Currently still serving a ban for the Singapore race fixing scandal of 2008, Briatore is still involved behind the scenes in the management of Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber.

Horner and Webber (Red Bull)

“I hope Red Bull is a big enough team that it can guarantee the drivers equal cars, ” he said. “But every time something happens, it happens to Mark.

“I understand that you need a bit of luck but if the same number keeps coming up you wonder what’s under the roulette wheel.

“I don’t doubt Horner’s honesty, but what’s going on sounds strange.”

It was around Monaco last year that Webber inked his 2011 contract with the team, but there is no sign of a renewal for 2012 at the moment.

Adrian Newey has said publicly that he wants Webber to continue with the team, but the situation looks pretty fluid.

“I’m hoping Mark continues next season,” said Newey. “Apart from being a great person, his contribution has been significant. He’s been a pillar of the team from the start. Seb is very perceptive in his feedback in some regards and Mark is very perceptive in other areas. We listen to both and it helps the car.

“So far the gap between Sebastian and Mark [Webber] has been bigger than last year. It’s certainly not a case that Mark has been driving any slower – that’s for sure. Mark’s just taken a bit longer to adapt to the Pirelli tyres but the gap is closing.”

Gazzetta dello Sport describes the visit as a “very great surprise” and speculates as to the motive for the visit. It happened four days ago, after the British Grand Prix, when Ferrari and the FIA were in a dispute about the sequence of events which led to Fernando Alonso’s penalty, which ruined his race.

Following the Singapore crash scandal last season, Briatore is now a free agent, no longer affiliated to the Renault F1 team. He managed to clear his name to a certain extent in the successful appeal against his lifetime ban from the FIA World Council.

However he is still under an order where he is not allowed to work in F1 until 2013. This is mainly on the team management side. He is allowed to duck and dive and he played a big role in bringing the Pirelli deal into F1.

There is talk in the F1 paddock that he is likely to start work with his old friend Bernie Ecclestone in the near future.

His position in the sport now is an interesting one, as he was one of the architects of the Formula One Teams Association and drove them towards the breakaway last summer. Although he is from the other end of the Italian political spectrum from Montezemolo and the two had a stormy relationship for many years, their work together on FOTA brought them closer together. Briatore was in charge of the commercial working group at FOTA and in that capacity was a kind of “shadow Bernie”.

But if Briatore does now work alongside Ecclestone in some capacity which does not violate his sentence, he will be in a poacher turned gamekeeper role in the negotiations over the 2013 Concorde Agreement, one with extensive insights into FOTA’s strategy and it may be that Montezemolo wanted to look him in the eyes and ask him his intentions.

We are about to enter into an interesting period when the teams are shaping up to demand a much higher share of the commercial revenues of the sport in the next Concorde Agreement. There are all sorts of theories about what Montezemolo personally wants to get from the negotiations. Bernie Ecclestone and former FIA president Max Mosley are believed to have long considered FOTA a Trojan horse for Montezemolo.

Given the background here, it is unlikely that Briatore went to Maranello simply to have a coffee.

There are many possible reasons why he might have gone there; he is the boss of a company which still manages Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber. He could have been there to sound out Montezemolo on behalf of Ecclestone.

However the converse is also possible and he could even have been talking about a role in a future F1 without Ecclestone and let’s not forget that Briatore and Montezemolo were all for FOTA starting an alternative racing series last season.

Indeed, the way that this story has emerged and knowing a little of how things work in Italy, there is a message here to someone from Montezemolo and Briatore. Looking at the provenance of the story and the writers involved, it is more likely to have come from Briatore than from Ferrari.

Whatever the political motive, it is unlikely that Briatore has any kind of return to racing in mind, as he said in May, “Seeing the way it is now, I don’t enjoy it anymore, the adrenaline to do it is not there anymore. This is something I don’t miss at all.”

Meanwhile the FIA has reiterated that Briatore is still subject to the sanction banning him from managing drivers, which puts Red Bull’s Mark Webber in a tricky position.

