Moving swiftly to limit damage from Formula One racing's worst scandal while saving the participation of a powerful and wealthy sponsor, the sport's ruling body confirmed Monday that France's Renault racing team had fixed a Grand Prix in Singapore last year by staging a crash, but stopped short of expelling Renault from Formula One. After a hearing at its Paris headquarters, a disciplinary tribunal of the International Automobile Federation, known as the FIA, described the deliberate crash as a matter of 'unparalleled severity' and said the Renault team's actions 'not only compromised the integrity of the sport but also endangered the lives of spectators, officials, other competitors and Nelson Piquet Jr.,' the Brazilian driver involved in the crash. But although the tribunal said that Renault's actions 'merit permanent disqualification' from the Formula One world championship, it did not expel the Renault team or impose a heavy fine on the company, France's largest car manufacturer. The tribunal noted that Renault had 'apologized unreservedly to the FIA and to the sport for the harm caused by its actions.' The tribunal's ruling was lenient in comparison with the actions it took two years ago, when it imposed a $100 million fine on the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team, 40 percent owned by Mercedes-Benz, after the racing team admitted stealing secret technical documents from Ferrari. Instead of expelling Renault, the tribunal, known as the World Motor Sport Council, suspended the Renault team's disqualification for two years, until the end of the 2011 Formula One season, saying it would 'only activate this disqualification if the Renault F1 team is found guilty of a comparable breach in this time.' The tribunal imposed no fine but said the Renault company had agreed to pay the costs of the FIA investigation and to make a 'significant contribution' to the organization's motoring safety efforts. The tribunal's rulings appeared to have been calibrated to steer between two imperatives top FIA officials had to weigh after the Singapore crash scandal broke last month: Taking rapid disciplinary action to limit the damage to Formula One's claim to be the pinnacle of international motor sports, yet doing so in a way that stopped short of stripping the sport of another major car manufacturer. Formula One is already struggling to cope with the defection in recent months of teams owned by Honda and BMW. A third major manufacturer, Toyota, is said to be reviewing the $500 million it spends each year on its Formula One team and has said it will make its decision known in November. The existential risks posed to Formula One by the Renault case were recognized ahead of the Paris hearing by Max Mosley, the Englishman who is the president of the FIA. He told the BBC that Formula One had to be careful not to tolerate fraudulent behavior because 'before long, you're the World Wrestling Federation, and that you can't have.' But after Monday's tribunal, he laid the emphasis on the need not to unfairly implicate the corporate side of Renault in actions taken in Singapore by the two top executives of the company's racing team, who were punished by the tribunal with bans from all forms of international motor sports. 'I don't think it means anything,' Mosley said when a reporter asked him what the implications of the tribunal's findings were for Renault's future participation in Formula One. When asked if Renault intended to stay in Formula One, he replied, 'Yes,' without elaborating or affirming that he had that assurance from the company. 'Because Renault has demonstrated that they have absolutely no moral responsibility for what took place -- that the team didn't have, still less did the company, have any responsibility at all -- it would be wrong in all cases to impose an immediate penalty,' he said. Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone, a vice president of the FIA and a billionaire who has worked hand in glove with the FIA president for much of the past 20 years to build Formula One into the vast moneymaking machine it has become, played an important role at the tribunal. In effect, the tribunal appeared to have accepted the argument that it should spare Renault as much as possible and lay the blame on the two team executives who were ousted last week when the team announced it would not contest the race-fixing allegations, effectively admitting that the crash accusations were true. Flavio Briatore, a 59-year-old Italian who was the Renault team's managing director, was barred indefinitely from racing, and Pat Symonds, the 55-year-old Englishman who was the team's engineering director, was barred for five years. Both were barred from the pits and paddock areas of all FIA-sanctioned racing events. In addition, Briatore was effectively barred from acting as an agent for Formula One drivers, a role he has combined with running the Renault team. As for the Renault team's drivers, the tribunal said the Spaniard Fernando Alonso, twice a Formula One champion with the Renault team in recent years, had no responsibility for the events at the Singapore Grand Prix in September 2008. Alonso won the race in runaway fashion after his teammate Piquet crashed early in the race in a way that brought out the safety car and enabled Alonso to climb rapidly through the field from what had seemed likely to be a midfield finish. The tribunal thanked Alonso for 'cooperating with the FIA's inquiries' and for attending the Paris meeting Monday. That cleared the way for the Spaniard to join the Ferrari team for 2010, a move expected to be announced soon. Piquet was also spared punishment on the grounds of the prior grant of immunity he was given by FIA investigators when they opened their investigation of the Singapore events in August. He had just been fired by Briatore after a lackluster 17 months with the Renault team when his father, Nelson Piquet Sr., a three-time Formula One champion in the 1980s, approached Mosley with a claim that Renault had fixed the Singapore race by having the younger Piquet crash. 