UPDATE: Haas Australian GP protest rejected

Haas has failed with its protest into the race result at the Australian Grand Prix after controversy surrounding a late race restart.

Kevin Magnussen’s crash triggered a red flag that left two laps possible after a standing start. The first corner saw multiple incidents – including crashes for the Alpine drivers and Fernando Alonso being spun to the back before Lance Stroll went off – that led to the race being red-flagged again just three corners later.

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As the cars filtered through the first sector, Nico Hulkenberg was promoted to fourth place behind Carlos Sainz, who would later get a time penalty for hitting Alonso, but the restart order for the cars to roll over the line on the final lap was taken from the previous restart positions, minus those cars that had retired.

That promoted the Aston Martins to third and fourth, with Hulkenberg classified in seventh, but Haas protested the provisional classification in an attempt to get the order taken from the first sector when the German was higher up. Had it been successful, such a change would have impacted multiple drivers and have given Haas the first podium in its history.

The stewards deemed the protest admissible based on the International Sporting Code, as Haas was claiming a breach of the regulation that states “In all cases the order will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars...” and arguing that “It was possible for the position of all the cars to be determined at the SC2 line not the previous starting grid”.

However, the stewards spoke to race director Neils Wittich and agreed that a decision needed to be made in a timely manner and that GPS data to establish the order of cars in such a situation was unreliable. As a result, the stewards felt the most appropriate point had been selected to determine the order at the time, and dismissed the Haas protest.

That confirmed the race result with Max Verstappen winning from Lewis Hamilton and Alonso, with Lance Stroll classified in fourth ahead of Sergio Perez, Lando Norris and Hulkenberg.