'Crashgate' revisited - F1's tainted 800th race

The 800th world championship grand prix should've gone down in history because the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix was Formula 1's first ever night race. Instead, it gained immortality as the scene of perhaps F1's biggest scandal - the race decided by a deliberate crash.

It took nearly a year for the truth to emerge, and at the end of the 2009 season Jonathan Noble - one of the journalists integral to breaking the story - wrote an article for F1 Racing reflecting on how the world learned that Nelson Piquet Jr's Singapore '08 crash really was a team strategy designed to help Fernando Alonso win:

Back in 2008, we had all pondered the conspiracy theories about Piquet's Singapore crash, but these were dismissed at the time as nothing more than that - conspiracies. Piquet denied it. Renault staff rubbished it. We moved on and forgot about it.

All that changed on the Sunday of this season's Belgian Grand Prix when the veteran Brazilian journalist Reginaldo Leme revealed in his television broadcast on Globo TV that Piquet had been asked to crash deliberately - and that the matter was now being looked at by the FIA.

The news spread quickly around the Spa paddock but there was no evidence to back up the claims. All the FIA would say was that a previous world championship race was under investigation. There was not even a confirmation that it was the Singapore race that was being looked at.

The story was picking up momentum, but it was hard to nail down the facts. Renault issued a statement that they would give no further comment on the matter - standard practice these days when such weighty matters are being debated in the public eye.

Even when the FIA announced a few days later that Renault were going to be called before the World Motor Sport Council to answer charges that they caused a deliberate crash in Singapore to help Fernando Alonso win, a lot of people still could not believe that there was much truth to it.

Was this not simply a case of a disgruntled former employee taking revenge on his old bosses? How could anyone plot a deliberate crash without a whole team knowing - and then be able to keep it quiet from the rest of a paddock that thrives on gossip? How too could someone with such a 'good chap' reputation like Pat Symonds be involved in something so corrupt? All of those questions would be answered on the Wednesday before the Italian Grand Prix.

Renault under pressure

Alonso had returned to Renault, the team with which he had won the 2005/06 titles, for '08 after a dramatic single season at McLaren in which he came within one point of a third straight world championship but also endured one of the most turbulent team-mate relationships in the modern era with rookie partner Lewis Hamilton and turned whistle-blower against his own team in the 'spygate' scandal over confidential Ferrari data.

There were no podiums for Alonso in his first 14 races back at a Renault team now far behind 2008 title combatants McLaren and Ferrari, and as the global financial crisis hit the car industry there were increasing question marks over the futures of any F1 manufacturers struggling for results. Renault was no exception.

But in Singapore there was hope: Alonso was fastest of all in second and third practice, his car thriving on the new street circuit.

Then in qualifying that hope appeared to be dashed as a fuel feed problem meant Alonso stopped on track early in Q2 and was consigned to 15th on the grid.

Starting grid for F1's 800th GP - Singapore 2008

On Sunday, though, an apparent miracle followed. Alonso quickly got up to 11th place, then pitted for the first time on lap 12 of 61 - a seemingly bizarre strategy that dropped him to last.

One lap later, team-mate Piquet - who had been running 16th - crashed heavily at Turn 17. Heavily enough to prompt a safety car.

The leaders having to queue behind the safety car before pitting meant Alonso was up to fifth by the time the race restarted, with everyone ahead of him either about to be penalised for pitting when the pitlane was closed or on an inferior strategy.

He duly won ahead of Williams's Nico Rosberg, who had been among those penalised for the pit infraction but who benefited from Jarno Trulli's slow Toyota holding up much of the field in the laps before his penalty was declared, and title contender Hamilton.

In his Autosport race report that week, Mark Hughes alluded to the murmurs of 'race fixing' that immediately started swirling:

Cynics muttered, in quite an admiring way, that surely this had been choreographed by the team, that it had been a cynical but brilliant plan.

