Conclusions about the decision

Interesting. I dont buy the Alonso bit. He was given IMMUNITY in the last affair at Mclaren and has the "who me" attitude about this one. Coincidental or not pretending you are dumb as a rock is not impressive. No matter its over and here is an example of what the motoring press are saying.


10 Conclusions From Nelsinhogate
Monday 21st September 2009 - PlanetF1.com

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.


FH

 

What The Papers Say About Renault Verdict
Tuesday 22nd September 2009 - PlanetF1.com

Fleet Street is almost unanimous in their verdict on the Singapore race-fixing scandal: Renault got off rather lightly.


'Renault can consider themselves extremely fortunate to have got away with a suspended ban for deliberately causing the crash at last year's Singapore grand prix that shocked Formula One, never mind the world at large, from top to bottom.


'The FIA World Motor Sport Council considered the breaches relating to the race "to be of unparalleled severity". Considering that the governing body campaigns strongly and successfully for safety in the sport, this is a curious decision, one that has been predicated on the fact that neither the parent company nor the team, Renault F1, had a moral responsibility for what happened when Nelson Piquet Jr was told to crash his car. On the one hand, a ban is the highest form of punishment available. But to suspend it is to give Renault a slap on the wrist and send them to bed early.


'The ban has crushed Briatore completely by affecting his involvement not only with F1 but also GP2 and his management contracts with drivers such as Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber and Heikki Kovalainen. How this affects Briatore's association with Queens Park Rangers is for others to decide.


'While the sentence handed down to Renault is almost of no consequence, the punishment delivered to Briatore - and, to a lesser degree, Symonds - is a strong message to others in positions of tactical influence within the sport.' - Maurice Hamilton, The Guardian





'Renault escaped with a minimal penalty on Monday despite orchestrating one of sport's worst acts of cheating on record.


'The FIA's World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) determined that covering Renault's expenses of the governing body's investigation and all the legal costs - estimated at a combined maximum of £750,000 - and making a 'significant' donation to safety work was sanction enough for race-fixing.


'But it will disappoint those demanding punitive censure after a sporting few months bedevilled by rugby's 'Bloodgate' controversy and football's diving debate.


'The only culprits whose crimes were severely punished were team principal Flavio Briatore, who may yet be drummed out of QPR, and his No 2, Pat Symonds.


'They left Renault last week in shame. On Monday, appropriately enough for the setting of the FIA's Place de la Concorde HQ at the foot of the revolutionary guillotine, their heads were offered up on a plate.' - Jonathan McEvoy, Daily Mail





'You have to wonder if there are any limits now. If it is possible to employ men you vetted, and who carry your name, who go on to rig a race, strategically smash a car into a barrier, risk lives and damnation, and yet you survive, receive a green light to continue unscathed in something ever more loosely described as sport, surely it has to be asked, what is next on the agenda?


'A little bit of brake-tampering, perhaps? That would juice up events quite nicely, and so much more spectacularly than some boring old industrial espionage or getting your world champion driver to lie through his teeth in order to sneak a point or two in the championship table.


'We cannot say, though, we were not warned that the ruling authority, the FIA, would produce an appalling fudge in Paris yesterday when it came to deliver its form of punitive justice on the Renault team.' - James Lawton, The Independent





'So why weren't Renault banned, if the World Motor Sport Council said that they considered their breaches relating to the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix "to be of unparalleled severity"? And that they "not only compromised the integrity of the sport but also endangered the lives of spectators, officials, other competitors and Nelson Piquet Jnr himself?"


'It's an interesting question. And one might speculate whether, say, McLaren would have been treated so leniently in similar circumstances.


'But this was one instance in which the FIA, via the WMSC, did exactly the right thing. They weighed the relative values of the Renault F1 team and Flavio Briatore, and clearly decided that while one had considerable merit, the other had none.' - David Tremayne, The Independent





'A convenient outcome all round. Whether Formula One's ruling body, the International Automobile Federation (FIA), has adequately served the interest of the sport in its compartmentalisation of crime and punishment is another matter.


'In suspending the sentence passed on Renault and imposing an indefinite ban on Flavio Briatore for his role in the Singapore race-fixing affair, the FIA has fashioned an outcome that involves both sanction and reprieve. Like all snake-hipped shifts in position, manoeuvres of this nature are more easily accomplished without vertebrae.


'Maybe it is expecting too much of ruling authorities to uphold the virtues of fair play that no longer have any relevance in contemporary life, let alone sport. Perhaps they never did. Somewhere along the line romance hoodwinked us into believing there was such a thing as 'Corinthian Spirit' when all there ever has been is scheming, conniving, cheating and lying.' - Kevin Garside, Telegraph





'Flavio Briatore, the former Renault team boss, was the big loser from the World Motor Sport Council's extraordinary assembly in Paris on Monday morning when he was made to carry the can for the Formula One race-fixing scandal that rocked world sport.


'The Italian entrepreneur, who left his post as team principal of Renault F1 last week, was essentially handed a lifetime ban from any FIA-sanctioned series and forbidden to manage any FIA-licensed driver for the foreseeable future.' - Tom Cary, The Telegraph






'Max Mosley and the FIA were accused of bowing to commercial pressures last night after the hearing into the "Crashgate" scandal resulted in Renault escaping with a suspended ban.


'The judgment in Paris was attacked by those who believe that the world governing body of motor sport, with Mosley as its president, is far too close to Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One commercial rights-holder.


'Damon Hill attacked the decision. "I'm not surprised they've let Renault off," the British former Formula One world champion said. "It's a crying shame for the sport.


'Hill said he saw the decision not to punish Renault as expedient. "You have to put this in the context of inconsistencies in the way in which the FIA has treated breaches of the regulations over the years and, knowing what we know, we cannot dissociate this from the power play going on behind the scenes for control of Formula One," he said. "Formula One has to ask itself, is it just a very expensive form of entertainment or a proper sport? There is a whole book on what's wrong with Formula One. It's called Bernie's Game and the history of this episode is typical.' - Edward Gorman, The Times