Monday October 18th, 1999

Ferrari's technical director, Ross Brawn, held a press conference last night at Kuala Lumpur, in an attempt to refute the FIA's decision to disqualify the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine from the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Brawn, standing next to one of the Ferraris deemed illegal by the FIA's technical delegate at Sepang, explained that, "Regulations state that the bottom of the barge-board has to be the lowest surface when looking from the bottom of the car. Unfortunately, when you get to here [pointing at the area declared illegal], there is a piece missing, about ten millimetres or one centimetre. We haven't established the reason why this has occurred. The piece is obviously checked, and when the prototype is produced, everything is checked for legality. We have to establish what has gone wrong.

"I would just emphasise that there is no performance gain from such a piece and, obviously, we wouldn't produce a piece which we knew to be illegal, because they are checked by the FIA," continued Brawn. "There has been a mistake which has left a small piece of material absent."

Brawn's claim was enforced by Jordan's Chief Aerodynamicist, Tim Edwards, who said that "There is no way you would do something like that which would cost you first and second place." Edwards also agreed that no advantage would have been gained by that missing centimetre. "The performance advantage is so small it would not register," he said. "It is so small you would gain no advantage at all. But it certainly would not be worth doing intentionally because you could risk losing first and second place for an advantage which is so miniscule. And in any case you can see it with the naked eye. It is obviously something the FIA wanted to look into because they were sticking all kinds of rulers into it. It's bound to be an oversight because it is not something you usually check. That said, it is definitely illegal if there is a step because it breaks the flat bottom rule."

Ferrari team chief, Jean Todt, also reiterated that "This is exactly the same car in terms of technical specifications that was used and raced at the Nurburgring. And the cars were scrutinised on every day of this race event in Malaysia."

Ferrari will present these claims as part of their appeal in front of the FIA, most likely in the next few days - before the Japanese Grand Prix. In the mean time, McLaren's Mika Hakkinen is the provisional winner of the Malaysian Grand Prix and the provisional World Champion for 1999. However, Hakkinen's McLaren team chief, Ron Dennis, admitted last night that he is not altogether pleased with the way events had transpired in their favour. "This is not the way to win a championship," he said, "It is bad for the sport."