The FIA have summoned the Renault team to an extraordinary meeting of the World Motorsport Council to answer charges that they manipulated the result of the 2008 Singapore GP. With all the furore of NelsinhoGate about to break out, let's go back to the Singapore Grand Prix of 2008 and see what PF1 made of it at the time. Here's Frank Hopkinson's race conclusion:
"It was a fantastic race, producing an F1 lottery of a result. Though McLaren and Ferrari had been dealt the same cards by the surprise Safety Car, it was Ferrari's pit-stop system that had cost them Massa's result and Raikkonen's error that had cost them any points at all.
Alonso will be very relieved that the stewards weren't paying too much attention on the opening lap and Rosberg will be glad that the stewards acted so slowly to impose his Stop/Go penalty. But just as it was bad news for F1 to reverse the Belgian result, it would be bad news to have any thing detract from what has probably been the best race debut in F1 history."FH
The general verdict at the time had been that Piquet's accident had been perfect timing for Alonso, but nobody thought for a second that they would have orchestrated it. Also, there had been a second Safety Car later in the race when Adrian Sutil had crashed which had also shuffled the order.
What was more pertinent, and within the stewards' control, was that they had failed to penalise Alonso for cutting a chicane earlier on in the race. The infamous case at the Belgian GP a few weeks earlier, where Lewis Hamilton had been closed out by Kimi Raikkonen, skipped the final chicane and then rejoined the circuit at speed to overtake Raikkonen into La Source had brought him a 25 second penalty.
The FIA stewards ruling had been quite clearly that you cannot leave the circuit and gain an advantage by it. This had been picked up early in Frank's report.
"...Kovalainen fought back and took Glock going into Turn 7, before Timo claimed it back a corner later. Further back three cars cut the opening chicane - Heidfeld, Alonso and Piquet. Significantly, Alonso made up places by not bothering to battle it out for position and gaining significant momentum on Jenson Button. Fernando tried to take the corner at an impossibly tight angle and seeing the queue of cars ahead of him decided not to bother. All three incidents went without investigation."
And then to the incident in question:
"At the end of Lap 12 Fernando Alonso came in for his first pit-stop, having failed to make any rapid progress in the opening stint. It looked like his race was well and truly run. That all changed when his team-mate Nelson Piquet Junior lost control of his car at the exit of Turn 17 on lap 15."
No hint of suspicions in the GP report, even though I vaguely remember James Allen muttering jokingly about Piquet, something on the lines of 'he couldn't have done that better if he tried.'
In Winners and Losers Alonso's performance was described as:
Fernando Alonso, Renault, 1stIt just goes to show that good things come to those who can do a Basil Fawlty impression. Alonso was the big beneficiary of the Safety Car lottery, but what was quite clear was that he had a car that, on performance, deserved to come first. This was no Nelson Piquet at Hockenheim lucking into a place he didn't look capable of achieving on his own. A fuel line failure in qualifying had left Alonso mimicking the moment when Basil's Austin 1100 broke down. Fernando chose not to thrash his Renault with a branch, but if he could have found one he would have.
He was also slightly fortunate to escape a penalty on the opening lap. Replays showed that he gained a speed advantage by cutting the chicane and not funnelling through the turn with Jenson Button. In the normal scope of things, most people wouldn't have bothered replaying the tape from Turn 1, but post-Spa - and after everyone in the pitlane tutted their disapproval that Lewis could do such a dastardly thing as gain a speed advantage - all eyes are on chicane cutting now. As it is, the variable logic that drives F1 decision-making prevailed and the move was passed over. On the balance of things Alonso didn't gain all that much, but it would have been good PR for the stewards to look at it, if only to exonerate him and show the world they were awake. The last thing we need after another great race is another decision reversed. Spa was bad enough, but in the wake of all the self-congratulation over Singapore F1 doesn't want the wrong kind of headline.
The reason that nobody thought that Nelson could have spun deliberately were many and various:a) Nelsinho was often having moments like that, so yet another on a street circuit didn't surprise anyone.b) Sutil, Massa and Raikkonen all lost control of their cars on the tight street confines of Singapore.c) Alonso wasn't a contender for the World Championship.d) It was very early in the race and - as we saw with a subsequent Safety Car for Sutil - there could have been a few more that might have reversed Alonso's earlier 'good fortune'.e) Nelsinho had to spin his car in a place that was guaranteed to bring out a Safety Car and not just allow it to be recovered under waved yellows. So he had to make it big accident, but not so big that he hurt himself.f) Apart from Michael Schumacher in Monaco qualifying (and even then not very convincingly) nobody had ever done it before and certainly not to benefit a team-mate.
Now that the charge has been made of course there will be a lot of people who suddenly develop 20/20 hindsight and 'knew something was suspicious at the time', but if that's the case, why didn't they speak out a year ago?
What will be interesting in the weeks ahead is to find out exactly who supplied the evidence to the FIA? And are they neutral witnesses, keen to see fair play prevail or do they have an axe to grind? Given that the governing body have already tried to penalise the Renault team disproportionately for a loose wheel at the Hungarian GP - something that has happened countless times before with no action taken - it would appear that Flavio Briatore's outfit are 'this year's McLaren'.
Andrew Davies
No comments:
Post a Comment