Renault race-fixing at Singapore 2008

[raceman]

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/n ... 2106.shtml

what is actually going on? from the above article, Symonds seems to agree that the accident was a pre-decided one - he claims it was Piquet Jr's idea. by "admitting" this, he is putting his own team in danger of cheating. on the first place, I am unable to understand why he claims this!!



any "inside" views??

[vyselegend]

Nelson Piquet Jr’s Full FIA Statement

It seems Piquet has a deal with the FIA protecting him from pursuits if he goes and charge Renault.

Obviously the Piquet clan & Mosley have common ennemies from the RF1 team, so there is a ...hum... great colaboration between the two parts.

F1 really is a joke. There are more F1 politics in newspaper than sport on the track.

[Shaddock]

Can anyone see a different outcome other than Renault being banned for next year?

McLaren got a $100 million fine and lost their WC points, but carried on next season.

Renault could be banned for a period of time and fined a similar amount. Renault then exit F1, and avoid the fine.

[RH1300S]

To my mind there is a lot of nonsense in all this.

First - if either version of events is true - Nelson Piquet shows real mental weakness. Could you imagine an Alonso or Shumacher being asked (or suggesting) to throw the race??

It doesn't look good for Renault whichever way you cut it....circumstantially, all the published evidence makes it look very likely that Piquet was asked to crash.

If Pat Symonds has been quoted accurately and it was Piquet's idea...well, they didn't have to fuel Alonso light and they didn't have to let Piquet know which lap Alonso was pitting....so really in either scenario Renault must be culpable. If they wanted to be whiter than white someone could have said "ok Nelson - you chuck it in wall if you want....but you won't be driving the next race if you do; and we aren't telling you when Alonso is stopping"

[jddh1]

I have a theory:

FOTA thinks Flavio would be a better "Bernie" then Bernie. Well, obviously Bernie doesn't like that. So he calls up his buddy Max and says "you got any dirt on that bastard?"
Max says, well, I might know somebody, Piquet Jr. So how can we discredit Flavio and ban him from F1 forever so he doesn't become the new "Bernie"? Well, let's play the cheating card on him. He'd be banned for sure.

[kilcoo316]

I thought a few days ago Picket insisted he did not contact the FIA...


Now it appears quite certain he did.



And people are still giving his words weight....

[RH1300S]

I have a theory:

FOTA thinks Flavio would be a better "Bernie" then Bernie. Well, obviously Bernie doesn't like that. So he calls up his buddy Max and says "you got any dirt on that bastard?"
Max says, well, I might know somebody, Piquet Jr. So how can we discredit Flavio and ban him from F1 forever so he doesn't become the new "Bernie"? Well, let's play the cheating card on him. He'd be banned for sure.

There is some sense in that - and who would be surprised.

The only modifier is that Symonds has admitted (apparently) the meeting and a conversation about crashing (whoever you believe - they both seem to agree that they met).

So, it's unlikely to be a trumped charge.

Certainly - if the mood is there the FIA could kick Briatore's door down and have him out of the sport with this one. Perhaps that's the reason why it's being pursued so vigorously?

[Motornic]

Can anyone see a different outcome other than Renault being banned for next year?

McLaren got a $100 million fine and lost their WC points, but carried on next season.

Well they'd probably lose all their points and have to pay something up. Maybe hang somebody out to dry just like Mclaren earlier this year. Mclaren and Hamilton were punished NOT for passing Trulli, but for making false statements to the stewards. But the problem is they are basing all this off of one person's word , they can really only fine them for what? Withholding information about a potentially unsafe action? Can you fine somebody a $100 Million on hearsay evidence?

The only statement to be released is from Piquet.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/152109/1/n ... apore.html

[Conceptual]

[...]

[jon-mullen]

12. I intentionally caused the crash by letting go of control of the car just before the relevant corner.

Just before the relevant corner and just in front of a full grandstand. I don't care who told him to do it, he needs to have his license revoked.

[nae]

my prediction is

renault out of F1 with immediate effect
flav out of F1
symonds out of F1
piquet never to drive anything again (even a taxi)
max happily banging the last nails into the lid of the F1 coffin

100,000 to 10,000,000 fans to disown F1 for ever


somehow the breakaway seems like a missed opportunity

[Super racing]

my prediction is

renault out of F1 with immediate effect
flav out of F1
symonds out of F1
piquet never to drive anything again (even a taxi)
max happily banging the last nails into the lid of the F1 coffin

100,000 to 10,000,000 fans to disown F1 for ever


somehow the breakaway seems like a missed opportunity

Now in someway this is Max's fault? Was he supposed to ignore it? An then what if PK Jr went to the press with it?

[bhall]

piquet never to drive anything again (even a taxi)

That's the part I don't understand at all. I mean, it's obvious that Renault threw Piquet under the bus, so to speak, and it's becoming obvious that the team did something to manipulate the result of the race. But for the life of me, I cannot understand why Piquet thought it was a good idea to make all of this public when it only serves to ensure that he never gets another F1 drive again.

Nobody likes a snitch, especially a self-serving one.

[Pup]

Well, Alonso did exactly the same thing two years ago, and he hasn't exactly been shunned from racing. Worse, actually, since he first went to his boss to blackmail him. He played an active roll in a cheating scandal, and then in a fit of revenge blackmailed his team with the evidence, eventually providing that evidence to the FIA only after being guaranteed immunity.

The only difference I see is that Alonso is a world champ. So sure, Piquet's days in F1 are over, but it's not because of this.

[Motornic]

From Autosport, Rubens recalls when he had to "throw" the race in 2002 for MS.
If you're true a racer, how do you do it?

Well, it's quite difficult to think that somebody would crash a car because he was told to. Very realistically speaking, I think it's easier to crash a Formula One car than drive a Formula One car, that's a fair point, because of the amount of power and everything. It's very easy to crash the car. But to get to that point, I was put into a situation in Austria which was the limit of the limit. There were eight laps of conversation, the conversation going on and things were said to me that I had to give up, but I had to give up in front of everyone, everyone knew what was going on there. It's very, very sad. If that's true, it's very, very sad. The only thing I can see is that somebody wants Briatore's head, that's all I can see now, because it sounds very strange.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/78465