Renault has been summoned to appear before the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council later this month to answer charges that it sought to fix the result of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
The governing body has been investigating allegations that the Enstone-based team instructed its driver Nelson Piquet Jr to crash during Formula 1’s first ever night race in order to help his team-mate Fernando Alonso win.
Having found sufficient evidence to warrant taking the matter further, the FIA announced on Friday that it had asked Renault team representatives to attend an extraordinary meeting of its World Motor Sport Council on Monday 21 September.
“The team representatives have been called to answer charges, including a breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, that the team conspired with its driver, Nelson Piquet Jr, to cause a deliberate crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix with the aim of causing the deployment of the safety car to the advantage of its other driver, Fernando Alonso,” the FIA said in a statement.
Renault acknowledged the FIA’s request but said it would be making no comment on the allegations before its appearance at the hearing.
Formula 1’s second cheating scandal of the season first surfaced last weekend when it emerged that an unidentified source had presented the FIA with the explosive claims about Renault’s conduct at the Singapore event.
Alonso scored the team’s first victory of 2008 in the city-state after benefiting from a timely safety car period triggered by team-mate Piquet hitting the wall.
It was an unexpected triumph because the Spaniard had started from 15th on the grid after a fuel feed problem in qualifying.
Having gambled on an unusually short first stint, he had already made his first refuelling stop when Piquet’s crash brought the safety car out, and vaulted up the order while the rest of the field pitted.
It proved the turning point of the race and Alonso went on to claim the first of two consecutive wins.
While the irony that Piquet’s crash had played into Alonso’s hands was not lost on observers, suggestions that it was part of a pre-meditated plan were left to conspiracy theorists.
At the time Piquet said he had made a simple mistake in a car that had been bottoming heavily on the bumpy Singapore track, while Alonso admitted he had been “very lucky”.
The fact that, following its preliminary investigations, the FIA believes Renault has a case to answer opens the team to potentially severe penalties ranging from a heavy fine to race suspensions or even exclusion from the world championship.
The catch-all Article 151c prohibits “any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally”.
Should Renault be found to have orchestrated Piquet’s crash, it would almost certainly face a heavy sentence since it would be guilty not only of “fraudulent conduct” but of potentially endangering the life of its driver, marshals and fellow competitors.
In such circumstances it might also face criminal prosecutions.
But F1’s commercial ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone suggested earlier this week that it would be extremely difficult to prove that Renault ordered Piquet to crash.
He also raised the possibility that the allegations came from Piquet himself, who was axed by Renault last month for failing to hit performance targets in his contract and who Ecclestone described as “an angry young man”.
Piquet has made no comment on the matter thus far
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