Renault will pay its second visit of the season to the FIA on Monday as the team prepares for the hearing which will bring an end to the scandal dubbed ‘Crashgate’ following the alleged race-fixing antics of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. Just six days ahead of this year’s race in Marina Bay, the team faces a hefty fine or worse.

Whether it be from the team’s Enstone headquarters in the UK or its engine manufacturing plant at Viry-Châtillon in France, there is no great distance between Renault and the FIA’s base in Paris, although the miscreants will this time be attending the governing body’s World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) as opposed to the International Court of Appeal (ICA), to which it travelled in order to overturn its Valencia ban following the Hungarian Grand Prix.

One has to go back nearly a year to the start of ‘Crashgate’; then Renault Managing Director Flavio Briatore has been accused, along with former Executive Director of Engineer Pat Symonds, to have developed a pre-race plan in Singapore last season for driver Nelson Piquet Jr. to crash deliberately during the race in order to assist the quest for victory for team-mate Fernando Alonso, who had started in the bottom quarter of the grid.

How costly will this moment prove to be for Renault F1?

Although documents may have been leaked, the closest ‘proof’ so far of cheating would be that both Briatore and Symonds have left the team; this fact may also be the deciding factor as to whether Renault’s fate could be a large fine – possibly in the region of McLaren’s £50m for making use of Ferrari data in 2007 – as opposed to full exclusion from the World Championship.

Both Symonds and driver Piquet have been granted immunity by the FIA – providing that the World Council believes full and honest evidence is given. Both Symonds and Briatore, who cannot be sanctioned directly by the FIA due to having departed the outfit, could still be sued by the team for bringing the Renault name into disrepute.