An Inconvenient Truth

A couple of hours after the chequered flag was waved at Interlagos, I was chatting to an FIA official about the amazing outcome of the race we had just witnessed. You couldn't have made it up, we reckoned.

We happened to be standing near the bottom of the exterior stairs that lead from the race control building. And as we talked, we saw a BMW Sauber delegation coming down the stairs, consisting of team manager Beat Zehnder, technical director Willy Rampf, and chief mechanic Urs Kuratle. They didn't look like they were celebrating a double points finish.

It was an utterly transfixing moment, for it could only mean one thing - there was a scrutineering issue with one or both of the cars, perhaps one that could lead to an exclusion. In the light of Lewis Hamilton's unsuccessful quest for fifth place, the potential implications were huge.

My FIA pal had been busy with other things and was just as surprised as I was at this development, and hurriedly went off to investigate. Meanwhile, figuring that the BMW guys were not about to make any potential problems public too prematurely, I temporarily put my investigative instincts aside and got on with the more pressing job of chasing quotes from the celebrating Ferrari folk.

It was quite a while before word of what was going on began to filter around the paddock, and when it did, those celebrations came to an abrupt halt.

There was indeed a problem with both BMW cars, and it concerned the fuel being colder than the prescribed limits. Not only that, the same issue afflicted the Williams of Nico Rosberg that they had been battling with (and the less relevant sister car of Kazuki Nakajima).

With three cars ahead of him now called into question, there was now the tantalising prospect of Hamilton moving up to fourth place.

It was almost too much to take in. Would this crazy season really have another twist? And would the FIA really turn the result upside down a few hours after the world had seen Kimi Raikkonen beaming on the podium? It was time to find out what it was all about, and I spent the next couple of hours canvassing opinions in the paddock. And I found some quite contrasting opinions...

Ten degrees of separation

You never stop learning in this job, and I have to say that while I had an idea that teams cooled their fuel, I had little clue about the 10°C rule and the significance attached to it by the FIA and the teams. This is perhaps not surprising considering that never before had anyone fallen foul of it, so this specific rule had not previously attracted any attention.

No one can quite remember when the rule came in, but it has been there for a very long time. In essence, it was introduced to stop teams from actually freezing the fuel and gaining an advantage by reducing its volume and improving fuel flow. Even at 10°C below ambient temperature, there is still some benefit in that area, albeit a marginal one.

The second advantage is that pumping cooler fuel into a near empty and very hot tank at a pitstop reduces the risk of problems with pressure and vapour lock that could lead to a car stalling.

But most importantly, cooler fuel means more power, and 10°C below ambient confers a clear performance advantage increase. Exactly what that is depends on who you talk to. Ferrari engine boss Gilles Simon insisted that it was worth perhaps 2.5bhp, while others put it higher.

However, it is a short-lived bonus. Once the fuel is in the super-hot environment that is a Grand Prix car in the middle of a race, it soon heats up.

Nevertheless, there is an advantage to be had, especially in those often critical laps after pitstops, which is why the teams ship their bespoke cooling equipment around the world, at huge expense.

Someone at McLaren pointed out that their device weighs 425kg, adding that "it should serve drinks!" Everyone of those kilos has to be paid for when it's flown around the world, so it follows that the team (like everyone else) consider that it's worth the expense and effort.

Crucially, as it turns out, the rule actually refers specifically to the fuel in the car. The FIA currently has no way of measuring the temperature in the car, which in any case can be different in the various parts of the system - the fuel in the fuel rail, close to the engine, can be hotter than that still in the cell.

Therefore, the rule has always been applied by measuring the temperature in the rig - i.e. before it goes into the car. It's not unlike dimensions such as ride height being measured when the car is at rest - it's the best the FIA can do, because it's impossible to verify it while a car is moving.

Until two years ago, temperature was measured by an FIA official who manually inserted a probe into the rig and recorded the appropriate figure. However, last year the FIA introduced a data logger, a white box that is attached to each fuel rig and is retrieved for examination at the end of the race.

This records the details of each fuel stop, including the time, the flow rate, and of course the temperature. So depending on how many stops a driver did, the FIA will download two or three sets of figures for each car at the end of the race. The fuel temperature figures can then be compared with the ambient recorded at that time.

The ambient figure is understood by all the teams to be the number displayed on Page 3 of the FOM timing screen, which throughout the weekend carries details such as humidity, wind-speed, and rainfall. That information comes from FOM's own weather station in the paddock, and is thus not generated by the FIA itself.

