Flavio Briatore appeals against Crashgate life ban

Flavio Briatore, the disgraced former principal of the Renault Formula 1 team, is to appeal against the life ban from the motorsport imposed on him by the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) in the wake of the Crashgate affair. The 58-year-old Italian will claim that Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, was "clearly blinded by an excessive desire for personal revenge" against Briatore and will seek a minimum of €1m in damages against the federation, the Guardian reveals today.

Briatore was banned from the sport by a FIA hearing in September, which heard how he and Renault's chief engineer Pat Symonds had instructed their junior driver Nelson Piquet to crash during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, thus creating the circumstances through which the other more senior Renault driver Fernando Alonso could win the race. Symonds is joining his former boss in appealing the decision.

The pair say that the FIA acted against its own constitution and the laws of France - where it is based and where the appeal will be heard in a Paris court later this month. Briatore's claim states that "the excessive and abusive power clearly exercised by both the World Council, in particular, and the FIA, in general" and "the breach by the World Council of the most basic rules of procedure and the rights to a fair trial" should annul their original decision.

In addition, Briatore says that Mosley breached rules concerning fair trials that are laid down in the European Convention on Human Rights: "The decisions to carry out an investigation and to submit it to the World Council were taken by the same person, Max Mosley, the FIA president... [Mosley] assumed the roles of complainant, investigator, prosecutor and judge". The former Renault man implicitly suggests that animosity between him and the FIA president over the future of the sport had led to the sanction.

Formula 1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone is also brought into the case, with Briatore claiming that he "took part and was able to vote in the deliberations of the World Council, and was a directly interested party in Renault not suffering a sanction" - the team had a suspended sentence imposed on it - "that might discourage it from continuing its participation in the Formula One world championship and could, moreover, be hostile to Mr Briatore as a result of stances taken by him during the previous year on behalf of the constructors involved in Formula One."

With the sport in some considerable disarray at the moment following the Japanese team Toyota's decision to pull out and Renault itself delaying a decision on continued participation in Formula 1, Briatore's case is an additional headache for Ecclestone and co. ·