The FIA ​​rejected McLaren’s request for a review of Norris’ penalty in Austin

The Woking team, as it is entitled to under the FIA ​​Racing Code, submitted a request to the stewards in Mexico to reconsider the penalty imposed on Norris by the stewards in Austin.

According to McLaren, the stewards of the American race made a wrong decision in imposing the penalty on Norris which cost him 3rd place from Verstappen, and ultimately a total of 6 points in the Englishman’s battle with the Dutchman for this year’s championship.

As the regulations provide, in order for a request to review a stewards’ decision to be accepted, the team must present “substantial new relevant information” about the incident in question, which was “not available at the time of the decision to postpone the penalty”.

At the hearing held yesterday afternoon in Mexico, with the participation of the Texas racing team via video conference, McLaren sought to substantiate its claim that Norris had already managed to pass Verstappen in their controversial battle at Turn 12 of the Austin circuit , so by the time he came off the track (at the exit of the turn) he was the defending driver – and not the attacker.

The hearing, which lasted just 25 minutes, was attended by McLaren’s Andrea Stella and Radip Singh, Red Bull racing director Jonathan Whitley, FIA director of single-seaters Nicolas Topazis, marshals and other Federation officials.

The new element presented by McLaren was the stewards’ document with which they announced the penalty decision to Norris. According to Radip Singh, “the decision document contained a statement that was incorrect and (therefore) demonstrated that an objective, quantifiable and demonstrable error had been made by the referees”.

McLaren reported that “the statement (at eletter) was that ‘Car 4 was passing Car 1 on the outside but was not level with Car 1 at the top of the corner’ and that ‘the above statement was incorrect because McLaren had evidence that Car 4 had already passed and was ahead of Car 1 in the braking zone'”.

According to Whitley, with this claim McLaren did not present new and material facts to the case, which were not available to the stewards at the time of the decision, as required by the regulations.

The Texas judges argued that the “new evidence” presented by McLaren did not meet the requirement of “relevance” to the subject matter, saying that their decision document could not even be considered “new evidence”.

They said, in particular, that McLaren’s claim that Norris was the defender rather than the attacker at the time of the exit from the track is “incorrect”as is the claim that “this alleged error is in itself a new element.”

Following this the FIA ​​rejected McLaren’s request to renew Norris’s penalty in Texas, and in announcing this rejection said: “This is unfounded. An application for review is made in order to correct an error (of fact or law) in a decision. Each new item must prove this error. The error which must be proved to exist cannot in itself constitute the element referred to in Article 14 (of the International Sports Code)”.

This was followed by McLaren’s official position on the matter, through an official statement it published, and said: “We acknowledge the decision of the Race Officials to reject our application for a Right of Review.

We disagree with the interpretation that an FIA document informing a competitor of an objective, quantifiable and demonstrable error in the Racer’s decision cannot be considered an admissible “element” that meets all four criteria of the International Sporting Code as set out in Article 14.3.

We would like to thank the FIA ​​and the scrutineers for looking into this matter in a timely manner. We will continue to work closely with the FIA ​​to further understand how teams can constructively challenge decisions that lead to incorrect race classification.”