Formula 1 stewards have rejected Red Bull’s request to review the penalty handed out to Lewis Hamilton over his clash with Max Verstappen at the British Grand Prix.
Red Bull Racing believes that the 10-second penalty which Hamilton received was “a light penalty for this type of incident,” in the words of team principal Christian Horner, who also revealed that the crash had cost his squad around $1.8 million.
It formally requested that the FIA review the incident and a hearing was held on the eve of track activity at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
However, for that review to proceed, the Milton Keynes team would have had to demonstrate “a significant and relevant new element is [had been] discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned,” according to the FIA’s International Sporting Code.
A statement issued by the world governing body advises that it failed in doing so.
Red Bull submitted four pieces of evidence, in the form of a series of slides, in attempting to argue its case.
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According to the FIA, they were:
1) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, derived from GPS data available to them, of the cars involved in the accident at Turn 9, namely Car 44 (HAM) and Car 33 (VER);
2) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, derived from GPS data, drawing various alleged comparisons with the line taken by HAM when overtaking Car 16 (LEC) at Lap 50.
3) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, which showed alleged Lap simulations of the incident; and
4) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, which showed “a re-enactment of Hamilton’s Lap 1 line at Silverstone on July 22, 2021,” based on a lap allegedly driven by another driver (Alexander Albon).
The latter was conducted by Albon, Red Bull’s reserve driver, as part of a filming day at Silverstone on the Thursday after the British Grand Prix, following the conclusion of a Pirelli tyre test.
However, stewards deemed that none of that evidence had been “discovered”, rather that it had been created from existing evidence.
They stated:
1) That what was presented to the Stewards was not “a significant and relevant new element (that was) discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned.”
2) The slides in Appendix 2 of the Competitor’s letter that were relied upon as New Evidence were not “discovered” but created for the purposes of submissions to support the Petition for Review. And they were created based on evidence that was available to the Competitor at the time of the decision (namely the GPS data). That clearly does not satisfy the requirements of Article 14.
For this reason, the Stewards dismiss the Petition for Review.
The stewards also made reference to certain ‘allegations’ made by Red Bull in requesting the review, although the exact nature of those allegations is unknown.
“The Stewards note, with some concern, certain allegations made in the Competitor’s above letter,” they wrote.
“Such allegations may or may not have been relevant to the Stewards if the Petition for Review had been granted.
“The Stewards may have addressed these allegations directly in any decision that would have followed.
“The Petition having been dismissed, the Stewards make no comments on those allegations.”
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