Teams are well aware of the 10°C rule. They know that just like overall weight, or dimensions of items such as brake ducts, it's something they have to always be on top of.

To that end, they closely monitor the Page 3 ambient figures in the build-up to the race and after it starts. The absolutely key thing is that when the car comes in for a stop, the temperature of the fuel in the rig - as recorded by the FIA - is not more than 10°C under the Page 3 figure.

It goes without saying that if this number goes up during the course of the race, teams have to make sure that they don't get caught out. And if it goes down, they have the option of cooling the fuel further so that they can gain the maximum benefit.

Inevitably the likes of McLaren and Ferrari have the most sophisticated cooling devices, and they can adjust the temperature at will. Others don't have the facility to heat the fuel mechanically, but they have a more basic option if they are chasing ambient - they can physically dump in extra fuel that has been sitting in barrels in order to bring the average up. BMW Sauber are in the latter category, and the team have no method of automatically adjusting the temperature once the race begins.

McLaren take the fuel issue so seriously that in addition to his other race day duties, chief race engineer Steve Hallam has the specific task of monitoring the Page 3 ambient figure and reporting any changes to crew members who control the rig temperature.

"The chiller is controlled all the time," said the chief mechanic of a team not connected with Sunday's controversy. "It's very critical. We have a chart showing what the ambient is and what the fuel temperature is at the time of your pitstop.

"The big problem is when you have a cloudy day in somewhere like Malaysia; the clouds disappear, the sun comes out, and the temperature goes sky high. Then it's a question of how quickly you can follow it. And you give yourself a buffer."

"The cooler it is, the more you get, which is why we all cool fuel," said a team manager, again not connected with the case. "The regulations say that the fuel in the car can't be more than 10°C below ambient, and ambient is a moving target. Obviously the ambient at 9:00 am is not the same as 2:00 pm, so you have to track this moving target, because you want the most performance that you can get from the fuel.

"We all apply a margin of safety to it, because we don't want to break the rules. We all juggle with the same thing every Sunday morning. We have certainly been warned before that we are close to the limit with the fuel in the rig. And I believe other teams have been told the same. The unusual thing (at Brazil on Sunday) was that ambient has gone up really quickly, and that may have caught people out. I don't imagine anyone has done it intentionally."

Everyone knows it's not an exact science, so as these guys suggest, they leave plenty of margin - no one sails too close to the 10°C figure. Standard numbers I heard include Renault 7°C, Honda 8°C, and Ferrari 9°C, a range which one presumes reflects the team's confidence in their own equipment.

The point is that everyone in the pitlane understands how the system works, and how to play it. Which is why the BMW Sauber guys looked so shell-shocked when they descended those stairs. They knew that they were in trouble...

A cut and dried case?

The same goes for Williams. Technical director Sam Michael - who had already left for the airport and had to be called back to deal with the crisis - looked grim-faced when he went to race control.

Rivals too knew exactly what was going on, and in the Ferrari garage, it was as if the whole team's temperature had been brought down by the flick of a chiller switch. The drivers had gone, but everyone else from Jean Todt downwards stayed on, including Kimi Raikkonen's management team, David and Steve Robertson. There were some grim faces in the camp, and no one could quite believe what was happening. Sporting director Stefano Domenicali went to race control and hung around waiting for any news.

Any apparent technical discrepancy is noted by FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer, and passed to the stewards. He just reports the facts, and it's up to them to decide what course of action to take. The publication of Bauer's report did not improve the sombre mood at Ferrari. This is what it said:

The temperature of the fuel going into the car during the race refuelling has been checked for car numbers 01, 02, 05, 06, 09, 10, 16 and 17. The temperature of the fuel going into the car numbers 01, 02, 05 and 06 was within the 10 degrees below the ambient temperature. The temperature of the fuel going into the car numbers 09, 10, 16 and 17 was more than 10 degrees below the ambient temperature:

Car 09, driver Nick Heidfeld:

1st pit-stop at 14:33 fuel temperature: 24°C ambient temperature: 37°C
2nd pit-stop at 15:06 fuel temperature: 25°C ambient temperature: 37°C

Car 10, driver Robert Kubica:

1st pit-stop at 14:26 fuel temperature: 23°C ambient temperature: 37°C
2nd pit-stop at 14:49 fuel temperature: 24°C ambient temperature: 37°C
3rd pit-stop at 15:15 fuel temperature: 24°C ambient temperature: 37°C

Car 16, driver Nico Rosberg:

1st pit-stop at 14:31 fuel temperature: 24°C ambient temperature: 37°C
2nd pit-stop at 15:10 fuel temperature: 25°C ambient temperature: 37°C

Car 17, driver Kazuki Nakajima:

1st pit-stop at 14:41 fuel temperature: 25°C ambient temperature: 37°C
2nd pit-stop at 15:10 fuel temperature: 26°C ambient temperature: 36°C

I am referring this matter to the stewards for their consideration.

