to move into a different role that would mean he no longer had to attend race meetings, it was approved.
But it didn't give Stepney the fresh start he was looking for. In fact, such a move was seen as an affront by his Italian colleagues, and he was pushed even further onto the outer at Ferrari.
Seeing red
Desperately unhappy, Stepney decided to drastically take matters into his own hands. He was going to sabotage the cars.
In May, mechanics found white powder around the fuel tank of Felipe Massa's car as they were preparing for the Monaco Grand Prix.Â
Ferrari officials called the police. CCTV showed Stepney snooping in the area the tanks were kept in the hours before the powder was found. He was searched, and white powder was found in his pockets.
Felipe Massa at the 2007 Monaco Grand Prix. Getty
Lab tests later confirmed the powder in Stepney's pockets matched that found around the car. His home was raided, and more matching powder was found.
Stepney claimed it was planted, and he was the victim of a "dirty tricks campaign" from Ferrari for speaking out against the team.
Prost's punishment was the sack. Stepney believed his was the utter destruction of his reputation within the sport by the very people who had employed him, for whom he'd helped take to five-straight world title doubles.
In a second raid on his home, police seized Stepney's laptop.
Investigators then discovered he at some point had downloaded all 780 pages of documents relating to the 2007 car. There were technical drawings, reports, photographs and other sensitive information all emblazoned with the Ferrari logo.
That could've been a phone call
Following the collapse of the Arrows team in 2002, McLaren invited Mike Coughlan to interview for the chief designer role.
McLaren was a heavily corporate formal outfit, but Coughlan famously arrived at his interview in jeans with no socks. But he got the job.Â
Coughlan was responsible for the drawing office, which produced the renders and models of the McLaren car. He worked closely with legendary designer Adrian Newey.
Mike Coughlan in 2013 when he was working for Williams. Getty
When Stepney's career at Ferrari started going sideways, he called Coughlan to vent. From that phone call, a series of back-and-forth emails began. In one of them, Stepney sent Coughlan details of a piece of Ferrari bodywork.
It was duly shared with the McLaren design team. That was the first piece of Ferrari design to end up in the McLaren inner sanctum.Â
The emails continued. While it's not clear if any more drawings were shared, details on how the Ferrari team worked was shared.
Eventually, Coughlan grew wary of Stepney, and had McLaren's IT team block emails from his Ferrari account.Â
But bizarrely, Coughlan then flew to Spain to meet with Stepney while he was on holiday, to tell him to stop contacting him. Investigators would later put it to Coughlan this conversation could have very easily been a phone call.
From Coughlan himself, in an affidavit.
"After I arrived at Barcelona airport, he took me to a restaurant in the marina. Whilst we were having a coffee, Mr Stepney produced, unsolicited, a diagram of a brake balance assembly used by Ferrari."
After lunch, Stepney asked to be driven back to the airport. In the car, Stepney pulled out the motherlode – the 780-page dossier containing the intricate details of the somewhat lazily named F2007 – Ferrari's 2007 F1 car.
"My engineering curiosity got the better of me, and I foolishly took the documents from him. I casually flicked through them over the course of the 25-minutes-or-so journey it took for Mr Stepney to drive me to the airport. I kept hold of the documents and took them home with me."
Felipe Massa leads Kimi Raikkonen during the 2007 Italian Grand Prix. Getty
Back in Surrey, Coughlan showed at least some of that dossier with McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale. Officially, Neale only glanced at the documents – just long enough for him to realise what he was looking at – before urging Coughlan to get rid of it.
On June 1, in the week following the Monaco Grand Prix, Coughlan and Stepney met with top brass within the Honda F1 Team – which at that point were struggling – to discuss "career opportunities" for the pair. Their pitch was for one of them to be chief designer, the other technical director.
The Honda brass were reportedly open to a deal, but that's as far as it got. Because in the following days, news broke about the white powder that had been found in Felipe Massa's fuel tanks.
And then Coughlan's wife, Trudy, walked into that tiny copy shop in Surrey.
Come back tomorrow for part two.