Following the publication of Nelson Piquet's letter to the FIA in late July in which the Brazilian driver gave a detailed confession on what exactly happened during the last year's event, Symonds was summoned to appear before FIA's chief steward Alan Donnelly to answer some questions.
While very opened to the questions regarding the pre-race discussion between him, team's boss Flavio Briatore and Piquet – during which he admitted having talked about the possibility of Piquet crashing deliberately as part of the team's strategy – the Englishman suddenly became evasive when being asked to detail what happened during the race.
Symonds said it was Piquet's idea to begin with, but then preferred not to answer when “asked if he knew Piquet was still planning to crash on lap 14 when the race began,” as reported by the GMM news agency.
“When probed about Piquet's claim that, no longer in boss Flavio Briatore's presence, he showed the driver on a layout map on which corner he should crash, Symonds again said he did not want to answer. He also gave a similar answer when the FIA interviewer asked about Piquet's claim that the crash site was selected due to the lack of recovery cranes,” added the report from the aforementioned source.
Another clear suggestion that Fernando Alonso was part of a conspiracy he knew nothing about was the fact that he was called to the pits while still carrying some 8 kg of fuel, some 2 laps before the crash. His race engineer was not expecting such an early entry and was troubled by the change in strategy, but was calmed down by Symonds who told him “No, no, it's going to be alright” via the radio. This latest evidence was leaked on Thursday and surfaced in the media prior to Symonds' meeting with Donnelly.
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