Judgment day arrives for Renault

RENAULT’S future in Formula One hangs in the balance ahead of today’s extraordinary meeting of the World Motor Sport Council into the circumstances surrounding Nelson Piquet Jr’s crash during last year’s Singapore Grand Prix.

The team have already confirmed they will not dispute the charge of conspiring with Piquet Jr to cause a crash and that should work in their favour when it comes to the 26 members of the Council – motorsport’s most powerful body that includes FIA president Max Mosley and Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone – debating what sanction to impose.

When the WMSC hammered McLaren with a £50 million (€55m) fine and stripped the team of all constructors’ points for 2007 over the ‘spygate’ affair, the penalty was severe because the team had been found to have deliberately lied.