Jenson Button’s BAR Honda team were on Thursday banned from competing in the next two grands prix after being found guilty of ”highly regrettable negligence” at last month’s race in San Marino.
The verdict, way short of the season-long ban called for by motor racing’s governing body, the International Automobile Federation (FIA), was handed down by the FIA’s International Court of Appeal.
The court ruled that the car Button drove to finish third at Imola was underweight.
In addition to being excluded from Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix and Monaco on May 22, BAR have retrospectively been thrown out of the San Marino race and stripped of the points they picked up there — their first of the season.
They have also been handed a six-month ban, suspended for one year.
BAR vigorously deny they used an illegal hidden second fuel tank to gain an advantage on their grid rivals.
FIA president Max Mosley said he feels the sentence meted out by the four-judge panel at the FIA’s Paris headquarters is lenient.
”The facts in this case are very clear,” Mosley told the BBC. ”The team was asked to pump the fuel out of their car. They left 15 litres in the tank and told us it was empty.
”Under the circumstances, we feel they have been treated rather leniently.”
But in a statement, the FIA’s appeal court said that it was not possible on the evidence it had heard to prove that BAR had deliberately cheated.
”Their actions … show at the least a highly regrettable negligence and lack of transparency,” the statement said.
Imola track scrutineers initially found Button’s BAR had conformed with the legal minimum weight limit when they inspected it.
When the car was weighed immediately after the race, it was found to be above the weight limit, but it was below the limit when the fuel tank was drained.
FIA scrutineers at the track accepted BAR’s explanation, but the FIA, suspecting the car was loaded with petrol as ballast, put the case before its International Court of Appeal.
In its ruling, the court declared: ”The inspection revealed that on top of the 160g of fuel that was emptied, 8,92kg of fuel still remained in a special compartment within the fuel tank and a further 2,46kg remained in the bottom of the fuel tank.
”These quantities remained in the vehicle after the BAR Honda team had confirmed ‘That’s it’ when asked if the draining process was completed.”
The ruling means that BAR will restart the season in Germany on May 29 without a point. — Sapa-AFP