How Renault might have gone race-fixing

Might.  For the love of all, remember that their accusers need not be telling the truth.

What we should be discussing is a mouthwatering weekend at Monza, with only five weekends left to settle a championship nobody wants to take ownership of, one in which almost the entire grid suddenly looks capable of causing a disturbance at the front.

We’re not.

This blog did not exist at the time of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, and there are those among the readership for whom Formula One may as well not have existed at that time, so let’s have a look at the bare facts of the weekend’s action.

Nelson Piquet Jr was knocked out of qualifying in the first session, a result that failed entirely to send shockwaves through the paddock.  His team leader Fernando Alonso had been among the front-runners throughout free practice, comfortably eclipsing his teammate as usual, and was expected to be one of the main players in qualifying until his car broke down at the start of Q2.  A coupling in the fuel system, designed to ensure a clean break with no fuel spillage should the car break apart in a heavy accident, had come adrift, leaving the engine without juice and the Spaniard without power.  As a consequence, the Renaults started line astern, 15th and 16th.

The two cars began the race with very different strategies.  Piquet was fuelled to run a long first stint, scheduled to make a single pit stop.  By plodding around at the back, he hoped to make up places by losing less time running heavy on the circuit than his opposition would lose by making an extra stop.  Alonso, as aggressive as they come, was much lighter, running a two-stop strategy with a short first stint in the hope of making up ground early on.

Fernando’s start was perfect, aided somewhat by his completely ignoring the defined track on the inside of the first corner, but before long he found himself in a queue of cars held up behind the one-stopping Toyota of Jarno Trulli.  Losing 3 seconds a lap to the cars directly ahead of the Trulli train and unable to make headway until the lap counter reached double figures, his afternoon looked shot.  On lap 12, Alonso pitted.

On lap 14, Piquet did this:

Since his crash took place at one of the few places on the track not easily accessible to the recovery cranes, the safety car was called upon to neutralise the race while the mess was cleared.  Last season’s safety car rules required the entire field to be bunched up and ordered to Race Control’s satisfaction before the pit lane was made available for use, which was all kinds of wonderful for Alonso.  Before anyone ahead could call into the pits, the rules stipulated that he’d have to catch them up, this giving him the pleasure of watching them disappear from view before reappearing 20 seconds later in his mirrors.

Once the field had sorted itself out, the Ferrari mechanics had played out a comic epic in the pitlane involving chasing Felipe Massa’s car and half a fuel rig down the road and Trulli had finally pitted, Fernando found himself leading.  In a car quick enough to stay there, he knew how to make sure it did, with the result that at the end of lap 61, Alonso did this:

So far, so what?  The safety car had won Alonso the race, his teammate happened to have been the man who caused it, but a Piquet crash was hardly unexpected and anyway, at least he’d be keeping his drive for 2009 after that, ha ha ha.  The circus moved on to Japan, where Alonso won again in a demonstration of what sheer brilliance can drag from an ordinary racing car, everyone went back to concentrating on the Hamilton vs Massa battle for the world title, and that was that.

Last month, Nelson Piquet Jr was fired.  He made a lot of dark noises, covered in this blog’s July and August archives, about strange occurrences and happenings beyond his comprehension, orchestrated by his ‘executioner’ Flavio Briatore, but his interviews appeared to be no more than the bitter rantings of a man whose limits had been exposed at the highest level.  Certainly, they were reported as such, right up until the FIA announced an investigation into events that Sunday in Singapore.

If Autosport’s sources are to be believed - and they’re generally solid enough – then the next couple of weeks will knock the early-season Liegate episode into a cocked hat.  It is suggested that Piquet was instructed to crash just after Alonso’s first stop in a pre-race meeting with Briatore and engineering director Pat Symonds, that the crash location was pre-selected precisely because it was difficult to access by crane and likely to trigger a safety car, and that Piquet Jr went along with it since his drive at Renault was by no means secure at the time.

We’ll receive no comment from Renault until their appearance before the World Motor Sport Council on race-fixing charges, scheduled for September 21st.  Why would they do it?  Why destroy one of their cars to give the other a chance of winning in a sport where human or mechanical trouble could throw it away in a second?  

What follows is speculation and no more.  It is one man with a netbook and some time on his hands.  It is one man with no insider access or knowledge, it is not presented as fact, and I ask that you keep that in mind.  That goes double for anyone more commonly addressed as Your Honour.  All we can do here is speculate, and we’re hardly the only ones doing it, so try this for size - likely profit at relatively low cost, with plenty of incentive.

Renault had not won a race since the end of the 2006 season, and hadn’t looked likely to in the interim.  For the first time in a long time, they had a competitive car at their disposal, and had been prevented by a freak mechanical failure from exploiting it.  Alonso, the complete package as a driver, was publicly considering his future options and being aggressively courted by Honda.  ING, the team’s title sponsor, were out in force throughout the Singapore weekend, keen to see their logos cross the line ahead of the field after two seasons spent waiting for success, and not likely to be that thrilled at the prospect of their cars sharing the eighth row of the grid.

Piquet was expendable.  He was alongside Alonso on the grid, yes, but through circumstance rather than having equal pace.  The prospects of his delivering a good result were slim to none, and without a guaranteed seat for 2009 he’d be almost certain to ask how high if instructed to jump.  The damage done when car met barrier would have run into high five figures at least; nothing when compared to the millions on offer for recording a good finish in the constructors championship.  It’s also worth considering, while we’re thinking of money, that Piquet didn’t have to make quite such a thorough job of having an accident; a spin and stall in the same area would have had the same effect on the race, and perhaps Renault were expecting something more like that and less like the wreck he gave them.

The odds of being found out?  Long.  We’d grown accustomed to race fixing the Ferrari way – “Is your name Michael?  No?  Then get out of Michael’s way, Rubens…” – and quite used to the idea that results could be manipulated blatantly, right before our eyes.  Nelson Piquet Jr having an accident was not newsworthy, and if the circumstances of that crash were peculiar – nobody else spun all weekend at turn 17, scene of Piquet’s wreck, and he didn’t appear to make any great effort to recover the spin – they could easily be written off as Nelson being Nelson.  Alonso benefitting from Piquet crashing would surely be viewed as nothing more than a fortunate happenstance, the lucky dip that saw Fernando’s name picked from the hat when a crash a few laps later would have ruined his race completely.  Benefit he surely would too, since the cars were generally reliable, earlier glitch notwithstanding, and the driver not prone to lapses in concentration.

It was viewed as just that.  Had the Piquets not gone to the FIA, it would have remained so.  What’s in it for them is harder to fathom.  Nelsinho’s performances have not set the world alight, and his stock in the F1 paddock isn’t high.  He did appear certain of his own abilities, though, and keen to remain in the sport next year, so what could he gain through tarnishing his own reputation by associating himself with a scandal such as this?  Is it already clear that nobody wishes to take up his services for 2010?  Are the rumours linking his father to a takeover of BMW true, and is his seat guaranteed?  Has he left himself open to sanctions should it be ruled that he was integral to the success of any Renault plot, and if so will he still have a racing licence this time next month?

All of the above is based on one giant assumption; that Autosport’s sources are trustworthy and correct.  Makes sense, though, doesn’t it?