'Briatore Should Stay Banned'

Saturday 28th November 2009

Is Flavio Briatore the Italian Del Boy of F1, the lovable rogue with a heart and Sovereign ring of gold? Or is he a wrinkled, over-tanned old playboy who tried to cut one too many chicanes with the FIA?

By early next year we'll get to hear if Flavio Briatore has overturned his lifetime ban from F1. The general feeling from the pitlane - and being the off-season it's a virtual pitlane we're talking about - is that though Briatore deserved to get a tough sanction for his role in Crashgate, a lifetime ban was going too far.

But is it really?

This week Briatore sought to overturn the ban by an application to the French courts Briatore's lawyer attended the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris to outline his client's assertion that the punishment handed down by motor sport's governing body in September was illegal. The 59-year-old Italian is also demanding damages of just over £900,000. (A bit rich, eh).

Briatore was involved in a conspiracy which saw Nelson Piquet Jnr deliberately crash his car at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix in order to help team-mate Fernando Alonso take the win. "My client vigorously and utterly contests having been aware of such a conspiracy," his lawyer told the court. "The FIA has to overturn its decision... because it's an illegal order in terms of its results and the manner in which it was carried out."

And you have to say he has a point. There was so much leaking of evidence before the World Council hearing which banned Briatore that if it were a trial by jury in the UK the case would have been tossed out immediately, as virtually all of the prosecution case was in the public domain.

The case also hung on evidence from a key witness described at the time as "an unidentified Renault whistle-blower". Presumably, because the press laid siege to the FIA headquarters during the hearing in September, the whistle-blower remained unidentified by not attending.

Now if it were a court case in the UK then the only way that a witness could retain anonymity would be if it were a matter of national security or extreme police sensitivity (ie drugs). Even then the witness would likely have to attend court so that they could be cross-examined.

I myself spent six days on the jury for a trial which was halted because a key witness failed to turn up and the case was dismissed - even though the weight of surveillance evidence against the defendants looked pretty damning.

The identity of the Renault whistleblower is key, not only because it could be some makeweight at Enstone who harboured a grudge for not getting on the Briatore Christmas card list, but because it would reveal the depth of knowledge through the team of Piquet's deliberate crash.

If it's a junior member then a lot of people in the team would have known. Or it might have been Alonso. Fernando has not been shy at informing the FIA of team skulduggery in the past, so he's obviously got Max's phone number. There was also no harrumphing reaction from the FIA after Alonso dedicated his subsequent podium to Briatore, maybe mindful that a little smoke was needed.

And come to think of it, Fernando Alonso did attend the Paris hearing...

Anyway, all this speculation is based on the premise that Briatore didn't deserve a lifetime ban, and there's a great case to be made that he got what he deserved. And if Fernando stitched him up, well, good for Fernando.

Briatore knew the world he was moving in and has led a charmed life in terms of FIA decisions since his early days in F1. In 1994 when the FIA discovered illegal traction control software on the Benetton car his team should have been thrown out of the World Championship for that year and given a severe penalty for the subsequent year. He got to keep both 1994 and 1995 titles.

Two years ago, in the wake of McLaren being given the most massive fine in sporting history; $100m for making use of a Ferrari dossier they were given, Renault got no financial penalty for using technical data they had stolen. It was a massive escape for the man whom Heidi Klum's aunt once described as a "worthless, wrinkly old has-been." (Heidi's aunt came to this conclusion after Briatore was spotted kissing jewellery heiress Fiona Swarovski on the day Heidi announced she was pregnant with Briatore's child, prior to them splitting up.)

It's very hard to feel sorry for a multi-millionaire who's been forced to spend more time with his family on his harbour-dwarfing yacht, or on his Kenyan ranch. Singapore has proven to be a desperate gamble where Briatore lost out - and only then because of his ill-judged sacking of Nelson Piquet Junior in 2009. If he fails to get his lifetime ban overturned you won't catch me sobbing into my café latte.

Frank Hopkinson

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