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For the last month, Formula One has been traumatized by allegations from a back-of-the field driver that last September’s Singapore Grand Prix was fixed by a crash prearranged by the Renault racing team that enabled its lead driver to leap from a midfield position to an upset victory.
Many in the sport fear that if the allegation is proven it could be the equivalent of the 1919 World Series for Formula One: a scandal that tops all previous upheavals and one that rocks the already shaky finances of the sport, threatening billions of dollars of investment by some of the world’s largest auto companies and corporate sponsors.
Those fears appeared to be confirmed on Wednesday when the British-based Renault racing team — financed at a cost of $300 million a year by the Paris-based Renault company — announced it would not contest the race-fixing allegation when Formula One’s governing body, the International Automobile Federation (FIA), convenes a tribunal to hear the allegations in Paris on Monday.
“The Renault Formula One team will not dispute the recent allegations made by the FIA concerning the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix,” the team said in a statement.
The statement said the two men alleged to have set up the crash, both veterans of past championships, have left the team. Flavio Briatore, a 58-year-old Italian, was the team’s managing director, and Pat Symonds, a 55-year-old Englishman, was the team’s engineering director. In Paris, the federation announced it would go ahead with the tribunal. Possible penalties include banning Renault from the sport.
The day’s developments represented the greatest crisis in the history of a series that has cast itself as the pinnacle of international motor sport, and as a showcase for aerospace-style, groundbreaking technologies that Formula One insiders believe give their series an edge over the more tightly restricted, cost-conscious engineering formulas of Nascar and the Indy Car series that dominate American racing.
Formula One’s stability had been deeply shaken before this scandal by other occurrences, including a $100 million fine imposed on Britain’s McLaren-Mercedes racing team two years ago after it was found to have obtained secret technical documents from Italy’s Ferrari team .
Briatore announced last week that he had launched a lawsuit in France that said the crash allegations were part of an attempt by 24-year-old driver Nelson Piquet Jr. of Brazil and his father, Nelson, to “blackmail” the Renault team into keeping the younger Piquet as one of its two drivers. The younger Piquet was fired midway through this year’s 17-race schedule.
The Singapore race last year came close to the end of his first season in Formula One, when he was under heavy pressure from his team after a series of lackluster performances that had included crashes and an inability to match the speed of his teammate, Fernando Alonso of Spain, twice a winner of the Formula One championship with Renault.
Soon after his last race with Renault, the two Piquets approached the FIA with their allegations, details of which have been leaked in recent days to reporters covering Formula One, along with transcripts of FIA interviews with those involved. The two Brazilians said the younger Piquet had been told at a Singapore meeting with Briatore and Symonds that they wanted him to crash at a narrow spot on the track, shortly after an unusually early refueling stop by Alonso.
The plan, the Piquets said, was for debris from the crash to slow the field behind the safety car, allowing Alonso to seize the lead as the early front-runners made their own refueling stops.
As millions of television viewers around the world saw, Piquet crashed on the 14th lap of the nighttime race, after Alonso’s refueling stop on the 12th lap, bringing out the safety car. Alonso went on to win, as he did three weeks later in the Chinese Grand Prix, where there have been no suggestions of race fixing. Nothing in the leaked FIA documents showed Alonso was aware of the plans for the crash, and he has declined to comment, pending the Paris tribunal.
According to the leaked FIA documents, the younger Piquet said he was “in a very fragile and emotional state of mind” when he was asked to crash, because Briatore had refused to say whether his contract would be renewed for 2009.
Symonds was quoted in the documents as saying it was the younger Piquet who had raised the possibility of a crash. At another point, he was quoted as having told FIA investigators: “I have no intention of lying to you. I have not lied to you, but I have reserved my position just a little.”
For Formula One, the potential impact runs beyond the risk that Renault will be forced out of the series, or that Renault will quit the sport. The Paris tribunal will hear claims that the Renault managers organized the crash to snatch a victory that would persuade Renault bosses in Paris, looking for cost savings in the midst of a worldwide slump in car sales, not to pull out of Formula One.
