Mosley Slams BAR Reasons to Drop Case
FIA President Max Mosley has ridiculed BAR Honda's claim that they did not pursue an appeal against the team's two-race ban in the civil courts because of issues of jurisdiction, with Mosley suggesting it was the fear of being embarassed that stopped them from taking matters further
"They know that the whole thing would be out in the open and their case would collapse," Mosley said in Barcelona. "We'd have someone cross-examining their witnesses and it would be somewhere between an embarrassment and a disaster."
Mosley defended the FIA stewards at Imola, saying that they were working under pressure and, in the time frame available, were unwilling to throw BAR Honda out.
"As judges of first instance sometimes do, they did not interpret the regulations properly," Mosley claimed. "They allowed themselves to be convinced with all sorts of data that the car had not gone under 600kgs.
"But there were two problems with that. One, the teams can't prove that just by using data, that's what Article 2.6 says - you have to do it by physical inspection.
"The second problem was that the data assumed that the rate of fuel consumption was constant, and there's no means of knowing that. So, for all anyone knew, it could have gone under 600kgs but, anyway, whether it did or not is irrelevant because the actual car weighed less than 600kgs.
"The stewards got it wrong, it's that simple, and that's why we appealed."
Mosley says that it was such an open and shut case that the FIA did not bother to send a barrister to the FIA Court of Appeal.
"Once you analyse it clearly there is no debate," he said. "The BAR team had one of the cleverest people in the English legal system (David Pannick). He's brilliant. He acted for us against BAR when we had that arbitration (concerning the running of team cars in dual livery). That's how they found out about him!
"I think another time I'd send a barrister who's a good cross-examiner because what was needed was a good cross-examination of their weaknesses and then their whole case would have dissolved into tatters."
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