Red Bull has even resorted to the performance of Alexander Albon, the team’s reserve driver, when he was taking part of the Pirelli tests at the Silverstone circuit a week after the British Grand Prix.
As most of the personalities of the paddock boasted, the FIA has endorsed its view of what happened at Silverstone a couple of weeks ago despite the ‘new evidence’ contributed by Red Bull, unhappy with the 10-second penalty given to Lewis Hamilton while Max Verstappen was forced to quit without completing even a lap.
Ron Meadows, Mercedes sports director, Andrew Shovlin, director of engineers in the circuits of those of Toto Wolff and the own James vowles, strategy director of the Brackley formation, were in charge of defending the formation of the silver star, while Christian horner, Ben waterhouse (RBR Director of Performance Engineering) and Jonathan Wheatley (RBR sports director) took care of the opposite side.
Next to Michael Masi, all of them met by videoconference to make a new decision after what happened. In order for the FIA to accept such a review, the appellant must provide ‘new relevant information of an incident that was not available to them at the time ‘, something that the governing body of Formula 1 has not found on this occasion.
Thus the things, the request of Red Bull has been rejected after they have presented until 4 tests:
- Slides with data derived from the GPS of the cars involved in the accident at Turn 9 (# 44 and # 33).
- Slides derived from GPS data, drawing various supposed comparisons to the line taken by Hamilton when he passed car # 16 (LEC) on lap 50.
- Slides showing alleged simulations of the incident.
- Slides showing a recreation of the line taken by Hamilton on lap 1 at Silverstone on July 22, 2021, based on a lap by Alexander Albon.
The first was considered “a new element”, the second “significant” and “relevant”, the third a “discovery” and the fourth and last “inaccessible to the competitor at the time of decision”, leading the FIA to reject any major sanction towards Hamilton / Mercedes.