Currently reading: Briatore overturns F1 ban
French court wins court action against the FIA

Former Renault boss Flavio Briatore and head of engineering Pat Symonds have won a court action in France against motorsport's governing body the FIA over bans from involvement in motor racing.

Briatore and Symonds were told on Tuesday afternoon by the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris that the case had been successful.

"The court ruled the sanction was illegal," the judge told the Paris court.

F1's governing body ruled last September that Briatore and Symonds ordered Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately crash his car to help team-mate Fernando Alonso win the Singapore Grand Prix in 2008.

Briatore denied having a role in the scheme and took legal action against the FIA to clear his name. Symonds admitted knowledge of the incident, but contested that his five-year ban from motorsport was too harsh.

"In this case, the FIA has been used as a tool to exact vengeance on behalf of one man," said Briatore.

Briatore had also asked for $1.5 million (£935,000) in damages, but was awarded 15,000 euros (£9350).

The FIA was also ordered to take out adverts in French newspapers saying that its decision to implement bans was wrong.

The FIA's legal team has already told the Reuters news agency that it plans to appeal the Briatore decision.

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tomisdadude 5 January 2010

Re: Briatore overturns F1 ban

If I am honest I do not understand anymore who is innocent or not but never less i hope he never gets to run an F1 team again his reputation has been tarnished with permanent ink. It is impossible to remove crash gate off his hands no matter how hard he tries.

If he did run a team again I would and I am sure many others would be wondering if the team and the drivers made the win or Briatore giving outrageous orders. No offence but for that reason he should never rejoin thats the same with Nelson Piquet Junior (thats saying he was never that good anyway) and I would say the same with alonso (however I think there would be a void if he got kicked out that would be hard to fill).

I hope politics will stop coming into this sport but I really doubt that day will come which annoys me the sport would be soo much better without all of this happening it should be man and machine not back door politics

Everytime one of these incidents occurs a chip occurs on Formula One repuation hopefully it can be repaired over time

disco.stu 5 January 2010

Re: Briatore overturns F1 ban

i think that the FIA had over-stepped its position by banning him. Along with most others, i think he deserved a ban, but the FIA did not handle it well and didn't really have the authority to ban him. From what I understand, they could have banned Renault as a team but not Briatore as an individual.

On the other hand, am quietly glad that Briatore had the balls (and in fairness, the wealth) to be able to take the FIA to court and defeat them. Just a pity that it never happened earlier in Mosley's presidency, as it would have kept him in line a bit better.

kcrally 5 January 2010

Re: Briatore overturns F1 ban

i'm thinking of employing flavio to run my rally team