Here's how the conspiracy theory goes: why was Alonso on a light fuel strategy from a mid-grid, a place where, if anything, you tend to err towards fewer stops/longer stints? It didn't seem to make sense, unless the short-stint plan was to get him into the pits before any of the leaders, and then get the other driver - who'd started way back and was fuelled heavy - to trigger the safety car by deliberately crashing, on a slow corner like Turn 17, say. Piquet's future with the team is under threat, so he'd surely be compliant. How would he know which lap to crash on? There'd be a pre-agreed radio message such as, 'Come on Nelson, you need to push now'.

Alonso argued that his strategy was prompted by brake wear precluding a one-stopper. Engineering chief Symonds said Renault had just wanted to get onto the harder Bridgestone compound sooner: "The car was not good on this tyre, but was terrific on the harder one. So it made sense to fit the slower tyre for the shortest stint and, once it was clear he wasn't really progressing any further, I said, 'Sod it. Let's get him onto the other tyre'."

He even joked about the team's strategy simulation tools at base stopping working and forcing him to use "a piece of paper, pen and a calculator. The old-fashioned way! I might do it again after today!"

In the team by team round-up section of the report, Hughes acknowledged the conspiracy theories further - devoting the Renault entry to an imagined Saturday briefing that he 'joked' might've gone: "Nelson, once he's pitted we'll come on the radio and say, 'Push, Nelson!' That means have a spin, somewhere like T17 where they can't just drag you off. Make it good and leave some junk on the track. Out comes the safety car and, Bingo!". The section concluded: "Fantasy? Probably."

Two weeks later at Fuji, Alonso and Renault won again - this time pouncing on hamfisted early moves by title rivals Hamilton and Massa before overcoming Robert Kubica's BMW. Renault surged past Toyota into a clear fourth in the constructors' championship, and Singapore became less about a miracle win and a well-timed crash and more about a Ferrari pitstop that proved critical to the championship outcome.

The moment that cost Massa a title

Until that Piquet-induced safety car, Singapore had looked like a spectacularly good weekend for Massa.

Leading Ferrari's title challenge ahead of reigning world champion team-mate Raikkonen, Massa had arrived at Marina Bay just one point behind Hamilton having hacked into the McLaren man's lead in recent races.

Massa had dominated in Valencia, picked up victory at Spa when on-the-road winner Hamilton was contentiously penalised for corner-cutting, then pipped Hamilton to sixth at a sodden Monza as young gun Sebastian Vettel took an astonishing victory for Toro Rosso.

Then Massa smashed Hamilton in Singapore qualifying, taking pole position by 0.634 seconds and cruising into an early 4s lead over his title rival.

It all fell apart spectacularly at Massa's first pitstop, which came early due to the Piquet crash and safety car. Ferrari had been using a 'semi-automatic' system - replacing the 'lollipop' method of having a crew member holding a sign in front of a car during stops with a green light on a gantry. But this was still triggered by a crew member hitting a button when the stop was complete.

In Singapore that button was hit fractionally too soon. Massa charged away with the fuel hose still attached, and had to stop at the end of the pitlane while Ferrari crew members frantically ran down to remove it. A penalty for an unsafe release followed and he finished only 13th to Hamilton's third.

"We lost six points today so we are seven behind," said Massa. "We could have been first in the championship now. The green light went on and I drove forward. The only problem is that we had a human problem and the green light came in the wrong moment. Then everything happened with the fuel tank."

Autosport's news section included Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali defending the pitstop system:

Although the team then opted to switch from the light system - which is believed to save around a tenth of a second - back to a conventional lollipop, team principal Stefano Domenicali said this was not because the system is flawed.

"There was a mistake," he said. "It is better to control the stop using a green light instead of a lollipop. We preferred not to use it for the other stop because we wanted to give a sign of less tension."

The Autosport report hinted that Hamilton and McLaren might ironically have squandered a Singapore win by being too cautious exiting the pits at the same moment - hanging back to avoid being released into other cars' paths and therefore ending up mired in traffic rather than being in with a shot of jumping Alonso later.

