London - Lewis Hamilton had a second ‘victory’ in two days after Mercedes decided not to appeal against Nico Rosberg’s demotion at the British Grand Prix.
Although Hamilton, who won the wet-dry race at Silverstone in style, sought no favours from his bosses in Brackley, and wants to beat his German rival on the track rather than on technicalities, the upshot is that his deficit in the championship table is just one point going into the 11th round of 21 in Hungary a week on Sunday.
Had Mercedes appealed and won, Rosberg’s advantage would be four points. The three-point difference could yet be important in deciding the title.
But it was not for reasons of partisanship towards their world champion that Mercedes decided not to contest the issue, which centres on instructions given by the team to Rosberg over the radio towards the end of last Sunday’s race.
Rather, they and their in-house counsel decided that the risk of appealing and losing - and potentially getting a heftier punishment - was too great. The demotion of Rosberg from second place to third is now set in stone.
Mercedes will, however, work to get the new rule clamping down on radio traffic changed after being found in breach of article 27.1 of the FIA sporting regulations, which state that a driver must drive “alone and unaided”.
The controversy arose when Rosberg reported that he had a gearbox problem.
His engineer Tony Ross told him: “Avoid seventh gear.”
Rosberg replied: “What does that mean? I have to shift through it?”
Ross responded: “Affirm, Nico, you need to shift through it.”
Such help is not allowed in an FIA push to stop drivers being “coached” by pit-wall boffins, a ruling that was meant to hand drivers greater responsibility, but is in fact baffling the teams.
Mercedes explains
In the team’s statement confirming it was withdrawing its notice of intention to appeal, Mercedes said: “We were able to prove to the stewards that a car-stopping gearbox failure was imminent and, as such, were permitted within the rules to advise Nico of the required mode change.
“However, the advice to avoid seventh gear was considered to breach the sporting regulations.
“The team accepts the stewards’ interpretation, their decision and the associated penalty.
“During the coming weeks, we will continue discussions with the relevant Formula One stakeholders on the subject of the perceived over-regulation of the sport.”
That last line reflected the anger along the pit wall, not least after Sergio Perez crashed in Austria seven days earlier having suffered a brake failure that his Force India team were not allowed to help him sort out.
Pat Symonds, Williams’ chief technical officer, said: “Normally when something happens, we know what to do on the pit wall. But now with this, every single race, a debate goes on in the pit lane, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t do this, what are we going to do?’
“Poor old Perez in Austria, how ridiculous. You’re going to do tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage to the car, because you can’t tell a guy his brakes are about to fail? It’s not just wrong, it’s negligent.
“We debated the very situation Perez found himself in and said, ‘If that’s the case, we’ll tell the driver to stop. We don’t care about a penalty. We’re not going to risk injuring a driver’.”
The FIA has so far been reluctant to give in, pointing out that the more stringent rules were unanimously agreed by the teams.
Daily Mail
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter