Foust wins ERC appeal


by Tim Whittington |

The FIA International Court of Appeal (ICA) has found in favour of American ASN the ACCUS, which brought the appeal on behalf of its licence holder Tanner Foust, and overturned the decisions to exclude Foust from the Dutch round of the European Rallycross Championship, and the Dutch ASN’s move to rule Foust’s original appeal inadmissible. There has not yet been any published change to result of the event in question or of the championship standings, but it seems that the outcome will lead to Foust being able to use a zero score from the Dutch event as his dropped score in the second half of the championship which, in turn, will improve his final classification in the championship from third to second.

The ICA heard the Foust case on November 4. Foust had sought to overturn the KNAF’s decision to rule his appeal inadmissible (which it had done on the grounds that the fee had not been paid on time) and also to quash the exclusion from the Dutch event, leaving the penalty of the black flag for the third heat incidents that was at the root of the dispute. The KNAF sought to have both the original penalty and its decision regarding Fousts appeal, upheld.

In handing down its decision to uphold Foust’s appeal, the ICA first notes that Foust is not seeking to have the black flag withdrawn. It adds that the manner in which the black flag was displayed did not meet the regulations . The two parties in the dispute also made contradictory statements regarding whether Foust had admitted seeing the black flag. Because of this, the ICA found that it was unable to ‘assert with reasonable certainty’ that Foust had seen the black flag and that, therefore, Foust could not ‘be blamed for having carried on racing’. The ICA also states that both the original incident with Davy Jeanney and the subsequent incident with Frode Holte later in the same race, are a ‘blameless racing incident’.

As a result of these finding the ICA:

1. declares the appeal admissible;

2. quashes the decision of the Court of Appeal of the KNAF in that it declared Mr Tanner Foust’s appeal before it to be inadmissible;

3. quashes Decision No1 taken by the Stewards of the Meeting on 14 August 2011 excluding Mr Tanner Foust from heat no3 of the event run at Valkenswaard (Netherlands) and counting towards the 2011 FIA European Championship for Rallycross Drivers – SuperCars;

4. leaves it to the sporting authority to draw the consequences of the present decision;

5. and orders the appeal fee to be refunded to the Appellant in its entirety and the KNAF to pay all the costs and expenses of the hearing.

 

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The previous stories relating to this are linked below:

http://rallyxworld.wpengine.com/2011/08/14/foust-excluded/ 

http://rallyxworld.wpengine.com/2011/08/17/foust-to-appeal-exclusion/ 

http://rallyxworld.wpengine.com/2011/08/31/court-of-appeal-decides-against-foust/

http://rallyxworld.wpengine.com/2011/10/03/supercar-provisional-until-november/

 

 

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