Highlights

Renault have faith in FIA, says Briatore

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-09-12 08:23

LONDON, Sept 11 - Renault are confident the Formula One championship is being run fairly and without favouritism, team boss Flavio Briatore said on Monday.

Speaking a day after his controversial outburst on Italy's RAI television, in which he compared F1 to Italian soccer's match-fixing scandal and suggested Ferrari were being favoured, Briatore told Reuters that he had been misunderstood.

"We have full confidence in everything...we never believed that they (the governing body) were manipulating anything against Renault," he said in an interview. "I am sure of the integrity of the stewards, of this I am 100 percent sure."

Briatore felt, however, that the rules needed to be reviewed to ensure drivers were punished only for deliberate blocking actions in qualifying rather than unintentional misdemeanours.

Renault's world champion Fernando Alonso was demoted five places to 10th on Sunday's Italian Grand Prix starting grid after stewards ruled that the Spaniard had impeded Ferrari's Brazilian Felipe Massa.

Alonso, who left Monza with his lead over Ferrari's Michael Schumacher slashed from 12 points to two after an engine failure, was adamant he had not blocked Massa and said bitterly on Sunday that Formula One was no longer a sport.

RULE CHANGE

"What we need to do in the future is identify really what is the spirit of the rules," said 56-year-old Briatore.

"The spirit in qualifying was that if someone intentionally stops you doing your lap time, they should be punished. This was the intention, or we should put it this way.

"The stewards have Ferrari's telemetry and maybe in that there is some proof that Fernando upset Massa. But for sure Fernando did not want to disturb Massa's lap," he added.

"For us, Massa on pole position is better than Schumacher on pole."

Briatore excused Alonso's anger as that of a young man whose emotions were inevitably running high at a crucial stage of the championship.

Briatore's own words, including the comment that "they have decided to give the world championship to Schumacher' and a reference to the 'calciopoli' football scandal, had been simply misunderstood.