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Post by QPR Report on Sept 19, 2009 6:29:21 GMT
From The Daily Mail/Des Kelly ..... Would you cheat if you thought there was even the slightest chance someone could be maimed or killed? Flavio Briatore decided it was worth the risk. Not to him, of course, but to everyone else. To his chosen kamikaze Nelson Piquet Jnr; to the other Formula One drivers arrowing through the wreckage of his deliberate crash; to the volunteer marshals and to the paying public watching from the stands. He gambled with them all. The devious skulduggery was meticulously planned in a succession of secret meetings, except for one all-important aspect. The Renault boss was unable to guarantee people would not be maimed or killed. In the mayhem of a crash, you never can. This is not the same as a footballer punching a ball into a net. It's not about an idiot sprinter dosing himself up to beat the clock. And it makes rugby union's 'Bloodgate' look like a squabble at a children's party. This about one man deciding that the lives of innocent people are worth jeopardising, just to win a race. Buy a ticket for any motor sport event and you will see red triangle signs everywhere: Warning, Motor Sport Can Be Dangerous. Despite the organisers taking all reasonable precautions, unavoidable accidents can happen. You are present at your own risk.' Briatore made a mockery of 'reasonable precautions'. I hope he is forced to face charges in Singapore for wilful endangerment of life. I hope he is drummed out of Queens Park Rangers, as how can anyone capable of such a plot be considered a 'fit and proper person' for a football club? Truly, it will be a terrible day if his strangely featureless, boneless BBQ'd chicken of a face darkens the doors of sport again. How to make a Briatore [/img][/center] In a testy little pit-lane exchange on TV last week, David Coulthard sought to take team boss Eddie Jordan down a peg as they discussed a minor incident, sneering: 'That's why you were never a driver.' The inference was Jordan was in no position to dare disagree, since he was not from a select club. Actually, Jordan did race, albeit briefly thanks to a couple of broken legs, before founding his own team. But let's analyse Coulthard's 'expert' view of the Renault controversy, the biggest cheat scandal to hit Formula One. As a driver, surely he would have an intuitive knowledge? Sadly not. When the accusations of race-rigging surfaced, Coulthard declared: 'Well, call me naive but I'm not buying it. I find them [the accusations] very hard to stand up.' There you have it. The next time he gets haughty, Eddie, remember you're talking to Call-Me-Naive-Coulthard. Naive, however, is better than stupid. And Eddie Irvine is an unalloyed idiot. 'Formula One has always been a war and in war all is fair,' he announced. As throwaway lines go it deserved to be hurled a great distance. Driving a car is not war. No sport is war. If they can find a Chinook, perhaps the Army would like to drop Irvine and his Ferrari in Afghanistan just to prove the point? Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-1214568/Des-Kelly-Great-joke-City-Fergie-punchline.html#ixzz0RWztlgMq |
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Post by QPR Report on Sept 19, 2009 8:14:03 GMT
And what was said on Briatore's personal website (which I imagine will either be radically changed or closed down) Singapore GP 2008 This is an amazing victory for Renault and for Fernando. Since Friday we knew that the car was very competitive and we were very disappointed at the end of qualifying. Today the car was extremely quick, stronger than the Ferrari and McLaren, and although we had some luck when the safety car came out, we deserved this victory. It’s a very important result for Renault after two difficult seasons and helps us prepare for 2009 in the best way possible. www.flaviobriatore.it/home_en.html |
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Post by klr on Sept 19, 2009 9:10:30 GMT
With regards to the Des Kelly piece, I have to say I couldnt have put it better myself & couldnt agree more.
