The 2008 Crashgate – Formula One’s Darkest Moment

On July 20, 2008, the German Grand Prix, the 10th race of the Formula One season, was held at the legendary Hockenheim circuit. The exciting race showcased the mastery of the young Lewis Hamilton, who won the race, and also highlighted the promising rookie Nelson Piquet Jr., son of three-time world champion Nelson Piquet, who finished the race in second.

Piquet Jr.’s first and only podium of his F-One career was more like an act of sheer luck than talent. He started the race in 17th place, and given the poor performance of the Renault cars that year, he had little prospect of scoring points in that race. At lap 35, he was brought to the pits for refuelling and fresh tires, which later on proved to be an incredibly well-timed decision.

Minutes later, Timo Glock crashed his Toyota (pictured above), forcing the safety car out. According to the 2003 rules, drivers were not allowed to proceed to the pits while the safety car was active. After the marshals cleared the debris and the safety car was called in, all the drivers pulled to the pits, leaving Piquet Jr. free to jump to P1. Hamilton, driving a much superior McLaren-Mercedes-Benz, overtook him with eight laps to go, but still, second place was a considerable achievement for a rookie, driving a shabby car.

The 2008 German GP was a welcome relief for a team starving for points. So far, the season had been a rough one for Renault.

Renault

For the 2008 season, Renault unveiled the R28, a promising new car that ultimately fell short of its promises. It just couldn’t keep up with Ferrari and McLaren.

Fernando Alonso, the star driver who clinched two world titles for Renault in a row in 2005 and 2006, was struggling to stay in the midfield. For Nelson Piquet Jr., the situation was even more complicated; he was having a below-average season, plagued by too many mistakes. Besides all the pressure a rookie can face during his debut season, he also had the extra weight of carrying on the family legacy.

A Formula One team works like any other business. It must generate results to keep the sponsors happy. Renault’s principal manager, Flavio Briatore, was in a difficult position: he had to squeeze at least one victory in this season to keep Renault alive.

Briatore was a huge name in Formula One at the time. He was the guy who “discovered” Michael Schumacher and brought him to Benetton, during the time he managed the team from 1991 to 1997.  

Briatore was a ruthless businessman with limited knowledge of F-One technology. He was known for his shady methods to get the job done and had been convicted multiple times of cheating during his career. In 2008, besides overseeing Renault, he also managed five drivers, including Piquet Jr.

Singapore Grand Prix – 2008

The 2008 Singapore GP was the 15th race of the season. It marked the first Formula One race to be held at night. City officials put on a spectacular show, with the Marina Bay Street Circuit beautifully illuminated. The race was intended to be one of the season’s highlights.

Felipe Massa (Ferrari) qualified in pole position, and Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) started the race in second. The two drivers were fighting tooth and nail for the championship. Fernando Alonso qualified in 15th, and Piquet Jr. in 16th.

Massa was on fire that night. After 10 laps, he had built up a solid 3-second lead over Hamilton. On lap 12, Alonso was the first driver to pull into the pits for refueling and a set of soft tires. But on lap 14, Piquet Jr. lost control of his car on turn 17 and crashed into the concrete wall.

The race that was supposed to be smooth sailing for Massa turned into a nightmare.

Turn 17 is a complicated spot. At the time, it didn’t have any access road nearby, and Piquet’s car had to be removed by a big crane.

The safety car was deployed, nullifying the comfortable lead Massa had over Hamilton. According to the rules (the same rules that helped Renault during the 2008 German GP), drivers were not allowed to pull into the pits while the safety car was on the track.

The time the track crew took to clear the debris delayed the other driver’s scheduled pit stops. When the pit lane was finally reopened, chaos broke out as all the drivers rushed in to refuel their cars.

Massa’s pit stop was a complete disaster. The Ferrari crew, in a panic, gave him the green light while the fuel hose was still attached to the car. He ripped it off its frame, spilling fuel everywhere, and knocked a crew member to the ground.

He had to wait at the end of the pit lane to have the hose removed. When he rejoined the race, he was dead last. To add insult to injury, he was penalized for the incident.

