Crashgate F1: How Fernando Alonso’s teammate crashed deliberately to make him win inaugural Singapore Grand Prix

Tanish Chachra | 27/09/2022
Crashgate F1: How Fernando Alonso's teammate crashed deliberately to make him win inaugural Singapore Grand Prix

The Crashgate F1 scandal is among the biggest controversies in the history of the sport, and how it outraged the whole community.

In 2008, F1 took a new destination in the name of Singapore. It had a lot of chatter because, along with being a street circuit, it was going to be the first night race in F1.

Thus, the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix had massive excitement. However, despite giving an exciting race, Singapore also gave one of the biggest scandals to Formula 1.

It is no hiding that Fernando Alonso benefitted from the crash of his teammate at Renault, Nelson Piquet Jr. But for a long time, the majority thought, it would have been out of luck.

But in the following year, when Piquet got sacked by Renault for scoring no points in the first 10 races of the season. The Brazilian race driver decided to go to the FIA and confess that he was instructed by his team to deliberately crash at a particular turn to manipulate the race.

Because of the nature of the crash, only two cars got into the pit before the pitlane closed. Hence, several drivers queued to refuel and change tyres when they reopened.

Therefore, it led Alonso to lead the race by the time everything settled, and he eventually won it from there. Therefore, Piquet’s confession compelled an investigation by the governing body on whether Renault actually manipulated the race.

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From Piquet’s confession to the conclusion of FIA’s decisions, it took 17 days. In the end, FIA found Renault guilty of interfering and manipulating the race in their favour.

The decision was also influenced by the French team making a statement almost a week before FIA’s council meeting on this issue. They claimed that they wouldn’t challenge the allegations and also sacked Managing director Flavio Briatore and executive director of engineering Pat Symonds.

Therefore, making the job for FIA easy. While, Symonds got banned for five years for coming out and accepting his fault, and also showing regret over his actions. Briatore was banned indefinitely from the FIA events.

On the other hand, FIA found no reason to punish Alonso for his manipulated win in Singapore. Coming to Piquet Jr, he never got to race an F1 car again.

Though he plied his trade in NASCAR and Formula E, in the latter, he got a brief success when he won their inaugural championship. Nevertheless, the whole scenario was viewed as a big blow to the integrity of the sport. But F1 soon moved on from it.

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Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Fernando Alonso Renault Singapore Grand Prix

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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