FIA was considering an appeal after being stunned when a French court overturned its lifetime suspension of former Renault Formula One boss Flavio Briatore on Tuesday.
F1’s governing body banned Briatore from motor sports in September after it said he ordered Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately crash his car to help teammate Fernando Alonso win the Singapore Grand Prix in 2008. Briatore denied a role in the scheme.
Just hours after Renault confirmed Eric Boullier as its new team principal, the Paris court said Briatore was not given the right to properly defend himself during the FIA inquiry. It pointed out that the decision to ban him was on the basis of anonymous testimony, while the Italian’s lawyer had not been allowed to question the witness.
The court ordered FIA to pay Briatore 15,000 euros (US$21,500) — far short of the 1 million euros he sought in damages.
Briatore told Italian state TV in a telephone interview that the ruling “gives me back my dignity, my freedom, which was taken from me in an absolutely arbitrary way.”
Asked if he would soon be seen in the box along the race tracks, Briatore replied: “We’ll see. Some time has to pass to heal the very deep wounds of these past months.”
But FIA said in a statement the court decision “cannot be enforced until the FIA’s appeal options have been exhausted.”
It said its “ability to exclude those who intentionally put others’ lives at risk has never before been put into doubt, and the FIA is carefully considering its appeal options on this point.”
FIA said the court “did not examine the facts and has not reversed the FIA’s finding” that Briatore and former Renault chief engineer Pat Symonds, “conspired to cause an intentional crash.”
Symonds’ five-year ban was also overturned by the Paris court. He was awarded 5,000 euros, also far short of the 500,000 euros he sought.
Briatore’s lawyer, Philippe Ouakrat, said it was “almost an exceptional outcome” for his client.
“We have the feeling that some justice has been reinstated,” Ouakrat said. “I’m certain that the court was quite shocked by the way that the decision was made against Mr Briatore.”
Ouakrat argued that Briatore was suspended because of his tense relationship with then-FIA president Max Mosley, and that FIA exceeded its authority by imposing a sanction on individuals.
In a deposition given to FIA investigators in exchange for his immunity, Piquet Jr said Briatore and Symonds ordered him to crash during the 2008 race into the wall at turn 14, where it would take the most time to clear the damaged car and result in the longest possible delay.
Meanwhile, Boullier said on Tuesday his main priority would be to restore the team’s credibility in the wake of the scandal.
The 36-year-old Boullier has been in place at Renault since last month when most of the team was sold to Luxembourg-based Genii Capital.
“When I started in the job it quickly became clear that the staff’s morale had been affected by the end of the 2009 season and that the last few weeks had been quite challenging,” Boullier said.
“However, the team is now very motivated thanks to the new philosophy that the Renault F1 Team wants to implement and, when it was presented at the factory shortly before Christmas, it was welcomed with applause. Everyone is now refreshed and ready for action,” he said.
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