 |
|
|
|
No penalty for Massa's jumped start
Ferrari driver Felipe Massa will not be sanctioned for his jumped start at the Belgian Formula One Grand Prix, but the ruling body, the FIA, said on Friday it will make sure such incidents won't go unnoticed in the future.
An FIA spokeswoman said that Massa's fourth-place finish from Sunday's race a Spa-Francorchamps will stand because the result was final.
Videos circulating on the internet (and now withdrawn for rights reasons) appeared to indicate that Massa was closer to the start line than his supposed place after the warm-up lap.
TV commentator Martin Brundle said at the time that Massa was "two metres in front of his start line".
Massa would have likely faced a drive-through penalty had the incident been detected immediately and would have lower than fourth, given the time differences in the final results.
"The problem was not brought to the attention of the FIA race director by either the marshals nor the automatic jump start system in time to be able to apply the appropriate penalty for jump starts," the spokeswoman said.
"As no further information or complaints were received before the publication of the official result on Sunday night, the classification of the Belgian Grand Prix will now remain unchanged. The FIA is investigating the causes of the apparent failures in communication with race control in order to ensure a repetition is not possible."
