This is not related to Le Mans Racing but worth to be notice: remember the flame war going on between the Renault Formula 1 team and Nelson Piquet Jr, their former driver?
Well after being made redundant by Renault, the Brazilian Formula 1 driver approached the F. I. A. pretending team manager Flavio Briatore and chief engineer Symonds have asked him to deliberately crash his car during last year’s Singapore Grand-Prix. Why so? Well, Fernando Alonso, the team’s star, was stuck in traffic with no chance to win, but had already refueled. Following Nelson’s deliberate crash, the safety car was sent out on the track allowing all cars to regroup, which basically made for a whole new race. But since everybody else except for Alonso had to make a pit stop to refuel, Alonso had won the grand prix without much difficulty, bringing Renault a much needed victory.
Renault have initially loudly denied any wrongdoing in the matter, and even went as far as to announce they’ll file a defamation law suit against Nelson Piquet Jr in a French court. But today French newspaper Le Monde announced that Renault will plead guilty at the hearing held by the F. I. A. on the matter and that Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have left the team. So this means Nelson’s accusations are true after all, as I can’t imagine Renault taking such a blow if they had the slightest chance to win their case. The Renault people are probably trying very hard to play the matter down, given the disastrous effect such a scandal may have on their public image and as such, sales.
It is no secret, Formula 1 is in very big trouble. After the McLaren-Ferrari espionage case two years back and after the public disagreement between organisers and top teams this year and after this, Formula 1 is loosing a lot of credibility. Once again, this scandal goes to show that whenever such massive commercial interests and amounts of money are involved, cheating automatically steps in.