Spyker confident of retaining Japan point
Spyker bosses are confident about their prospects in next week's court of appeal hearing into Vitantonio Liuzzi's yellow flag penalty at the Japanese Grand Prix
Scuderia Toro Rosso have appealed Liuzzi's 25-second penalty for overtaking Spyker's Adrian Sutil under yellow flags, and Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost said earlier this weekend that he was positive the ruling would be overturned.
Tost claimed there was no green flag to signify the end of the caution area on the circuit, and that Liuzzi was well past Anthony Davidson's stricken car on the start/finish straight before he made his move.
But Spyker technical chief Mike Gascoyne thinks it is no excuse for Liuzzi to have overtaken where he did, because the driver cannot make a move until he sees a green flag.
"I am a little bit surprised by [the comments from Tost] because if you look at the judgement, and the clause under which they were done - the yellow flag rule - it states quite clearly that there must be no overtaking from the first yellow flag until the display of the green flag," said Gascoyne.
"That's the rule. There is no requirement to show intermediate yellow flags. It is the first yellow flag until the displayed green one.
"I'm a little bit surprised to see them say that there was no green flag - I don't really know why they're appealing."
Gascoyne says he looked at the incident in great depth and, although he acknowledged marshals made a mistake in not displaying a green flag, he believes that should not be enough of a reason to allow a driver to overtake.
"You have to say that is a mistake, but it is a mistake for the leading car as well as the following car," he explained.
"And you both have to observe the regulations, which is that until there is a green one, you have to slow down and not overtake. It's not really very difficult.
"The other thing is that there was a yellow flag being waved on the straight, by mistake. So, there's a slow vehicle on the track. You don't know if there's a recovery truck coming around Turn 1, or... you just don't know.
"So Adrian [Sutil] said, 'well, there's a recovery truck somewhere'. And he went down to Turn 1, there's no green at Turn 1, so he thought therefore something's happening. And you have to assume that.
"If you approach it and think, 'there's a guy behind me, there's no green, OK, there's something happening'. You can't know whether it is a mistake or not. So to say, 'there wasn't a green flag, it's OK'... I don't think that's in the International Sporting Code."
Article 4.1.2b of Appendix H of the International Sporting Code states: "Overtaking is not permitted between the first yellow flag and the green flag displayed after the incident."
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