Lewis Hamilton in clear to race after F1 tyre-test row ends

FORMULA One's £500,000 show trial ended with a slap on the wrist and a guilty verdict for defendants who suggested their own punishment.

Lewis Hamilton Mercedes

FORMULA One's £500,000 show trial ended with a slap on the wrist and a guilty verdict for defendants who suggested their own punishment.

To the bizarre catalogue of legal cock-ups that fill the library of the FIA, the sport's governing body, make a space for the prosecution of Mercedes and Pirelli over an illegal tyre test. Then send the bill to the army of lawyers who filled the "courtroom" at the FIA's opulent headquarters off the Place de la Concorde in Paris on Thursday for the seven-hour hearing.

Twenty lawyers were present, according to the FIA's list, including four eminent silks. Some estimates put the cost at more than £500,000 for a day of evidence that revealed little more than confusion over the arcane rules by which F1 is governed.

The team and the tyremaker were reprimanded yesterday for staging the 600-mile test by an independent International Tribunal, which found both guilty but went no farther than banning Mercedes from the young drivers' test next month at Silverstone after the British Grand Prix.

The three-day test is the same length as the Barcelona session that enraged Mercedes' rivals when they discovered that Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were testing Pirelli's tyres.

Paul Harris QC, counsel for Mercedes, was good enough to suggest the quid pro quo punishment in his closing submission to the tribunal. In F1, an eye for an eye is now a tyre for a tyre and the tribunal's five judges obviously took note.

There seemed little doubt that Mercedes and Pirelli broke the letter of the law but the sentence reflected the shambles of a governing body that gave them the go-ahead in the first place. The prosecution was aggressive in tone, led by Mark Howard QC, counsel for the FIA, yet was always on shaky ground once it was known that Charlie Whiting, the FIA race director and the organisation's most senior man in F1, had given his conditional approval after taking legal advice from Sebastien Bernard, the FIA's legal director in Geneva. So the judgment in the prosecution of Mercedes and Pirelli ended with the defendants sharing equally in the £500,000 worth or so of costs with the FIA, the prosecutors.

If relief was the first emotion at Mercedes, it was followed quickly by an assurance that there would be no appeal against the conviction. The verdict also means that Ross Brawn, the Mercedes team principal and a towering figure in F1, will not be forced to retreat into a side office at the team's headquarters in Brackley, Northamptonshire, clutching a bottle of whisky and a service revolver. Acts of sacrifice are no longer required.

Whiting has also survived this one. The tribunal found that no one acted in bad faith and Whiting gave his qualified approval to using the 2013 W04 Mercedes at the test last month at the Circuit de Catalunya after seeking the best advice he could get. The door was half-open and Mercedes and Pirelli simply walked straight through it, into the complicated legal mess that culminated at the tribunal hearing.

Mercedes' rivals - particularly Red Bull and Ferrari, who lodged the protest that triggered the legal action - wanted blood; Christian Horner, Red Bull's team principal, even turned up at the hearing, the only representative from Formula One in a sea of briefs.

Horner said that he merely wanted clarity on the rules, but he really wanted Mercedes to suffer a points deduction that would have dealt his fast-improving rivals a mortal blow - but then he would.

In F1, you fight them on the track, then in the courtroom.