Scuderia Ferrari has not been successful in its attempt to have the decision to award Sebastian Vettel a five second time penalty at the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix reviewed.
Vettel was accused of rejoining the track in an unsafe manner and impeding Mercedes AMG Motorsport‘s Lewis Hamilton after sliding off the track at Turn 4 on lap 48 of 70 at the Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve, and was burdened with a five second penalty.
The German could not create the sufficient gap to Hamilton in the remaining laps, gifting a fifth victory of the 2019 season to Hamilton.
Ferrari decided against lodging a formal appeal through the FIA‘s Court of Appeal, instead choosing to try the governing body’s right to review ruling that gives the protesting party 14 days from the initial race classification to gather and present any new information that was not available at the time of the decision.
Ferrari’s sporting director Laurent Mekies was certain that the team had “pretty overwhelming” new evidence to present to the reassembled Canadian GP stewards panel, with a meeting taking place during Free Practice 2 for this Sunday’s French Grand Prix.
But the stewards have deemed that Ferrari had offered “no significant and relevant new elements which were unavailable to the parties at the time of the competition concerned”.
Ferrari put forward seven items when trying to clear Vettel of any wrongdoing, including onboard camera footage, the four-time champion’s team radio, telemetry, GPS data and an analysis of the incident by ex-F1 driver and current Sky Sports pundit Karun Chandhok.
The stewards retorted by saying that five of the seven pieces of evidence were available at the time of the decision.
Chandhok’s analysis “was new but not significant and relevant as [it was] a personal opinion by a third party”, and onboard footage from Vettel’s helmet-facing camera was also registered as insignificant due to other onboard angles, that were available at the time, showing the same thing.
The result of the hearing ensures that Hamilton remains the winner of the Canadian GP and keeps his 29-point lead over team-mate Valtteri Bottas in the Drivers’ Championship.
