Nelson Piquet Jnr, Renault., Singapore, 2008

Alonso won’t answer questions on Crashgate

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: 10 years on from his controversial victory in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso is unwilling to accept questions about ‘Crashgate’.

What they say

Alonso cut off a journalist who brought up the subject of Crashgate. Here’s his response when asked: “Just going to back to ’08, obviously a very famous race, what all these years on…”

I think we are in 2018 now and I will not answer anything about the past. Not even last year.

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Comment of the day

The 2019 Ferrari drivers are giving us mixed messages:

I thought this was somewhat funny based on this article and the previous one.

Leclerc: “He has always been very nice to me, Every time I was going a good job in the simulator, once I was in Formula Two, he would always send a text and that was great. And it will be even better to work with him, for sure I have a lot to learn from him.”

Vettel: “I don’t have his number.”
Renzo (@Renzo88)

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Quotes: Dieter Rencken

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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54 comments on “Alonso won’t answer questions on Crashgate”

  1. I’d love to see Giovinazzi replacing Ericsso.! The Raikonnen – Giovinazzi pairing would be nice to watch! Some exciting and interesting pairings in sight for 2019.

    1. Would also help thoroughly evaluate Giovanazzi @spoutnik.

    2. Completely agree. Although Erricson has done a decent job this year, I just don’t think that’s enough to give him a 5th season in F1. He’s been poor to mediocre for 5 years in a row…. it’s gotten him this far… but I don’t think it’s ever going to get any better for him.

      Gif looks like a promising young talent, and it adds a little excitement to see him paired up against a veteran like Raikonnen. Also would be great to have an Italian on the grid again in a half Italian team.

  2. I don’t blame Alonso for shutting down that question. If it wasn’t dealt with properly in 2008 by the FIA, it’s up to the FIA to comment. Moving on……

    1. Unfortunately there is a lot of Sensation journalism in Formula 1.

      “Oh what a headline I could get, if I poked Alonso”

      Even the headline here is leaning towards Alonso cheated into his WDC.

      1. Unfortunately there is a lot of Sensation journalism in Formula 1

        Agreed.

        Even the headline here is leaning towards Alonso cheated into his WDC.

        Wait, what? The headline here is literally: “Alonso won’t answer questions on Crashgate”

        I don’t see any hint of cheating, or links to the WDC. And you do realize that Alonso didn’t win the 2008 WDC, when Crashgate occurred, right? So there’s no way a headline talking about Crashgate can possibly be hinting that Alonso won/cheated his way into the WDC.

        1. There’s the mass damper ofc, not exactly a legal car, but that happened in 2005 and first part of 2006, however let me just say he looks really bad avoiding to answer questions about crashgate, seems like an admission of guilt.

  3. Why would Alonso answer questions about Singapore 08? He doesn’t know anything about it, right?

    1. It’s very hard to believe that he didn’t know anything.

      1. Jonathan Parkin
        14th September 2018, 7:54

        It’s not for me. If Flavio was involved he wouldn’t want any mud to stick to Fernando. And the best way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to not tell him anything.

        1. How do you know any of that?

          1. Jonathan Parkin
            14th September 2018, 9:33

            Flavio is Fernando’s manager. I would assume Flavio would think, ‘If I go down Fernando will too.’ So the best thing would be to not tell him.

    2. I see what you did…

      But given that these are the few last chances to get him to talk about something he was part of (in the sense that he was in the team and interacted with those who’ve so far been punished for the conspiracy) and has so far refused to speak about, one can’t blame the journalist for trying.

      It’s like, “you’re leaving the house and we wish you the best, but son, you’re leaving a mess in your room, and we kind of need an explanation”.

    3. Whether he knows anything or not (and I don’t see why he would have happily pitted at that point if he did not), it makes absolutely no sense for him to be open to questions about that race. He can only lose, so why engage? On the other hand, his refusal to discuss those events is in no way an admission of guilt. My own guess is that he knew something was going on but not what the specific plan was and that this was intentional so that he would have “plausible deniability” (though some might question the plausibility of it). I can definitely imagine him saying, “I don’t want to know anything about anything. Just tell me when to pit.”

  4. COTD, LOL!

    They’ll talk after.

  5. If F2 and IndyCar raced on the same circuit Wich would be quicker ??

    1. @joac21
      F2 is between 9 (Monaco) and 16 (Spa) seconds slower than F1, so that’s a lot of space for IndyCar to slot into.
      Monaco might be the toughest circuit for them, as agility is their greatest weakness, but on the more ‘open’ tracks, their superior power should easily give them the upper hand.

