Often-angry former F1 world champion Sir Jackie Stewart has bellowed that there is something "fundamentally rotten" in Formula One, after the Renault team effectively admitted to fixing the result of last year's Singapore Grand Prix.
Renault released a statement earlier today saying that they would not be contesting the charges against them in a WMSC hearing in Paris on Monday, in which they will face the prospect of being banned from the sport over the allegation that they ordered Nelson Piquet Jr to crash at last season's Singapore race, in order to help his team mate Fernando Alonso to win.
They also said that the two team members at the centre of the whole farce, team principal Flavio Briatore and director of engineering Pat Symonds, have both left their positions with the team.
The delicious fun of Fixgate follows a number of recent "-gate" controversies in F1, including 2007's Spygate when McLaren were found guilty of receiving technical information about the Ferrari car, and this season's Liegate, where Lewis Hamilton and McLaren were found guilty of lying to the stewards at the Australian GP.
The summer was also dominated by an ongoing rules row between FOTA and the FIA, which threatened to see a manufacturer-led breakaway series emerge from F1's bulbous frame.
And Stewart, for one, has had enough of the controversy.
"What I do know is that there is something fundamentally rotten and wrong at the heart of Formula One," he moaned earlier today, "Never in my experience has F1 been in such a mood of self-destruction."
He added that: "Millions of fans are amazed, if not disgusted, at a sport which now goes from crisis to crisis with everyone blaming everyone else.
"There is a nervousness and fear within the teams, which is not healthy. There is no respect or trust for the individuals, or the institutions that are meant to regulate and govern the sport."
Stewart's answer is a nebulous demand for change at the very roots of the sport, something which he hopes may be possible after the FIA presidential elections in October, when either Ari Vatanen, who drove rally cars, and former Ferrari boss Jean Todt will be elected to succeed long-time incumbent Max Mosley.
"There needs to be a fundamental reform of all the structures of governance and management of F1, from both a regulatory and commercial standpoint," Stewart shouted, possibly banging the table as he did so, if he was near a table.
"Unless proper leadership is established soon within F1 at every level, the commercial sponsors will walk away and the sport will be seriously damaged for years to come."
Stewart admitted earlier this month that he had been asked a high level member of the FIA had asked him to stand for election in the October poll, but he had declined.
"I replied 'absolutely not', just as I had said before," he said at the time, "My belief is that the president shouldn't be somebody who has been involved either recently or presently in Formula One."
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