FOTA unhappy about data leaking

Ahead of Renault's appearance in front of the FIA's World Motor Sport Council to answer charges that it asked Nelson Piquet to crash deliberately during last year's Singapore race to help Fernando Alonso win, details of the evidence against the team emerged over the course of the week.

As well as documents included in the WMSC's dossier on Renault, the full version of one of the Nelson Piquet's statements to the FIA was published on the internet.

The identity of the leaks has not been disclosed, or even whether they have come from within the governing body or the Renault team, and the FIA has promised an investigation to find out exactly where the information has come from.

FOTA is disappointed about the matter, and claimed that a 'competent' governing body would have ensured that confidential documents remained under control.

In a statement issued on Friday, it said: "FOTA today express concern at the leakage of information, which may or may not be relevant to the FIA current enquiry into the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

"All parties to the dispute should have the right to a fair hearing carried out in private and not in the public arena, which is producing adverse publicity damaging to the corporate image and credibility of Formula 1.

"FOTA believes that differences within the sport should be handled in professional manner and condemns the habit of intentionally releasing confidential documents to influence public opinion. Confidential documents should remain under the control of the competent authority."

FIA president Max Mosley said on Friday that lessons would be learned from the way that information relating to the case was put into the public domain.

"That is actually very unfortunate because it is just one side of the story," he said. "We are quite genuinely curious as to how that happened.

"Next time, when we send out to 20 or 30 people, we will probably arrange it in such a way that we can tell who is leaking stuff. We don't know how it happened."