Immunity for Piquet is just plain wrong

We all know the type: complete idiot, driving his company car at top speed, one hand cradling his phone, the other trying to wedge Abba's Greatest Hits into the CD player. Surprise, surprise, he crashes.

Then this lunatic climbs out of the wreckage and calmly informs the police that this was no accident but a deliberate smash. An insurance job, he explains. His boss asked him to do it. How could he say no? Rightfully, there'd be just one outcome - a lifetime ban from driving, perhaps even worse.

Not in Wacky Races - also known as Formula One.

Now the only difference between the two is that Dick Dastardly and Muttley - the "double-dealing do-badders" in the classic Hanna-Barbera motor-racing children's cartoon - were invariably punished for their cheating, villainous ways.

Not so Nelson Piquet Jr. 

That the Brazilian driver this week wriggled out of F1's race-fixing scandal without so much as a slap on the wrist would be a joke, worthy of one of Muttley's trademark sniggers, if it wasn't so utterly wrong.

This fool purposefully rammed his Renault R28 into a concrete wall at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, keeping his foot on the accelerator when any normal person would have hit the brakes.

The spectators at Turn 17 whooped as Piquet extracted himself from the smoking wreckage, oblivious to the dangers from flying debris he had just exposed them to. Then, he hared on foot across the track, again endangering both himself and his fellow drivers.

Piquet can cry all he likes about how sorry he now feels. 

"I do not expect this to be forgiven or forgotten," he says.

Too right. Because what he really should have done when Renault F1 team boss Flavio Briatore and engineering director Pat Symonds supposedly cooked up this cynical scheme was simply say "No." 

Ten months later, when Piquet finally spilled the beans on the fix that helped clear the way for his teammate Fernando Alonso to win in Singapore, he told investigators that he'd been hoping to curry favor with Briatore.

After a lamentable F1 debut, strewn with accidents and lowly finishes, he was eaten by worries that Briatore would not renew his contract in 2009. Agreeing to crash might save his skin, Piquet figured.

"I was in a very fragile and emotional state of mind," he said. "At no point was I told by anyone that by agreeing to cause an incident, I would be guaranteed a renewal of my contract or any other advantage. However, in the context, I thought that it would be helpful in achieving this goal."

Hmmm, a weak-willed rookie who has shown that he is prepared to sink to any depths to keep his career on track. Not, one would think, ideal racing-driver material.

Yet the FIA, motorsport's governing body, granted Piquet immunity for his belated stab at the truth. Piquet gets to keep his F1 driver's licence and, says the FIA, there's no reason why it won't be renewed in the future. The Paris-based FIA argues that leniency toward Piquet is important in encouraging whistle-blowers to come forward the next time someone resorts to foul means.

Briatore, rightly, is now banished from F1. Symonds is out for five years. Renault escaped lightly with a suspended ban, understandable in the circumstances. Excluding it from F1 would have unfairly punished the 600 or so employees who work at the team's bases in England and France and who had nothing to do with this scam.

But Piquet's immunity was too lenient by far.

Perhaps Carlos Gracia, the president of Spain's motorsport federation, said it best. 

"If it were up to me, this kid wouldn't be allowed to walk blind people on the sidewalk." 

Piquet's testimony bore eerie similarities to that given in another scandal that rocked sport this summer, when rugby's Harlequins winger Tom Williams claimed that he also felt compelled to agree when his boss, Dean Richards, asked him to fake an injury by biting on a joke-shop blood capsule.

"I had no real choice in the matter," Williams said. "In hindsight, if I had refused to bite the capsule Dean would have seen that I disobeyed him and might refuse to play me again. This could have spelled the end of my career at Harlequins."

For that match-fixing attempt, Williams was banned for four months.

Piquet is already plotting his comeback.

"I realise that I have to start my career from zero," he says. "I can only hope that a team will recognise how badly I was stifled at Renault and give me an opportunity. What can be assured is that there will be no driver in Formula One as determined as me to prove myself."

Or one less deserving of a second chance.

© Sapa-AP. John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press.