It sounds like something out of a movie. A desperate F1 team, two drivers, a planned crash. Thing is, it’s real life. It has been revealed that at last season’s Singapore GP, the first night race in the history of F1, the Renault Formula One team asked its youngest driver, rookie Nelson Piquet Jr. (shown), to wreck his car on purpose to help teammate Fernando Alonso win the event.

The New York Times has a great look at the story with the background holes filled in to show why the team would have done this and what their motivations were. As is to be expected, they were quite personal.

All forms of racing have their gray areas and even some cheating, but everyone draws the ultimate line when people start getting asked to crash on purpose to change the outcome of an event. Renault apparently did not have a problem with it, because that’s exactly what they did, ask their rookie driver to wreck his car. Like a good soldier, he did. Luckily for him he did not get hurt. Renault is in huge hot water with F1 and the FIA and The guys who made this happen have all been removed from the team.