Mosley suspected BAR of breaking rules

FIA president Max Mosley has accused BAR of a “crude” and “primitive” attempt to break the rules – and revealed he suspected them before the season even started.

The FIA successfully appealed to have BAR-Honda punished for entering an underweight car in the San Marino Grand Prix, after which Jenson Button’s car was found to have a secondary fuel tank.

BAR trucks began leaving the Spanish Grand Prix paddock after they were banned for this weekend’s race and the Monaco Grand Prix later this month.

Mosley claims he was stunned to learn of BAR’s device, which kept a quantity of fuel apart from the main tank.

“You have got to be crazy to do it,” said Mosley at Barcelona prior to this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.

“People don’t do that sort of thing in Formula One any more. It’s the sort of thing people do in a club race, low-grade racing. It’s crude, it’s primitive, it’s not sophisticated electronics.”

Mosley claims he was aware of paddock gossip over the winter which suggested BAR were running cars which did not meet regulations.

BAR strenuously deny any wrongdoing and insist they never ran under the 600-kilogram minimum weight during the San Marino Grand Prix.

But Mosley said: “Everybody who was really in the know in Formula One strongly suspected something was going on. There was a general rumour in Formula One that this was going on.

“The 2004 season is closed, there may be an issue between the teams but as far as we are concerned it is closed. The truth is they went on too long if they were doing it last year.

“I personally heard about this during the winter from someone who does not work in Formula One but works in top-level motorsport in the United States.

“The reason I didn’t tell [technical delegate] Charlie Whiting at Imola was because if it’s true they would know this rumour was going around and nobody would be so stupid as to do it at their first competitive race.

“My intention was to talk to our people about it at this race.”

The FIA had asked their International Court of Appeal to exclude BAR from the rest of the season, having accused them of “fraud”.

The appeal court did not agree with that assessment of BAR’s behaviour.

Mosley added: “Confronted with what appeared to be a deliberate infringement, BAR have pleaded stupidity and the judges have given them the benefit of the doubt.”

BAR have argued that they did not break the rules because nowhere is it explicitly written that a car must weigh 600kg or more when drained of fuel.