Ferrari's Nigel Stepney emailed McLaren's Chief Designer Mike Coughlan prior to the start of the Formula One season to tip him off about the team's new movable floor design, this week's Autosport magazine has revealed.

Next week the McLaren-Mercedes team faces a hearing at the FIA in Paris to answer the serious charge, "that between March and July 2007, in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes had unauthorised possession of documents and confidential information belonging to Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, including information that could be used to design, engineer, build, check, test, develop and/or run a 2007 Ferrari Formula One car."

This was widely believed to refer solely to the 780-page confidential Ferrari technical dossier that Mike Coughlan was in possession of from the end of April, and was found during a search of his house. The dossier is thought to have been passed on by the now former Ferrari employee, Stepney, who was a friend of Coughlan, and who worked with him in the past. The two were reportedly teaming up to find a new employer. However Autosport magazine yesterday quoted "a reliable source" as saying that the March date the FIA refers to is in fact an earlier contact between Stepney and Coughlan.
 

The source says that "in particular it relates to a specific email that Stepney sent to Coughlan, revealing Ferrari's floor design and tipping the McLaren designer off about taking possible action about it." During the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, McLaren asked the FIA for clarification about the 'moving floor' and it was subsequently banned.

Autosport also reveals that the photocopying shop in Surrey, which is believed to have set the whole train of events in motion when it tipped off Ferrari, was asked by Coughlan to scan the contents of the technical dossier and transfer them onto a computer disk. "It is understood that after the information had been put on disk," reports Autosport, "the actual Ferrari document was shredded and burned in Coughlan's back garden. Coughlan is understood to have been advised to destroy the document after showing a glimpse of it to McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale at a golf club. It is not known, however, when this incident took place."