PARIS -- BAR-Honda's Formula One team was banned for two races after an appeals court ruled Thursday that Jenson Button's car raced illegally at the San Marino Grand Prix last month.

Button was also stripped of the six points he won for finishing third at Imola on April 24, and teammate Takuma Sato lost his four points for finishing fifth. The sport's governing body, FIA, wanted the team to be disqualified for the season.

But the FIA's international court of appeal said in a statement that "it is not possible for the court to find that BAR-Honda deliberately committed fraud.'' However, the team displayed "a highly regrettable negligence and lack of transparency.''

BAR-Honda, which will miss the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona this weekend and a race in Monaco on May 22, explained to the appeals panel Wednesday why Button's car ran 11 pounds under the minimum 1,322-pound weight at Imola.

The FIA's arguments centered on the possibility of a concealed mechanism in Button's car. BAR-Honda chief executive officer Nick Fry denied the claims and threatened to go to civil court if his team was expelled.

"BAR-Honda is appalled at the decision ... and asserts that the judgment is contrary to all of the evidence heard,'' Fry said. "The team proved that it complied with the current regulations and the FIA now acknowledges that the regulations are unclear.

"At no time did BAR-Honda run underweight at the San Marino Grand Prix.''

The hearing centered on the legality of two carbon-fiber fuel tanks in the car's main tank, which the team said pressurizes fuel before it is injected into the engine.

"BAR were asked to pump the fuel out of their car. They left 15 liters in the tank and told us it was empty,'' FIA president Max Mosley said. "Under the circumstances, we feel they have been treated rather leniently.''

BAR-Honda argued that deliberately racing underweight would have led to possible engine failure. But that didn't convince the FIA, even though officials originally ruled Button's car was the correct weight.

The FIA challenged its own ruling and called for the 18-member tribunal to exclude BAR-Honda for the season and pay $1.29 million.

"We all agree that there are specific rules for all the teams, and if you are not inside the rules you are at a risk to have a penalty,'' said driver Fernando Alonso, who won the San Marino GP and leads the drivers standings with 36 points.

The team can return to racing May 29 for the European Grand Prix at Nurburgring, Germany.

The last team to be banned was Tyrrell, which missed the last three races in 1984. The team was banned because the sport's governing body ruled that a performance aid was found in the water that was sprayed over Martin Brundle's engine air intake trumpets at the Detroit Grand Prix.

(ESPN)

Thoughts?

I think the 2 race suspension is just. Teams constantly try to push the rules, and thats what motorsports is. If teams dont analyze every letter of the rule books, they arent doing their job. Now, when a team misinterprets the rules, its the team's fault and they should be punished. A full season ban would have been way out of line, but I think FIA settled on a reasonable punishment.

Time to ice skating in hell, cuz I just agreed with a ruling from the FIA!

I can't read that wall of text... is this about the steroid thing again?

M

The FIA, NASCAR, SCCA, etc racing bodies screw with the rules all the time, in the name of equality, which none of them are for anyway.

So now race weight is with empty tanks...and foolish me, I always thought it was what the vehicle weighed when it came off the track to impound...gas, dirt, rubber and all.

Oh well.....

QUOTE (SLITS @ May 6 2005, 02:49 PM)

The FIA, NASCAR, SCCA, etc racing bodies screw with the rules all the time, in the name of equality, which none of them are for anyway. So now race weight is with empty tanks...and foolish me, I always thought it was what the vehicle weighed when it came off the track to impound...gas, dirt, rubber and all. Oh well.....

The minimum weight has been 600kg for the car with driver but without fuel for over 10 years now, so this is hardly a "new" ruling. Quite unlike NASCAR, F1 doesn't juggled the rules several times a season to keep the playing field level. They've been changing the rules far too much lately, but it's been in the name of safety and slowing the cars, as well as reducing expenses. It's generally been ineffective at both.

