Red Bull right to review request against Hamilton penalty dismissed

Red Bull’s request for a right to review the penalty handed out to Lewis Hamilton at the British Grand Prix has been dismissed as it “clearly” did not provide new evidence.

Teams are allowed to request a right to review a penalty that stewards will grant if they feel “a significant and relevant new element is discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned.” Red Bull duly lodged such a petition under Article 14 of the International Sporting Code last Friday and had to provide its evidence during a video conference in Hungary on Thursday, when it would try to convince the FIA to re-examine the penalty.

It transpired that Red Bull’s submission consisted of a letter dated July 23 that featured appendices, and Appendix 2 of the letter was claimed to be the new evidence. The FIA confirmed that Appendix 2 featured the following slides:

1) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, derived from GPS data available to them, of the cars involved in the accident at Turn 9, namely Car 44 (HAM) and Car 33 (VER);

2) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, derived from GPS data, drawing various alleged comparisons with the line taken by HAM when overtaking Car 16 (LEC) at Lap 50.

3) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, which showed alleged Lap simulations of the incident; and

4) Slides created by the Competitor, for the Petition, which showed "a re- enactment of Hamilton's Lap 1 line at Silverstone on July 22, 2021," based on a lap allegedly driven by another driver (Alexander Albon).

Albon had driven at Silverstone for what Red Bull had described as a filming day the day after a Pirelli tire test ended, with the letter now showing that part of the day involved recreating Hamilton’s line in order to try and have new evidence.

The stewards had to determine whether the submitted evidence was a new element that was significant and relevant and was discovered (rather than created) having been unavailable to Red Bull at the time of the decision. In announcing their decision, the stewards stated:

1) That what was presented to the Stewards was not "a significant and relevant new element (that was) discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned.”

2) The slides in Appendix 2 of the Competitor's letter that were relied upon as New Evidence were not "discovered" but created for the purposes of submissions to support the Petition for Review. And they were created based on evidence that was available to the Competitor at the time of the decision (namely the GPS data). That clearly does not satisfy the requirements of Article 14.

For this reason, the Stewards dismiss the Petition for Review.

However, there was a further point of interest as the decision also highlighted some of the content of Red Bull’s letter.

“The Stewards note, with some concern, certain allegations made in the Competitor’s above letter. Such allegations may or may not have been relevant to the Stewards if the Petition for Review had been granted. The Stewards may have addressed these allegations directly in any decision that would have followed. The Petition having been dismissed, the Stewards make no comments on those allegations.”

It is not yet clear what the allegations made by Red Bull were.