Photo: Darren Heath

In the Telegraph he added, “Remember, the court did not find that he was not guilty. They just didn’t like the procedure we used. But it’s a very preliminary judgement. I think the FIA should appeal the judgement because I think it is seriously flawed in a number of areas.

“Aspects of it are just extraordinary. (Pat) Symonds actually admitted in writing that he was guilty and yet they found in his favour. But that’s only because they are not looking at the substance, they are just looking at the procedure.”

Mosley also dislike the French courts’ assertion that he had a conflict of interests and had pursued a vendetta against Briatore. He said that, “This was all invented to distract attention from the fact he committed the worst example of cheating in the history of sport.”

Mosley’s intervention and the tone of it are very interesting. He is no longer the FIA president – Jean Todt is – and yet he is speaking as if he still were. He appears to be speaking on behalf of the FIA when he talks about the points of principle which are very important to him. But his main motivation for speaking out is the personal criticism, which both Briatore and the court have made of him.

Todt had Mosley’s full support in his candidacy, but he also made it clear that in office he will be his own man. He knew that Mosley would do this interview, sanctioned it even, but it has created a confusion. Who is running the show? There is a risk so early in Todt’s presidency that this episode could be construed as confirming many people’s fears; that Mosley is driving the FIA from the back seat. Mosley still talks of a “handover period” in the presidency and clearly he feels that this is ongoing.

The FIA seem quite calm about this today. Mosley felt he had to intervene, whereas Todt has kept in the background, communicating only by means of an official FIA statement on the day of the verdict. This is likely to be the tone of his presidency and it is also unlikely that Mosley will intervene again in this way, on what appears to be an FIA remit, unless there is some personal angle specific to him. His ongoing role is as a member of the FIA Senate, nothing more.

The FIA has three options now in dealing with Briatore; appeal against the verdict, reconvene the world council or take the case to the new disciplinary court which Todt is planning to introduce. I can’t see the need to appeal, as they can achieve what they want through internal changes without dragging the case on in public.

This verdict, which was a shock to the FIA, will force them to make some changes so that they have some authority over third parties. They can change the statutes so that the FIA can ban non licence holders, they can introduce licences for key men, as I suggested in a post the other day. All options are open and they may well pursue a combination of them.

In the mean time, the FIA confirmed that Briatore is still barred from managing drivers. the Italian said to Gazzetta dello Sport yesterday that he still had his management business. This was not part of the court’s verdict and as far as the FIA are concerned, the sanction handed down in September stands and any Briatore managed driver applying for a superlicence will be turned down. This affects Mark Webber, but not Heikki Kovalainen, who has left the Briatore stable.

Drivers normally apply for their superlicences around the start of February.

He spoke about his feelings on former FIA president Max Mosley’s role in his ban and he said point blank that he was not involved in the crash fixing scandal which rocked the sport last season.

In a telephone interview on Italian TV station RAI, he spoke more openly about Max Mosley than he has so far elsewhere,

“Will I come back to F1? At the moment I’m only interested in Formula Bambino (his first child, a boy, is due in three months),” he said.

“I’m much more tranquil now, the harm that the decision of the FIA did to me was great, the harm Mosley did very great indeed.”

Briatore added that he has no “thoughts of a vendetta” against Mosley, but said, “Now Mosley is reaping what he sowed. The decision (of the Paris court) has given me back my freedom and my dignity, things which Mosley took away from me in a vile way. Let’s enjoy this moment.”

He also appeared this morning on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, where he was pressed to own up whether he was involved in the Singapore crash plot or not,

“I am not involved at all, if you take the FIA investigation. That’s all I’m allowed to say at this moment, ” he said, on two occasions.

“I have no desire to get back into Formula 1, I’m happy to have my dignity back. The last six months have been a very difficult period for me.”

The FIA still has the opportunity to appeal the court’s decision and is weighing up its options.

