Sauber drivers disqualified from Australian GP

Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi have been disqualified from yesterday’s Australian GP. Both Sauber cars registered technical infringements which made stewards take away the seventh and eighth spots earned by the team’s drivers.

After making an excellent debut to his F1 career finishing in seventh ahead of his team-mate Kobayashi, Sergio Perez saw the stewards in Melbourne exclude both the team’s cars because of the infringement of technical rules 3.10.1 and 3.10.2. These rules refer to the uppermost rear wing element.

Article 3.10.1 reads: "Any bodywork more than 150mm behind the rear wheel centre line which is between 150mm and 730mm above the reference plane, and between 75mm and 355mm from the car centre line, must lie in an area when viewed from the side of the car that is situated between 150mm and 350mm behind the rear wheel centre line and between 300mm and 400mm above the reference plane. When viewed from the side of the car no longitudinal cross section may have more than one section in this area.

"Furthermore, no part of this section in contact with the external air stream may have a local concave radius of curvature smaller than 100mm.

"Once this section is defined, 'gurney' type trim tabs may be fitted to the trailing edge. When measured in any longitudinal cross section no dimension of any such trim tab may exceed 20mm."

3.10.2 states: "Other than the bodywork defined in Article 3.10.9, any bodywork behind a point lying 50mm forward of the rear wheel centre line which is more than 730mm above the reference plane, and less than 355mm from the car centre line, must lie in an area when viewed from the side of the car that is situated between the rear wheel centre line and a point 350mm behind it."

Sauber has already confirmed its intention to appeal its disqualification from the Australian Grand Prix. The team has been caught by surprise and is disappointed with the outcome of what had been a great weekend.

"It appears that there is a question over the top surface of the uppermost rear wing element, this area is not the working surface of the component and therefore relatively unimportant to its function,” said technical director James Key.

"Certainly this has not led to any performance advantage. We are checking the design of the parts now to better understand the situation and we intend to appeal the decision made by the stewards," he added.

Because of the disqualification of Perez and Kobayashi, Felipe Massa climbed up to seventh position, ahead of Sebastien Buemi from Toro Rosso. Force India’s Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta climbed to the points, closing the top-ten.

Fastest Lap: Felipe Massa - 1m28.947s

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