This year has been a tumultuous one for F1 – with more stories, scoops and changes than just about any other sport. It’s certainly living up to being the ‘pinnacle’ of motorsport, though some would argue for all the wrong reasons.
Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have both quit the Renault F1 team, following revelations regarding the actions of Nelson Piquet Jr at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix.
For those of you who’ve been living under a rock and missed the story – it basically goes like this. Piquet crashed, resulting in the safety car coming out. This lead to to his teammate, Fernando Alonso, taking the lead and controlling the rest of the race.
A number of figures have stepped out of the woodwork to talk about the industry – some saying that it’s a diabolical situation and if true, is completely disgusting. After all, we’re talking about a driver that could have been killed. Then again, Piquet has to shoulder some of the blame. He could have refused and reported the team for (quite literally) putting his life on the line.
Others (I won’t name them) have said whilst in the limelight that this sort of thing goes on all the time and that people shouldn’t be surprised. Well, doping goes on in olympic sports – but it doesn’t make it any less shocking or upsetting to hear when it’s happened now does it?
Ultimately, it was a sad day for the sport when this whole thing came out, and even worse when it was revealed that there may be a kernel of truth in the whole thing. I think they should just give Button his title now, call this year off and start afresh in 2010.
On a more positive note, I heard that Alain Prost is in the runnings for the Renault F1 top job. They should give it to the man – he’s grounded and as far away from a bs talker as you can get. Oh, and he also won 4 championships in his F1 career…
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