Darren Heath

The subsequent FIA hearing into the affair ended with Briatore being banned from motor sport for life and Symonds for five years. But Briatore felt that the case was not handled correctly by the FIA, then under the control of Max Mosley and rather than appeal through FIA channels, as his friend Bernie Ecclestone urged him to do, he took his case to the Tribune de Grande Instance in Paris. Briatore said his right to a fair defence to the charges was flouted.

Although Briatore has won big, he has not been awarded the damages he was hoping for. He was seeking €1 million in damages from the FIA but the judge has awarded him €15,000 and Symonds €5,000.

Although the verdict is made public, under French law the reasons are kept private, but more details may emerge later if Briatore’s lawyer speaks to the media.

Briatore is likely to return to F1 immediately through his driver management business which looks after Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Lotus F1′s Heikki Kovalainen. The question is whether Briatore will be satisfied with that or whether he might move to take control of another team. With the cost control agreement, for which he fought so hard, now in place it is possible for a well run team to be profitable and Briatore has always been good at finding sponsors.

Although the ban has been lifted, the question of his guilt over the crash fixing allegations remains. The court said that the sanction was lifted. If he is neverthless guilty what will the sanction be?

Unlike Symonds, who admitted guilt, Briatore always denied the allegations and there is only the word of Piquet and Witness X to implicate Briatore. Although an internal Renault investigation is thought to have concluded that Briatore was responsible and he and Symonds left the team before the FIA hearing, it will be interesting to see how the FIA perceives his status now. The lifting of the ban will help him maintain his director’s role at his football team QPR.

A few hours before the verdict was announced, Renault took the step of announcing that 36 year old Frenchman Eric Boullier has taken over Briatore’s old role as Renault team principal.

Boullier is rising star of French motorsport management. He has worked at DAMS GP2 team and was the boss of the French team in A1 GP. He moved to Gravity Sports Management last year, which is linked with tech investor Gerard Lopez, who acquired a controlling interest in the UK based team at Christmas.

Boullier revealed that the budget is fixed for 2010 and that the second driver would have to be someone “able to score points and challenge Robert Kubica.”

Kubica’s manager Daniele Morelli revealed yesterday that his concerns about the new owners of the team had been answered and confirmed that his driver would stay with Renault despite the change of ownership.
“We are going in the right direction,” said Morelli. “There were no doubts, really, but it was very important we understood who were in the key roles in the team and of course also the budget – it is fundamental you have that for the updates to the car.”

The second Renault seat is now probably the most competitive seat still open for the 2010 season. Gravity has some drivers under contract but they are probably all too inexperienced at this stage, with the possible exception of GP2 driver Jerome D’Ambrosio, who was ninth in last season’s GP2 series with no wins. Bertrand Baguette, the Belgian driver who tested for Renault at the Young Guns test in November and who won last year’s World Series by Renault (as Kubica did) remains an outside chance.

BBC revealed before Christmas that Lopez had introduced Boullier to the staff and he has now been at work for a few weeks. “When I started in the job it quickly became clear that the staff’s morale had been affected by the end of the 2009 season and that the last few weeks had been quite challenging, ” said Boullier. “However, the team is now very motivated thanks to the new philosophy that the Renault F1 Team wants to implement.

“I will concentrate solely on the sporting and performance aspects. Bob Bell will oversee the Design Office, Production and the technical development of the car.”

Briatore: Not finished with F1 yet (Darren Heath)

Briatore’s case was heard by the Tribunal de Grand Instance. His lawyer argued that the FIA World Motor Sport Council was both the investigating and judging body and based much of his case on the statement by Abu Dhabi WMSC member Mohammed Bin Sulayem that the decision was made before the WMSC hearing took place.

“In 2009 there were so many problems in F1 that it was hard not to imagine a settling of scores,” said the lawyer, Philippe Ouakrat, referring to Briatore’s prominent role in the FOTA breakaway threat and calls for a change of governance at the FIA. The lawyer said that the evidence against Briatore was not conclusive spoke about the crucial role of the mysterious Witness X, believed to be one of the senior Renault engineers, in condemning Briatore. Witness X was not present in court and so could not be cross examined.