Alonso, who had pitted before the safety car was deployed, took the lead, and went on to win the race. Nico Rosberg managed to finish second despite incurring a stop-and-go penalty, and Hamilton completed the podium in third.

The result saw Hamilton extend his lead in the Driver’s standings to 7 points over Massa, who failed to score. McLaren also took over the lead in the Constructors’ Championship by one point from Ferrari.

Mr. Briatore, your reputation precedes you.

The fact that the safety car had saved Renault once again, in the same season, immediately raised a few eyebrows at the paddock. Rob Smedley, the experienced Massa’s race engineer, watched the video of Piquet’s crash a couple of times and noticed that the car spun because the rear wheels lost grip due to aggressive acceleration. It looked like Piquet Jr had dropped the hammer in the middle of the turn. The crash wasn’t an accident; it was deliberate. But for the time being, the result stood. The first Renault victory in almost 2 years.

Massa and Hamilton took their fight for the championship to the last race of the season in Brazil. Massa did what he could, winning the race, but he lost the title to Hamilton. It was the most heartbreaking moment of his career, missing the world championship by one single point. At the podium, he could not hold back the tears, and many fellow Brazilian fans in the stands also broke down and cried.

The crashgate

Right off the bat, the 2009 season seemed to have all the ingredients to make it a memorable one. More teams had the equipment and the talent to fight for the title making the season much more exciting. To everybody’s surprise, the debutant team that year, Brawn GP, started as a serious contender for the championship.

Another surprise was Briatore renewing Piquet Jr.’s contract after an abysmal 2008 season. However, things didn’t improve for the Brazilian driver. After 10 races without scoring points, Piquet Jr. was fired following the Hungarian GP, replaced by the team’s reserve driver, Romain Grosjean. But the biggest surprise of the year was yet to come.

With all the rumors circulating in the paddock and now, following his dismissal from Renault, Piquet Jr. knew his future in F-One looked pretty grim. With nothing left to lose, he went to his father and told him everything that happened during the infamous 2008 Singapore GP.

The Cheating

Until the 2008 Singapore GP,  Flavio Briatore never gave Piquet Jr. a hint whether he would have a chance to stay in the Renault team for the following year. The Brazilian driver figured that, thanks to his poor performance, Briatore would let him go.

If Briatore were a gentleman, we would have said something to Piquet about his intentions, allowing the Brazilian to plan ahead; however, it never happened until just before the 2008 Singapore race.

Piquet Jr. was called for a secret meeting with Briatore and the race engineer Pat Symonds, in an inconspicuous room at the back of the pits. There, Briatore asked if Piquet Jr. was willing to sacrifice his race to help Alonso achieve a better result. Then, it was time for Symonds to present the plan, which was pretty simple: “We will pull Alonso for refueling sooner than planned, on lap 12th. Then all you have to do is crash your car on turn 17, forcing the deployment of the safety car.”

The message at the end of the meeting was that if Piquet Jr. decided not to participate in the cheating, his contract would not be renewed; however, if he chose to be a “team player,” he would continue to drive for Renault in 2009.

With his back against the wall, Piquet decided to play along.

In the eyes of Piquet Senior, Briatore took advantage of an inexperienced driver, willing to keep his job, to bring his evil plan to fruition. Not only is psychology forcing his participation, but it is also deliberately risking his life.

In a desperate attempt to save whatever was left of his son’s dignity, Piquet Sr. convinced him to make the whole episode public. On July 29, 2009, the Piquet family sent a 1,400-word statement addressed to the FIA (Federation Internationale de l’Automobile), revealing all the details about the Briatore/Symonds manipulation of the Singapore GP.

A couple of days later, the most prominent TV media organization in Brazil, Rede Globo, gained access to the content of the statement and made it public. The most reasonable explanation is that the Piquet family secretly gave the document to Rede Globo and allowed them to publish it. The statement sparked an investigation, and on September 04, 2009, the mighty Renault F-One team was charged with conspiracy and was to answer the charge on September 21, 2009.

