San Marino GP - Confusion Anyone?

Results from the San Marino GP: The story from flag to result.

Firstly, there was an incident in the pit lane involving Ralf Schumacher and Nick Heidfeld. Ralf was let out of his pit box in a very dangerous position, forcing Nick to brake hard and endanger the pit crews. This is not liked by the stewards of the race, and so a 25 second penalty was given to Ralf. This was contended after being given on the night of the race, but nothing came of it in the end, and Toyota accepted their punishment.

But, BAR’s Jenson Button was in far more trouble.

Tipped off by two former BAR employees, the stewards drained Button’s car of fuel after it initially passed the weighing test. Without fuel however, the car was more than 6kg under the minimum 600kg weight allowed and so he was under threat of disqualification for cheating. After a hearing at the track on the evening of the race, the car was deemed legal by the stewards and nothing was thought of it.

However, the FIA overruled this decision, and appealed the stewards’ decision. The hearing was set for the 4th May at a court in France and once again, BAR were defending their cars once again, after many a legal wrangling with the FIA in the past. This though, was far more serious. In their opening statement, the FIA asked the court, should they find BAR guilty of cheating, to exclude them from this year’s World Championship and fine them upwards of one million euros.

On this, BAR tried to defend themselves.

However, a secondary ‘storage’ fuel tank is never an easy thing to explain, especially when excluded by the regulations. (It is an ingenious way to get round the regulations though, as when this tank is empty, the car can run up to 10kg underweight, giving it a good advantage over it’s competitors. Then, in the final pit stop, you simply fill it up, so at the end of the race when the cars are weighed, you’re overweight again, and deemed fully legal.) BAR’s argument that they got no advantage from having this second tank (they said it was full for the entire race, so they were always racing a heavy enough car) was washed away by the fact they were using fuel as ballast, couldn’t supply the data needed to show the car was overweight for the entire race distance, and they tried to hide the fact they were doing this from the FIA. The judges could only rule against them, and so they were disqualified from the San Marino GP, and excluded from the two subsequent races, Barcelona and Monaco, seriously harming their championship challenge. This punishment, is deemed “lenient” by FIA President Max Mosley, especially after such a strong opening statement.

It'll dull down this weekend's race in Barcelona though, with a flailing Ferrari with surprisingly little place, a rested Montoya crashing on day 1 in practice and Webber not setting a time. You've got to be doubting the race qualities of this week, really.