Almost a week after the checkered flag flew, the United States Grand Prix is officially over.
McLaren filed a “right of appeal” regarding a five-second penalty handed down to Lando Norris in the closing act of the race in Austin, seeking the appeal of the penalty which cost Norris third place in the United States Grand Prix, and promoted Max Verstappen to third in his place.
However, following a hearing conducted on Friday ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix, race officials have rejected McLaren’s request.
According to the report from the stewards, under the FIA Sporting Code, a party requesting a right of appeal has to satisfy a “high bar” in their request. Specifically, McLaren needed to demonstrate that “a significant and relevant new element is discovered which was unavailable to the parties seeking the review at the time of the decision concerned,” as outlined in Article 14.3 of the Sporting Code.
As outlined in the stewards’ decision, McLaren needed to meet “each and every one of the four above criteria.” (Emphasis in original).
McLaren’s argument advanced in support of their right of review was that in the stewards’ initial decision in Austin, they found that Norris was overtaking Verstappen “on the outside but was not level with [Verstappen] at the apex.”
According to McLaren, that statement “was in error because McLaren had evidence that [Norris] had already overtaken and was ahead of [Verstappen] at the braking zone.”
Red Bull, represented by Sporting Director Jonathan Wheatley at the hearing, relied on the fact that the standard for the right of review set an “extremely high bar” for McLaren to satisfy, and their request did not meet the applicable standard.
The stewards, in their decision, focused on the relevance of the reportedly new element submitted by McLaren. In their view, the stewards found that McLaren’s position that a mistake was made in the underlying decision, and is, therefore, a “new element” to be considered in the right of review, is “not sustainable,” and therefore the petition was rejected.
However, the stewards did note that the FIA might want to reconsider just how high the bar currently is for parties seeking a right of review, particularly regarding decisions made during the “pressurized environment of a race session.” Specifically, the stewards drew the “regulatory authority” to this language in their decision:
The current “high bar” that exists in Article 14 and the fact that it appears to have been designed more for decisions that are taken as a result of a hearing where all parties are present, rather than the pressurized environment of a race session, when decisions are taken, (as is allowed under the International Sporting Code), without all parties being present.
In a way, this might be the ultimate relief McLaren was seeking. Both Norris and Team Principal Andrea Stella in their comments to the media, including SB Nation, raised the fact that race officials simply decided on Norris’ penalty without hearing from the drivers, and in the “pressurized environment of a race session.”
Both Norris and Stella thought it would be more prudent to wait, and hear from all the involved parties, before issuing a decision.
While that might not change going forward, the language included by the race stewards at the end of this decision opens the door to the current “high bar” on right of review requests being lowered, when decisions made in the “pressurized environment of a race session” are involved.