FIA dismisses Aston Martin's request for review of Vettel's Hungaroring disqualification

The Aston Martin Team has failed in its review bid of Sebastian Vettel’s Hungarian Grand Prix disqualification after the sport's governing body reviewed the case on Monday.

After securing the tenth starting position, the four-time world champion used the first-corner melee at the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix to jump to the sharp end of the field, capitalizing on Valtteri Bottas’ overambitious move that forced Lando Norris and Sergio Perez to retire and caused a significant damage to Max Verstappen’s car.

Vettel then jumped to the second place at the restart when reigning champion Lewis Hamilton made a huge mistake by deciding against pitting for dry-weather tyres on the second formation lap. The German was then involved in a race-long battle with Alpine driver Esteban Ocon for the race win with the Frenchman able to fend off the faster Aston Martin racer.

However, Vettel was excluded from his second place finish after the FIA was unable to retrieve the required one litre sample of fuel from the car for post-race testing.Aston Martin immediately confirmed its intention to appeal which gave the Silverstone-based outfit a 96-hour period to decide whether to take it further.

On Monday afternoon the stewards heard from team boss Otmar Szafnauer, Chief Technical Officer Andrew Green and Sporting Director Andy Stevenson to hear the team's case. Under F1's rules, in order to secure a right to review, the team must show "significant and relevant new" evidence to the stewards.

Since the team’s data indicated that there was more than 1.0 litre of fuel in the car after the race – 1.74 litres in fact – the team requested a right of review, as a result of having discovered what it deemed to be significant new evidence relevant to the sanction which was unavailable to it at the time of the FIA stewards’ decision.

That review has now been completed, and, while the FIA stewards accept the team’s explanation of a fuel system failure as the cause of a leak resulting in an unexpected loss of fuel, their verdict was that the team’s petition for review be denied on the basis that its new evidence was not relevant to the requirement to provide 1.0 litre of fuel.

An FIA statement said: “For the assessment of whether or not the one-litre requirement was broken, it does not make a difference why there was less than one litre.

“There may be a couple of explanations why at the end of a race the remaining amount is insufficient. In any case, it remains the sole responsibility of the Competitor to ensure that the car is in conformity with the regulations all times (Art. 3.2 FIA International Sporting Code) and it shall be no defence to claim that no performance advantage was obtained (Art 1.3.3 FIA International Sporting Code).

“In order to be able to affirm a “relevant” fact, Aston Martin would have had to present facts that actually more than one-litre of fuel was remaining. The explanation why this requirement could not be met is not relevant to the decision as to whether a breach of the regulations has occurred.”

Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer commented: “Sebastian drove brilliantly in Hungary and we are pleased to have been given the opportunity to show significant new evidence that we discovered since the race.

"We felt that the evidence we presented was relevant and demonstrated to the FIA that he should have been reinstated following his disqualification.

"Unfortunately, the FIA took a different view and, despite the fact that that the accuracy of our new evidence was not contested, Sebastian’s disqualification has been upheld on the basis that the new evidence was not deemed ‘relevant’. That is disappointing, and we will now consider our position in respect of the full appeal process,” Szafnauer concluded.