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Post by QPR Report on Sept 19, 2009 9:29:30 GMT
Karen Brady's View of Briatore (Guess she won't be replacing Gianni at QPR!) Karen Brady/The Sun - The past seven days... Thursday, September 17 QPR owner Flavio Briatore, 58, has left Renault at high speed in the wake of allegedly ordering a crash to help Fernando Alonso win the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. The driver of the Italian's bridal car three months earlier was former world champion Alonso who made it safely to the church without any assistance from Briatore. I met him at a football match last season and struggled to discover, short of his £68m yacht, the charms he had worked on some of the most beautiful women on earth, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum, and his Wonderbra model wife Elisabetta Gregoraci. Why doesn't it surprise me he's a mate of that dirty old Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. ..." www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/sunsport_columnists/2644888/Karren-Bradys-Brum-diary.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=SunSport+Columnists |
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Post by QPR Report on Sept 19, 2009 9:31:22 GMT
[Merging two threads] Not all will agree. I've seen the posts not interested in what occurred in F1..Only QPR...Also seen posts who even see something commendable in cheating...Whatever! Good piece... This Sporting Life: Say it ain't so, Flavio Comment Email Print Share By Jeff MacGregor ESPN Page 2 More news today from the frontier outposts of human stupidity -- news from out there on the distant horizons of dumb, from way out there on the cutting edge of idiocy, from out there in the deep and farthest darkness of the human experiment, where we find the Edsel and the New Coke and the baseball career of Michael Jordan and the movies of Michael Bay, from out where the abyssal, abysmal research is done, and where, just when you think our scientific understanding of Stupid is complete, that we can do no worse, that humanity can be no dimmer, no dumber, no more selfish or contemptible a species, someone wearing a lab coat and blast goggles and holding a clipboard turns to us all and says "Not so fast." The short version: To assure the outcome of a race in Singapore last year, a Formula One team gave their own driver an order to crash. The driver, Nelson Piquet Jr., is the son of a former world champion and was desperate to catch on in the same sport his father once dominated. To do so, he did what he was he told. The men accused of telling him to put his own car into the wall are Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds. They did this to assure a victory by Piquet's teammate. Until this week when they resigned, they were the middle-aged brain trust at the Renault Formula One effort. Read our more detailed report here. In the European tabloid press, this story is now being hyped as the worst instance of cheating in the history of sports. That overstates things certainly, but it did put at risk a young man's life and the lives of those around him. And it raises the question: What is winning worth? Or fame? Or glory? Cheating in all of auto racing -- whether F1 or NASCAR or IRL or WRC -- is commonplace. Cheating is the very air that auto racing breathes. That's because the illegal mechanical voodoo a smart engineer can bring to bear on a car is just too tempting to resist. And that powerful black magic is what every racing series chases with its stewards and its rulebooks and its inspections and its micrometers and its post-qualifying impoundments and on and on and on. No one minds as long as everyone cheats on a relatively level playing field, keeps it mechanical and within the bounds of precedent and decency. In fact, the tension between race officials and ingenious cheats is part of the appeal of the sport. But to demand a car willfully crashed at the risk of injury or death to who knows how many innocent people ushers in a new age of low and contemptible team orders. Even in a silly, dangerous sport run by amoral billionaires like Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley, this story has the power to shock. A postmodern, postindustrial, deathproof triumph of ends over means. And it's all part of that fabled he-man falsehood -- the tough-guy racer boast usually attributed to latent bipolar suicide Ernest Hemingway -- that there are only "three real sports: racing, bullfighting and mountaineering," and that everything else is just a game. You still see this brag silkscreened on T-shirts at the track, worded in various ways and attributed wildly to everyone from Bill France to Emerson Fittipaldi to H. L. Mencken. Doesn't matter. It was never true. It was always just a way to keep your swagger while you whistled past the graveyard and lived your life on the adolescent assumption that chicks dig risk. At 17 this seems merely shallow. At nearly 60 it's at once astonishing, dumbfounding and heartbreaking. Thus, auto racing goes on, sometimes in violation of Commandments VIII, IX, and X. Sometimes II. (Most NFL players and coaches violate IV like clockwork, but that's a beef with the league scheduling office and therefore likely a venial, rather than mortal, sin.) Go back even farther, all the way to Homer, and you'll find the chariot races in Book 23 of "The Iliad" beset by cheating, and you'll find one of the core questions we continue to draw from sports: Just how far will you go to win? What, and whom, are you willing to risk? So 2,500 years on, we still teach that sports is a character-builder. The question remains, however, what kind of character are we building? Understood in its broadest terms, this story is yet another watershed human moment in which greedy middle-aged men -- with their rapacious appetite and keen sense of privilege, and blinded by their ambitions -- put younger, dumber, even more ambitious men in harm's way. This they routinely do from the safety of the pit box or the board room. And hungry on our own behalf for honor or meaning or mere diversion, we go along. We play along, and thus provide not just the means for the crime, but the motive and the opportunity, too. All those ovations and all that money and all that fame have to come from somewhere. They come from us. You and me. To think otherwise is to seek the overturn of human nature, and to crave the comforting denial of the worst kind of lie: the lie we all agree to tell ourselves. Stupid. Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. Please continue to submit your answers to his question: "What Are Sports For?" You can e-mail him at jeff_macgregor@hotmail.com. sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=macgregor/090918 |
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nico
Ian Holloway
banned
Posts: 256
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Post by nico on Sept 19, 2009 10:20:58 GMT
That's a first for me.