The big dogs push back

On 11 September, the day after Piquet Jr.’s statement to the FIA was leaked, Renault F1 stated that it intended to take legal action against Piquet Jr. and his father in both French and British courts, stating that “…today the ING Renault F1 Team and its managing director Flavio Briatore personally wish to state they have commenced criminal proceedings against Nelson Piquet Jr and Nelson Piquet Sr in France concerning the making of false allegations and a related attempt to blackmail the team into allowing Mr Piquet Jr to drive for the remainder of the 2009 season”.

In response to the legal action, Piquet Jr. stated “Because I am telling the truth I have nothing to fear, whether from the Renault team or Mr Briatore – and while I am well aware of the power and influence of those being investigated, and the vast resources at their disposal, I will not be bullied again into making a decision I regret”.

On 14 September 2009, Symonds was also reported to have been offered immunity from action if he provided the FIA with details of the alleged conspiracy. Symonds was reported to have told FIA investigators that the initial idea of a crash had come from Piquet Jr.

On 15 September, The Times published extracts of Renault F1 radio conversations transmitted before and after the Singapore Grand Prix between Renault F1 personnel, including Piquet Jr., Alonso, Symonds and Briatore.

The investigation has just confirmed what everyone in the paddock already knew: that the 2008 Singapore GP was rigged. Recognizing the situation was quite complex, Renault shifted its position, and on September 16, the company announced it would not fight the charges, stating that the team’s managing director, Flavio Briatore, and its executive director of engineering, Pat Symonds, had been dismissed.

The Sentences

On September 21, 2009, the WMSC (World Motor Sport Council) held an extraordinary meeting in Paris for the 2008 crashgate hearing. After a 90-minute session, the Renault team was sentenced to a two-year ban from Formula One. Briatore received an indefinite ban from FIA events, while Symonds was ousted for five years. Briatore was also barred from managing drivers, with the FIA stating that super licenses would not be issued or renewed to any driver associated with him.

Alonso was cleared of any wrongdoing; the FIA found no evidence that he or his mechanics were aware of the scheme.

The WMSC came down hard on Briatore because he denied his involvement despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Symonds, in contrast, had confessed, expressing his “eternal regret and shame” for his role in the scheme. In announcing the sanctions, the council stated that Renault F1’s actions were serious enough to merit expulsion from Formula One altogether. However, it opted to impose a suspended sentence because Renault F1 took swift action in forcing Briatore and Symonds to resign. The Daily Mirror described the de facto lifetime ban on Briatore as the harshest sanction ever imposed on an individual in the history of motorsport.

Their bans were subsequently overturned by a French court. However, they both agreed not to work in Formula One or FIA-sanctioned events for a specified time as part of a later settlement reached with the governing body.

Justice was served, or was it?

“There is something fundamentally rotten and wrong at the heart of Formula One. Never in my experience has Formula One been in such a mood of self-destruction.” – Jackie Stewart, former 3 times F-One champion.

After the hearings concluded, it seemed the perpetrators had received their fair punishment, but the scandal was far from over.

In 2023, the FIA’s big boss Bernie Ecclestone, confessed during an interview to F1 Insider that he knew everything about the 2008 crashgate. This is an excerpt of what he said:

“Max Mosley [then FIA president] and I was informed during the 2008 season about what had happened in the race in Singapore. Piquet Jr. had told his father Nelson that he had been asked by the team to deliberately drive into the wall at one point in order to trigger a safety car period and thus help his team-mate Alonso.”

“Piquet Jr was afraid of his contract extension, so he was under a lot of pressure and agreed.“

“We decided not to do anything for the time being. We wanted to protect the sport and protect it from a huge scandal.”

“That’s why I persuaded my former pilot Nelson Piquet to keep calm for the time being.”

“We had enough information in time to investigate the matter. According to the statutes, however, we would probably have had to cancel the race in Singapore under these conditions. That is, for the championship standings, it would never have happened.“

“Then Felipe Massa would have become world champion and not Lewis Hamilton.‘

“At that time there was the rule that a World Championship classification after the FIA award ceremony at the end of the year is untouchable. So Hamilton was presented with the championship trophy and everything was fine.”

Ecclestone felt comfortable coming forward in front of a reporter, 15 years after the scandal, but for one guy, the wound has not yet healed.

