Sir Jackie Stewart has warned that Formula One risks losing its credibility altogether in the face of the controversy involving Renault and the sport’s governing body, the FIA.

The French team confirmed that they would not be disputing the veracity of claims made by their former driver, Nelson Piquet Jnr, that he was ordered to deliberately crash his car during last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, a decree which has sparked the resignation of Renault duo, Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds, ahead of next week’s FIA meeting.

As somebody who has witnessed a recent series of damaging stories with mounting horror, Stewart, 70, said he could hardly believe the fashion in which F1 was staring at a barren future.

“There is something fundamentally rotten and wrong at the heart of Formula One,” said Sir Jackie. “Never in my experience has the sport been in such a mood of self-destruct,” said the former three-time world champion.

“There needs to be a fundamental reform of all the structures of governance and management of F1 from both a regulatory and commercial standpoint. Millions of fans are amazed, if not disgusted, at a sport which now goes from crisis to crisis with everybody blaming everybody else.”

“There is a nervousness and fear within the teams [involved in the championship] which is not healthy. There is no respect or trust for the individuals or the institutions which are meant to regulate and govern the sport. Unless proper leadership is established soon within F1 at every level, I have no doubt that the commercial sponsors will walk away and the sport will be seriously damaged for years to come.”

As a long-term observer of Grand Prix’s Machiavellian tendencies, Stewart said recently that nothing surprised him any more, but this latest incident has shaken him to the core. Privately, he is known to be aghast at the suggestion that a driver could decide to crash his car on purpose, but he is not alone in fearing that Renault’s wider management might look at the tide of negative publicity associated with their name and withdraw from F1 at the end of the season. In the present climate, it would be wholly understandable.