This particular infraction was BAR deciding that fuel was legal as ballast, so as long as they kept at least 6kg of fuel in the car, it was the legal weight. The actual rules state that the car can never be under 600kg during the race, and that all ballast must be "fixed" and "only removable with tools". In 1994, a "clarification" was issued that stated that fuel could not be used as ballast, but this never actually made it into the rulebook. Instead, all fuel was pumped out of the car at the end of the race when it was weighed. The procedure for this was the car was tipped up nose in the air, a hose was run into the fuel inlet, and a pump pulled the fuel out into a container. BAR's tank design had a collector tank inside the regular tank which they claimed was to provide consistent fuel flow on low fuel (fair), but this collector was in the nose of the tank, so that when the car was tripped up, fuel wouldn't flow out of this collector tank, which could hold as much as 9kg of fuel. So, the normal pump out procedure would always miss this, and the car would be 9kg heavier than it could be during a race, when the fuel would flow out of the collector freely. Very clever design, and almost certainly put there to cheat. BAR's defense was that the fuel as ballast clarification had never been entered into the rulebook, and the rules as written were vague about using fuel as ballast.

BAR got off lightly. In 1996, Toyota had a very clever device on their WRC car that allowed air to flow around the 32mm inlet restrictor and into the turbo, thus violating the rules. It was built in such a way that it was very hard to detect even under close examination, and was obviously built to prevent detection. Toyota were stripped of thier points, and banned from the series full stop. Not just for one season, but until the FIA decided to let them return (which they have yet to do). Ove Anderrson, who ran the Toyota WRC team at that time, also ran the Toyota F1 team when they started it up, until last season, when Toyota brought in a Japanese manager to try and turn the team around after several seasons of no results for much money spent.

I think every one in racing cheats some how, or should I say, interprets the rules differently than their sanctioning body. Just not every one gets caught. BAR did and now they pay. I just wonder what if any knowledge of this did Gil De Ferran have. I think it was done before he took over as director for BAR and I wonder how else they might be able to use all that engineering talent instead of finding a way around technicalities in the rule book. I personally do not like the new tire rules, or the way qualifying has evolved, but I am a fan. So I will continue to watch, even if it is on ABC for a few races.
Erik

QUOTE

However, the team displayed "a highly regrettable negligence and lack of transparency.''

I don't know about you, but I am usually not transparent.

I mean you can sorta see a flashlight when you shine it through the palm of my hand... but it's just a little light that shines through.

"BAR's system was neither secret nor illegal (this is not disputed by the FIA). The team's main contention is that it was impossible for the car to run with less than 5 kg of fuel in the accumulator, which is separate to the main tank and an integral part of a primed fuel system. The accumulator normally runs completely full, at 0.5 bar pressure, before being boosted to 50 bar in the fuel feed line to the engine.

The technical submission includes data from the end of the first stint of the race, where Button's accumulator suffered a pressure drop-out twice as they pushed the car to run one extra lap before pitting: this was with over 5.3 kg of fuel still in the car.

The weight of fluids such as oil, water, fuel contained within the fuel lines, etc. is included in a car's minimum weight - a team asked to drain fuel from the tank for weighing purposes has never been required to drain fuel lines or indeed accumulators, even when they have been found to be close to the 600 kg limit. (The FIA, incidentally, was believed to have been acting on a tip-off from two ex-employees of BAR).

This would be an extremely crude way of cheating were it genuinely the case. ATL, which makes fuel cells for most of the F1 grid, confirmed that there was nothing unusual about the BAR system. I've heard from a friend with links to BAR that ATL has been extremely busy in the last 10 days, manufacturing new fuel cells for three other teams ahead of this weekend's race! BAR prepared formal protests against 6 other cars after the race at San Marino, but did not submit them because the stewards decided to take no further action against BAR on the day.

Incidentally, FIA technical delegates saw the fuel tank internally and externally at each of the two previous Grands Prix. In Bahrain, Button's pressure regulator was changed under parc ferme conditions (i.e. with an FIA delegate watching the procedure) and in Malaysia, FIA delegates asked to inspect BAR's spare fuel tank. In neither case was any objection raised."

I copied that text from another forum where they were talking about it. It shed some light on the issue.