FIA stewards reject McLaren’s Right of Review petition over Norris’s Austin penalty

McLaren has had its request for a Right of Review into Lando Norris’ Austin penalty rejected by the FIA stewards for last weekend’s Formula 1 race in Austin.

McLaren had argued that the stewards made an incorrect statement – and overall call – in handing Norris a penalty in Document 69 (from the FIA timing system) of the Austin weekend.

It was this that the orange team submitted as a “significant and relevant new element that was unavailable to McLaren at the time the stewards took their decision” to penalise Norris.

McLaren tried to argue that Norris had successfully got ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the scrap at Turn 12 late in the United States Grand Prix and so became a defending car and not an attacker when Verstappen shot back to reach the apex of the corner ahead before they both ran wide and Norris overtook in the wide run-off area.

In order for the Right of Review procedure to get to its second stage, which here would have been a new case assessing if Norris’s penalty would be rescinded, all teams initiating this process must prove to the stewards what they are arguing as new evidence is ‘significant’, ‘relevant’, ‘new’ and ‘unavailable at the time of the decision’.

The hearing in the Mexican GP paddock – with the Austin stewards joining via video – lasted just 25 minutes, as McLaren team boss Andrea Stella and team manager CHECK Randeep Singh made their case.
Red Bull representatives, which included sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, FIA officials including head of single seater matters Nikolas Tombazis were also present – with Wheatley outlining Red Bull’s arguments in the case.

Singh argued that McLaren believed ‘Document 69’ was a significant and relevant new element because “The document for the decision contained a statement that was incorrect and that [therefore] evidenced an objective, measurable and provable error had been made by the stewards” – per the FIA document announcing the Right of Review had been rejected.

McLaren said “that the statement [in ‘Document 69’] was that “Car 4 was overtaking Car 1 on the outside but was not level with Car 1 at the apex” and that “the above statement was in error because McLaren had evidence that Car 4 had already overtaken and was ahead of Car 1 “at the braking zone”.

Stella argued that…