New attack by Symonds against Piquet Jr

In order to provide testimony and his own feelings on the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix case, Pat Symonds recently sent a letter to the members of the World Motor Sport Council.

He begins his letter with a serious accusation against Piquet Jr: « Among all the articles on the subject I have read, there is a crucial point missing. It is that the idea of the incident was entirely conceived by Nelson Piquet Jr. He was the one who approached me first regarding this idea. At the time, I naively believed he wanted to do this for the good of the team. I didn’t know he was in the process of negotiating his contract. In hindsight, he surely thought that this action would have had a favorable effect on his negotiations. »

In his letter, he addresses the issue of safety: « Piquet had his fate in his hands. He was alone in the car to determine how it was going to happen. I obviously did not discuss with him the details of how he was going to cause the incident. I imagined the incident would be similar to what happened when Michael Schumacher disrupted the qualifying session in Monaco in 2006. I did not expect him to act recklessly at all. » In this last sentence, Symonds implicitly admits to being surprised by the violence of the accident.

The engineer acknowledges his involvement in the incident: « When Piquet Jr submitted his idea to me, I should have rejected it immediately. This will be my eternal regret and I am ashamed that I did not. I can only say that I believed I was acting for the good of my team and not for personal gain. I absolutely did not want to endanger the team and the staff for whom I have great responsibility. In this act, I destroyed a reputation that took me 33 years to build in motorsport. During this night race in Singapore, I made a mistake whose consequences I could never have imagined. For this mistake, I can only extend my sincerest apologies to those affected by this matter. »

It is important to remind that the World Motor Sport Council meeting held in Paris last Monday banned Pat Symonds from engaging in any activity in the field of Formula 1 for five years.