If Red Bull’s appeal succeeds in the International Court of Appeal (ICA), it could lead to a flood of challenges during the 2014 season according to Marussia’s Graeme Lowdon.
Red Bull are set to debate Daniel Ricciardo’s exclusion from the Australian Grand Prix after it was deemed that he exceeded the maximum fuel flow limit.
Red Bull claim the FIA’s mandatory sensor was giving inaccurate readings and they therefore chose to use their own data. However the stewards warned the team before and during the race to ease back – but they chose to ignore the advice.
Lowdon suggested a victory for Red Bull could lead to other teams ignoring information and then appealing, which he says would be bad for the sport and the fans.
“I certainly hope not because the fans don’t like that,” he told Sky Sports.
“They want to switch on, watch a race and then know who’s won it and not have to stay up another day or something like that to find out who actually won or who came second or whatever. So I certainly hope we don’t have that kind of thing.
“My own view is, and it’s purely a personal view, that it would open the floodgates to all sorts of things if this appeal were to be successful because, yes, the ICA is the final arbiter, opinions given by the FIA outside of the technical regulations are meant for guidance and they are guidance, it doesn’t constitute part of the Technical Regulations as such, but I think some things should be reasonably straightforward.
“If Red Bull chose to ignore the guideline from the FIA then they will have only done that to make their car go quicker – there’s no reason why they would have done anything other than that. Therefore if that was the approach that every single team took then without any question every single result would always be decided in the International Court of Appeal, and that’s not really what it’s meant for and it wouldn’t be good for the fans and, you’d argue, it wouldn’t be good for the sport.”
Whilst technical directives – advice issued outside of the technical regulations – don’t form part of the official rules, Lowdon says the system works well and it was followed by all but Red Bull that weekend.
“That’s why we have this system where the FIA give their opinion. It happens on things all the time,” he explained. “We seek Charlie Whiting’s opinion on a lot of things and he gives it and I think there’s a general view that it’s good for the teams to follow that advice, even though it might not necessarily constitute a part of the regulations.”
“It is an opinion and if we were just to ignore all of those opinions and constantly test them in a court then the sport would just stutter along endlessly.”
