Renault may leave F1 as Briatore steps down

MOTOR SPORT RACE FIXING:RENAULT COULD be poised to withdraw from Formula One at the end of this season after effectively admitting its guilt in a race-fixing scam and confirming the departure of the two senior figures at the centre of the allegations, including managing director Flavio Briatore.

The team said it would not contest accusations that its management encouraged Nelson Piquet Jr to crash deliberately in last year’s Singapore Grand Prix.

Having last Friday launched legal action against its former driver, the U-turn came as a surprise even in a Formula One season that is losing its power to shock.

Piquet Jr was alleged to have been ordered to crash on a specific lap in order to help his team leader, Fernando Alonso, win, thanks to the appearance of the safety car.

Senior executives at Renault Group had said they would not rush to any hasty conclusions about the team’s future, but its presence in next year’s championship has already been called into question by the departure of its main sponsor, ING, and the likely departure of its main driver, Alonso, for Ferrari.

Yesterday Briatore, the Renault team’s managing director and a colourful figure in the sport for more than two decades, and Pat Symonds, the executive director of engineering, left their posts with immediate effect ahead of next Monday’s meeting of the FIA’s world motor sport council.

“The Renault team will not dispute the recent allegations made by the FIA concerning the 2008 Singapore grand prix,” it said in a statement. “It also wishes to state that its managing director, Flavio Briatore, and its executive director of engineering, Pat Symonds, have left the team.”

Monday’s extraordinary meeting will proceed in Paris as planned to decide what penalty should be imposed on the French car maker for its part in the latest of a seemingly endless string of scandals which have embroiled the sport for the past decade or more.

Leaked documents detailing interviews with Symonds and Briatore and transcripts of the team’s radio communications at the Singapore race appeared to indicate that, at the very least, there is a strong case for Renault to answer.

The FIA offered Piquet Jr immunity in return for outlining his allegations. Symonds is also believed to have been offered immunity, but it now appears unlikely he will take up the offer.

The Formula One rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone, said he could not comment on the likely decision of the council, on which he sits alongside the FIA president, Max Mosley, and 24 others, but said he “felt sorry” for his close friend Briatore.

“Obviously, I’m surprised at what has happened, and I’m taken by surprise that they’ve decided to walk away,” he said.

Whether Briatore jumped or was pushed is neither here nor there in the ultimate analysis; Renault concluded both had to go if the team were to have a hope of drawing the sting from any penalty the FIA might have in mind – which could include their exclusion from the title race a few days before the first anniversary of the controversial event.

This has been a fast-moving saga, fuelled by the embittered Piquet who was dropped from the team last month, through to the symbolic sacrifice of Renault’s leading player, Briatore.

The sequence of events mirrors the way in which McLaren chairman Ron Dennis and his lieutenant Dave Ryan were sidelined following the so-called “Liargate” controversy involving Lewis Hamilton at this year’s race in Melbourne. Ryan and Symonds were caught in the crossfire and were not the main targets of the FIA’s ire.

Formula One insiders are split on Renault’s likely intentions. Some argue the decision to part company with Briatore and Symonds suggests the team was preparing a case that would appeal for clemency by the FIA and enable it to honour an earlier commitment to remain competing in the championship until at least 2012. Others are convinced the scandal will merely have hardened Renault’s intention to pull out, but that Briatore and Symonds had to go in order to limit the damage to the team’s reputation.

“There is something fundamentally rotten and wrong at the heart of Formula One,” said three-time former world champion Jackie Stewart yesterday..

“Never in my experience has F1 been in such a mood of self-destruction. Millions of fans are amazed, if not disgusted, at a sport which now goes from crisis to crisis with everyone blaming everyone else.”