Briatore to be driven out of F1 – Fact
The ING Renault F1 Team will not dispute the recent allegations made by the FIA concerning the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
It also wishes to state that its managing director, Flavio Briatore and its executive director of engineering, Pat Symonds, have left the team.
Before attending the hearing before the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Paris on 21 September 2009, the team will not make any further comment.
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| Flavio Briatore |
09/15/09 Flavio Briatore is likely to be driven out of Formula One within the next 48 hours unless he can convince Renault they can successfully defend the charge of fixing last season’s Singapore Grand Prix.
The FIA have accumulated a huge weight of evidence against Renault’s flamboyant team principal, all of which Sportsmail has seen, ahead of next Monday’s meeting of the World Motor Sport Council.
Briatore has spent the past fortnight trying to convince the team’s parent company that he did not order Nelson Piquet Jnr to crash his car in the floodlit grand prix, an accident which brought out the safety car that allowed his other driver, Fernando Alonso, to win the race.
It remains to be seen whether they have accepted Briatore’s version of events, though they must surely come to a conclusion as early as Wednesday after FIA president Max Mosley set ‘the middle of the week’ as the deadline for the presentation of Renault’s evidence. By Thursday, at the latest, they must decide whether to back him or sack him. MailOnline