The race-fixing allegations that have engulfed Renault were met with a mixture of scepticism and disbelief by drivers from rival teams in the Monza paddock on Thursday.
The Enstone-based squad has been summoned to face the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council on September 21 to answer charges that it instructed Nelson Piquet to crash during last year’s Singapore Grand Prix in order to help his team-mate Fernando Alonso win the race.
When asked for their reaction to the news, several drivers said they found the claims hard to believe.
Rubens Barrichello recalled that it was only with extreme reluctance that he had given up victory to his then team-mate Michael Schumacher in the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix on the instructions of Ferrari, and felt that asking a driver to crash to assist the team’s cause would be a far greater imposition.
“It's quite difficult to think that somebody would crash a car because he was told to,” said Barrichello.
“Realistically, I think it's easier to crash a Formula 1 car than to drive a Formula 1 car, 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 in a situation in Austria [in 2002] which for me was the limit of the limit.
“There was eight laps of conversation going through it, and things were said to me that I had to give up, and I had to give up in front of everyone and everyone knew what was going on there.
“If this is true, it's very, very sad.”
Piquet is believed to be the source of the allegations, and Barrichello hinted that his younger countryman may have had an axe to grind after being dropped by Renault earlier this month.
“The only thing I can see is that somebody wants Briatore's head,” he said.
“It sounds very strange.”
Nico Rosberg said he also found the claims far-fetched: “I don’t think they did it.
“If it was deliberate then it would surprise me, yeah, because it’s quite shocking – pretty impressive in a negative way.”
But the Williams driver admitted that conspiracy theories briefly did the rounds among the drivers at the time because of the way Piquet’s crash and the ensuing safety car period played perfectly into Alonso’s hands.
“It was all over the place, definitely yeah,” he said.
“It’s quite a coincidence – all the things coming together… Alonso goes in a lap earlier and then the safety car comes out for his team-mate.
“It was a rumour that you heard in the paddock after the race.”
F1 returnee Vitantonio Liuzzi added: “It's a fine line, but it's very difficult to believe that someone would crash on purpose.”
While he stressed that he was unsure whether or not the allegations were true, Nick Heidfeld said he had entertained the thought following last year’s race that Renault’s actions might have been coordinated.
“I don't know if suspicions is the right word,” he said.
“I thought about it. But until now I don't know if it was on purpose or not.
“But when you looked at it, you thought that it might well be the case.
“There were talks of Piquet maybe therefore keeping his drive for this season after not performing brilliantly compared to Alonso.
“Maybe that's what could have made him do it. I don't know.”
Heidfeld was in no doubt that the allegations had the potential to do huge damage to the sport’s image, already battered by a succession of scandals and controversies in recent years.
“If it really happened, I think it's extreme and unbelievable,” he said.
“After all we've seen in Formula 1 happening over the last couple of years, with some very unexpected things, this for me would be the most amazing one in a negative way.”
Rosberg could conceivably be handed his first F1 win if Alonso’s win were to be annulled, but the German acknowledged that he too had benefited from the safety car and suggested that if the crash was deliberate then the entire race result would be invalid.
“I wouldn’t say no to that, but one shouldn’t expect that to happen because one should still think that it was a coincidence and not on purpose, but we will see,” he said.
“That wouldn’t be good for the sport though, that’s for sure.
“The whole result of the race – everything in the race, every single position – would have been different if those incidents wouldn’t have happened. That’s clear.”
All the drivers who were prepared to comment insisted they would never be willing to crash on purpose, regardless of any pressure from the team.
“I wouldn’t do it no matter what kind of situation I was in,” said Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel.
“If you would get an order from your team and it doesn’t make sense to you as a driver, in the end you are the one looking after yourself and deciding for yourself – you have the steering wheel in the hands, so you are the one to decide.
“For me, even being in a bad situation, or with a lot of pressure, or whatever, I think this is the worst direction to go to.”
No comments:
Post a Comment