BMW & Williams under investigation!

[joseff]

F1 Rejects mentioned that even with disqualification, promotion is "discretionary", meaning elimination of both bmw and williams does not automatically make LH world champion.

Hmm... that's new to me. Is this true?

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, I'm not sure. I skimmed da' rulez and all I got was rule 53 in the ISC, that says:

53) a) It shall be at the discretion of the stewards to decide, upon a report or a request by the race director, if a driver or drivers involved in an incident shall be penalised.

However, I think this is not a racing incident of the kind covered by that paragraph.

Sections on fuel in the Technical Regulations explains what could be wrong with fuel, but they don't talk about penalties.

[flynfrog]

F1 Rejects mentioned that even with disqualification, promotion is "discretionary", meaning elimination of both bmw and williams does not automatically make LH world champion.

Hmm... that's new to me. Is this true?

McLearns points were not redistributed after they were taken away no?

[DaveKillens]

Finally, after all this crap, it's now official. Kimi is the Champ, and Mclaren's appeal rejected.

[West]

McLaren almost took away his title, AGAIN.

[millerjam]

Yeah that might be all very well, but haven't two teams who cheated/broke the rules gone unpunished...what an absolute farce. How can the FIA even call themselves an organising body.
Fair play to Kimi he probably deserved to win this year, in fact anyone who got through this year who was in the title hunt probably deserved to win it, but this was about breaking the rules...
Can't help but think this is going to be latched onto by a number of teams and exploited for next year...

[Sawtooth-spike]

so can somebody tell me if i am wrong,

Next year everybody can cool the fuel to whatever level they like?

Why make rules you wont bother to enforce. BMW and Williams cheated, I dont care what happens with Lewis, its just BS (not the tyre) that people cheat and thats ok.

Next year Mclarren should run some kinda super cooling system for fuel.

[checkered]

Williams has, for

the first time since the stewards raised the issue, commented on the issue publicly. They're stating the same argumentation they provided for the ICA, quite naturally. It leaves little to nothing to speculate about.

Williams F1 today welcomed the findings of the ICA. The outcome of the hearing means that the Steward's decision in Brazil in relation to this matter remains in force and valid.

The team did not transgress the regulations, demonstrate any intent or gain any competitive advantage in relation to the management of its race fuels.

In order to respect the Court of Appeal process, Williams has refrained from making any public statement until a conclusion had been reached.

The team can now confirm that the facts of this case are as follows:

1. Article 6.5.4 of the FIA Technical Regulations states that no fuel on- board the car may be more than 10C below ambient temperature.

2. There is no specified source for the ambient temperature measurement, and there is no homologated and sealed sensor for measuring fuel temperature either in the fuel rigs or on-board the cars.

3. Meteo France, who provide official temperature measurements for the FIA and Formula One teams, recorded a maximum ambient temperature during the Brazilian GP of 33C.

4. The lowest temperatures recorded by Williams' precise on-board sensors in the fuel tank and in the fuel injection rail on either of its cars during the Grand Prix were 31C and 35C respectively.

5. Consequently, as the Stewards found, there was no breach of the regulations.

6. All of the preceding points are consistent with all of the clarifications and opinions related to fuel temperatures expressed in Team Managers' Meetings and other such forums. The views offered in these meetings fully support Williams' case as presented to the FIA ICA.

These facts lay behind the Steward's decision in Brazil. Williams was pleased to be able to present these facts to the ICA and see the Steward's decision upheld, confirming that both Williams race cars were legal throughout the course of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

In the event, the appeal of the Steward's decision was found to be inadmissible as McLaren failed to follow the correct and clearly documented protest procedure.

Williams welcome ICA decision - link, Autosport

[joseff]

The "cold" fuel sample was taken from the refueling rig. The rules say that fuel in the tank must not be 10C below the ambient temperatures.

Williams and BMW might or might not have cooled the fuel in the rig, but their fuel in the car obviously didn't break the rules.

[Saribro]

While I can accept the appeal from Mclaren on this point, the rules simply don't allow for any other way to resolve other than the way it has. No official source of ambient temp in the rules + no source of in-car fuel temp in the rules = this outcome.

[deluge]

Two points to be made, if I can. The standard ambient temp was suspect. Even though the standard was defined as the "FIA on-screen ambient", those readings were not consistant when compared to those of Mateo France, the weather service sanctioned by the FIA. So, the standard ambient temp was questionable, to some degree. But, this is not the most important issue.

Second, and more importantly, the rules say that "onboard" temp, not fuel rig temp, is the temp that is compared to ambient. It is my understanding that the teams in question provided "in tank data" that proved the on-board temps were in compliance with both the FIA "on-screen data" as well as the more optimistic ambient temp data provided elsewhere.

Every F1 car has on-board in-tank sensors to measure fuel temp. This is necessary in order to feed the engine management system with data that is necessary to provide proper fuel mixtures as fuel loads decrease and tank temps rise.

The on-board temps showed compliance, and that led to "inadmisability" for this protest.

[kimi]

As per the Williams statement there was questionable doubt on the ambient temperature readings on the FOM,which showed it to be 37C.But as per the Meteo France readings it was 33C.and as per the details of the appeal I think even the fuel rig temp of all the four cars are within or just on the limit of 10C difference to the ambient temperatures.Now coming to the rule,the fuel temp on board measured by the censors also showed that they within the projected ambient temperatures.So there was no point of imposing a penalty on both the teams.

And moreover there was no major performance advantage gained as they were well ahead of Lewis and Lewis couldn't have done anything with it even if they were running on whatever fuel temperatures.