It was there in black and white. In the case of Robert Kubica, his fuel temperature was as much as 14°C below ambient - not an insignificant amount.

The man in the hot seat

We tend to refer to the FIA as a sort of amorphous mass, but in circumstances such as these we are talking about the three stewards, whose brief it is to make up their own minds. For the past two years there has been a permanent chief steward in Tony Scott Andrews, and he's joined at each race by a World Council member and a local steward.

As with any kind of refereeing job, it is a thankless task, because you can't keep everybody happy all the time.

Since he's one of three, Scott Andrews can in effect be outvoted by his colleagues, but in general he has been the guiding light in many a controversial decision.

His legal background means he takes a very analytical approach, reviewing the evidence in front of him and taking very seriously any apparent ambiguities in the rule book that give any cause for doubt. In published decisions he has gone to great lengths to explain his rationale.

He's also not afraid to take the big decisions, as evidenced by the penalties applied to Michael Schumacher at Monaco last year, and Fernando Alonso in Hungary this year - in both cases the stewards' reports all but called the world champions liars, although couched in polite terms such as 'disregarding evidence'.

But even these two celebrated cases could not prepare Scott Andrews for Sunday night. At the end of a long season, he would have been more than happy to enjoy an early escape from Interlagos, especially after a weekend when Ferrari folk made it clear that they were none too happy with the fact that McLaren escaped with a fine for Lewis Hamilton's tyre infringement on Friday, and that no action was taken after the Briton's alleged impeding of Kimi Raikkonen in qualifying. And now this...

Just put yourself in the guy's shoes. Accused at various times of favouring McLaren or Ferrari, or even Hamilton over Alonso in the case of Hungary, he knew that whatever decision he and his two colleagues made was bound to send a shockwave through the sport.

But despite the obvious pressures, he had to be dispassionate and come up with a judgement based on the facts of the case, and ignore any implications for the championship.

Having listened to technical directors Sam Michael and Willy Rampf, the three wise men had to make a call. It was not going to be easy...

Reading between the lines...

Williams and BMW Sauber did their job, which was to create a degree of doubt where at first glance, none appeared to exist.

Not for the first time matters were complicated by the fact that not everything by which the sport is run is written down as a numbered article in the FIA sporting and technical regulations. There are understandings and precedents, and there are items that have been agreed and minuted in meetings of team managers and slightly more formal bodies such as the FIA's Sporting Working Group.

The problem is that when the stewards come to discuss a matter such as the fuel temperature, they can only refer to what is actually in the rule book, unless for example a team can present relevant documentation relating to the above. In this case, however, the teams stood to benefit by not bringing such items to the attention of the stewards.

There were two major issues. First, there was the question of ambient temperature. The teams all understand that the FOM figure is the one that matters, however accurate or not it might actually be. But while non-regulatory documentation exists that makes it clear that Page 3 figure is sacrosanct, it is not specified in the rulebook as such.

To complicate matters, there is now a second quasi-official source of weather information. Last year the FIA did a deal with Meteo France to provide accurate weather forecasting over Grand Prix weekends. Because of the price that was quoted, the governing body invited teams to share the cost (eight took up the option, some supplying it on to their customer teams).

Typically a radar station is set up some 5km from the track, and information is sent to the FIA and shared with the teams. That's why TV coverage has been boosted by messages promising rain expected in five minutes, and so on.

The forecasts are for information purposes only and have no basis in the rules, but the fact is that there is Meteo France data floating around the paddock with an FIA logo on it, and when presented with that by the 'guilty' teams, the stewards had to give it some credence.

And while the FOM figures on Page 3 had a range of 36-37°C, according to BMW team manager Beat Zehnder, Meteo France had recorded 32-34°C during the race. And if you used those figures, the fuel under question was not more than 10°C below ambient.

There certainly seemed some cause to doubt the FOM figures last weekend, and several people noted a significant discrepancy between FOM's track temperature and their own measurements on both Saturday and Sunday. However that info, like that for humidity, wind direction and rainfall provided by FOM, has no relevance to car legality, and is again purely for information purposes.

