Formula One is a sport that is manipulated and fixed in advance, Renault team chief Flavio Briatore said on Sunday.
MONZA: Formula One is a sport that is manipulated and fixed in advance, Renault team chief Flavio Briatore said on Sunday. Speaking after seeing his star driver, defending drivers world champion Fernando Alonso, retire from the Italian Grand Prix with a blown engine, Briatore said this year's title race had been decided "around a table."
He told Italy's state television company RAI that it had been decided in advance that this year's world championship would be given to Schumacher, who won Sunday's race and then announced his intention to retire at the end of the season.
Briatore's outburst followed Spaniard Alonso's earlier accusation that Formula One was "no longer a sport" after he had been penalised for allegedly blocking Schumacher's Ferrari team-mate Brazilian Felipe Massa during Saturday's qualifying session.
Alonso was relegated from fifth on the starting grid to 10th. German Schumacher's win hoisted him to within two points of Alonso with three races remaining this year.
Briatore said it was not the events of the race that bothered him most.
"What happened on Sunday isn't the problem. It is what happened before the race which is strange. This is a world championship, which has already been decided at the table. We have understood how things go -- it has all been decided ... they have decided to give the world championship to Schumacher and that is what will be," he told RAI.
He compared his claims about race- and championship-fixing in Formula One with the scandal surrounding Italian soccer in which Juventus, like Ferrari owned by Fiat, were found guilty and relegated from Serie A to Serie B.
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said, "While I accept that there are people who talk about Ferrari from time to time, there is someone who talks too much and who missed a good opportunity to stay quiet.
"In life you need to have a little bit of class and so I prefer not to respond."
Schumacher has won seven drivers titles and is seeking to win an eighth before heading into retirement.
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