Lewis Hamilton dominated the 61-lap Singapore Grand Prix to take the checkered flag ten seconds clear of Timo Glock on a day when his main race rivals eliminated themselves from contention after making mistakes. Hamilton’s second race win of the season, his 11th with McLaren Mercedes, was sealed when first Nico Rosberg and then Sebastian Vettel were handed penalties for errors exiting and entering the pit lane. From that point, he was able to back off, conserve the car and a drive on to a relatively easy victory.

The big news from the three rounds of night time qualifying was not Hamilton taking pole, but rather Button getting knocked-out in Q2.  On the tight streets of Singapore, the outlook does not seem favorable for the championship leader in tomorrow’s Grand Prix.  Rubens, on the other hand made his way into Q3, but crashed the BGP Chassis in the final seconds of the session, thoroughly spoiling a handful of hot laps on fresh rubber.  Before he made contact with the wall however, he was sitting in 5th place, and with the 5 spot penalty for changing his gearbox outside of the 4-race minimum, Barrichello will start 10th.

Rubens Barrichello set the early pace is Friday Practice 1, taking P1 after 90 minutes of prep for tomorrows qualifying. In Practice 2, Webber had a violent shunt that red flagged the field for the remaining moments of the session, and Mark’s teammate, Sebastian Vettel went on to take the top honors, shaving off over two seconds from his FP1 time.

A transcript of the conversations between Renault team bosses, engineers and driver Nelson Piquet Jr. during last year’s Singapore Grand Prix has been published, adding to the speculation over claims that Piquet was told to crash deliberately in order to aid the chances of his team-mate Fernando Alonso, who went on to win the race.

Yesterday, Renault’s director of engineering, Pat Symonds, was granted immunity in the FIA’s investigation into the incident if he agrees to provide details of the alleged plan.

Now the Times newspaper has published details of the interactions between Symonds, two Renault engineers and crucially, Flavio Briatore, the team principal, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing on behalf of the driver and the team. In the radio communication, Briatore swears repeatedly and says that Piquet is “not a driver” following the now notorious crash, before later asking: “Is Nelson OK?”

“I can tell you now we are not three-stopping,” Symonds is heard to say on the transcript made by the FIA, the sport’s world governing body.

Later Symonds says to an engineer: “Don’t worry about fuel because I’m going to get him (Alonso) out of this traffic earlier than that.”

Piquet says: “What lap are we in, what lap are we in?”

A Renault engineer then reports: “He just asked: ‘What lap are we in?’”

Symonds replies: “Yeah, tell him that he’s about to complete lap eight.”

Symonds insists Piquet is then told something he should know from his pit board, which is shown to him at the end of every lap. “No, just tell him, he is about, he’s just completing, he’s about to complete lap eight.”

Symonds then says: “Right, I’m going to…I think we’re going to stop him just before we catch him (a reference to the Williams driver Kazuki Nakajima, who was ahead of Alonso) and get him out of it, the reason being we’ve still got this worry on the fuel pump. It’s only a couple of laps short. We’re going to be stopping him early and we’re going to go to lap 40.”

An unnamed engineer asks a few minutes later: “Pat, do you still not think that this is a bit too early? We only did six tenths that lap.”

Symonds replies: “No, no it’s going to be all right.”

“OK, OK, understood,” the engineer says.

Renault were summoned by governing body, the FIA, after Nelson Piquet Jr. claimed he had been directly asked to crash to help team-mate Fernando Alonso’s race. Renault have been called to answer charges that they “conspired with Nelson Piquet Jr to cause a deliberate crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix with the aim of causing the deployment of the safety car to the advantage of its other driver, Fernando Alonso”.

Ahead of Monday’s Extraordinary meeting of the World Motor Sport Council, the team announced today that both Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds have left the team.  ”The ING Renault F1 Team will not dispute the recent allegations made by the FIA concerning the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix,” a statement reads.  ”It also wishes to state that its managing director, Flavio Briatore and its executive director of engineering, Pat Symonds, have left the team. Before attending the hearing before the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Paris on 21 September 2009, the team will not make any further comment.”

The hearing will attempt to attribute responsibility for the Singapore “crash-gate” despite the news that Briatore and Symonds have left Renault. Should the team be found guilty of the allegations, the range of sanctions available to the FIA range from a fine, to permanent exclusion from the world championship.

At the time, Piquet attributed the crash to a simple error, but after being dropped by the team after July’s Hungary GP the race-fixing allegations emerged. He has since testified to the FIA that he was instructed by Briatore and Symonds when and where to crash.