Interestingly, one team manager told me of a precedent for the FOM figure being questioned officially: "We only look at Page 3, because that's the only thing that matters. If we have a problem with what it is displaying, we tell the FIA about it. At Indianapolis last year the ambient displayed on Page 3 was wrong, and we told them. They put a note on Page 3 which told us the offset to use when applying the ambient. I can't remember the figure, but it was a lot - it wasn't just one or two degrees..."

The difference is that at Indy that doubt was communicated to all the teams before the race, and not considered retrospectively after someone had got into trouble.

The second big question mark was placed against the method of recording fuel temperature. The rule clearly states that it is a question of the fuel in the car. And yet as noted earlier, over the past two years it has been recorded electronically as the fuel leaves the rig. So is that the same figure as that in the car?

The fuel travels down a hot hose that has been lying in the sun, albeit often covered by a reflective shield, and the very process of dumping it through the hose also serves to warm it up. Then it lands in the very warm environment of a fuel cell of a car that has just run 20 or so laps.

Williams and BMW successfully argued that the temperature leaving the rig, and that in the car as specified by the rules, was not the same thing. Michael and Rampf knew full well, as did all their rivals, exactly how FIA technical delegates Jo Bauer and Charlie Whiting had always measured fuel temperature, but once again, they were able to plant some doubt into the minds of the stewards, who could only judge the matter by what was in the rule book. Clearly there is an unfortunate oversight, but then it doesn't specify what tools you use to measure all sorts of minimum and maximums.

BMW provided some useful data in the form of 71 fuel temperature figures for each car, taken from the bursts of data that the car sends as it passes the pits. The team were apparently able to demonstrate that whatever the rig figures, the temperature recorded in the car was never more than 10°C below ambient. Of course, this was internal data that had not been verified by the FIA (and there is a question as to whether it was the fuel cell figure or that for the inevitably hotter fuel rail close to the engine), but it contributed to the case.

Scott Andrews took all this in and considered the following: If this was a legal case, was the evidence compelling enough for a conviction - or was there enough doubt, especially in the form of ambiguous legal technicalities, to let the defendants go free? It was not an easy call to make...

A gathering storm

By now it was dark, and flashes of lighting over Sao Paulo made for an eerie atmosphere. Outside the door to race control a crowd of TV crews and photographers had gathered, and every time it opened there was a burst of activity until everyone realised it was a hapless track worker carting off a TV set.

"You might have to explain to people that when you went to sleep Kimi was champion," said one bemused Italian reporter who expected the worst, "and you woke up and Lewis is champion. It will be difficult for the sport to recover from this."

The wait continued, and eventually even Charlie Whiting and his number two Herbie Blash had to bale out and head for the airport, leaving the stewards to it.

At around 9:00pm McLaren team manager Dave Ryan had tired of waiting and headed into race control in search of some news, and found his Ferrari opposite number Domenicali had been there all along. McLaren's Paddy Lowe, also eager for news, followed him later.

Finally there was a burst of activity, and the BMW folk came out and strolled down the paddock and past the Ferrari garage. They didn't say anything, but there was more than a hint that they were pleased with the outcome. An eager Steve Robertson tried to find out, but even he couldn't get a straight answer off team manager Zehnder, still a close friend of Kimi after their 2001 season together.

The suspense was awful, but the Scuderia didn't have to wait long as shortly afterwards Domenicali came marching down the paddock. The smile said everything, and as he punched the air there was a collective relief of pressure in the garage. The cheering was as loud as it had been right after the flag.

"How do I feel?" said a clearly relieved David Robertson. "It feels fantastic. We hung around and had to wait, but as long as it's the right result, it doesn't matter. At the end of the day what would have taken the shine off the whole thing was if they'd gone 'Lewis, we wanted you to win, and you have!'

"It's only apt and correct. I was supposed to be at the party, and now we can go on there. It's just going to be a longer and later party."

"Try to imagine what it's been like," smiled Domenicali. "Also because it doesn't depend on our situation, it depended on the situation of other cars, and not on our compliance. I was up there just because I was interested in what was going on. We were not involved, you have to ask the guys from BMW and Williams. I'm just pleased with the fact that the classification is now out, full stop."

And yet, it was not over. Aside from the drivers, Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh, the entire McLaren team had waited for the verdict long after the packing up process had finished. Just to make things even worse, no sooner had the verdict arrived than it started to rain. You couldn't make it up.

The stewards' decision noted that they lacked "a precise reading of the temperature of 'fuel on board the car' which shows fuel at more than 10 degrees centigrade below ambient temperature"; and "a regulation stating in clear terms that for the purposes of Article [6.5.5] the definitive ambient temperature shall be indicated on the FOM timing monitors alone."

