Behind the 'Accident' That Doomed Renault

**GrnMachine** · #1 09-25-2009, 01:13 PM

Behind the 'Accident' That Doomed Renault

It is only now, a year later, that the most memorable moment in Formula One’s first-ever night race has come to light: A crash that turned out to be one of the ugliest instances of cheating in the sport’s history.
All motor-racing series have their cheating incidents, and the series at the pinnacle has had several in recent years. But there has never been a case like the one that was revealed last month when Nelson Piquet Jr., a former driver at the Renault team, told the International Automobile Federation, the sport’s governing body, that he had been asked by his team directors to stage a crash to help his teammate, Fernando Alonso, win the Singapore Grand Prix.
Not only was it an unprecedented scenario, but it went against all the professed principles of the sport: safety, fairness, the triumph of superior technology and the integrity of the world’s greatest racing drivers.
As a result, Renault received a suspended disqualification from the sport on Monday for its involvement in the crash. In its ruling, the sport’s governing body, known as the F.I.A., said that the team would only be banned at the end of the 2011 season if it again breaches F.I.A. rules.
For their roles in the case, Flavio Briatore, 58, who was the Renault team’s former managing director, was banned indefinitely from motor sport and Pat Symonds, 55, who was the team's engineering director, was banned for five years. Both men had already resigned from the team, on Sept. 16.
Alonso, 28, was exculpated from any responsibility in the case. Piquet, 24, was also not punished, having been granted immunity by F.I.A. investigators when they opened their formal inquiry.
Now, as the series returns this weekend for its second Grand Prix through the nighttime streets of Singapore, Formula One is in the midst of a self-examination of a kind rarely seen before.
Singapore’s narrow street track, surrounded by tall buildings, was the jewel in the crown of the series last year, with its magnificent lighting that makes it brighter by night than by day. It was the very nature of the circuit itself that lent itself to the crash scheme, as it was disclosed by Piquet.
In fact, it was better suited for such a scenario than any track on the calendar except the one through the streets of Monaco, the Grand Prix on which Singapore modeled itself, with its glamour, glitz, city life, and a track confined between concrete walls and metal guardrails, where little real racing was likely to happen.
On a course densely populated by racing cars and with few runoff areas to offer cars escape in the event of an accident, the race risked, like Monaco, being one in which the winner would be the driver closest to the front who survived the longest. The Renault team directors decided to use this to Alonso’s advantage, Piquet said, although Alonso, a double world champion, had not been informed of their “strategy.”
Alonso’s car had been fast enough during qualifying the previous day to take pole position, but a technical problem spoiled his chances and he qualified only 15th. Piquet qualified 16th. The purported strategy, therefore, was to run Alonso on a light fuel load at the start, call him in for an early pit stop and then have Piquet crash a few laps later.
According to this scenario, with the safety car deployed to neutralize the race while the marshals cleared the track of crash debris, the other competitors ahead of Alonso would make their pit stops and Alonso would rise up the pack. As it happened, drivers ahead of Alonso were penalized for entering the pit lane while it was closed, and the leader of the race, Felipe Massa, had an accident in his pit stop during this same caution period, so Alonso rose up the pack and won the race.
In the past, most of Formula One’s cheating incidents had involved technology. In 2007, the McLaren Mercedes team was fined $100 million after it admitted stealing technical secrets from its rival Ferrari. In 2005, the BAR-Honda team was excluded from two races for having an illegal double fuel tank that allowed the team to cheat with the car’s weight.

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