Briatore set to appeal ban

Former Renault team boss seeking damages, according to report

Last updated: 14th November 2009   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Briatore set to appeal ban

Briatore: Seeking to overturn ban

Related links

Teams

Also see

Flavio Briatore is to claim the life ban handed to him by the FIA was "blinded by an excessive desire for personal revenge" on the part of the former president of world motorsport's governing body, Max Mosley.

The former Renault team principal is appealing the ban he received by the FIA's World Motorsport Council for his part in the so-called 'Crashgate' scandal later this month.

According to The Guardian, Briatore will bid to have his ban from involvement in all FIA-endorsed events overturned and demand damages of €1million (just over £900,000) when his case is heard at the Tribunal de Grande Instance on November 24.

Mosley chaired the WMSC hearing which handed down the punishment to Briatore, after they decided that he was complicit in the plan which led to Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashing his car at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix in order to benefit team-mate Fernando Alonso.

Briatore will claim that the FIA did not have grounds to issue him with the ban, and that the extent of Mosley's role in the matter breached European laws concerning fair trials.

"The decisions to carry out an investigation and to submit it to the World Council were taken by the same person, Max Mosley, the FIA president," read a statement by Briatore reproduced in part by the newspaper.

Breach

The statement added that Mosley "assumed the roles of complainant, investigator, prosecutor and judge" in what Briatore claims was a breach of the "most basic rules of procedure and the rights to a fair trial".

Furthermore, Briatore will claim that the WMSC was "blinded by an excessive desire for personal revenge" owing to the Italian being a leading light in plans for a manufacturer-led breakaway series earlier this year.

The plans stemmed from opposition to Mosley's desire for a budget cap - a proposal which eventually came to nought after a deal was reached with teams to cut costs to "early 1990s levels" within two years.

In light of the deal, though, Mosley decided not to stand for a fifth term as president.

The newspaper also claims that Renault's former executive director of engineering Pat Symonds, who received a five-year ban, will join Briatore in seeking to overturn his WMSC sanction.

Renault F1 themselves received a life ban suspended for two years, while Piquet was granted immunity by the FIA in return for his evidence.