The first time I have read an article n the Daily Mail and liked it.
I once heard the Mail is the paper Flavio "reads". Let's hope he is not around to read it today because I fear it might spoil his day
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Post by superckat on Sept 19, 2009 11:43:24 GMT
I have to admit I am one of the I don't care what he did at F1 crew. Just like I didn't care whetever Jim Gregory, might have gotten up to. What he does at QPR is what matters to me. However I don't really like what he's doing at QPR.
Hopefully this will be a wake up call and he might be more humble in his actions from no on. Wishful thinking I know. But some people will only change when there's a defining moment in their life. Lets hope this is his defining moment.
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Post by cpr on Sept 19, 2009 11:46:19 GMT
Spots and Leopard springs to mind.
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Post by superckat on Sept 19, 2009 12:01:22 GMT
cpr. tbh I think you're right. I was hoping he woill change because I think he could be good for us....
However on second thoughts I wonder what this means to current and potential future sponsorships. Will they want to do business with FB now. If there is a backlash to the club based on what he has done, then he should leave. However if there isn't perhaps he will put more energy into making this work.
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obk
Dave Sexton
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Post by obk on Sept 19, 2009 12:01:51 GMT
Superckat, I can't understand your reasoning. If someone actually risks other peoples lives (driver, functionaries, audience) and do this just to get a better position in a race then you couldn't care less just because it doesn't concern QPR???
That is what I have such a hard time understanding, don't you people care for others at all? Just you and your own? Or what am I missing?
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Post by grumpyolde on Sept 19, 2009 13:31:21 GMT
Supercat,
You don't like what he's doing at QPR yet you think he could be good for us ? How ? he's never given a toss for the supporters since he's been here.
By the way, I don't know if you have any kids but if you did would you approve of say Hitler or Jack the Ripper as a godfather if they could give them a few quid ?
Some things are more important than money and morals is one of them!!!!
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Post by superckat on Sept 19, 2009 14:21:49 GMT
Guys, Ok I don't know exactly what was said and what the actuality of serious damage was. I assume the risk of crashing the car was calculated so that there wouldn't be any serious damage done to anyone. I could be wrong on that. But the fact Piquet crashed the car. I would guess he wouldn't do it if he thought he would end up dead or end up killing anyone else. That's where I'm coming from. As serious an allegation as this is. I don't believe either of them thought or did it with the intention of hurting anyine else. It seemed a desperate measure to win a race. I'm not a FB fan. So I'm not sticking up for him here. I'm jusrt explaining my thoughts.
With regards to me not liking what he's doing at QPR. Yes things aren't good at the moment. But wjat has been good are the sponsorships and the contacts he has. If he focused on that side of things then financially we could end up doing really well. We probably have the best sponsorship deal of any club in the championship and a lot in the premiership. If the backlash from the F1 doesn't affect this. Then we can probably continue to get bigger and better deals. I think that's where FB could be good for us.
Grumpyolde "By the way, I don't know if you have any kids but if you did would you approve of say Hitler or Jack the Ripper as a godfather if they could give them a few quid ?" C'mon that's ridiculous. I won't waste my time on that.
