BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Kimi Raikkonen was confirmed as the 2007 world champion after the FIA’s International Court of Appeal ruled that McLaren Mercedes’ appeal regarding the results of  the Brazilian Grand Prix was inadmissible.
McLaren questioned the way the stewards in Brazil handled the issue of the cooled fuel in the (Williams and BMWs) being outside the temperatures allowed. Had the drivers of those two teams been disqualified, then Lewis Hamilton could have been elevated to fourth place and become champion. But McLaren said that was not why it appealed.
“In the interests of rule clarification and rule consistency, we lodged our appeal,” Martin Whitmarsh explained.
However, McLaren’s lawyer, Ian Mills, did call for the Brazilian race results to be reclassified.
Things got nasty at times during the two-day hearing held in London.
“It would be highly damaging for the sport if the title were to be won this way with the fans probably feeling it was more about grubby maneuvering by the lawyers than by skill behind the wheel,” Ferrari’s lawyer Nigel Tozzi argued.
BMW Sauber’s lawyer Ian Meakin accused McLaren of “naked opportunism.”
Because McLaren was not directly involved in the stewards’ ruling in Brazil, the ICA declared “the appeal lodged by (McLaren) to be inadmissible on account of the lack of direct interest in the decision under appeal.”
Furthermore, the ICA stated that McLaren did not follow the correct procedures laid out by the rules, which would have been to file a protest within 30 minutes of the race results being posted in Brazil.
Williams technical director Sam Michael agreed, telling ITV that McLaren was “negligent and didn’t follow the clearly documented procedure.”
If McLaren was merely interested in clarifying the fuel cooling rules, Michael said, the team simply could have raised the matter at the next meeting of the Technical Working Group and saved all the cost (as the loser, McLaren had to foot the bill) and hassle of an appeal.
How fuel temperature is measured does indeed have to be clarified.
Hamilton is happy with the appeals court’s ruling.
“As I have said all along, Kimi deserved to win the championship,” he said, “and neither I, nor anyone at McLaren Mercedes, had any desire to take it off him in court. That was not the purpose of the team’s appeal.”
If there were any doubts that Raikkonen would be stripped of the championship, they were quelled before the hearing by Bernie Ecclestone, who said he would give serious thought to retiring if that happened. Eccleston, who turned 77 on Oct. 28, has always said he will never retire, so he obviously felt pretty safe throwing down such a challenge.