But the team defended its handling of the race, hinting at lessons learned from its messy end to 2007:

McLaren, haunted by memories of blowing last year's drivers' championship with disastrous races in China and Brazil, is playing a "no-risk" game for the title run-in.

McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh said: "Lewis kept his head and did a no-risk drive. Frankly, that isn't perhaps how we were finishing last year. That is a positive and it's drives like this that win world championships."

In the end, throwing caution to the wind won Hamilton the 2008 title - achieved in that famous final corner move on a wild day in Brazil. Massa never did manage to win a world championship, and Ferrari is still chasing a follow-up to Raikkonen's 2007 crown.

The truth comes out

Massa's pain at that defeat increased when the truth of the Singapore 2008 race came out in late 2009. The chaotic Ferrari pitstop might never have taken place under such pressure had it occurred in normal racing circumstances, rather than in a scramble under the safety car.

Piquet had been under pressure going into Singapore '08. Autosport's news section that week reported on Renault's hope of dispensation to improve its engine - an upgrade restricted by the era's 'engine freeze' rules - as being key to its chances of fending off interest from BMW Sauber and Honda to keep hold of Alonso. But his team-mate's situation looked bleak:

Even if the team retains Alonso, it is increasingly likely that it will promote GP2 ace Lucas di Grassi from his current test role.

The team is understood to be losing patience with Nelson Piquet, who has not scored points since the Hungarian Grand Prix, and was impressed by di Grassi in his three-day test at Jerez last month.

In the event, Piquet stayed on into 2009 - but he was sacked after the Hungarian GP and replaced by Romain Grosjean.

Piquet went on the offensive, slamming Renault boss Briatore in a series of interviews, including this one with Autosport's Edd Straw:

"Nobody has a friendship with Flavio - there's no relationship. It's only business. He is ignorant about Formula 1. Maybe because of all the things that didn't favour me put me so low that he just didn't care.

"He didn't understand what is going on with the team. If you listen to the pitwall radio, it's like a joke. He hasn't got a clue what is happening in the race. Sometimes he asks if a driver has slick or wet tyres when it is obvious.

"Everyone knows that his ego is bigger than anything else. He likes to show off."

By that time, Piquet had already planted his bomb - having approached the FIA to reveal that he had been ordered to crash deliberately in Singapore.

Noble's F1 Racing article picks up the story of how details emerged ahead of Monza 2009:

Reports out of Italy that morning gave brief details that there was more to the story than originally thought - and suggested that there had indeed been a conspiracy between Piquet, Briatore and Symonds.

From my perspective, having received a note from a reliable source the night before telling me that he had information that would blow the Renault case out into the open, it was clear that this was the day the story was going to take a dramatic leap forward.

Travelling to Monza meant a delay in chasing more details, but by the early afternoon I had heard sufficient and, more importantly, trusted my source enough, to feel comfortable running a story.

My source confirmed the FIA evidence against Renault was based around a meeting that had taken place in Flavio Briatore's office on the pre-race afternoon in Singapore. In it, Piquet had been asked by Briatore and Symonds to crash deliberately so as to help Alonso win.

Worse than that, Symonds had taken Piquet aside and told him not just which lap to crash on, but also where to do it. Turn 17 had been singled out because there were no cranes there to lift cars away, which meant that any accident would guarantee the scrambling of a Safety Car.

The story, now a cold, calculated conspiracy, was a goer.

Briatore and Symonds both left Renault in the days afterwards. The World Motor Sport Council gave both men bans from F1 - Briatore's indefinite, Symonds's for five years, after which he ultimately returned and held roles with first Manor, then Williams.

Renault itself was given a suspended ban, but the team was sold to Genii Capital and the French manufacturer itself made a quiet exit - before eventually reacquiring the Enstone squad and resuming its works F1 presence nearly a decade later.

Alonso left Renault for Ferrari at the end of 2009. Piquet never raced in F1 again, but did become Formula E's first champion. And the Singapore 2008 result stood.

Result - F1's 800th GP, Singapore 2008