Sport, Films, Music industry are filled with people who have done worse and are still idolised. How many people have cheered on Mike Tyson. When before he was a boxer, he was a street hoodlum, muggung, robbing shops and beating people up. How many people watching Dirty Den Eastenders when he years before he murdered an innocent taxi driver. You just need to look at the music industry and it's filled with criminals of one sort or another.
I have never been interested in what FB did at Renault. Even before all this came to light. If he was a raving success there it wouldn't matter to me. If he has been punished for his actions by losing his position there it still means nothing to me. If the ruling that means he will lose his position at the club, what I would care about is what that would mean to the club.
Rightly or wrongly, that's my view on it. If reports show that FB's actions were done and his basic attitude was that he didn't care if if meant that other people were hurt maimed or killed. Then I will change my views immediately.
I think I could be in for a slating here so here goes...
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obk
Dave Sexton
Posts: 1,516
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Post by obk on Sept 19, 2009 14:56:53 GMT
No slating, but there is no such thing as a calculated crash with a formula 1 car! Ordering someone to crash in such a car is to play with that persons life, nothing less! (also could endanger people around).
So, if he is guilty I would personally like to see him sent to prison. If not guilty then all is fine and we can concentrate on how he runs QPR.
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nico
Ian Holloway
banned
Posts: 256
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Post by nico on Sept 19, 2009 19:29:25 GMT
First, let's concentrate on the positives - great win today. Good news to end a good week.
Now as to Flavio changing, as someone who has seen how he treats everybody around him at first hand quite a few times I cannot imagine him changing. It might be difficult for people to appreciate who have not met him, but it is difficult to imagine a more unpleasent person. And whilst you might say you don't case how horrible he is - it effects things: it conditions how and what he thinks of the fans, how he treats long standing staff, how he treats other potential investors, players, managers etc.
And then even if he could change, his current press reputation as someone prepared to put others lives at risk to cheat in sport means that he will in the future only do harm to any football club he is associated with. I know people are concerned about what happens after he goes, and so we should be. But it is inevitable now. He is seriously and irreparably damaged goods, at the very least in the world of sport if not as a high profile person period. As I have said before it is no longer a mater of if but when he goes.
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nico
Ian Holloway
banned
Posts: 256
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Post by nico on Sept 19, 2009 19:57:09 GMT
Apologies for treading on Mike's toes, but just seen this by Piers Morgan, and love him or hate him Piers sums up Flavio to a T: They should throw the book at Top Gun poser Briatore www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-1214676/A-match-ban-Now-thats-ugly.htmlWhat the hell is going on in sport at the moment? Just when I didn't think things could get any more repulsive than rugby players using fake blood to cheat, along comes Flavio Briatore to drag the decency bar several leagues further downwards. I've been struggling to comprehend the mindset of a man who orders a racing driver to crash his car, and possibly kill himself in the process, just so he can cheat his team's way to victory. It's the kind of thing Hannibal Lecter would do, or Idi Amin. An act of such grotesque monstrosity that it almost defies belief. Briatore has always struck me as a fairly awful character. Flash, brash, intellectually moribund and an inveterate, shameless show-off. He chases models, buys yachts, wears ludicrously age-inappropriate Top Gunstyle sunglasses and leather jackets and generally behaves like the worst kind of spoiled, lecherous old roué. I bumped into him once in a gym, and he stared at me for several seconds with a quite stupendously sneering look. I'm used to that kind of thing, obviously. But few have done it with such faux imperious grandeur. I've heard that he does this to a lot of people. Briatore may think he's better than the rest of us. But he's not. He's turned out to be worse than the worst-ever cheats in the history of sport. Someone who was prepared for his driver, Nelson Piquet Jnr, to risk his life in a duplicitous attempt to con a win. His resignation, despite some pathetic bluster about wanting to 'save the team', was a tacit admission of guilt. So a police investigation is essential and charges should follow. And, if found guilty in a court of law, then Briatore must be punished so harshly that nobody ever even thinks of doing what he did again. |
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Post by QPR Report on Sept 19, 2009 20:04:49 GMT
