09/08/2021
NEWS STORY
Following today's decision by the FIA to reject Aston Martin's appeal against Sebastian Vettel's disqualification from the Hungarian Grand Prix, the team is to consider its position.
"In the original decision, the stewards only assumed the fact that there was not enough fuel in the tank," said the FIA following today's hearing. "The question of what caused that situation was left out of consideration," it added, referring to the team's claim that the mandatory litre of fuel could not be extracted due to a faulty fuel system.
"The F1 Technical Regulations unequivocally calls for a remaining amount of one litre and does not allow any exceptions under which circumstances or for what reasons it could be dispensed with," said the FIA.
"In order to be able to affirm a 'relevant' fact, Aston Martin would have had to present facts that actually more than one litre of fuel was remaining," it added. "The explanation why this requirement could not be met is not relevant to the decision as to whether a breach of the regulations has occurred."
Reacting to the decision, Aston Martin has tonight issued its own statement.
It reads:
"After Sebastian Vettel's drive to second place in the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday August 1st, he was disqualified from the results when a 1.0-litre sample of fuel was not able to be taken from his car after the race (a requirement as set out in the FIA Formula One Technical Regulations).
There was and is no suggestion that Vettel's Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One™ Team AMR21 car benefited from a performance advantage from the regulatory breach, or that it was deliberate.
Since the team's data indicated that there was more than 1.0 litre of fuel in the car after the race - 1.74 litres in fact - the team requested a right of review, as a result of having discovered what it deemed to be significant new evidence relevant to the sanction which was unavailable to it at the time of the FIA stewards' decision.
That review has now been completed, and, while the FIA stewards accept the team's explanation of a fuel system failure as the cause of a leak resulting in an unexpected loss of fuel, their verdict was that the team's petition for review be denied on the basis that its new evidence was not relevant to the requirement to provide 1.0 litre of fuel.
The team is now considering its position in respect of its outstanding appeal."
"Sebastian drove brilliantly in Hungary and we are pleased to have been given the opportunity to show significant new evidence that we discovered since the race," said Otmar Szafnauer.
"We felt that the evidence we presented was relevant and demonstrated to the FIA that he should have been reinstated following his disqualification.
"Unfortunately, the FIA took a different view and, despite the fact that that the accuracy of our new evidence was not contested, Sebastian's disqualification has been upheld on the basis that the new evidence was not deemed 'relevant'. That is disappointing, and we will now consider our position in respect of the full appeal process."