Formula 1

About the season

The season was overshadowed by the "Spygate" scandal: a former senior Ferrari engineer, Nigel Stepney, passed nearly 800 pages of confidential Ferrari documents to McLaren designer Mike Coughlan, whose wife's attempt to photocopy them at a print shop is what blew the affair open. As a result, McLaren was excluded from the constructors' championship and hit with a record $100 million fine, while their two drivers, Fernando Alonso and rookie Lewis Hamilton, kept their individual points for cooperating with the investigation. Hamilton produced a stunning rookie season, contending for the title all year alongside two-time champion teammate Alonso, before Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) snatched the championship by a single point over both McLaren drivers. The relationship between Alonso and Hamilton soured into open intra-team rivalry over the course of the season, a rift that contributed to Alonso leaving McLaren after just one year. Kimi Räikkönen won the 2007 Drivers' Championship with 110 points (Ferrari), 1 point ahead of the runner-up. Ferrari won the Constructors' Championship with 204 points, 103 points ahead of the runner-up. Across 17 completed races this season, there were 103 retirements. 4 different drivers won a race this season. Kimi Räikkönen took the most race wins, 6 in total. Räikkönen won the season-opening race, the Australian Grand Prix. The most dominant win of the season came at the Malaysian Grand Prix, with a margin of 17.6 seconds. Kovalainen made the biggest gain of the season at the Canadian Grand Prix, from grid position 22 to finishing 4 (up 18 places). The Canadian Grand Prix saw the most retirements of the season, with 10 drivers failing to finish. The closest finish of the season came at the Hungarian Grand Prix, with a gap of just 0.715 seconds. Räikkönen won the Brazilian Grand Prix, the final race of the season.