Motorsport Services

15/12/2017

A while since any point but the season has been anything but dull from a regulatory perspective. There are still 5 cases being handled going across to 2018 ..

We just succeeded in obtaining a hard fought and very serious unanimous Ruling from the Court last week before the 3 Law Chairmen whereby the Court has Ruled that under the CiK - FIA Judicial trial in UK an appeal CAN be brought against the underlying conviction for a breach of the rules and that a penalty, as it suggests, is a wholly different thing. So you can appeal the Decision that you did something wrong, but ion you agree you did, then you cannot appeal (the penalty).

So, in other words if you win on appeal then the whole conviction and penalty falls away but if you lose an appeal the penalty remains. It is difficult to argue against the fairness of that but I suspect that there will be a number who will not be at all pleased that competitors (the people who pay to take part they are also known as ..) do have their right of Appeal still intact.

That right is enshrined in the FIA International Sporting Code and MSA UK argued unsuccessfully that the Motor Sports Council had obliterated that right in the UK version of the CiK - FIA Judicial trial.

We have no idea how many people were wrongly advised they had no right of appeal this year (or even before that) as endeavours by competitors to appeal 'bad' decisions have been rejected often out of hand. That state of affairs was wholly unfair especially given that the Regulations provide for 4 strikes on reportable maters and then a suspension of licence (which is utterly a nonsense in my opinion). That was a Reg brought in when competitors did may be 12 events or even only races a year. So then if 1/3 of your races resulted in sanction it was reasonable to 'have a look' and that is what used to happen - a summons to the Court for a chat. Now our young karters are undertaking in excess of 140 races a season in some cases so a 'strike' rate of 4/140 is a bit disproportionate. But why keep it at all? Others don't even have it ...

Hopefully this Decision of the Court will go some way to keeping our competitors in the UK. But during the course of this very bitter battle a very respected MSA Steward put it to me that it would assist the Judicial officials greatly if they had some effective training ...

For now seasons greetings!

18/05/2017

So the motorsport judicial season is already in full swing...

I guess at some point in time it will be understood that 'judicial hearing' involves (a) putting an allegation of wrongdoing in a regulatory context (b) calling independent evidence to support it (because the law says no man can be judge in his own cause) (c) allowing the accused to see the evidence and (d) to challenge the evidence and (e) to call their own evidence in support of defence and (f) if the prosecution evidence includes moving images you must allow the accused to see it! Hello!

A Fair Hearing does not involve none of the above with a penalty attached to it..

2 successful cases this week with MSA giving 'no contest' in one and in the other the facts proving to be the undoing of the case against the competitor.

we also got a correct ruling from the Court that there is no definition of 'under own power' in the contract terms (the General Regulations) and that nowhere is it required that 'under own power' means a vehicle must be moving...

A number of very poor examples of no-proper-hearing have come to light and we have at least 3 additional cases where the independent -of - MSA National Court has rightly granted leave to appeal out of time.

11/03/2017

RIP John Surtees. Unlikely to be a repeat of the 2 + 4 wheels achievement - unless of course Mark Marquez .... we need some more 'heroes'!

22/02/2017

22/02/2017

22/02/2017

Homepage photo gratefully acknowledged to Jakob Ebrey and Martin Short of Rollcentre Racing Limited - the 'mighty' Mosler - so fast they banned it from GT3!