Sauber alters legality-check procedure

Both Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi - seventh and eighth in the race - were disqualified from the Melbourne event following a technical infringement.

A radius on the upper rear wing element on the cars contravened the regulations by a few millimetres.

Sauber's managing director Monisha Kaltenborn told AUTOSPORT on Thursday that the team had identified the problem and tweaked the system to avoid a repeat.

She also said it had been a human error.

"We had to first understand what happened and how it happened, which we did," Kaltenborn said. "We then focused on basically looking at the legality-check procedure we had and see how it could happen there.

"We reinforced measures, we added a few other measures to really have a robust system. So we concentrated on that and we are sure now the measurements are right."

She added: "You have a lot of things connected when you are designing, and so one change or modification can have effects on other things, and this is where simply a human error happened, and it slipped through the system."

Kaltenborn also laughed off rumours about technical director James Key being fired because of the incident.

"I think this is one of the examples of how dangerous the internet can be. Somebody somewhere on some chat wrote some nonsense and it has this effect all over the web. It is absolute nonsense and it would also be such a foolish move."

When asked if Key had a long future at Sauber, she said: "Absolutely, yes."