The dream goes like this: Young Mr. Piquet shows up at Singapore airport in 2012… Maybe it’s a stopover to Tokyo, maybe it’s another race of some kind, maybe there’s a chess tournament at Raffles Hotel… Whatever. As he steps off the plane, he’s arrested and thrown into a slow, quiet jail for threatening the safety of Singapore’s race fans.

Would anyone have a problem with that?

Why do people hate him so? Because he’s not a ‘real’ car guy, like Ron Dennis?

Go read Keith’s message stack (it was about 3 pages as of last night)… Dozens of people are saying “Alonso knew! Of course he knew! HE KNEW!”

And someone will say “Why do you think so?”

And they’ll say “Because he WOULD HAVE known!”
__________

It’s just not believable that so many people would have taken so many crazys**t risks just so Alonso (Alonso!) could possibly perhaps maybe have a chance to win some points forty-five laps later.

I think this is Mosley’s goodbye gift for Bernie. When Briatore made noises earlier this year about running a competitive series, I was ready to believe he’d do it, and do it well. Bernie probably didn’t like that.

This generation of leaders did a lot for the series. They absolutely transformed it into a safe, accessible, heavily-funded, brilliantly entertaining spectacle. But it’s like a family reunion of seniors who’ve never forgiven their little sisters for stealing their pudding at some childhood dinner. When these guys are all offstage, that will be OK too.

(Brawn excepted… We’d miss him a LOT.)

Hel-lo, Mister Horner! We’ve got the carpeting ready for your new office….

I think there have been a lot of different interpretations of that comment from Flavio.

Firstly, I think Flavio is quite a good liar — his exaggerated behaviours makes it easy to hide everything under a layer of bombast.

I have heard a few people suggest that Flavio’s comment revealed that he was not interested in the safety of his driver.

Another point to consider is the rumour that Piquet was actually supposed to crash into the wall on his right, so actually had a far bigger crash than he was meant to (presumably he wasn’t supposed to do so much damage to his car!). The fact that Piquet was unable to even crash his car correctly may have been the reason for Briatore’s comment.

Flavio:
F***ing hell…my every f***ing disgrace, f***ing, he’s not a
driver.

Nelsonho always looked so miserable. Listen, even if I was that lousy a driver, I’d have tried to have a smile or two during what was likely to be a short career in a tremendously rewarding sports league. Over here in the States, it’s said that our ‘football’ players average career is four years… Most of those guys don’t save the money like they should, but you get the sense that at least they’re enjoying it while they can. They smile… They tell stupid jokes to fans. They swagger in front of women.

(And yes, there was a rumor about that somewhere last week, I’ll have to look it up.)

Nelsinho never did any of that! Maybe fear of flaming death was why he didn’t. (Or perhaps this is all true, and that fear wasn’t as powerful as we might have thought.)

In any case, mollycoddled is a good word. Now, I admire fathers who can assist their sons, and assist them grandly. But we always had the sense that this Piquet’s heart was in other places. To imagine him pulling a stunt like this on behalf of *anyone* in the sport, let alone a talented senior player like a Alonso, is just weird… Family weird, spiritual weird, childish weird.

Teams come and go, so maybe this isn’t a big deal for F1. (People don’t talk much about Ron Dennis anymore, though I think they should.) But as a story of human interest, I’m looking forward to the next chapters.

I think your reading is right, although I think Pat Symonds’s statement more or less amounted to a confession — at least a confession that the plan existed. I am still not sure about Briatore’s involvement. We will have to see what happens at the WMSC meeting, which is still very important.

I wonder if Flav would still be up for managing an F1 team. The last time he was ousted from Benetton, he took a bit of a back seat, managing Supertec. He also has his involvement with Queens Park Rangers FC, though given that he works there with Bernie who knows what the future holds there.

I don’t buy this stuff about Nelsinho being too young. He is 24 for crying out loud. Vettel is 22 and challenging for the Championship. Alguersuari is 19; Buemi is 20. Piquet was an adult. But he was so insecure. This is where I think Briatore was on the button. Everywhere else he has driven, it has been for his daddy’s team, where he was mollycoddled and wrapped in cotton wool. Exposed to the harsh world of F1, he couldn’t hack it. Simple as. A stronger driver wouldn’t have considered deliberately crashing a car in my view.

Your point about Webber’s comments is interesting. I hadn’t thought about it that way before. It is no secret that Briatore has a “unique” management style. Sébastien Bourdais even sacrificed his F1 career back in the day because he did not want to be managed by Briatore.