*shattered*
man u gotta feel for the drivers...
n i wonder how pissed off Jenson is.. he must be fumeing.. n poor Taku

Mosley feels BAR Honda's sentence is lenient
The team will restart season on May 29





Max Mosley's first comments
after the BAR Honda verdict

FIA president Max Mosley said he felt the sentence against BAR Honda meted out by the four-judge panel at the FIA's Paris headquarters had been lenient.

"The facts in this case are very clear," Mosley told the BBC. "The team was asked to pump the fuel out of their car. They left 15 litres in the tank and told us it was empty. Under the circumstances, we feel they have been treated rather leniently."

But in a statement the FIA's appeal court said that it was not possible on the evidence they had heard to prove that BAR had deliberately cheated.

"Their actions...show at the least a highly regrettable negligence and lack of transparency," the statement said.

Imola track scrutineers intitially found Button's BAR had conformed with the legal minimum weight limit when they inspected it. When the car was weighed immediately after the race it was found to be above the weight limit but it was below the limit when the fuel tank was drained.


FIA scrutineers at the track accepted BAR's explanation but the FIA, suspecting the car was loaded with petrol as ballast, put the case before the its International Court of Appeal.

And in its ruling the court declared: "The inspection revealed that on top of the 160 grams of fuel that was emptied, 8.92kg of fuel still remained in a special copmartment within the fuel tank and a further 2.46kg remained in the bottom of the fuel tank.

"These quantities remained in the vehicle after the BAR Honda team had confirmed "That's it" when asked if the draining process was completed."

The ruling means that BAR will restart the season in Germany on May 29 without a point.

Button's first podium finish of 2005 now goes to McLaren driver Alexander Wurz. The fifth-place gained by Button's Japanese teammate Takuma Sato has also been cancelled, allowing Canadian Jacques Villeneuve to claim fourth for Sauber, with Italian Jarno Trulli moving up to fifth for Toyota. Williams duo Nick Heidfeld, of Germany, and Mark Webber, of Australia, are now credited with sixth and seventh while Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi is now credited with scoring a point for eighth place on his debut with Red Bull Racing.

Source AFP