As for Renault’s own internal investigation, on the strength of which both Briatore and Symonds were dismissed, Ouakrat referred to a series of letters between the FIA and Renault in which he alleges that the FIA steered Renault into agreeing to Briatore’s involvement under pressure.

Briatore denies strenuously that he was involved in the Singapore crash plot and claims that this is a settling of scores by former FIA president Max Mosley. Since the case was heard the FIA has a new president in Jean Todt and it will be interesting to see how the FIA plays this one, given that a lot of water has passed under the bridge since the WMSC reached its decision.

For a while he and Bernie Ecclestone fell out over the matter, Briatore unhappy at the lack of support from his old friend, but things seem to be well and truly patched up now. I’m reliably informed that the pair were out together this weekend enjoying a Friday night on the town in London, dining at Cipriani restaurant in Mayfair. Ecclestone advised him not to go the legal route but to use the FIA appeal court route.

Symonds position is different from Briatore’s; he wrote a letter to the WMSC admitting his guilt, albeit saying that it was the idea of Nelson Piquet Jr at the outset and expressing his regret at ruining his reputation.

In response to Briatore’s case, the FIA lawyer said that Briatore’s right of defence had not been violated as Renault had been the defendant, not the team boss. He said that the appeal court route was open to them if they wanted to prove that they were not involved. He said that it had been an “administrative decision” by a sporting body, not a disciplinary matter.

The judge will take a month and a half to consider all of this and will publish his decision on 5 January.

Briatore is anxious to clear his name. Should he be cleared, what would his next course of action be? Renault has already said that it wants to move on, to re-establish the Renault brand in F1, which had got lost beneath Briatore’s brand. But at the same time Renault president Carlos Ghosn has been sounding a negative tone on the sport lately. A decision on its involvement is due at the end of the year. After all that has happened and the damage caused, would he sell the team to Briatore to ‘do a Brawn’ and let the team race as an independent? Surely not. Renault is apparently committed to building and supplying engines nest season, which is a relief to Red Bull.

If Briatore can clear his name this is not the moment for a man like him to walk away from F1. There is money to be made, with the prospect of teams being able to operate at a profit due to reduced costs and increased revenues. Briatore has the road map for F1 and would see the next five years as a great opportunity.

Certainly the team is a more saleable set up than Toyota, which is offering a lease deal on its facilities to a Serbian group and a sale of Renault’s Enstone operation would avoid the difficulties of the company extricating itself from its obligations under the Concorde Agreement.

Renault did not contest the charges of race fixing and is living with the collateral damage to its brand image from that admission of guilt. The difficulty of finding sponsors as a result and the ongoing difficulties in the world car market may drive them out of the sport. Also Renault’s strategy seems to be a strong move into electric vehicles and sustainable transport and F1 is not particularly well aligned with that.

Meanwhile the FIA has had some success in court already this week, winning the case brought by N Technology into the way that the new teams were selected.

This extraordinary season of F1 still clearly has plenty of twists and turns in store before it comes to an end, with the FIA presidential election later this week, Max Mosley stepping down as president soon after and plenty of developments to come on the driver market and among the new teams.

Briatore is seeking to overturn the ban, by proving that the way in which he was treated by the FIA World Motor Sport Council was wrong. With the ban in place, Briatore is forced to drop his involvement in GP2 and GP3 as well as his driver management business. He also faces being ruled out as a director of Queens Park Rangers football club because the football authorities have a clause which prevents anyone from holding a significant stake in a club when serving a ban from another sport’s governing body. Even if he succeeds and the ban is reduced the football problem will still be there. Only a complete overturn of the ban would solve that problem.

