“This comes as surprise for me. I am not commenting on it. I'm very surprised. I cannot imagine these things, these situations. It's something that never entered my mind,” said the two-time world champion.
“He's always been a nice boss with me. A friend, a boss, he supports my career always. Flavio is one of the good people here and he has all my support, always,” insisted the Spaniard, who added “after the hearing, everything will be clarified and will be the time to say something. But now there's no sense (in commenting).”
Following the leaked information that surfaced in the media on Thursday, it seems Flavio Briatore didn't had much to do with the plan after all. Although admitting having held a conversation with Pat Symonds (director of engineering) and Piquet prior to the race, the three had no plan to actually follow it through.
Only after Briatore left the room, it seems Symonds told the Brazilian driver where exactly to deliberately crash his car, in order for the safety car to be deployed. The two allegedly took the map of the circuit and evaluated the best place for a crash together, but without Briatore in the room.
When confronted with those accusations by the FIA's chief steward Alan Donnelly, Symonds refused to answer the questions.
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