Haas has launched a bid to revise the results of the Australian Grand Prix by protesting the provisional race classification.
The FIA confirmed a representative of the team has been summoned to meet them at 7:30pm local time.Nico Hulkenberg finished seventh in today’s race. He briefly held fourth place after a standing restart with two laps to go led to a multi-car crash, and stood to gain another position from Carlos Sainz Jnr ahead of him, who had been given a five-second time penalty.
However the stewards decided to re-order the field before the final restart behind the Safety Car, which moved Hulkenberg down to eighth. Haas is believed to be unhappy with the decision not to restart the race using the order the drivers were in after the standing restart.
Haas was unsuccessful in its last attempt to change the result of a race when it protested the outcome of last year’s United States Grand Prix. Its protest was initially upheld but later overturned when the stewards ruled Haas had not submitted its protest in time.
Any protests must reach the FIA within half an hour of the provisional classification being issued. That was done at 6:05pm today and the FIA confirmed it received Haas’ protest 6:29pm.
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Jere (@jerejj)
2nd April 2023, 10:46
Interesting & unsurprising.
Nick T.
2nd April 2023, 13:05
A protest over their luck. They should be protesting to get rid of Wiitich who probably throws a red flag every time his own farts startle him.
Simon
2nd April 2023, 20:58
As is your comment after only 9 minutes 🙄
Crawliin-from-the-wreckage (@davedai)
2nd April 2023, 10:52
Just waiting for Zak to join in and protest everyone having an ice cube in their drink thingy.
Obviously they were positioned to provide additional engine cooling that was not approved bi FIA.
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
2nd April 2023, 10:53
Has there been a reasoning put out for the re-ordering of the field?
Michal (@terrion)
2nd April 2023, 10:55
It’s in the rules. When red flag is out, the order is set by the last lap under green flag. Which, in here, was the restart itself
KaIIe (@kaiie)
2nd April 2023, 11:15
Actually, on F1TV they said that if the red flag comes out before everyone has passed the first intermediate, the results are taken from the previous lap. The precedent was apparently set in Silverstone last year (or in 2021, cannot remember which one).
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
2nd April 2023, 11:19
Definitely happened at Silverstone last year, yes.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
2nd April 2023, 11:31
Same thing happened at Bahrain in 2020 after Grosjean’s crash.
anon
2nd April 2023, 11:38
@kaiie the regulation states that “the order will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars. All such cars will then be permitted to resume the sprint session or the race.” The argument will be over what constitutes “the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars”.
In the case of Silverstone, the argument there was that the running order could not be established because not all of the cars had crossed the second safety car line, so the only point of reference that could officially be used was the starting grid.
The timing data that is publicly accessible for this race indicates that all of the drivers passed through at least two micro-sectors, so the question will be where the drivers were relative to the second safety car line. If all of the drivers had crossed it, then Haas would have a valid argument that the FIA should have used the running order at the second safety car line instead.
Bob2 (@bob2)
3rd April 2023, 2:43
Seems a valid argument vs. an accepted argument remain totally opposite it the minds of the Stewards. The ruling appears to basically be, HAAS is right, but we have already made a decision and have a flight to catch…
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
2nd April 2023, 11:39
@kaiie thanks
James Hosford
2nd April 2023, 11:02
Because…that’s exactly and correctly how the rule works?
Every race restart after a red flag (including one literally ONE (1) hour earlier) is the same. The cars are scored in the order they last crossed a sector timing loop, leave the pits, follow the SC for one lap, then restart (either rolling if conditions dictate or usually, standing).
It just happened in this case that 1. There was only 1 lap left and 2. Cars changed positions lots between the last sector timing and the incident.
In Albon’s crash obviously no other positions had changed but had, hypothetically, someone made a DRS pass running between 8 and 9 only for the red to get thrown before those 2 cars got to the end of S2 after Turn 10, they’d have been reversed aswell. That’s how the red flag procedure works, it just obviously doesn’t usually cause dramas because most red flags are single car incidents that damage barriers and the field spread means positions don’t change drastically between sectors.
The closest recent equivalent to what we just had was a late standing restart in Mugello 2020 and it also reverted from a new post-crash shuffled order they came back into the pits in, back to the order from the previous timing sector before the incident. That’s how the rule works.
The field wasn’t re-ordered. The field resumed in the correctly scored order as per the last scored timing sector, as per the rule.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
2nd April 2023, 11:18
Would Nico really want his 1 and only podium to have been won in the stewards office hours or days after he lost his chance to stand on it?
The race should have been finished after the red for K-Mag and standard red flag count back applied in my opinion.
Jere (@jerejj)
2nd April 2023, 11:37
@eurobrun Or just finished under SC for K-Mag’s error.
Nevertheless, a podium finish is a podium finish regardless of how it comes, so I’m sure he’d take that.
Nick T.
2nd April 2023, 13:07
Speaking of which, while Mick was criticized for all the shunts during his first half season, K Mag has also been a regular crasher/car contact guy. Slow to boot.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd April 2023, 23:38
Indeed, I hope steiner complains about his crashes as much as he did with schumacher, otherwise there’s clearly hints of bias, I was for keeping both drivers, but I have to admit hulkenberg (especially considering his time away from f1) is making magnussen look average, so for now he’s proving an upgrade on schumacher, but I have the feeling with more experience schumacher would be doing as well as magnussen now and could improve, as he’s still young and didn’t have anywhere near as many years in f1.