Would you crash as a 20-year old F1 driver if your team boss so demands?

Assuming that is you in your profile picture...you look like an expert. Can you drive too?

 

no one was ever in danger during his crash. yes i would do it if they renewed my contract, and most people here are far removed from being 20 (I am not). When you're 20 and someone like Flavio says I need you to do this you get intimidated and do it.

 

Terrific post - I think you've hit on something here...most people are far removed from 20, myself included, and the thought process is much different than that of someone 20. I think the key word here that hasn't been brought up before is INTIMIDATION...something of which Flavio seems to have an inordinate amount of concerning some of those drivers no longer in his keep, most notably being Heikki (based on some articles I've read).
Thanks for your insight.

Carol

 

To say that no one was in danger is BS, "lets go to the video tape."
1/ Piquet had to run across the track post crash because there was no marshal post.
2/ Debris on the track, could be flicked up and hit someone in the head
3/ position of the crash, No crane to remove the wreck.
4/ Concrete walls limit visability at the left hander he crashed at. Need I go on ????

Andrew..

 

10 Conclusions From Nelsinhogate From PF1
Monday 21st September 2009

There were no winners only losers out of the Singapore race fixing 'scandal'. Nelson Piquet Junior may have been given Max Potter's cloak of immunity, but that won't get him a race drive.


1.Nelson Piquet Junior may not expect forgiveness, let's hope he doesn't expect another competitive race drive that his father doesn't have to pay for. NASCAR might be his best bet. They love drivers who crash, even ones that do it deliberately. And if you want, you can get fat and still drive.


2.The punishments handed down to the Renault team by the FIA seem more or less fair considering the severity of the crime. But you have to wonder what the penalty might have been if the team in question had been Mclaren? The Renault team's skullduggery was far in excess of anything that McLaren did during spygate in 2007 and they got a $100m fine. What's more - Renault's offence was only a year after they had been caught doing virtually the same thing as McLaren.

On the basis that McLaren got $100m for some industrial espionage, we should be talking in the $150m region for starters. However Max Mosley knows that if he did that, it would be curtains for the Enstone team and one less engine brand on the grid. His hands were tied...


3.Flavio should have been given a ban for five years not a lifetime. Considering we have a cherished former World Champion who is gagging to get back into a race seat who has caused two deliberate crashes to try and win two World Championships, it seems a bit odd that Flavio got a lifetime ban while all Michael had to do was join a road safety campaign. As with so many things FIA, the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime, it seems to fit the individual.


4.The FIA are right to stop Briatore, or any other F1 team manager, from becoming a driver manager as well as a team manager. From now on it is common sense that you do one or the other.


5.Nelson Piquet Senior has now had it exposed in the international press that he asked Flavio Briatore to move his son from London to Oxford to keep him away from a 51-year-old 'friend'. Nice one, Dad.


6.Fernando Alonso should sue Nelson Piquet Senior for libel as Senior insisted that Alonso had known about the race fix. What's more, when he was asked to withdraw his remarks he did so very grudgingly, hinting very heavily 'he should have known what was going on with that strategy'.

As Andrew Davies said in Team-Mate Wars, even if Fernando had been in on the plan he probably would have expected Junior to crash it at Turn 13 on Lap 17.

And Alonso still had to work very hard for that win. Nelson's crash just gave Fernando a big advantage. As we saw from Sutil's later crash, another Safety Car could just as easily have wrecked it for Alonso and swung the advantage in someone else's favour.


7.Eddie Irvine and Derek Warwick are right to say that skullduggery has gone on in F1 since it began. There are not many team managers and drivers out their with a totally clear conscience. Alain Prost, who has been mooted as a potential new boss of Renault, condemned the Singapore racefix...but didn't he once crash into the side of Ayrton Senna deliberately at Suzuka? And what about when he asked the Ferrari mechanics to secretly transfer team-mate Nigel Mansell's chassis to him. He's not spotless.

Eddie Jordan has said the affair beggars belief, but then so does claiming you did a $150m deal with Vodafone via a mobile telephone from the back seat of a taxi. Scratch the surface...


8.Nelsinho won't be getting a Christmas card from Felipe Massa. Yet it's wrong to jump to the conclusion that had there been no accident in Singapore then Felipe would have been World Champion. In the following race, the Japanese GP at Mount Fuji, Massa made a desperate attempt to pass Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap with a wreckless move that was never going to work and which sent Lewis out of the points. Had Massa arrived at the GP with a Singapore win under his belt he would never have felt the need for such a rash move.

It's just another motor-racing 'what if'.


9.The words 'Nelson' and 'Piquet' will now form a verb, the meaning of which is to deliberately crash your car, i.e. "I thought, 'what the hell' and Nelson Piquet-ed it into her rear bumper."


10.The affair only reinforces the view that there needs to be a new broom at the FIA and that when Max Mosley retires, Ari Vatanen should take over. Most important is the consistent application of F1's rules. Had the Singapore race stewards enforced the rules that were so strictly adhered to in Belgium (about leaving the track) just two races previously, then Alonso would have been serving a drive-through not cheating his way to victory. Also, it was the poor framing of the Safety Car rules that led to Briatore and Symmonds being able to exploit a situation where cars couldn't pit for fuel when they needed to, without a penalty

I had no idea he was gay (see number 5).

