A lawyer for McLaren yesterday called for Lewis Hamilton to be
handed the points that would make the Briton, and not Ferrari's
Kimi Raikkonen, this year's Formula One world champion.
Barrister Ian Mill told an FIA international appeal court
hearing that the BMW Sauber and Williams cars that finished ahead
of Hamilton in last month's season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix
broke the rules on fuel temperature and gained an advantage from
the breach.
If the three drivers involved are disqualified, Hamilton could
move up from seventh in the race to fourth - handing the
22-year-old British rookie the points needed to overhaul
Raikkonen.
However, the stewards do not have to move Hamilton up the race
order and the driver has said he wanted to win the title on the
track and not in a courtroom.
Finland's Raikkonen beat Hamilton by a single point at the end
of the 17-race season.
"The principle is clear," said Mill. "If there was a breach, it
was performance-enhancing. The sanction, I'm afraid, has to be
disqualification."
The lawyer urged the four independent judges, who are expected
to publish a judgment today, not to be influenced by the fact that
the title could be at stake. "I ask you to address this as though
it was any team at any stage of the season," he said.
The appeal, made on behalf of McLaren by the British governing
body, was against a stewards' decision not to sanction BMW Sauber
and Williams at Interlagos despite readings suggesting their fuel
was cooler than the rules allow.
The stewards ruled that there were "considerable discrepancies"
in the data.
McLaren was fined US$100 million and stripped of all their
constructors' points in September in a spying controversy involving
Ferrari.
The governing body ruled at that time, however, that the McLaren
drivers should keep their points because of an amnesty offered to
them if they provided evidence, despite strong arguments against
them remaining in the championship.
Mill used that same argument against McLaren's rivals.
"The driver may be entirely innocent ... but he has the benefit
of the infringing car," he said. "It must be right that if the team
is disqualified, the driver loses the points as well. In the other
case, the drivers were offered immunity if they assisted the
FIA."
Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone is concerned about
the appeal. "I don't think that the Formula One fans would like a
championship to be won because the temperature of the fuel, which
can't be measured anyway, is possibly 5 degrees C (41 degrees F)
out," Ecclestone was quoted as saying in The Times of London.
"If anybody thinks that's the best thing for Formula One then
I'd have a very serious thought about me retiring."
Ecclestone believes the fuel infringements were not a serious
breach of the rules. "In my opinion, they don't have to change the
results of the race - it's an infringement of the regulations," he
said. "On the same weekend, McLaren used an extra set of tires,
which they shouldn't have used - so if anything does happen at this
court of appeal, maybe they'll treat it exactly the same as the
tires."
McLaren was given a small fine and had the extra set of tires
confiscated.
(Shanghai Daily via Agencies November 16, 2007)