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Formula One
F1: FIA Waited A Month Before Grilling Renault
The FIA waited a month before grilling members of the Renault team at Spa over the Singapore affair...
Adam Cooper  | http://www.speedtv.com  |  Posted September 09, 2009   Monza (ITA)
Nelson Piquet Jr. (Left) formally gave his evidence to the FIA as long ago as Thursday July 30, several days after Nelson Piquet Sr. (Right) had first approached the FIA. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

The FIA waited a month before grilling members of the Renault team at Spa over the Singapore affair, we can now confirm.

As we have previously suggested the FIA wanted to spring the investigation on the team as a surprise. We now know that Nelson Piquet Jr formally gave his evidence to the FIA as long ago as Thursday July 30, several days after Nelson Piquet Sr. had first approached the FIA with information about his son’s role in Singapore.

The interview with the younger Piquet was conducted in Paris in the presence of investigators from the Quest concern, an FIA lawyer, and FIA stewards’ chairman Alan Donnelly. This was four days before Piquet released a statement saying the team had sacked him.

The investigation thus began during the summer break, when both the FIA and Renault were also preparing for the separate hearing into the Hungarian pit stop saga.

Indeed because of the doubts over the participation of Renault in the European GP in Valencia the FIA apparently decided to wait a further week, and conduct its interviews with team members at Spa.

This questioning took place in the presence of Quest, the FIA’s legal rep and as we have previously reported, the three Belgian GP stewards, namely Sweden’s Lars Osterlind, Greece’s Vassilis Despotopoulos and local representative Yves Bacquelaine. The first two are also World Motor Sport Council members.

Subsequent to those interviews Briatore and Symonds have reportedly submitted written statements to the FIA. According to extracts quoted on www.autosport.com, Briatore said he is "a victim of extortion by the Piquet family.”

He also reportedly acknowledged that the meeting took place: "I confirm the meeting with Piquet on Sunday morning, but nothing like that was ever talked about. I also remember that Piquet at Singapore was in a very fragile state of mind. Besides that, there are the audio recordings where I express disappointment when I see on the screens that Piquet had crashed."

Autosport.com reports Symonds is as saying: "It's true, during the Sunday meeting with Piquet the issue of deliberately causing a SC deployment came up, but it was proposed by Piquet himself. It was just a conversation."

If those quotes are accurate we are in the extraordinary situation of it being Piquet’s word against those of his two-team bosses as to what was discussed or agreed in that meeting.

However the FIA also has data from the race that would pinpoint any unusual throttle or steering movements. There are also radio recordings during which Piquet repeatedly asks what lap he was on. Apparently checks with previous events indicate that this was not his normal behavior during a race.

Briatore’s comment about Piquet being in a ‘fragile state of mind’ is also intriguing. It leaves open the possibility for the World Motor Sport Council to enquire further as to what that entailed, and ask just why the team would allow a driver to take part in a race in such circumstances, especially given his alleged suggestion about creating a safety car period.

The other key question could be to the effect that if Piquet had come up with the idea of crashing and then pursued it without the support of the team management why no action was subsequently taken by the team. Instead he was later re-signed for a further season.

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