Formula 1’s 5 Biggest Scandals That Shook The Sport

In 2007, Formula 1 went through one of its biggest scandals when it was revealed that McLaren had secret technical files that belonged to Ferrari. This scandal, called “Spygate”, happened because Nigel Stepney, a former Ferrari employee who was in charge of the Ferrari operations, gave the documents he had stolen to his friend, Mike Coughlan, the chief designer at McLaren.

The documents were sensitive and provided Ferrari with valuable information, and McLaren’s acquisition of the documents without permission was against the sporting regulations. The FIA, after its investigation sanctioned McLaren and declared the team guilty, fined McLaren $100 million, and also disqualified it from that year’s Constructors’ Championship.

McLaren drivers at the time – Hamilton and Alonso – didn’t play any role in the espionage, but they still got many advantages from it, and that put lots of attention on them. The Spygate scandal was quite damaging to McLaren’s reputation as a team, and in the end, it became a cautionary tale about the kinds of problems that cheaters can find themselves in within the world of Formula 1.

The following year, Formula 1 was involved, again, in another major scandal. Often called “Crashgate,” in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Renault deliberately concocted an accident to rig the race outcome. Nelson Piquet Jr., Renault’s driver, was told to crash at a certain part of this race that was supposed to trigger a safety car event. This was beneficial to his teammate Fernando Alonso, who was able to clinch the race.

The scandal was hidden for almost a year until the information concerning the plan was disclosed by Piquet Jr. after he got dropped from the Renault team. After the FIA’s investigation, it was stated that Renault had tampered with the results, they were guilty of race-fixing, and the team was suspended for two years.

At the same time, team principal Flavio Briatore and executive director Pat Symonds were specifically targeted and charged even more severe penalties: Briatore was banned for life from all the FIA events, while Symonds was banned for five years.

Another great illustration of how some teams would stop at nothing in their bid to edge out their rivals, and as a result, the FIA plunged into some serious reforms to ensure that such behavior would not happen again.

The most recent F1 controversy was at the 2021 Abu Dhabi, another thrilling battle and fight for the title between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen. A crash involving Nicholas Latifi got the safety car out and then followed some questionable decisions made by the race director Michael Masi.

In the beginning, Masi did not let lapped cars unlap themselves. However, on the penultimate lap of the race, he allowed only the cars between Hamilton and Verstappen to unlap. This set up a nail-biting final lap due to the differences in tire condition, as Verstappen, with new tires, easily overtook Hamilton and won the championship. Interference with the safety car caused huge controversy, and Mercedes filed a complaint, but the FIA dismissed the appeal. Accordingly, Verstappen was the 2021 World Champion.

That immediately caused debates between F1 fans. Some of the complaints were that the decisions were prejudiced and made the race unfair. The FIA conducted an investigation and concluded that there was indeed human error, but they still upheld the initial decision. This controversy led people to worry about how races were managed and harmed the image of the sport.

The 1994 season of Formula 1 had a severe confrontation between two drivers: Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill, and the last race in Australia was decisive for the championship. During that race, Schumacher crashed into Hill on lap 36, and both were out of the race. Since both failed to score points, Schumacher won his first-ever World Championship in a rather infamous manner.

The event provoked a lot of controversies immediately after the event, with fans and other experts discussing whether Schumacher intentionally crashed into Hill to ensure that he won the championship. The collision was called a racing accident by race officials, but the F1 community members engaged in heated debates on fairness and sportsmanship. While Hill didn’t point fingers at Schumacher right away, he later said that Schumacher purposefully caused the crash, which kept the whole ordeal alive and heated.

It will always remain in the history of F1 as one of the darkest weekends: the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. During qualifying on Saturday, Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger died in a crash, and the following day, less than 24 hours later, the multiple-time world champion and Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna met a similar fate in the Grand Prix race. Together, they underscored the absolute and urgent need for enhancing safety on the tracks.

Ratzenberger crashed when, at high speed, his front wing came off, putting his car into the concrete wall. While fans have paid more attention to Senna’s death, it was the unfortunate demise of Ratzenberger that led to a flurry of changes in Formula 1 racing safety standards. It shifted attention to the driver’s safety to prevent such incidents in the future, so new methods like the halo were incorporated.