Briatore issued a statement yesterday in which he was quite clear about what he sees as the real reason the Singapore crash hearing went the way it did; FIA president Max Mosley’s desire to be rid of him,

“In this case, the FIA has been used as a tool to exact vengeance on behalf of one man,” said his statement. “This decision is a legal absurdity and I have every confidence that the French courts will resolve the matter justly and impartially.”

Briatore’s lawyers believe that abuses of the FIA’s powers took place as well. He claims that a lifetime ban is ‘illegal”. He also says that the fundamental rights of the defence were breached because of a delay in the issue of the summons, a failure to state the charges in advance and a lack of access provided to prosecution document and to the key witness.

Briatore also plans to prove that “a lack of impartiality of the body passing judgement, the secret negotiation of the decision before the hearing and the granting of selective immunities,” meant that justice could not be done.

The timing of the law suit is of course, fascinating. Later this week the FIA will hold a secret ballot to elect a new president. We have already heard quite a bit from Mosley and his preferred candidate Jean Todt about the perceived threat to the FIA’s existence from the behaviour of the other candidate Ari Vatanen and now this attack is sure to spark more of that kind of thinking. On top of that, the Mail on Sunday has broken a story about threats being made against a club in Uganda which is supporting Vatanen.

Vatanen has written today to the presidents of the clubs around the world, who will vote on Friday, saying that if he elected he will “urgently introduce an
FIA Ethics Code to cover all senior officials, both elected and employees. Such codes of behaviour are the norm in the modern world of public life and business, where the need for ethical standards and transparent work practices are the key to public confidence. This should be no different in a global organisation of the FIA’s scale and scope.”

The scene is set for a very intense week in the run up to the election.

Returning to Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone has already said that he felt Briatore’s punishment was excessive. He feels that three years ban would be more appropriate. Briatore would be 62 by the time he could come back. Yesterday Ecclestone said “At the end of the day, the problem isn’t that Flavio is against the FIA, but against Max.”

Asked by the Gazzetta dello Sport whether he too had wanted Briatore out of the way because of his efforts on behalf of FOTA to organise a breakaway series in the summer, Ecclestone said, ” No. I knew from experience that the teams would never have been able to get themselves together to organise themselves into a business like F1.”

Ecclestone maintains that Briatore’s mistake was “first in the way he treated Nelsinho (Piquet) and then for the question of Singapore,” for which he still holds him responsible.

(Photo Darren Heath)

Briatore’s other great sporting passion is football. Since February 2008 he has been a DIrector and major shareholder of Queens Park Rangers, along with Bernie Ecclestone and minority shareholder Lakshmi Mittal. Briatore is also chairman of QPR Holdings, the holding company of the club.

But according to Football League rules an individual cannot be a director or hold a majority interest in a club if they are banned from another sport’s governing body.

The BBC quotes Football League chairman Lord Mawhinney as saying, “We have a board meeting and have at least a couple of fit-and-proper person issues which we will address.

“I would like to come out of the board meeting with settled policies in general terms which we can apply to future cases that need to be addressed.”

Briatore has clearly brought as much colour and controversy to the football world as he has to F1. Earlier this year, after yet another manager was ousted, Briatore was forced to deny that he interfered in picking the team,
“I never once told Paulo (Sousa), or any other coach for that matter, which team to pick,” said Briatore.

Ecclestone is a member of the WMSC himself and has a personal interest because Briatore is a close friend and business associate with whom Ecclestone spends his evenings at race meetings. Now, it seems their relationship is broken. Speaking at an LG press conference in Singapore today he said,
“He’s not talking to me, I don’t know. He thinks I should have defended him, which I couldn’t.”

But beyond that, reading between the lines of what he is saying here, it seems to me that he is laying the ground for an appeal by Briatore, from which he feels the Italian might emerge with a lesser sentence.

It’s just a hunch, but the wording looks quite significant to me. Max Mosley suggested the same thing yesterday, but Bernie’s message looks like some kind of signal. It’s curious. I’m hearing from my French colleagues that Briatore, having initially indicated that he wishes to pursue this in a civil court, is now coming around to the idea of an FIA appeal, having previously not wanted to have anything to do with the FIA.