For the last month, Formula One has been traumatized by allegations from a back-of-the field driver that last September’s Singapore Grand Prix was fixed by a crash prearranged by the Renault racing team that enabled its lead driver to leap from a midfield position to an upset victory.
Many in the sport fear that if the allegation is proven it could be the equivalent of the 1919 World Series for Formula One: a scandal that tops all previous upheavals and one that rocks the already shaky finances of the sport, threatening billions of dollars of investment by some of the world’s largest auto companies and corporate sponsors.
Those fears appeared to be confirmed on Wednesday when the British-based Renault racing team — financed at a cost of $300 million a year by the Paris-based Renault company — announced it would not contest the race-fixing allegation when Formula One’s governing body, the International Automobile Federation (FIA), convenes a tribunal to hear the allegations in Paris on Monday.
“The Renault Formula One team will not dispute the recent allegations made by the FIA concerning the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix,” the team said in a statement.
The statement said the two men alleged to have set up the crash, both veterans of past championships, have left the team. Flavio Briatore, a 58-year-old Italian, was the team’s managing director, and Pat Symonds, a 55-year-old Englishman, was the team’s engineering director. In Paris, the federation announced it would go ahead with the tribunal. Possible penalties include banning Renault from the sport.
The day’s developments represented the greatest crisis in the history of a series that has cast itself as the pinnacle of international motor sport, and as a showcase for aerospace-style, groundbreaking technologies that Formula One insiders believe give their series an edge over the more tightly restricted, cost-conscious engineering formulas of Nascar and the Indy Car series that dominate American racing.
Formula One’s stability had been deeply shaken before this scandal by other occurrences, including a $100 million fine imposed on Britain’s McLaren-Mercedes racing team two years ago after it was found to have obtained secret technical documents from Italy’s Ferrari team .
Briatore announced last week that he had launched a lawsuit in France that said the crash allegations were part of an attempt by 24-year-old driver Nelson Piquet Jr. of Brazil and his father, Nelson, to “blackmail” the Renault team into keeping the younger Piquet as one of its two drivers. The younger Piquet was fired midway through this year’s 17-race schedule.
The Singapore race last year came close to the end of his first season in Formula One, when he was under heavy pressure from his team after a series of lackluster performances that had included crashes and an inability to match the speed of his teammate, Fernando Alonso of Spain, twice a winner of the Formula One championship with Renault.
Soon after his last race with Renault, the two Piquets approached the FIA with their allegations, details of which have been leaked in recent days to reporters covering Formula One, along with transcripts of FIA interviews with those involved. The two Brazilians said the younger Piquet had been told at a Singapore meeting with Briatore and Symonds that they wanted him to crash at a narrow spot on the track, shortly after an unusually early refueling stop by Alonso.
The plan, the Piquets said, was for debris from the crash to slow the field behind the safety car, allowing Alonso to seize the lead as the early front-runners made their own refueling stops.
As millions of television viewers around the world saw, Piquet crashed on the 14th lap of the nighttime race, after Alonso’s refueling stop on the 12th lap, bringing out the safety car. Alonso went on to win, as he did three weeks later in the Chinese Grand Prix, where there have been no suggestions of race fixing. Nothing in the leaked FIA documents showed Alonso was aware of the plans for the crash, and he has declined to comment, pending the Paris tribunal.
According to the leaked FIA documents, the younger Piquet said he was “in a very fragile and emotional state of mind” when he was asked to crash, because Briatore had refused to say whether his contract would be renewed for 2009.
Symonds was quoted in the documents as saying it was the younger Piquet who had raised the possibility of a crash. At another point, he was quoted as having told FIA investigators: “I have no intention of lying to you. I have not lied to you, but I have reserved my position just a little.”
For Formula One, the potential impact runs beyond the risk that Renault will be forced out of the series, or that Renault will quit the sport. The Paris tribunal will hear claims that the Renault managers organized the crash to snatch a victory that would persuade Renault bosses in Paris, looking for cost savings in the midst of a worldwide slump in car sales, not to pull out of Formula One.
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