F1: Renault Denies Race-Fixing In Letter To FIA

Formula 1

F1: Renault Denies Race-Fixing In Letter To FIA

Reanult goes on record denying race fixing at Singapore...

SPEED Staff / GMM | Posted September 08, 2009 GMM Newswire

Pat Symonds (Left), Managing Director of Engineering for Renault F1, with Flavio Briatore (Right), Managing Director have denied the charges of race fixing at Singapore last year. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

In a letter by Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds, the heads of the Renault team have reportedly told F1's governing body that the charge of race-fixing in Singapore last year is not true.

According to the Spanish sports newspaper AS, it is alleged that team boss Briatore as well as Symonds, Renault's long time engineering director, instructed Nelson Piquet during a pre-race meeting to crash on purpose on a specific lap of the night race.

His promised reward was said to be the renewal of his contract for 2009.

Piquet, whose career is closely followed by his famous father, was furious when he was recently ousted by Briatore and in a media statement hinted that "strange situations" had occurred during his tenure.

Brazil's Globo TV, meanwhile, claims that Piquet's spin on the warm-up lap of the Singapore event was a practice for the similar-looking crash that brought out the safety car and boosted his teammate Fernando Alonso to the head of the field.

AS said it is clear that Renault will vigorously deny the claims at the extraordinary meeting of the World Motor Sport Council in Paris later this month.

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