No toes, Nico!  I welcome/encourage people to post things they see of interest. Although have to confess for a moment that when I read the description, certain message board posters came to mind ;D Have to wonder about his future at QPR and his relationship with Ecclestone...And how sponsorship will be affected..And a few other questions. His major focus was F! (90% he said). So what's he going to do now: A full time Briatore at QPR? Ugg! And this snippet from Ian Ridley/The Mail "...So Flavio Briatore will have more time on his hands after his departure from Renault. You have to sympathise with, and fear for, QPR boss Jim Magilton." www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1214671/Lets-embrace-new-Europe-lose-watch.html#ixzz0RaKPUhR1 |
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Post by londonranger on Sept 19, 2009 20:14:51 GMT
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Post by QPR Report on Sept 19, 2009 20:22:33 GMT
And some rather unfortunate views here! Crash.Net Formula One News
EXCLUSIVE DC: Briatore and Symonds will be back19 September 2009
Whatever the conclusion of the FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) on the salacious 'Singapore-gate' scandal currently engulfing Formula 1, the two men arguably at its centre – Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds – will find a way back into the top flight one day, reasons 13-time grand prix-winner David Coulthard.On Wednesday, it was announced that Briatore and Symonds had sensationally left their respective positions of managing director and executive director of engineering at Renault F1 [see separate story – click here], with the former claiming he did so 'to save the team'. That has prompted fevered speculation inside the paddock that there must be some truth behind Nelsinho Piquet's assertion that he was instructed by his two bosses to deliberately crash out of last year's Singapore Grand Prix, thereby enabling team-mate Fernando Alonso to triumph in the sport's inaugural night race – and likely also prevented Renault from pulling the plug on its F1 project at season's end. Whilst the WMSC is due to rule on the Enstone-based outfit's fate on Monday (21 September) – with the potential ramifications should the team be found guilty of the charge of 'race-fixing' stretching as far as expulsion from the world championship altogether – both Briatore and Symonds are gone. Coulthard contends that they may not be absent for long. “I think it's been well-documented,” the Scot told Crash.net Radio of the latest controversy to rock the top flight. “Singapore last year was the catalyst; Nelson Piquet Jnr obviously left the team and then decided to share some information with the FIA. They did an enquiry, and the end of that enquiry is that before the hearing on Monday where Renault have to step forward and explain themselves, both Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have left the team. “You have to presume that that's because there are some grey areas or something that wasn't discussed with Renault beforehand. We'll find out in time. I think they will both have their opportunity to say something publicly on it if they want to, for sure the FIA will enlighten us as to what happened and there will be some information that comes out of the event on Monday. People don't leave organisations unless there's a reason – either they did act inappropriately or they just felt it was for the greater good. “Pat I'm sure will end up somewhere else, because he's got a very long and successful history in motorsport. Flavio I'm sure will have a finger in some pie in Formula 1 – he's been a great entrepreneur and had a great deal of success, and he's never claimed to be passionate about the sport individually. It was more about the business side, and if he's made an error of judgement then obviously he's taken the penalty for that, but I think we have to keep in perspective that these guys are all under a great deal of pressure – and sometimes that makes them make bad decisions.”Other 'victims' of the fall-out look set to include Piquet – who Coulthard's BBC F1 colleague Martin Brundle has described as being henceforth 'unemployable' [see separate story – click here] – and Renault itself, which has suffered considerable losses in terms of car sales since the onset of the global credit crunch last year and whose CEO is known not to be a particular motor racing aficionado. If the French manufacturer was ready to leave before, so goes the school of thought, then nothing will be able to convince it to stay now. “I can't possibly know,” the Twynholm native stated of Renault's future. “I hope [they don't leave], but we just need to be patient and see what happens. It would be very bad for the sport if Renault pulled out – they've been a great supporter of Formula 1 and motorsport and have used it to good effect for the promotion of their vehicles, but these are difficult times and, if they are on the edge, something like that could push them over. Time will tell whether [Piquet] pops up at another team or not. You can't write the final chapter in the book; we just have to wait and see.” Whilst the name of Prodrive chairman David Richards has cropped up regarding taking over at the helm of Renault F1 in at least the short term – “He's been there before at Enstone, he knows the set-up, he's obviously got leadership qualities and he's well-equipped to handle it,” argues Coulthard – it has conversely been suggested that the disgraced Briatore and Symonds could both face criminal charges for having knowingly and wilfully endangered lives. 