Renault had another bad weekend at Hungary which resulted in team boss Flavio Briatore leaving the pitwall and probably the circuit before the end of the race.
Excluded from the European Grand Prix for releasing Alonso from the pits before his wheel was properly secured must of been a low point for the team after he qualified on Pole earlier in the weekend.
Aside from this though the other story from the Renault camp is that relationships between Nelson Piquet Jr and Briatore are at an all time low as he came in a lowley 12th place.
Briatore said that the Brazilian had “opened the book of excuses” to cover up his poor performances, with Piquet hitting back by saying Briatore “doesn’t understand s*** about Formula One”.
Briatore added: “I’ve always been fair with my drivers.”
“I expected more from Piquet because this is his second year with a full-time drive. He has done less testing compared to Alonso but Mark Webber has tested less than Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull because of his broken leg – and look where he is now.”
“When a driver lacks results, he opens the book of excuses and begins. The fault is the weather, a spectator’s sunglasses, a spin on the straight, this and that.”
“It’s not true that there’s a technical difference of seven tenths between Alonso’s and Piquet’s car.”
“If that was true, we’d have a car capable of winning the title. And that unfortunately isn’t the case. The technical difference has always been minimal and never longer than one race.”
To say it hasn’t been Piquet’s year would be a massive understatement, with his highest position being a 10th place in Bahrain.
Piquet responded to the claims from his team boss by saying “Flavio is a businessman but he doesn’t understand s*** about F1, he is my manager, but in his role of team boss he doesn’t respect me, he only thinks about money, about how much money he can pocket in everything he’s involved with. He’s a man with no friends.”
“Every day everyone asks me what’s going on, so why should I always keep quiet?”
In a direct response to Briatore’s comments on Mark Webber he said “Webber has been in F1 since 2001. He started in a different era, when testing wasn’t limited, he has probably done more than 20,000kms in testing, so it’s not a fair comparison. Now the situation is more difficult for a driver with little experience.”
“Besides that, I have to fight against Briatore and Alonso himself, who is a fantastic driver.”
Piquet admits he hasn’t been on form recently saying “When I wasn’t competitive in qualifying, I was the first to own up to it. But if Briatore doesn’t understand that, what can I do?”
So as the dust settles from Hungary and F1 goes on a month long break we will await the news that a lot of people are expecting…for Piquet to be dropped in favour for Renault Test driver and upcoming GP2 star Romain Grosjean.
