Bell replaces Briatore at Renault
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Technical director Bob Bell will stand in as Renault Formula One team principal until the end of the season following the departure of Flavio Briatore in a race-fixing controversy.
"Following the unfortunate recent events, the Renault F1 Team has reacted swiftly by implementing a new temporary management team structure," Renault said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Bob Bell will attend all the remaining races of the season and will be the team's spokesperson on all sporting and technical matters," the team said. Bell will also be the team's chief technical officer.
Jean-Francois Caubet, who had been head of marketing and communications, takes on the role of managing director reporting with Bell to team president Bernard Rey.
"The Renault F1 team is now ready to concentrate on the future and wishes to stress that no further comments or statements will be issued relating to the events of Singapore 2008," the statement said.
Briatore and engineering head Pat Symonds, effectively the flamboyant Italian's deputy, left the team last week before Renault appeared before the governing International Automobile Federation for a hearing in Paris on Monday.
The team was charged with ordering Brazilian driver Nelson Piquet to crash deliberately in last year's Singapore Grand Prix to bring out the safety car and help his teammate Fernando Alonso win the race.
Renault did not contest the charges and was handed a permanent ban from Formula One, suspended for two years.
Briatore was banished from the sport indefinitely while Symonds, the team's strategic mastermind on the pit wall, was barred for five years.
Piquet, granted immunity from punishment by the FIA in return for giving evidence, left the team at the end of July.
Renault have told the FIA they want to stay in F1, despite the dent to their image and the effects of the global recession.
(Rueters via China Daily September 25, 2009)
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