      But I have another question:
      Is IndyCar fast enough to place at least one car within 107% of the fastest F1 car? Again, this would probably change from track to track, and I wouldn’t be surprised if COTA has exactly the right mix of corners and straights to create a gap of exactly 7%.

      1. Fire up iRacing or rFactor 2 and see what you can do at the same track with seasonally equivalent F1 & IndyCar?

        1. Rent a few tracks as well as top F1 and IndyCar drivers and machinery and let them establish the facts?

      2. Well, it would be very interesting if an Indycar hit 107% given the drastic difference in cost of the cars and the fact that an Indycar can basically be bought off the shelf. F1 had better hope their times are MUCH better than the Indycar times.

    2. F2 weight 750kg, power 620 HP
      Indycar weight 735kg, power 550-700 HP, depending on turbo boost used at track
      F1 weight 733Kg, power 1000 HP?

      I think Indycar and F2 would be closely matched on the same track. F1 is in a different league for now. At least until Liberty slowly but surely make it into a spec series, and Todt intorduces the “world engine”. At which point R.I.P. F1 (hopefully not).

      1. Andrew in Atlanta
        14th September 2018, 12:53

        The world engine is NOT meant to be a spec engine, but design parameters to allow the F1 ICE to be used across other series. That would in turn decrease the costs of produced each engine. But hey, why let facts and information get in the way of a perfectly good rant and statements we know won’t happen. If every time people claimed F1 was dead it was true, we’d be watching something else but it is still here so.

  6. Now I’m wondering what happened in Singapore 2017 that Fernando would rather not discuss… (Probably nothing morally dodgy, but Fernando looks like a man desperate to get to the future as fast as possible).

    1. Crashgate was probably nothing more than a cover for the mystery events of Singapore 2017.
      Let’s put Woodward on this.

      1. The FIA pooped in the urinal

  7. Fernando pleading the 5th.

  8. I thought the actuators also closed the DRS. You’d even think about it as a safety measure to avoid what happened to Ericsson!

    1. @fer-no65 With the forces acting on it, I would imagine it just needs to stop pulling and it will shut on it’s own?

      1. Probably correct, @tonyyeb.
        But I guess teams got so good at stalling the air when the DRS is open that it doesn’t close automatically in all cases.

        1. @coldfly Yes that seems to be the case. I remember an article recently saying that the issues Williams had at Silverstone was related to that and Sauber even found that in Monza Ericsson’s wing was creating lift when the DRS was open!

      2. Probably a good idea to have a failsafe on something like this…

  9. Re: COTD
    Kids (and yes Leclerc is still a kid to us oldies!) these days use the term “text” to mean everything from SMS, Facebook message, Twitter DM, WhatsApp and every other Instant Messenger app. Also it could’ve come through someone else. Silly to read into this the way it is implied.

    1. Let’s also not forget that Leclerc isn’t a native speaker of English.
      That’s an aspect the native speakers of English tend to neglect when pinning down a non-native speaker to the exact semantics of a word they used. Remember when Jenson Button pulled out a dictionary to prove Flavio Briatore wrong, who had called him a ‘playboy’? That was such a case of missing the point by overestimating the linguistic precision of a non-native speaker of English.

      1. English is now the ‘first’ world language (much to the chagrin of a few other Europeans) but there are so many versions of it it’s inevitable confusions will arise, even amongst native English speakers. But this tendency for “native speakers of English . . . to neglect [it]” is international. It only seems to be ‘the English’ (itself a sweeping statement…) who do it because few English speakers are able to communicate in other languages at all, and rarely appear online in other languages…
        I suspect in maybe another 5-10 years there will be a “New English” which younger Tweeters, etc., will be using… and the poor native English speakers will have to re-learn their own language to stay abreast of the world situations… Lol…!

  10. Alonso to formula e is one of the possible moves I never thought about. Indycar is the most obvious one, nascar is a possibility but unlikely. I’d put supergt above formula e as I don’t see alonso being interested doing that although I think there is no reason alonso could actually do 3 things. Formula e, indycar and his wec races. I’d imagine he can pretty much choose where to go and whatever he chooses he’ll have a top team offering a seat for him?

    1. Unless in f1, right?

      1. But he “doesn’t want to do f1 anymore” :P

  11. re. the main image to this article.
    Imagine somebody having the guts to do that deliberately.
    I even have some (a tiny little bit) respect for the guy.

