A journalist's notes on the crashgate scandal

"One leak will sink a ship: and one sin will destroy a sinner."

I cannot seek credit for that phrase, and neither would John Bunyan have claimed much insight into the world of Formula 1. But his words sum up perfectly how a document that came into my hands one morning in September kick-started a sequence of events that resulted in two of F1's biggest names being forced to walk from the sport.

Crashgate. Piquetgate. Flavgate. Call it what you will. The tale of how Flavio Briatore, Pat Symonds and Nelson Piquet Jr conspired among themselves to cause a deliberate accident in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix became one of the biggest talking points of this dramatic year. Yet this most unconventional of stories was played out in the most unconventional of ways.

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 Singapore 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 was going to be called before the World Motor Sport Council to answer charges that it caused a deliberate crash in Singapore to help Fernando Alonso win, a lot of people still could not believe there was much truth to it.

Was this not simply the 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.

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 he had information that would blow the Renault case out into the open, it was clear 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 that 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 on which lap to crash, but also where to do it. Turn 17 had been singled out because there were no cranes there to lift cars away, which meant any accident would guarantee the scrambling of a safety car.

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

AUTOSPORT.com's first report went live at 5:20pm Italian time. It was soon being broadcast around the world and left many people shaking their heads in disbelief, as journalists began picking up the phone to their editors. There was more to come the next day, though.

That Thursday morning at Monza, I was allowed a glance at the full FIA evidence submission which had been collated into a folder containing 15 PDF documents. In it was all the information that the FIA had gathered during its investigations into the Renault case over the Spa weekend.

Flavio Biratore speaks to the media at Monza © LAT

Its contents were dynamite. It contained telemetry data from Piquet's car as it crashed, the stewards' full evidence against Renault (including interview transcripts with Symonds and Briatore), letters to the World Motor Sport Council members, two sworn testimonies from Piquet, transcripts of the radio transmissions from the Renault pitwall in Singapore, maps of the rescue vehicles in Singapore, FIA stewards' letters and a detailed map of Turns 14-17.

This was F1's equivalent of the MPs' expenses scandal that had rocked Britain over the summer - and with which The Daily Telegraph had dictated news for weeks.

In both the Renault and MP dossiers, there was enough information to write a whole book and it was impossible to publish everything at once. Much better, then, to drip it out bit-by-bit.

To be in that situation is like nirvana for a news journalist - and offers a glimpse of how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein must have felt when they got hold of their information about Watergate. In such situations though, it is impossible for things to go so public without alarm bells starting to ring in other quarters - especially in the high-powered world of F1.

The FIA was soon enquiring about where the leak had come from. There was some suspicion that the confidential source was actually someone from within Renault, keen to get the information out into the open to show that the FIA trial was not being conducted in the 'innocent until proven guilty' manner of normal court affairs.

All I could say was that I could not divulge the source. To this day, I still do not know specifically who the original source of the document was, or how many people it had been through before it was handed to my contact. In fact, as various documents started to arrive in the mailboxes of other journalists over the Monza weekend, it was hard to work out if there was one source or many.

My suspicion, which is all it can be, is that 'source number one' was a member of the FIA World Motor Sport Council whose motivation was creating transparency and getting the truth out there - rather than an attempt to discredit Renault or expose the FIA as an organisation that could not be trusted to deal with such matters effectively.

I do not believe the story was leaked deliberately by the FIA to bring the matter out into the public and make Renault realise that their game was up. The governing body has employed such tactics in the past - most blatantly through the use of letters - but not on this occasion.

On the Friday of Monza, AUTOSPORT.com published more of that folder's contents - this time choosing a letter that Flavio Briatore had written to Nelson Piquet Sr, threatening legal action over what he claimed were the "outrageous lies".

By that stage, the actual leak of the documents was becoming a story in itself as the FIA vowed to hunt down the person behind it. Later, FOTA would also criticise the leak. Having run the original story, it was hard now not to feel a bit under siege.

Nelson Piquet Jr arrives at the FIA hearing in Paris © LAT

With the leaks so public, the FIA and Renault had little option but to begin speaking about the matter. During first free practice on Friday, Max Mosley summoned a few of us to his track office to speak about the matter. He expressed his concerns about the leaks - but said it would be wrong for the FIA to judge Renault before the team had submitted its own evidence. However, he made it clear then that he felt race-fixing was worse than cheating.

Shortly after that meeting finished, and coincidentally (or perhaps not) after the Briatore legal action story, Renault issued a press release confirming that Briatore was suing the Piquets over their claims.

Later, Briatore summoned selected media into his motorhome for a briefing about the matter. With scores of camera crews and photographers crowded outside for a snapshot of the man at the centre of the affair, he told us confidently that: "The truth will come out." Ultimately, he drew short of stating exactly what he felt the truth to be. We did not know it at the time, but that would be the last time any of us would speak to - or even see - Briatore for a while.

His Renault bosses, faced with the wall of evidence against the team that was now out in public, accepted their guilt over the matter and, in the week after the Italian Grand Prix, both Briatore and Symonds resigned.

Yet for all the information that was thrust into the open, and the detailed investigations by Renault and the FIA, we still do not know the full story behind the crash scandal - and especially whose idea the plan was in the first place. Only the three men in Briatore's office that afternoon in Singapore know the truth and even their claims conflict.

All we can say for sure is that, as Bunyan told us so long ago, it was a single leak that sunk them. And it was a single sin on a crazy night in Singapore that destroyed them.

How Crashgate unfolded

27/09/08 Fernando Alonso qualifies 15th for the Singapore Grand Prix following a fuel-pump failure. His team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr qualifies 16th.
28/09/08 Fernando Alonso wins the Singapore Grand Prix. Nelson Piquet Jr crashes on lap 14, bringing out the Safety Car. At that stage, only Alonso had made his pitstop, on lap 12, handing him an important strategic advantage.
26/07/09 Nelson Piquet Jr drives his last race for Renault at the Hungarian Grand Prix, finishing in 12th place.
28/07/09 Flavio Briatore writes to Nelson Piquet Sr accusing him of blackmail and extortion over the claim that Nelson Piquet Jr was asked to deliberately crash.
30/07/09 Nelson Piquet Jr makes a sworn statement to the FIA alleging that he was asked to deliberately crash during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix by Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds.
03/08/09 Nelson Piquet Jr confirms that he has been sacked by Renault. He refers to "incidents that I can hardly believe occurred" and labels team boss Flavio Briatore his "executioner".
18/08/09 Renault confirms Piquet Jr has been replaced by Romain Grosjean.
25/08/09 Piquet Jr makes an additional sworn statement to the FIA.
27/08/09 On Saturday at the Belgian Grand Prix, Pat Symonds, Flavio Briatore and other Renault personnel are interviewed by the FIA stewards. Additional interviews are conducted the following day.
30/08/09 The FIA confirms that: "An investigation is underway regarding alleged events at a previous world championship race."
04/09/09 Renault are summoned to the World Motor Sport Council to answer a charge of breaching article 151c of the International Sporting Code.
09/09/09 Autosport.com's first report from the leaked dossier is published.
11/09/09 Flavio Briatore accuses Piquet Jr of "outrageous lies" while Max Mosley warns race fixing is "worse than cheating".
16/09/09 Following an internal investigation, Renault informs the FIA that it will not contest the charges at the WMSC hearing. Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds leave the team.
21/09/09 Renault are permanently excluded from the world championship, with the proviso that the ban has been suspended for two years. Briatore is banned from FIA-sanctioned motorsport for life and Symonds for five years.