Based on this interview, Felipe Massa initiated formal procedures for his lawsuit against the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone in August 2023. He sought damages and recognition as champion after new evidence surfaced. Court proceedings began in late October 2025 in a London court.

According to the golden rules of FIA, a world title cannot be overturned after the award ceremony, so Massa’s quest to become the 2008 world champion was doomed from the start. However, on November 20, 2025, Judge Robert Ray ruled that Massa’s claims for inducement of breach of contract could continue, saying in a summary of his ruling that Massa arguably did not know he could sue until a 2023 interview with Ecclestone was published.
But the judge rejected his case that the FIA breached its duty to him to investigate and dismissed his claim for a declaration, saying the court could not “rewrite the outcome of the 2008 Drivers’ World Championship”.

Massa is also seeking damages compensation of around 64 million pounds ($83.63 million).

But as life goes on, all those involved in the scandal kept, in one way or another, the foot on the floor. Some became legends, while others did not.

Flavio Briatore

The 2008 crashgate was not the first time Briatore was caught cheating. In the 1980s, he was even sentenced to prison in two cases of fraud, but he always found a way to evade punishment. After being banned from Formula One in 2009 by the FIA, a French court overturned the penalties and even granted him €15.000,00 in compensation. Briatore remained under the radar for many years but was not far away from F-One, thanks to his friendship with Fernando Alonso.

In May 2024, Briatore returned to Renault (now competing as the Alpine F1 Team). He was given the title of Executive Advisor for the Formula One Division, with full authority for hiring and firing within the team. The mafia boss is back.

Pat Symonds

The French court also overturned the charges against Symonds, and he came back to Formula One in 2011 as a consultant for Virgin Racing.

Symonds served as Formula One’s Chief Technical Officer from March 2017 until May 2024, playing a key role in the 2022 regulations that led to the return of ground-effect racing cars, aiming to make making racing more exciting. In 2024, Symonds was hired as Executive Engineering Director for the newly formed Cadillac F1 Team.

Lewis Hamilton

There isn’t much to say about Hamilton’s case, at least in the 2008 crashgate controversy; in this instance, he was the lucky guy of the season.

With seven world titles under his belt, Hamilton is widely seen as one of the greatest drivers in Formula One history. At the moment, he’s having a hard time finding his pace at Ferrari, and every so often, people catch him talking about retirement.

Fernando Alonso

The Spanish driver always claimed he didn’t know about the cheating in the 2008 Singapore GP, which I find hard to believe. Nonetheless, he was cleared of any involvement. The scandal didn’t tarnish his brilliant career. Besides being the F-One world champion in 2005 and 2006, he also won the World Endurance Championship in 2018 and 2019. He is also a two-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Currently, he is driving for Aston Martin. Alonso is also considering retiring soon.

Nelson Piquet Jr.

The crashgate made Piquet Jr. “unemployable” in Formula One. In 2010, he began competing in the NASCAR Truck Series and various minor stock car leagues, continuing until 2016. At the same time, he began competing in Formula E, where he won the 2014 and 2015 world championships. Currently, he drives full-time in the Brazilian Stock Car.

Some die-hard fans might argue that Piquet Jr. was an easy target for an unscrupulous manager, and he should also be considered a victim. However, the situation is more complex. He faced a choice; he could have said no and left Renault with dignity, but unfortunately, he chose a different path, and the burden he bears is not a light one.

Felipe Massa

Massa left Formula One in 2017, and the following year, he was hired by the Ventury Formula E team. He had a frustrating experience adapting to Formula E, and he left before his contract ended. In 2022, Massa began competing full-time in Stock Car Brasil. He also occasionally drives in IMSA.

Some people say it was a foolish decision to pursue legal action against FIA and Ecclestone, but the guy had the right to fight against the monumental injustice he faced.

To defend Formula One’s reputation, FIA took the 2008 championship away from Massa, but their effort ultimately failed. Corruption was exposed, yet the culprits managed to return to the sport. Despite this, Massa received no recognition or compensation.

The most shameful episode in Formula One’s history is not finished yet. Felipe Massa will not become the world champion, but he might end up with a substantial amount of money in his pocket. All he has to do is wait.

We will be rooting for him.