Mosley: "Renault Acted Impeccable in Crash-Gate"

Less than a month before officially stepping down from the presidential seat of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), 69-year old Max Mosley decided it was time to make one more positive comment within the Great Circle. Following the immense race-fixing scandal that Renault were dragged into earlier this month, Mosley praised the way the French manufacturer handled the whole deal.

Mosley revealed that Renault were stunned when being offered the dossier of evidence from last year's Singapore Grand Prix and acted accordingly, immediately admitting to their guilt and offering to pay for the FIA investigation. So we guess we finally got the answer to why their punishment was so light as compared to what a normal team/individual would get for trying to cheat in Formula One – a 2-year suspended ban.

Another information to support that argument is the fact that Renault seems to have contributed with a decent amount of money for some of the FIA's safety programmes.

In addition, the Enstone-based team backers decided to immediately dispose themselves from the two key persons that were involved in the scandal, namely Flavio Briatore (team boss) and Pat Symonds (head of engineering). In the same press release that they've announced the departure of those 2 employees, Renault also confirmed they will not dispute the race-fixing charges.

“When we sent Renault the dossier of evidence they made no attempt to cover up. They immediately instituted an internal investigation headed by a top lawyer. What they did was impeccable,” said Mosley in an interview with the Evening Standard.

While Renault got away with a 2-year suspended ban, Briatore was banned from the sport for life, while Symonds was handed a 5-year ban from all FIA-sanctioned competitions.