15 drivers broke the rules but were unpenalized
The regulation farce of the FIA World Touring Car Championship is not over yet. While nine drivers were penalized in qualifying due to exceeding rev limit and/or turbo pressure, a whooping 15 drivers were found to have exceeded that during the races but were left without a penalty.
“It is important to understand that what happened was not caused by an intentional act of cheating,” said WTCC promoter Marcello Lotti.
“But by a wrong gear shifting that resulted in a peak of the supercharger pressure of only 7 thousandths of a bar, which is too small to give a technical advantage, but enough to force the Stewards to exclude the car taking into consideration the technical report.”
The following drivers were found to have exceeded the rev limit and/or the turbo pressure:
Yvan Muller, Gabriele Tarquini, Rickard Rydell, Jordi Gené, Tiago Monteiro, Alessandro Zanardi, Nicola Larini, Jaap van Lagen, Kirill Ladygin, Viktor Shapovalov, Tom Coronel, Félix Porteiro, Eric Cayrolle, Mehdi Bennani and Laurent Cazenave.
The reason for not penalizing these drivers this time was stated to be the following:
“The Stewards, taking into account the exceptional circumstances and confusion, decided to impose a reprimand to the competitors concerned, who were reminded that their cars must comply with all the technical regulations for the remaining events of the season.”
The obvious difficulties to equalize the turbo charged diesel engines of the SEAT’s, which seemingly has sparked the rule controversy of this weekend, has raised the question why the diesel powered cars ever were allowed in to the S2000 rules.
“WTCC provides close links between the racing cars and the production models they come from. This also means we have to be prepared to open the door to new technologies, which is why we accept the turbodiesel cars.
And when you have to deal with new technologies sometimes you find yourself in situations that are not fully clarified,” said Lotti.
It seems that even the WTCC organisation has lost faith in the current two liter S2000 regulations and puts faith in the new “S1600” regulations that we have reported about earlier on TouringCarTimes.com.
“However, I am confident that with the co operation of the manufacturers and the FIA technical department, we can sort all the problems out.
I am confident that this will be easier to manage with the adoption of a new generation of engines from 2011, as the manufacturers are due to agree on using 1.6 litre turbo petrol-powered units.”
The regulation farce of the WTCC this weekend has seemingly become a hot potato within the FIA. Dutch WTCC reporter Rick Winkelman reports that Max Mosley personally is going to try to solve the regulation problems.
Stay tuned for further news on this infected subject!
