JUNE 30, 2005

Guilty as not charged?

The Formula 1 teams have pointed out a curious anomaly in the FIA World Council judgment of yesterday.

The Formula 1 teams have pointed out a curious anomaly in the FIA World Council judgment of yesterday. The teams went to Paris accused of acts prejudicial to the interests of a competition and specifically a charge of having wrongfully refused to allow your cars to race, subject to a speed restriction in one corner which was safe for such tyres as you had available but were found guilty of a different charge which was wrongfully refusing to allow their cars to start the race, having regard to their right to use the pit lane on each lap.

It is not clear why this would be the case but there is no doubt from the FIA documentation that it is indeed what happened. In legal terms, the two are clearly not the same thing.