At last year’s Formula One Grand Prix in Singapore, Renault team driver Nelson Piquet Jr. slammed into the wall, totalling his car and temporarily stopping the race. The incident allowed his teammate, Fernando Alonso, to win everything. Piquet eventually admitted the crash was deliberate — he was told to do so by team boss Flavio Briatore. (Personally, I imagine that conversation unfolding somewhat like an old Bob Newhart “guy on the phone” routine: “Yeah sure, anything, Flavio: You name it. Um, what’s that? You want me to what? No, it’s just, those walls are hard, Flavio…”) According to leaked testimony, Piquet was even shown on a map of the track where to go all crash-test dummy.

The World Motor Sport Council of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) delivered its judgment this morning on “Crashgate”, and it sounds like Renault got off fairly easy:

Renault escaped severe punishment Monday for ordering former driver Nelson Piquet Jr. to deliberately crash, receiving only a suspended ban from Formula One.

The team would be permanently disqualified from the sport if it were to again break the FIA’s rules within the next two years.

Flavio Briatore, who quit as team principal last week, was banned indefinitely from any F1 activities by the World Motor Sport Council. Engineering executive director Pat Symonds, who also left the French team last week, was banned for five years after expressing his “eternal regret and shame” that he participated in the conspiracy.

Many in the racing world see this as a slap on the wrist at best. Here’s Edward Gorman, writing in the Times Online:

Is it any wonder that Formula One is so regularly in the headlines for the wrong reasons when the body which governs the sport, the FIA, so patently fails to live up to its responsibilities?

Today in Paris we witnessed not the administration of a proper and fitting punishment of Renault for the shocking way in which it required Nelson Piquet Jr.no to crash on purpose at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, but an exercise in commercial pragmatism.

Fair enough. But no one is talking about the real victim here: Piquet’s car.