 

Nelson Piquet Senior was a low life too ... heck I guess he still is. Pity cause he could drive.

Pete

 

, but did you vote???

 

If today's revelations are true the title of this thread probably should have been: If You Are a Team Boss and Your 20 Year Old Driver Suggests a Crash, Should You Agree? And if its all accurate, they probably should both drop the law suits and save their money because both are in the career change mode right now. Maybe they could get jobs on Wall Street. Nelson could develop new, complex investment schemes and Flavio could be the CEO who specializes in mergers and acquistions, and doesn't know what's going on below him (not).

 

I haven't had a chance to look through all of the threads on this, but am I reading it correctly that NPJ suggested the crash himself?! That spinless b@stard has the nerve to do this and THEN tell on the bosses!? I thought he was scum before, but now??? He doesn't deserve to drive a taxi after that crap.

 

+ a couple. Bad eggs are always bad eggs ...

Pete

 

He did not. Absolute BS that someone here on FerrariCat that cannot read came up with.
Briatore cooked it up, the told Symonds to pesent it and sell it to NPJ.

 

and again you hose to go after the guy that is the whistle blower on one of the worst things that has happened to F1 ever and you condemn the guy that actualy raised a stink and had the honor to throw his kid under the wheels in exposing a year ago to the F1 sporting director Whiting that the Singapore race was fixed.

If you call that a low life your ethics are screwed in the wrong way.

 

Carol I a glad that thee are at least a few people that can honestly put themselves into the shoes of a 20 year old.
Selfrightous "never would I have done that.." posts at age 40+ are exactly what I was expecting. And I did get 40 so far. Very sad that people cannot put themselves into other people's shoes and rather condemn on the keyboard than to sit back and think. Too bad.

 

http://www.planetf1.com/story/0,18954,3213_5577444,00.html

I might just be reading it wrong, but this makes it sound like it was NPJ's idea and he suggested it to Symonds and Flav.

 

Post your sources proving that it was not Nelson's idea otherwise you know no more than I.

My view is simple: If Nelson suggested the idea and then acted it out AND then turned around and blew the whistle then he is a complete low life.

His father was the same sort, calling I believe Mansell's wife all sorts of horrible things to piss Mansell off, etc.

If indeed it Nelson junior was told by his boss to crash then of course things are different, but that is not what I was commenting on, and not what the media are saying.
Pete

 

I'm condemning the whistle blowing stunt he pulled. As far as actually wrecking the car, I said I'd do it. I'm 21, and in all honesty if I'm a driver in the premier racing series in the world, I'd walk blind-folded through a firing range if that's what I was told would keep me there. Yeah, it's unethical and cheating and whatever, but these guys are racing drivers and that competitive spirit is what drives them. I personally love the "win at all costs" attitude. I know many don't agree with it, but it's exciting. I just wish he could have been a man about it, and realized that his lack of performance is what brought this on. Take the blow like a man. Although in all honesty, now that I think about it, maybe I would have told too... I suck.

 

Ah I see.. so this isn't so much a poll for opinions, but one where it must be answered in line with the originators view... enjoy your game of whack-a-mole.

I wouldn't like to do business with someone that finds justification for doing the wrong thing.

 

anytime. I'm 28 for the record and while I'm never intimidated anymore I certainly remember being intimidated by a few bosses in my late teens/early 20s, and NONE were nearly the larger than life character that Flavio is. For god's sake this is the guy who blew up his enemies to move up the corporate ladder.

 

I am 46 going on 17, if you dont believe me , ask my surgeon. I have been in the situation where my Boss owned the track, and he asked me to slow down the field. I did not compremise the sport or my team members.

I can be proud of what I did and what I do.....

Andrew..

 

Humans are a diverse species -- we're not all alike.

Can I put myself in the shoes of a 20 year old? I was in my 20s, once. And it's not just in racing that you face ethical questions:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far .... well, it was in New Jersey :
A test of a new ground to air data link showed a flaw in a system that was about to go out for production. My boss asked be to remove the data points from the test runs that showed the flaw (it failed when the aircraft was maneuvering). When I expressed disapproval of fudging the data, he told me to do it just because he told me to.

I told him that "I was just following orders" was an excuse disapproved at Nuremberg (not Nurburg).
I'd forgotten who I was talking to: a Hungarian immigrant who'd driven a Panzer during the war.
I'm not known for tact.

The data stayed. (Sometimes the boss just needs to know someone will stand up with him.)


But the "40+" factor isn't just a dose of self-righteous self-delusion. It was a different era, back when us fogies were in our 20s.
Personal honor still meant something. We were "results oriented", rather than "process oriented".
Racing was still a "gentleman's sport". (Well -- euro style racing. The moonshiners' series was an exception. )
Today's 20 year olds are in a different environment. Generation gap.

 

Monsieur "X", the whistleblower and Symonds both are adamant that the idea came from Junior.

It makes sense if you remember that only a few months before, he qualified 17th but ended up 2nd at the german GP thanks to the safety car...