It concluded: "In view of the matters referred to above, the stewards consider that not withstanding the presumptions referred to above there must be sufficient doubt as to both the temperature of the fuel actually 'on board the car' and also as to the true ambient temperature as to render it inappropriate to impose a penalty."

It made no sense at all to anyone other than those connected to BMW, Williams and of course Ferrari.

"It's an extraordinary decision," said one top McLaren man. Just about the only things that had not been packed away by the Woking boys were Dave Ryan's computer and printer. He quietly typed out a notice of appeal, printed it out, and wandered off to deliver it to the stewards. The question of who was the 2007 world champion would remain open.

The Robertsons and the rest of the Ferrari crew headed off to a Martini party, and the McLaren guys went to their own Vodafone event. Tony Scott Andrews wasn't invited to either bash - after perhaps the most draining evening of his life, he made do with a quiet beer and sandwich in the bar of the Sao Paulo Hilton.

What happens next?

Ryan only had an hour in which to serve notice of appeal, and of course he had to file it in order to buy some breathing space. After that the team had 48 hours in which to confirm that it was going ahead with the appeal. I had a feeling that we might get a press statement detailing the team's dissatisfaction but saying 'for the good of the sport we are not pursuing this', but in fact Ron Dennis has decided to press on.

Ironically, there is a question mark as to whether Ryan could in fact appeal a decision that did not concern McLaren, and FIA sources suggest that what he should have done is protest the results within 30 minutes. However Scott Andrews - who could have rejected the appeal - accepted it.

In normal circumstances it would have been a logical and sensible route for all concerned, as the Court of Appeal will allow everyone to gather evidence, and for example McLaren to provide detailed 'official' documentation that refers to how Page 3 is used, how the temperature is measured, and so on. Clarifying procedures can only be a good thing.

But of course these are not normal circumstances, and I'm sure even Dennis doesn't expect Lewis Hamilton to become world champion in a couple of weeks' time. Indeed, the 22-year-old himself doesn't want to win in this way, and I'm sure most people involved in the sport - and even many of Hamilton's fans - don't want to see the sport turned upside down.

As has been reported, there does exist the facility for drivers/cars to be excluded from the results, and others not moved up. That happened for example in Hungary, where nobody claimed the constructors' points lost by McLaren, although in that highly unusual case it would have been absurd because the McLaren drivers kept their points.

Another precedent is that of taking away constructors' points but not those of the drivers. That happened with a fuel issue in Brazil in 1995, but back then the fuel was legal and it was an administrative problem - there was no performance advantage, as was clearly the case here. The size of that advantage is irrelevant.

The bottom line is that this is a mess of massive proportions, and it came about through nobody's fault, other than a little operational mismanagement by two teams that have no direct bearing on the championship battle.

Of course, it's impossible not to draw comparisons with Malaysia 1999, and the infamous bargeboard controversy that appeared to have settled the title in McLaren's favour.

On that occasion the rules as generally understood by the teams were, shall we say, reinterpreted. The happy outcome for Ferrari was that the title decision was postponed until the last race in Japan. It was also good for the show, in that the public had to wait for the final episode of the soap opera, but the whole affair left a bad taste in many people's mouths. Perhaps the show had become too important, and some fundamental principles of the sport ignored.

But, and it is a big but, it must be stressed that the FIA stewards do not always have to accept a decision made by, or an opinion offered by, the FIA technical department. That's pretty much what happened in 1999, although the challenge came from elsewhere in the FIA rather than from the stewards, and it's happened again this time.

There is no question that the rules concerned in this case need to be more explicit, and often it takes a challenge like this to make that apparent.

There is already one potential improvement in the pipeline, related to fuel temperature. The FIA already has a homologated sensor fitted in all cars that records fuel pressure - there is an upper limit of 100 bar to stop development of ultra high pressure systems - and as of next year the option is available to add a temperature sensor as part of the common ECU package. Then there will be no questioning of whether the rig figures are relevant to the temperature in the tank.

Scott Andrews is a good man who has had to do a near impossible job, and has earned a lot of respect up and down the paddock even from those who have occasionally been on the receiving end, but he is also human.

Cynics will inevitably wonder what the decision would have been had the situation occurred in Australia, and there had been no pressing special circumstances.

Indeed, if three cars had been found guilty of the same offence at the Nurburgring back in July, and a certain Lewis Hamilton had moved from ninth to sixth and gifted three priceless points, would there have been any whisper of a conspiracy?

On the other hand, what if the two Ferraris had been the cars with the temperature issue on Sunday? Have a think on that one...

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