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Aston Martin’s attempt to get Sebastian Vettel’s disqualification from the Hungarian Grand Prix reviewed has been dismissed by the FIA stewards.
Vettel lost his second place in the Hungarian GP after Aston Martin failed to provide a 1.0-litre fuel sample using the correct procedure.
Aston Martin had initially contested that its estimates put the amount of fuel left in the tank at the end of the race at 1.44 litres – but the FIA’s technical checks could only extract 0.3 litres.
The team initiated the appeal procedure but petitioned for a right to review as well, claiming it had discovered “significant new evidence relevant to the sanction which was unavailable to it at the time of the FIA stewards’ decision”.
That gave the team chance to contest the decision swiftly in the hope it could prevent a full-scale case with the FIA International Court of Appeal, as that process would take longer.
The stewards heard Aston Martin’s petition on Monday and concluded that the team did have new evidence but that it was inadmissible.
This is because the new evidence was derived from analysis of “more than 100 channels of fuel system related data” that concluded Vettel’s car suffered a fuel system failure.
According to Aston Martin the loss of fuel cell pressure meant the air pump in the fuel cell “activated a maximum output” that meant “a significant amount of fuel was inadvertently discharged”.
That meant there was “significantly less” fuel left than Aston Martin expected – hence only 0.3 litres being obtained for the sample when the team thought there must be more in the tank.
“Failure of the fuel cell pressure relief valve to seal is the prime suspect but any leak path from the fuel cell would have caused the loss of fuel pressure and resulted in the loss of fuel,” the stewards’ report noted.
The stewards felt that while all the telemetry data was available at the time, Aston Martin’s “careful analysis, interpretation and evaluation of this data” was only possible much later “because of the sheer volume and complexity”.
To that end they accepted Aston Martin brought a new element but ruled it fell short of being “significant and relevant” because the cause of the lack of fuel for the sample was never the stewards’ original issue.
The regulations that dictate the fuel sample process are very clear and simply require one litre be obtained through the correct process.
Aston Martin’s evidence does not change the fact that the rulebook “unequivocally calls for a remaining amount of 1 litre and does not allow any exceptions under which circumstances or for what reasons it could be dispensed with”.
The stewards noted that “for the assessment of whether or not the 1-litre requirement was broken, it does not make a difference why there was less than 1 litre” and that Aston Martin had been unable to establish that more than 1 litre of fuel was remaining.
They also said they “do not accept Aston Martin’s reference to examples of decision making by the FIA where the approach has reflected compliance with the purpose, but not the wording of the regulations”.
“These are different cases where for instance car accident damage results in replacing parts or adding weight due to the loss of parts during the race,” the stewards said.
“As long as such exemptions are not mentioned expressively in the written regulations, the stewards have to follow the wording.”
The stewards thus concluded that Aston Martin’s right of review “must be denied for reasons of admissibility”.
Aston Martin subsequently left the door open to continuing with its separate appeal process over the disqualification.
