Graphs generated by the data acquisition system located inside Nelson Piquet’s Renault R28 last year during the Grand Prix of Singapore demonstrate how the young Brazilian spun his car on purpose.
British Daily Mail web site Sportsmail has obtained the evidence that the FIA has put together against Renault over the Singapore 'crash-gate' scandal.
The files will go before the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Paris on Monday following allegations that Nelson Piquet Junior deliberately crashed his car under Renault team orders.
The first graph shows Piquet’s teammate and eventual race winner Fernando Alonso taking the infamous corner where Piquet crashed. The graph contains tons of information, but lets concentrate on the red line, which is throttle opening, and the dark burgundy line which shows the speed of the rear wheels.
We can see that Alonso pressed on the throttle out of the corner, relatively gently, until the rear wheels started spinning (indicated as “moderate wheel spin”). Alonso released the throttle a bit to regain traction. This is how things are normally executed not to lose control of the car.
Now let’s look at Nelson Piquet’s car data from the lap he crashed into the concrete wall.
We can easily see that Piquet was going much harder on the throttle. Consequently, the rear wheels started to spin quite early. Instead of releasing the throttle, Piquet kept his right foot down (100% throttle opening), spinning the wheels even more. He evidently lost control of the car, and finished his race into the wall.
The data acquisition system has an amazing precision. It is similar the “black box” of an aircraft, recording on a continuous basis dozens of key parameters of the car.
photo:Renault & Daily Mail
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| Nelson Piquet Junior with his engineers moments before the start of the 2008 Grand Prix of Singapore. |
British Daily Mail web site Sportsmail has obtained the evidence that the FIA has put together against Renault over the Singapore 'crash-gate' scandal.
The files will go before the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Paris on Monday following allegations that Nelson Piquet Junior deliberately crashed his car under Renault team orders.
 |
The first graph shows Piquet’s teammate and eventual race winner Fernando Alonso taking the infamous corner where Piquet crashed. The graph contains tons of information, but lets concentrate on the red line, which is throttle opening, and the dark burgundy line which shows the speed of the rear wheels.
We can see that Alonso pressed on the throttle out of the corner, relatively gently, until the rear wheels started spinning (indicated as “moderate wheel spin”). Alonso released the throttle a bit to regain traction. This is how things are normally executed not to lose control of the car.
Now let’s look at Nelson Piquet’s car data from the lap he crashed into the concrete wall.
 |
We can easily see that Piquet was going much harder on the throttle. Consequently, the rear wheels started to spin quite early. Instead of releasing the throttle, Piquet kept his right foot down (100% throttle opening), spinning the wheels even more. He evidently lost control of the car, and finished his race into the wall.
The data acquisition system has an amazing precision. It is similar the “black box” of an aircraft, recording on a continuous basis dozens of key parameters of the car.
photo:Renault & Daily Mail