Seeping Matter

In case you do not follow Formula 1, which is hard to imagine, I will fill you in on this story:  The Renault F1 team, having fired driver Nelson Piquet Jr. earlier in the season, some weeks ago found themselves facing accusations stemming from Piquet wherein he claimed that he had been instructed to deliberately crash his car in the Singapore Grand Prix last year in order to facilitate a victory for his teammate, Fernando Alonso.

I first heard about this Renault thing a couple of weeks ago.  I chalked it up to a Nelson Piquet Jr. temper tantrum, figured he was trying to get revenge on his former team for firing him a few weeks before.  I thought that perhaps there could be some merit — you know, maybe the team suggested the course of action, i.e. “Wow, if we had a safety car right now we could probably win the race, that’d be awesome, don’t you think so Nelson *wink wink* ?” — but surely they did not form a deliberate plan.

I hoped I was right.  I’m just starting to get to where I can stand Alonso again, and I really don’t want any more controversy in a sport I love.

This week’s events are sure to have far-reaching consequences.  Renault fired managing director Flavio Briatore and executive director of engineering Pat Symonds — that’d be like the Jazz firing head coach Jerry Sloan and GM Kevin O’Connor mid-season — and essentially entered a plea of “no contest” to the charges, which is all but an outright admission of guilt.  Piquet’s sworn statement to the FIA, if true, is certainly an earth-shattering piece of evidence, as he describes how he was instructed by Briatore and Symonds not only to “cause a safety car” (which, in F1, only happens if there is a crash on-track that cannot be removed in a timely fashion), but also the exact lap on which the crash should take place and the exact section of the track where it should happen.  The race events played out exactly as Piquet claims he was instructed, and his teammate Alonso went on to win the race.

This sort of thing makes Stepneygate seem like a parking violation in comparison.  Formula 1 is incredibly dangerous, and extensive rules and precautions are put into place in order to increase safety.  To deliberately cause a crash is to deliberately put the life of the driver of the car, the lives of all the other drivers, the lives of the track workers (who are almost always volunteers) and safety crew, and to a lesser extent the lives of the spectators, all at increased risk.

So, the question is, what is going to happen as a result?

Well, in the case of Stepneygate in 2007, McLaren was fined $100M and was stripped of all of their constructor’s points for the season.  This was an incredibly harsh punishment, as McLaren was contending strongly for the constructor’s championship with Ferrari.  This incident is certainly more serious than Stepneygate was.  Some have speculated that Renault will be excluded from competing in F1.  I have doubts about this, primarily because F1 needs strong teams in the sport.  But Renault might get fined so heavily that they end up being excluded anyway.  I would be surprised if the FIA fines Renault less than $500M.

Nelson Piquet Jr., I expect, will lose his FIA Super License for the rest of his life and will never race F1 again.

As for Alonso, well, so far there’s been no evidence that he was complicit or even aware of the ploy.  Certainly he must have been wondering why he was starting 15th on the grid with only twelve laps of fuel.  But for all I know he just followed a “hear no evil” policy and stayed out of the whole thing.  We may never know for sure.

And honestly, I’d prefer to think that he had nothing to do with it at all.  If he’s going to go drive for Ferrari next year, as the rumor mill claims, I just don’t think I can stand to have him driving for my favorite team if I can’t cheer for him in good conscience.