Flavio Briatore makes official F1 return as Alpine executive advisor

Flavio Briatore has been named as Alpine’s new executive advisor in Formula One, 16 years after his involvement in the Singapore ‘Crashgate’ race-fixing scandal. According to Alpine, Briatore will “predominantly focus on top-level areas of the team” which includes “scouting top talents and providing insights on the driver market, challenging the existing project by assessing the current structure and advising on some strategic matters within the sport.” It marks a formal return for Briatore to F1 for the first time since his involvement in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix Crashgate scandal that led to him being banned from the sport indefinitely. Briatore was the team principal of Renault — now Alpine — at the time when one of his drivers, Nelson Piquet Jr, was instructed to crash deliberately to help teammate Fernando Alonso win the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. In 2010, Briatore issued a statement in which he agreed “to bear his share of responsibility in the Singapore events in his capacity as managing director of the Renault F1 Team, at the time they happened, without any admission of a personal guilt in these events.” Symonds’ lawyers also issued a statement following the FIA settlement which read: “Under this agreement, Pat Symonds acknowledges that it was his duty to prevent such an event occurring and, in not doing so, he must share in the responsibility attached to this incident.” The events of Singapore 2008 have recently come back into the spotlight after Felipe Massa, the runner-up to Lewis Hamilton in that year’s world championship, launched an $80 million lawsuit over claims the race result have been cancelled and that he should have been champion. Esteban Ocon and Alpine have struggled this season It underwent a senior management change last year with the departures of team principal Otmar Szafnauer and long-serving sporting director Alan Permane mid-season.