  12. Why should he? Indeed it’s been almost ten years (on the practice day for the Russian GP to be entirely precise) since the inaugural race of this venue, so what happened then is entirely irrelevant now.
    – Coincidently, Vettel’s race engineer at the time of his first ever race win was the same (Ricardo Adami) as at his current team these days.
    – An interesting COTD: Someone indeed is contradiction the other there.
    – From the Racer-article:
    ”IndyCar’s heavier chassis specification and non-hybrid engine formula will ensure F1’s outright lap record at COTA will be preserved while the two series compete on the same layout.”
    – Add to that, significantly weaker aero than F1 as well. That’s in fact, the primary reason they won’t ever be able to challenge track records set by F1.

  13. Keith from Kimi’s and Tom Clarkson’s exchange, do you really think that was the brilliant part?

    1. @johnmilk That’s payback for not putting Kimi in the Strugglers’ list post Monza

      1. At least we will have two more years of Kimi owning press conferences

  14. What would u expect from a coward with so many dark moments in f1. Its the tenth aniversary of his most infamous thing in f1, if u forget launch starts, mass dampers, spygates, bribes, autodestruction of teams, etc etc.

    Its the perfect moment and last moment for the coward to say sorry to Nelson Piquet jr and all the fans that were cheated.

  15. Ten years… Someone is still talking about this shxt. Maybe it is right for Alonso to make the decision to leave.

    1. @peking901

      Ten years… Someone is still talking about this shxt

      Fun fact: That is what the Mercedes Team Boss said in 1955 also :D

      1. It looks really funny to me that you compared an accident that killed 83 people with a faked win. I am curios, do you blame Pierre Levegh, that Austin-Healey’s driver or Mike Hawthorn for causing it?

    2. It was the most blatant act of cheating in this sport, crashing on purpose to gift a victory to a teammate. What consequences did they suffer? The guy that benefited the most still claims it was a legitimate win. The guys that orchestrated it, one still works for F1! The other manages the 2006 world champion. Piquet, who also was part of the plot, even though likes to play the victim card races and is a champion on a FIA series.

      And the worst of all, after it has been proved that the result was fixed, it still stands!

      So just because you don’t like it, and you surely don’t considering your profile picture (you should find a more recent one btw) lets talk about it and remember it every single time we get back there or we have the chance.

      Now that Alonso will leave, and because the result hasn’t been overturned, he will get that Singapore 08 win as the most memorable one in his career

      1. M.Schumacher intendedly to crash his opponent to win the wdc twice, which as far as I concerned, the most ugly, disrespectful action in this sport (Unlike Senna who was more likely on his revenge). But still, millions of fans love him. So no, YOU will get that Singapore 08 win as the most memorable one in his career. Because you dislike him, I am not convinced that the 2008 Singapore GP is your main reason.

        Also, it looks really funny to me that you compared an accident that killed 83 people with a faked win. I am curios, do you blame Pierre Levegh, Austin-Healey or Mike Hawthorn for causing it?

        1. *intentionally*

        2. *curious*
          My gosh! Auto-‘correct’!

        3. @peking901 did I compare what? Have to pay attention there man

          Let me also get this straight, Schumacher is a disgrace because he crashed on purpose, but Senna is cool? Let me know how that works out.

          Because you dislike him, I am not convinced that the 2008 Singapore GP is your main reason.

          That’s my secret, I dislike all of them, no exception. And yes 2008 Singapore was the most disgusting act of cheating, even if you try to justify it with more acts of cheating, which isn’t very smart really. And if they eliminate that result, it won’t be his most memorable win anymore, win win situation

          1. 1. Why would you mention that Mercedes LeMans crash at this particular situation if you were not intend to compare them? And if they are incomparable, then what is the point of it? Just for fun again?

            2. As I said, Senna’s action against Prost was revenge for what happened in Suzuka 1989. (Honestly I like AP more than AS). I never said it was right, but understandable. Also, could you denied any of them as a great driver even after some of their deceitful, manipulated actions? Or MS and FA? The purpose I mentioned AS and MS was only trying to tell you not to make it too personally, not justifying it. If you were actually against every cheated actions, then oh boy, there are not many drivers left for you to support.

  16. Since I mentioned getting survey’s from F1 the other day & how I wasn’t happy with how they were structured in a way that I felt was leading me towards the conclusions they wanted rather than the views I had I thought I’d mention that I got another one today asking me about DRS.

    Here were the questions/available answers.
    https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/54832e34-14e4-4e03-847c-eaabbf4c7005.png
    https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/b575562b-9f2c-4a3d-96b7-ceaaa7686c46.png
    https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/e94e12c4-19fc-4bd2-9cde-e6ad525de6ec.png
    https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/b335bff7-4a9d-4c3f-ba45-597ba40db880.png

    If you want to do it it’s here, You need to sign upto the F1 Fan voice site but it’s an officially run thing which sometimes puts up some good behind the scenes stuff.
    https://www.f1fanvoice.com/oa/878c72

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