00:00The back wheels lost traction and the car whipped sideways, slamming into the concrete barrier.
00:05Nelson Piquet Jr. climbed out of the wreckage and thankfully he was okay.
00:09But as the safety car came onto the track and the other F1 teams watched the replay of the crash,
00:13something wasn't adding up. The crash had happened on Turn 17 at the inaugural Singapore
00:18Grand Prix in 2008. It was a pivotal moment in the season, with Ferrari's Felipe Massa and
00:24McLaren's Lewis Hamilton locked in one of the most intense battles for the world championship
00:28in F1 history. But when Piquet Jr.'s Renault hit the wall, under a strange rule in the 2008
00:34regulations, the pit lane was closed while the safety car was on the track. And for the Ferrari
00:39team, it couldn't have been worse timing. Massa was leading the race, but would soon need to refuel.
00:44And if he had to perform an emergency stop while the pits were closed, he would incur a massive
00:49time penalty. Ferrari's race engineer Rob Smedley couldn't believe their bad luck, and he didn't
00:54even understand how it could happen. Turn 17 wasn't a particularly challenging corner, and with no
00:59cranes or access roads nearby, the wreckage was going to take a long time to clear. When the pits
01:04finally reopened, nearly the entire field piled into the pits at once. And as Ferrari frantically
01:10rushed their stop, Massa was given the green light to leave too early, while the fuel hose was still
01:15attached. The hose was ripped off its frame, and after incurring a time penalty for the unsafe release,
01:25he rejoined the race in last place. As the team reeled from the disastrous stop, Rob Smedley once
01:33again turned his attention back to the crash that had caused it all. This time looking a little closer
01:38at the public telemetry data on Piquet's car, which was even weirder than the area he crashed in. It
01:44seemed like the exact moment Piquet Jr. lost control, the data showed he had stomped on the
01:49throttle, spinning the back wheels and accelerating into the wall. It looked like Piquet Jr. had crashed
01:54on purpose, but why? Smedley turned his attention to the other Renault driver, Fernando Alonso, and it
02:00all started to come together. See, by this point, Alonso was in first place. It just so happened that he
02:05had refueled remarkably early in the race, on lap 12, only two laps before the crash. He didn't need to
02:11pit
02:12during the safety car period, and the timing had allowed him to gain a staggering number of places.
02:17Alonso crossed the finish line and secured Renault's first victory in almost two years,
02:22while Massa ended the race in 13th place, scoring no points. Massa and the Ferrari team raised their
02:27concerns about the crash to F1 officials, but as the season continued, nothing was done about it,
02:32and at the final race of the season in Massa's home country of Brazil, he lost the title to Lewis
02:37Hamilton by a single heartbreaking point. But why did the Renault team do it,
02:41and how did the truth finally come out? There's no time left in this short,
02:45but tap here to see the other side of the story.
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