The results of the Spa 6 Hours World Endurance Championship round in May stand after Ferrari’s appeal of its failed protest was rejected by the FIA International Court of Appeal.
The decision of the court, announced on Tuesday after a hearing in Geneva last week, means that the #12 Jota Porsche 963 LMDh shared by Will Stevens and Callum Ilott has been confirmed as the winner of round three of the 2024 WEC at the Belgian venue.
The court upheld the decision of the stewards of the meeting to throw out the protest of the factory Ferrari AF Corse team against the decision to restart the race beyond the original scheduled finish time of the event and therefore the provisional classification.
The relevant decision, #71, was protested by Ferrari outside of the one-hour time limit laid down in the FIA International Sporting Code and therefore was “final and binding”.
The court additionally stated that Ferrari’s submissions “must be rejected as they are exclusively based on the argument that decision #71 breached the regulations and that ‘consequently’ the provisional classification, respectively the final classification, has to be amended”.
It stated that because Ferrari did not raise any further argument against the provisional classification “the appeal must be rejected on this point as well”.
It pointed out that the protest procedure is to allow one competitor to challenge another for an alleged breach of regulations.
But the court said that the stewards were “wrong to simply reject” the protest because their decisions cannot be challenged, stating that a challenge to the provisional results is expressly mentioned in the sporting code.
The ruling from the court ordered “the competent sporting authority [meaning the FIA] to draw, as appropriate, the consequences of this ruling”.
That is a reference to a clause in the WEC sporting code regarded as ambiguous by many, which states that the stewards can "stop and/or modify the race time set”.
“This may not exceed the time of the competition," it continues.
The stewards interpreted that as the duration of race rather than the timeframe in which it is scheduled to take place.
Ferrari has claimed that its protest was at least partially motivated to achieve a clarification of rules that resulted in an unprecedented extension of the timeframe of the race at Spa.
The need for extensive barrier repairs prevented the race being resumed after a red-flag stoppage within the original six-hour duration, but the stewards decided to restart the event beyond the scheduled 19:00 finish.
A further one hour and 44 minutes of racing — the remaining time on the clock at the stoppage minus the time it took for the cars to line up on the start-finish straight - began at 19:10.
The two factory Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercars had been running 1-2 when the race was red-flagged after four hours and 13 minutes.
Ferrari ended up finishing third and fourth with its #50 and #51 cars after the winning #12 Jota Porsche and the second-placed #6 factory Porsche Penske Motorsport entry leapfrogged the Italian cars because the time they lost pitting just before the red flags was reduced when the field was closed up behind the safety car at the restart.