“If you look at it sensibly, the people at the top had not the slightest idea,” said Ecclestone. “The people in the Renault F1 team had not the slightest idea.

“There were three people who knew what was going on and that is it. No one else was involved. Those people have been dealt with – in my view quite harshly in [regards to] Flavio. I don’t think it was necessary, but I was on the commission so I am probably just as guilty as anyone else. On reflection it wasn’t necessary. It was too much. Definitely too much.

“He should ask to be heard by the (FIA) court of appeal. If he goes to a civil court I don’t think he would win. Because the FIA would have to defend and somebody will say that he sent a young guy out to what could have been to his death. So it wouldn’t go down too well.”

Mind you, even if his sentence was cut to the level of Symonds’ that would still be a ban of five years and it seems unlikely that at the age of 64 Briatore would want to come back to racing.

There are suggestions that Briatore has been thinking of starting his own rival series to Formula 1, or trying to persuade the FOTA teams to follow though with the breakaway threat. But it’s hard to imagine.

Renault wants to stay in F1 (Photo D Heath)

“Renault F1 and its parent company have given serious consideration as to whether it should remain in the sport following the prejudice caused to its corporate image by the conspiracy, in addition to the existing background of financial pressures that have caused car manufacturers to withdraw.

“But it has concluded that it would like to remain in Formula 1 and continue to make an important contribution to the sport.”

This is a positive thing for the sport, Renault has played an important part in F1 for many years. In addition to the works team they provide engines to Red Bull and next year Williams are hoping to use their engines, in conjunction with their own KERS system.

In fact another piece of evidence published yesterday is a letter of support of Renault from Williams to the FIA, sent on September 14th. Williams argued that Renault is not an anti sporting company and that any punishment which put their participation at risk would be a punishment against other teams and fans as well.

There have been suggestions, especially in the Italian media, that the verdict in this case was pre-negotiated between the FIA and Renault. It’s been interesting to see how the different nations’ media have interpreted the verdict, with the British press quite dismissive of Briatore and upset by the leniency of the Renault sentence, while the Italian media is sticking up for one of the country’s most successful F1 managers.

The question now is what Briatore’s next move will be. Again in the Italian media there is talk of him preparing a lawsuit against the FIA for restraint of trade, with him not having been given the chance to defend himself in court on Monday, although the FIA maintains he was. They say he wrote them a letter saying he wouldn’t come because he wasn’t the licence holder, Renault was.

He has the right of appeal but according to La Gazzetta dello Sport, he has no intention of submitting himself to an FIA court, he wants to take his case to the high court in Paris.

Spain’s FIA representative Carlos Gracia said yesterday that he thought this option would be open to him, “Briatore’s penalty seems to me excessive,” Gracia said. “There was no clear proof against him and he was not able to defend himself, either. Morever, I wouldn’t rule out him going to ordinary justice because he has been left without his means of earning a living.”

Renault’s lawyer said this week that the company was withdrawing its blackmail complaint against the Piquets, but understood that Briatore would not,

“I’m told that French counsel wrote to the public prosecutor last Friday seeking to withdraw the criminal complaint on behalf of Renault F1. It’s my understanding that the second complainant, Briatore, has not withdrawn the complaint, but it is our intention to draw the line and to do everything we can to put this sad history behind us, ” he said.

Meanwhile the question remains of whose idea the crash plot was. Pat Symonds in his letter to the court maintained the line that it was Piquet’s idea. But close examination of the passage in the court report suggests that the FIA believes that the idea must have been Symonds’ because it says the subject was raised with Witness X present on Saturday after qualifying, whereas in Piquet’s testimony the first time he mentions the subject was on Sunday, before the race.

With the F1 circus now in Singapore, the hope is that this story will not dominate the weekend and that the racing can, but how ironic that this race should be the next one up after the saga involving last year’s event.