'DC' contends that the whole threat level of the situation has been somewhat over-exaggerated. “I think it's wrong to pull out the 'it could have hurt someone' card,” he underlined, “because by the very nature of motorsport, at any moment there could be a very bad accident that involves a driver, a marshal or a spectator. That is the fact, that is the reality, so you can't look at one incident and say 'well, that's the one that tipped it over to being really dangerous'. It's not that type of small incident that is the thing we need to watch out for; it's the big crashes – the cars being launched and all the rest of it. It's a valid point in that it is increasing the danger, but I think it's overplayed in this circumstance. “Crashing is pretty extreme, but I have had team orders in the past where I've been told to move over and allow another car to come through – and at the time that was part of the sport. If we go way back to Stirling Moss' day, drivers would come in and give their car to their team-mate if necessary to allow them to finish the race. The essence of the sport is all about team play rather than the individual, but clearly there are sporting rules that are there to define and govern the sport and what we should be seeing is the best driver/team combination winning on any given day. “Obviously it's damaging for the sport to have any sorts of allegations of race-fixing and this sort of thing, but hopefully we'll be able to move on from this and it's good that the FIA have acted. Clearly anything that effectively fixes or changes the result is a form of cheating and should be punished. Scandals don't enhance the reputation, that's for sure, but they are factual events that have happened and the powers-that-be – the controllers of the FIA, the controllers of the commercial rights, the controllers of the teams – are collectively responsible for the image of the sport. If they've acted in a way which has damaged the image of the sport, then they have to respond to that.” It is easy to forget, finally, that against the backdrop of so much going on off-track, there remains a title fight on the circuit too, with four grands prix of the 2009 season now remaining. Whilst Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz has written off his team's chances of denying Brawn GP glory in the wake of the energy drinks-backed operation's Monza disaster last time out, Coulthard is adamant that nothing is over yet – even if he acknowledges that it is Jenson Button in pole position to make it back-to-back title triumphs come Abu Dhabi in just over a month's time. “There are 40 points available and they're 20-odd points behind, so the fight is still on,” urged the 38-year-old, who ended his competitive career with RBR last year and has stayed on at the Milton Keynes-based squad as a consultant and occasional test driver. “It's not over. Kimi Raikkonen came back and won the championship from that far away two years ago, so we have to keep working, keep pushing and then see what the championship brings. “The most likely person for the championship, though, is of course Jenson Button. He had a lean period, but that's inevitable in such a competitive championship, and he's led the championship from the first race. He's got a 14-point lead now and his wing-man is his team-mate, so he'll more than likely be the world champion.” www.crash.net/f1/news/152451/1/exclusive_dc_briatore_and_symonds_will_be_back.html |
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Post by superckat on Sept 19, 2009 20:43:41 GMT
First, let's concentrate on the positives - great win today. Good news to end a good week. Now as to Flavio changing, as someone who has seen how he treats everybody around him at first hand quite a few times I cannot imagine him changing. It might be difficult for people to appreciate who have not met him, but it is difficult to imagine a more unpleasent person. And whilst you might say you don't case how horrible he is - it effects things: it conditions how and what he thinks of the fans, how he treats long standing staff, how he treats other potential investors, players, managers etc. And then even if he could change, his current press reputation as someone prepared to put others lives at risk to cheat in sport means that he will in the future only do harm to any football club he is associated with. I know people are concerned about what happens after he goes, and so we should be. But it is inevitable now. He is seriously and irreparably damaged goods, at the very least in the world of sport if not as a high profile person period. As I have said before it is no longer a mater of if but when he goes. Firstly, Don't put words in my mouth. Secondly, I don't care about your experience. Whatever happened to you. I'm sure was well deserved. Thirdly I think it's quite obvious to most that he is unpleasant. |
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Post by cpr on Sept 19, 2009 21:09:24 GMT
Silly question.
Has this allegation been proven against Briatore then?
I haven't seen evidence of that as yet.
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I welcome/encourage people to post things they see of interest.
