Kubica Disqualified For Being Underweight
2006 Season

Kubica Disqualified For Being Underweight

Oliver White
6th August, 2006
2 comments
2 min read

Robert Kubica has been disqualified - 2006 Hungarian Grand PrixRobert Kubica – who drove a blistering debut in Hungary earlier – has been disqualified from his seventh place finish after stewards found his BMW Sauber to be 2kg underweight. The news comes as a bitter blow to the Pole who had driven so well all weekend after being promoted in Jacques Villeneuve‘s absence.

The error in weight has been attributed to excessive tyre wear caused by the teams having to run on intermediates as opposed to the well-rehearsed runs on dry/grooved tyres.

In a statement, the stewards had this to say:

The Stewards accept that the fact of the car being underweight was entirely inadvertent and give credit to BMW Sauber F1 Team for their assistance and cooperation in dealing with this matter.

The reason for the car being underweight was explained as being attributable to excessive and unexpected tyre wear (and therefore weight loss) arising through continued use of wet weather tyres in comparison to the accustomed and anticipated rate of wear for dry tyres.

It is the Stewards’ view that the car did not comply with Article 4.1 of the 2006 FIA Formula One Technical Regulations.

The Stewards’ decision is that the car be excluded from the results.

The disqualification of Robert Kubica promotes Felipe Massa to 7th, and Michael Schumacher to 8th, despite not even taking the chequered flag. Although Schumacher didn’t actually finish the race, he was oficially classified 9th before the promotion because of lapped traffic. The championship lead to Fernando Alonso is now just ten points with five races remaining.

2 comments

  • Schumacher classified 9th despite not finishing the race because of “lapped traffic”?! Sadly did not see the race as away, so could someone please explain this in simple language please! Thank you. pb

  • Peter:

    I apologise for the cryptic language ;).

    Michael Schumacher didn’t finish the race because he had an incident and was forced to retire 2 laps from the end. However, Michael had lapped the Midlands at least twice during the race, so when he retired on lap 68, Albers and Monteiro couldn’t unlap themselves two full laps before the race finished. Therefore, they couldn’t actually overtake Schumacher. Thus, the Midlands were officially classified as finishing behind Michael’s Ferrari, who ‘finished’ in 9th, and then promoted to 8th after Kubica was disqualified.

    I appreciate that still doesn’t explain it very well. Does anyone else have a better way of saying it? Your comments are welcome.

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