Filed under: Motorsports
FIA rejects McLaren appeal, confirms Raikkonen's title
Kimi Raikkonen and the boys at Ferrari can breathe a sigh of relief, as their championship has been formally confirmed by the FIA. The title was appealed by the incredibly sore losers at McLaren, who insisted that because of a temperature irregularity in the fuel in BMW's and Williams' cars at the season closer in Brazil, those four cars should have been disqualified, thereby catapulting McLaren's Lewis Hamilton to the championship. (Yeah, they were serious.)Hamilton, it should be noted, stated that he didn't want to win the championship that way. And nobody else wanted him too, either. Even F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone threatened to quit the sport if the FIA took the title away from Raikkonen and awarded it to Hamilton over the technicality.
The ruling was issued by a specially-convened panel of the FIA's International Court of Appeal, presided over by a Czech motorsport judge and three others from the United States, Greece and Portugal. The court, which heard testimonies from BMW, Williams and McLaren, convened in London instead of the FIA's headquarters in Paris due to traffic issues in the French capital.
Our take: Rules are rules, but if the FIA had stripped Raikkonen of his title, it would have been bad for him, bad for Hamilton, bad for F1 and bad for motorsports. We'll be waiting for Ron Dennis to find a way to blame us for this, too.
Full statement from the FIA after the jump.
Press Release
"The FIA International Court of Appeal met in London on Thursday, November 15, 2007, to examine an appeal lodged by the Motor Sports Association (MSA) on behalf of its licence-holder Vodafone McLaren Mercedes against the decision (document 41) of the Panel of the Stewards of the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix dated 21 October 2007 and counting towards the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship.
"Following a report from the Technical Delegate indicating that the temperature of fuel pumped into the cars N°9 - Nick Heidfeld, N°10 - Robert Kubica, N°16 - Nico Rosberg and N°17 - Kazuki Nakajima, was more than 10 degrees centigrade below ambient temperature, the Stewards of the Meeting met to consider whether a penalty should be imposed.
"Having heard the evidence they decided not to impose a penalty as they had sufficient doubt as to both the temperature of the fuel on board the car and to the true ambient temperature.
"Having heard the explanations of both parties and having examined the various documents and other evidence, the Court decided that the appeal lodged by Vodafone McLaren Mercedes is inadmissible.
"The International Court of Appeal was presided over by Mr Jan STOVICEK (Czech Republic), elected President, and composed of Mr John CASSIDY (United States), Mr Vassilis KOUSSIS (Greece) and Mr José MACEDO e CUNHA (Portugal)."
"The FIA International Court of Appeal met in London on Thursday, November 15, 2007, to examine an appeal lodged by the Motor Sports Association (MSA) on behalf of its licence-holder Vodafone McLaren Mercedes against the decision (document 41) of the Panel of the Stewards of the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix dated 21 October 2007 and counting towards the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship.
"Following a report from the Technical Delegate indicating that the temperature of fuel pumped into the cars N°9 - Nick Heidfeld, N°10 - Robert Kubica, N°16 - Nico Rosberg and N°17 - Kazuki Nakajima, was more than 10 degrees centigrade below ambient temperature, the Stewards of the Meeting met to consider whether a penalty should be imposed.
"Having heard the evidence they decided not to impose a penalty as they had sufficient doubt as to both the temperature of the fuel on board the car and to the true ambient temperature.
"Having heard the explanations of both parties and having examined the various documents and other evidence, the Court decided that the appeal lodged by Vodafone McLaren Mercedes is inadmissible.
"The International Court of Appeal was presided over by Mr Jan STOVICEK (Czech Republic), elected President, and composed of Mr John CASSIDY (United States), Mr Vassilis KOUSSIS (Greece) and Mr José MACEDO e CUNHA (Portugal)."
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Philthy 7:58PM (11/20/2007)
"Incredibly sore losers"? How should a team react if it lost a world championship by finishing behind two teams that were (according to the evidence) most likely cheating? The villains here are the FIA, for applying the rules only when it's convenient (and doesn't upset their sugar-daddies at Ferrari).
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Yago Bal 7:58PM (11/20/2007)
This was last Friday, guys...
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David 8:00PM (11/20/2007)
Autoblog really needs to stop reporting on F1 or Top Gear. You guys are always way late with news concerning those two things.
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fuel70 8:01PM (11/20/2007)
Kimi has been in F1 for SO long he absolutely deserved the Title. So im happy the FIA came to this ruling.
Hamilton is young and will have many more years to challenge the Iceman.
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Jay P. 8:22PM (11/20/2007)
Wow, gotta love it when new media such as blogs can be days behind print media. *sigh* I guess giving late news is better than posting yet another press release....
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Geoff 9:11PM (11/20/2007)
In other recent news, Michael Schumacher will retire from F1 at the end of this season.....
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Frank Boulton 9:57PM (11/20/2007)
If you read the full FIA report on the penalty against McLaren you might undestand the complaint filed against McLaren. This whole thing was a dirty mess,a disenchated Ferrari employee sends documents to a disenchanted McLaren employee and McLaren pays - excessively. many in the industry agree. Todt better remember what goes around etc - -
McLaren's complaint was accurate and in frustration.Time to move on.
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6_speed 10:07PM (11/20/2007)
"Incredibly sore losers...". Wow, Noah Joseph! I think it was well within their rights to see that the rules get applied fairly and evenly among all competitors. In previous rulings, when these sorts of temperature variance were found (using the same type of methods), the cars involved had a penalty. It is more of a story that in this case the rules were not applied evenly. It is almost funny how the FIA International Court of Appeals ran scared, and chose to do nothing. It opens the door to having penalties for these sorts of temperature "irregularities" being applied unevenly. Not a good thing, in my opinion.
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Edward 11:51PM (11/20/2007)
Autoblog, you guys need to provide some balanced and intelligent reporting once in a while. You've taken something Ron Dennis said very personally, and it makes you look silly when Dennis' original comments were true and fair. In fact, by reporting in the manner you do, you simply justify his views further.
Poor job.
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pmalloy4391 3:04AM (11/25/2007)
I have to agree with you. In most cases the commentary is well placed but this should have been done as nutral as possible..
To the guys who say this is a week old, I dont follow F 1 so this is the first time I am seeing it. So to me a week late is in fact better than not at all,
Flea 5:57AM (11/21/2007)
well damn, you'd think the most popular motoring sport in the world, the second most popular overall sport after soccer, would grab a bit more attention even from our american bloggers, no? English, German and Italian blogs had the news up roughly 15 minutes after FIA's declaration
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Bob-o 6:20AM (11/21/2007)
Autoblog, your ass is showing.
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TuuSaR 11:32AM (11/21/2007)
BMW and Wiliams didnt break rules, FOM measured ambient temp wrong, simply as that.
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sqweak 3:30PM (11/21/2007)
"Sore Losers"? C'mon Noah, Hamilton and the Engineers pursuing the appeal stated repeatedly that they were not looking to win the title in court. Hell, here's a story stating as much _from the very same source_ that this post links to.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/63957
And get over the blogger/internet media comments made by Dennis. It's been blown out of proportion. This isn't some David vs Goliath "Poor little Blogger got no respect from monster McLaren". You're employed by an international media conglomerate so you'll get no sympathy from me.
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