Nelson Piquet Jr. and the Crashgate Scandal
Nelson Piquet Jr. was a rising star in motorsports and he had finally realised his dream to drive in Formula 1. He was hired by the Renault F1 team and he raced in the 2008 season to a modest success. Piquet Jr., the son of legendary Brazilian race car driver
Nelson Piquet, then only raced for half of the 2009 season. The reason was that he was one of the major parties involved in what was dubbed, the Crashgate scandal by the media. This incident, which saw the young driver crash his car on purpose after receiving
orders from the Renault team principal, effectively ended his Formula 1 career. This interesting saga of deception and greed is a fascinating story that needs to be explored further.
Nelson Piquet Jr. was born into a racing family. His father was the wealthy, racing car driver Nelson Piquet Sr. and his son started racing at an early age. Piquet Jr.’s racing career started in Brazilian karting where he stayed from 1993 to 2001. After
leaving karting, he moved to Formula Three Sudamericana. He was part of his father’s racing team, Piquet Sports, and showed a lot of promise in the different racing formats.
Two years later, Piquet Jr. moved to the UK and joined the British Formula Three Championship. He finished the Championship in third place in 2003 and he then tested for the Williams Formula 1 team. The next year, the young driver won the Formula 3 Championship
and became the youngest driver ever to do so. In 2005, he drove in the A1 racing series for Team Brazil and then moved to the GP2 Series. In 2006, Piquet came in second place in the GP2 Championship and was all set to move to Formula 1 the next year.
In 2007, Piquet Jr. tested with Renault Racing and was the official reserve driver for the team. The next year was his official debut in Formula 1 for the Renault team alongside current Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso. He did not have too much success in
his debut season and was in danger of losing his place on the team. He narrowly avoided being demoted by some points winning races in the year. His next year was better than his first but also nothing too spectacular. He was dropped by the Renault team in
August of 2009. It was his involvement in Crashgate though, that is the most interesting aspect of this racing car driver’s life so far.
During the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Piquet crashed his car into a wall and he said later that it was an honest mistake. But later on, during an investigation into the crash, it was revealed that the driver had crashed his car deliberately into the wall
to let his teammate Alonso win the race. Amid pressure during an FIA investigation, Piquet revealed that it had been Renault’s team principal and Piquet’s boss, Flavio Briatore, who had ordered the driver to crash. Due to his testimony the FIA gave Piquet
immunity and banned Briatore for life from the sport. The governing body also suspended the team’s engineering executive director, Pat Symonds, for five years. Alonso was cleared of any wrong doing as the FIA felt he was not aware of the scandal.
Both Briatore and Symonds hit back at Piquet and almost started criminal proceedings against him because of they felt he had lied and had damaged the team and their reputations. They claimed that it was actually Piquet who had come up with the idea for the
scandal himself and they were being punished for it. The FIA did not agree and stated that there was overwhelming evidence along with the testimony of a secret Witness X, to show that it was actually Briatore that had given the orders.
This interesting story does not have a happy ending, as it should not. Both Symonds and Briatore quit from the team and the sport and Piquet was fired from the team. The young Brazilian driver now drives in Nascar in the Camping World Truck Series for Red
Horse Racing. He is unemployable in Formula 1 but this story brings up some interesting points.
Firstly, it is odd to think that a driver would come up with a plan such as this on his own; the management of Renault must have been in on it. So what happened at the end of the day was that the whole team cheated, and Renault Racing should have been banned
from Formula 1. The reputation of the team and of its driver and top management was severely tarnished and it may never recover. The Crashgate controversy has become the biggest and most damming scandals in Formula 1’s history and hopefully we will not see
anything this dodgy again in the future.
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