The 2008 Singapore Grand Prix was the first-ever Formula One night race, but instead it would be chiefly remembered for one of the sport’s biggest scandals, whereby the Renault team deliberately engineered a crash so that their other driver could have a better chance of winning the race.
Coming into the fifteenth race of the season (with three to go), Britain’s Lewis Hamilton led the Drivers’ Championship by a point from Brazilian Felipe Massa, with Fernando Alonso’s Renault down in seventh. Renault had not won a race for nearly two years and were rumoured to be considering quitting the sport. Massa started on pole in Singapore with Hamilton second and Alonso only fifteenth. Massa led around the street circuit from Hamilton and Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen, the reigning world champion, until, on lap 14, Alonso’s Renault team-mate, Nelson Piquet Jr, crashed into the circuit wall at Turn 17, necessitating the deployment of the safety car. Alonso had stopped surprisingly early (on lap 12) for fuel and tyres, rejoining at the back of the field, but as many of the drivers ahead of him pitted under the safety car, Alonso found himself promoted up to fifth. Massa’s cause was not helped when Ferrari released him prematurely from the pits, not only into the path of Adrian Sutil’s Force India but also with the fuel hose still attached to his car. Massa stopped just before the pit-lane exit, hotly pursued by Ferrari mechanics. To add to his misery, he was subsequently given a drive-through penalty for an unsafe release from the pits and was relegated to last place. After various other penalties were served and pit stops taken, Alonso moved into the lead and, despite making his second pit stop on lap 42, he held on to win from Nico Rosberg’s Williams and Hamilton’s McLaren. It was Alonso’s first victory of the season. Piquet described his crash as a simple mistake, and nobody, apart from a few cynics, really thought anything more about it. Freelance Formula One journalist Joe Saward dismissed these conspiracy theories, writing: ‘One likes to believe that no team would ever be so desperate as to have a driver throw his car at a wall.’
As the son of a three-times world champion, great things had been expected of Piquet but the young Brazilian had struggled for much of the season, and so it was a surprise to many when he kept his Renault seat for 2009. His fortunes did not improve, however, and in August 2009, without a single championship point to his name that year, he confirmed that he had been dropped by the team. He immediately hit out at Renault team boss Flavio Briatore and sensationally claimed that Briatore and experienced engineer Pat Symonds had asked him to stage the Singapore crash deliberately in order to help Alonso.
The sport’s governing body, the FIA, charged Renault with conspiracy and race fixing, whereupon Renault counter-accused Piquet of making false allegations and blackmail. Then Renault had a sudden change of heart, announcing that they would not contest the charges after all and that Briatore and Symonds had left the team. The ‘Crashgate’ hearing, as it was dubbed in the press, took place in September 2009. Symonds confessed to his role in the conspiracy and expressed his ‘eternal regret and shame’, blaming his actions on ‘a misguided devotion to my team’. Briatore continued to deny involvement but an unnamed Renault employee, Witness X, testified that the flamboyant Italian knew about the scheme. The FIA found that Alonso had no knowledge of the planned crash.
Briatore and Symonds received bans, but these were subsequently overturned by a French court, although both agreed not to work in Formula One for a specific time. In 2011, Symonds returned to F1 as a consultant for Virgin Racing and two years later was appointed Chief Technical Officer with the Williams team. In 2010, Renault apologised unreservedly to Piquet and his father for defaming them. So ended one of F1’s messiest sagas.