Evan in one article I read that the track temp at Brazilian GP was shown to be 67C which was far above than the Meteo France readings.Well I may be wrong,but can anyone please let me know about it?

[bizadfar]

Numbers are assigned by WDC points, as stated above the Ferrari's would be 1-2 with Kimi leading, Mclaren 3-4 and BMW 5-6...

I don't think this is correct Tom. The number 1 car goes to whoever is the reigning driver's champ, and his team-mate automatically gets number 2. thereafter however it reverts to the team results for order.

The reasoning for this I guess is to not unfairly 'penalise' teams who's top drivers move on for the next season. This is why Alonso was #1 this year and Renault had 3 & 4, not Ferrari even thought Schumy was runner up in the 2006 championship. It also perhaps prevents a new team signing the WDC and inheriting the car #1 in their first year.

So, as far as I can quickly work out, next year will look like this (assuming these drivers stay where they are):

1 - Kimi, Ferrari
2 - Massa, Ferrari
3 - Heidfeld, BMW-Sauber
4 - Kubica, BMW-Sauber
5 - Fisichella, Renault
6 - Kovalainen, Renault
7 - Rosberg, Williams
8 - Nakajima, Williams
9 - Coulthard, Redbull
10 - Webber, Redbull... and so on down to

21 & 22 - McLaren..or something like that.. (assuming Force India are entered and Prodrive are not)

Rob W

22 & 23. Must remember No 13 is not used.

[checkered]

SpeedTV appears to

have "acquired" the entire ICA decision. Whether they managed to contact the FIA Secretariat, as the brief press release indicated as the proper procedure of requesting the entire decision, they don't elaborate on that. The document itself makes for really tedious reading, Williams' reaction explained the thing much better. The ICA decision has virtually no technical content even though quite many teams went to great lengths to submit such data.

EXCLUSIVE: McLaren Appeal Decision Text in Full - link, speedtv.com

An interesting footnote from the proceedings: Not only BMW Sauber and Williams presented their data showing temperatures from the fuel tank and fuel rail, recorded during the Brazilian race - Ferrari did so, too. But when McLaren was requested to submit their comparable data for consideration, the team refused to do so despite the fact that every team makes these measurements. This, had the ICA really considered the technical merits of the case, wouldn't have reflected well on their appeal. This is oddly reminiscent of their other request for "clarification" when in addition to forcing changes in Ferrari's floor, they actually had to alter their own construction as well.

Even grandprix.com, having propably perceived themselves to have stood McLaren's ground whenever humanly and logically possible through what must have been one of the most tortuous seasons in the team's history (and I certainly sympathise with many of their trials, too, albeit with some critical reservations that can be attributed to my subjective perception that I need not adopt a balancing position at any cost to the sport), put the team's latest appeal in this perspective:

McLaren said, and some believed them, that this was not about the World Championship. They argued that it was about knowing what constitutes the rules. Well, yes, in part. It was also about putting the FIA in an embarrassing spot with a very public issue but given what has been done to the team this summer that is perhaps understandable.

The FIA Appeal Court decision - link, grandprix.com

It will be a really tense - or testing, rather - off season. At some point, someone will have to consciously bite the bullet and end all the outstanding tit-for-tats. It was my opinion with the McLaren-Ferrari case already that some aspects of it should've just been overlooked in the general interest of things. That proved impossible since both parties were more interested in using the different processes as leverage against each other than really finding out whodunit and what happened - never mind fixing things together.

It remains to be seen whether common interests can be better perceived with the outstanding cases. F1 deserves to get back to racing.

[checkered]

Some quotes from

an interview with Sam Michael on ITV. It's extensive and a good read in its entirety on Sam Michael talks to itv-f1.com - link.

It was very clear during the process of putting forward the engineering side that the stewards’ decision was most likely to be upheld.

...

FOM have a temperature sensor, but it became clear up to two years ago that it was not accurate enough to be used as regulatory.

So what was agreed was that the FOM temperature would be used as a guide, and if there was any question mark over its accuracy, that would be reviewed with the Meteo France data.

Now Meteo France is the French met office so they are pretty good at measuring temperature. That is their business. It's not just a forecast they provide either, they also measure the temperature at the circuit constantly.

...

Just so we are clear, the Meteo France temperatures are not forecasted, they are measured temperatures. So they measure them at the circuit on the day.

...

I think normally we would have ended finishing it up on the Sunday night and if there was any ambiguity in the regulation it would just have got handled in the next TWG.

The fact that there was a championship involved didn't interest Williams on the Sunday night in Brazil. That was completely irrelevant to us. Not just because it didn't affect us, but because if the legality of your cars is called into question, that is more important than any championship, particularly a championship for another team.

That is probably more of a question for McLaren to say whether the championship influenced them to go to the court of appeal.

Although it was good to have those things out in the ICA, I don't know how much it cost them to turn up with the four or five lawyers they had. You wouldn't have expected them to spend that just to clarify a regulation when you can turn up for free at any TWG and do the same thing.

...

This is straightforward. This is what happened on the day, it could easily have been solved in the TWG, but fine we'll go to the ICA to prove the same thing.

But still it is being painted as if there is something underhand going on and that is disappointing.

We play a very straight game and if there is implication that it is not like that – and I don't mean just Williams, but at the FIA's level – I'm sorry that is just not the case here.

We sat in the hearing on Thursday, everyone got the full ear of the ICA, and it was all done properly, and yet there are still third parties who like to paint the fact that it wasn't.

But it was done by the book.

[The perception that it wasn't] is potentially damaging.