BAR Up for a Fight in Paris
BAR are clearly leaving no stone unturned in their bid to win Wednesday's FIA Court of Appeal hearing into the legality of Jenson Button's BAR at the San Marino Grand Prix, after hiring one of Britain's top lawyers and assembling a 10-strong witness team to represent them
The Court of Appeal will meet to rule on whether the FIA Stewards from Imola were right to allow Button to keep his third place result, even though his car was found to be underweight when it was drained of fuel after the race.
Although BAR have proclaimed they are completely innocent of charges that their car was underweight at any point of the race, with further suggestions of a secondary fuel tank being used, the team are clearly taking no risk in their case.
Their legal team is being led by top British QC David Pannick, who specialises in public law and civil liberties. He has argued more than 50 cases in the House of Lords and more than 20 cases in the European Court of Human Rights.
Most famously he acted for a British newspaper in the 'Spycatcher' case after the British government applied for an injunction to restrict publication of the memoirs of a former MI5 agent.
The team's list of witnesses includes representatives from the team and Honda. As well as team boss Nick Fry and technical director Geoff Willis, BAR will be calling upon chief engineer Craig Wilson, race team manager Ron Meadows, chief mechanic Alistair Gibson, number one mechanic Darren Beacroft and team truck driver Chris Fry.
Honda will also be present at the appeal with President of Honda Racing Development Yasuhiro Wada and their vice-president Otmar Szafnauer. Nick Brookes, a director of British American Tobacco, will also be called upon.
The FIA's nominated witnesses include Formula One technical delegate Jo Bauer, and two members of the Formula One technical team, Kris de Groot and Alan Fuller.
McLaren and Williams have also decided to send legal representatives to act as observers. McLaren have sent Mark Hubbard, their legal adviser, and Williams have sent their head of legal affairs John Healey.
The four judges who will rule on the case are Xavier Conesa from Spain, Vassilis Koussis from Greece, Erich Sedelmayer from Austria and Pierre Tourigny from Canada. The Court of Appeal hearing will begin at 11am at the FIA headquarters in Paris.
Autosport-Atlas will bring all the latest news from Paris as they happen.
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