F1: Briatore says he fell on his sword to save Renault

Remember the Hamilton scandal earlier this year? And his race engineer who left McLaren right before a hearing was due? At that time, it was explained that only team employees can be compelled to appear before the World Motor Sports Council.

So here we are, two days after the UK's Daily Mail published the full set of documents relating to Nelson Piquet's crash in Singapore last year, including telemetry readings, and the two people implicated in the scandal have shuffled themselves out of the witness list.

The accident was not a tiny knock. It's been replayed over and over since the scandal broke and it was a big impact. And that's where the telemetry comes in: it shows that Piquet used more throttle in the corner than on previous laps, that when the car started to slide that, instead of lifting to bring the back under control he kept the power on hard, and then after the initial impact, he kept the power on again until the car hit the wall on the opposite side of the track.

That, says everyone who has commented, is so counter-intuitive for a driver that there is, at least, cause to investigate.

The allegations are incredible. To deliberately crash, especially on a street circuit with no run-off and almost no visibility for approaching drivers is so far out of the imaginable as to be, well, there aren't strong enough adjectives. To litter the track with carbon fibre could result in punctures, which might not be noticed until other cars came up to full race temperature after a stop. Because the corner is almost unsighted, if Piquet's car had not come to rest next to the wall just where it did, other cars may well have ploughed into it - causing serious risk of harm to Piquet himself as well as other drivers.

There is absolutely no way that the story can be credible. Except that the telemetry supports everything Piquet, and others, have said.

The scandal won't die quietly: Briatore is not just close friend of Bernie Ecclestone, they are in business together as owners of Queens Park Football Club in London.

And it's not Briatore's first brush with scandal in F1: he was the driving force behind the Benetton racing team, which ultimately became Renault. And it was at Benetton that he gained a reputation for cheating. In 1994, he arranged for the removal of a constrictor from the refuelling rig so that Benetton cars could be refuelled faster. The removal of that FIA required part was implicated in the spectacular pit-lane fire involving Jos Verstappen.

Benetton made lightning starts off the grid - consistently better than any other team. Allegations that Benetton had a form of launch control in software were never proved; it was even alleged that the software involved a logic bomb that self-destructed the offending code after the start of the race, but again nothing was proved. Some have pointed out that Renault long had lightning starts regardless of who was at the wheel, but Michael Schumacher never managed quite the same reaction times in a Ferrari as he did in a Benetton.

In 2007, the FIA found that Renault had obtained details of McLaren's development and technical programmes.

But another aspect to the "resignations" is that neither man need now appear in Singapore. The City State has made no mention of the scandal. But the allegations relate to the first GP held in Singapore for 40 years and the first on the streets of the island. It certainly does not want its image tarnished with this sort of activity and it is by no means certain that the authorities would decide not to question any of those allegedly involved.