McLaren to Answer to FIA for Lying Saga on April 29th

McLaren Mercedes will appear before FIA's World Motor Sport Council on April 29th to explain themselves over the controversial incident involving Lewis Hamilton during the Australian Grand Prix.

The Woking based team already admitted their wrongdoings in the aforementioned incident, as they instructed Hamilton through the radio to let Toyota's Jarno Trulli pass him under safety car. However, the FIA will determine if McLaren have “intentionally misled” the Australian stewards in the post-race investigation.

According to the FIA on Tuesday, McLaren are believed to be in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, if found guilty. The aforementioned article states that any team involved in “any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally” will be judged accordingly.

The FIA is yet to issue other information of the hearing, but Hamilton and McLaren's sporting director Dave Ryan are expected to be cited. Ryan was recently fired by the Woking team following the “lying saga”, as Hamilton publicly revealed it was the team's sporting head that instructed him not to tell the truth to the Aussie stewards.

A press release issued by the FIA on Tuesday revealed the 5 counts McLaren are believed to be in breach of after the Aussie incident:

* on 29 March, 2009, told the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix that no instructions were given to Hamilton in Car No. 1 to allow Trulli in Car no. 9 to pass when both cars were behind the safety car, knowing this statement to be untrue;


* procured its driver Hamilton the current World Champion, to support and confirm this untrue statement to the stewards;


* although knowing that as a direct result of its untrue statement to the stewards, another driver and a rival team had been unfairly penalised, made no attempt to rectify the situation either by contacting the FIA or otherwise;


* on 2 April, 2009, at a second hearing before the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix, (meeting in Malaysia) made no attempt to correct the untrue statement of 29 March but, on the contrary, continued to maintain that the statement was true, despite being allowed to listen to a recording of the team instructing Hamilton to let Trulli past and despite being given more than one opportunity to correct its false statement;


* on 2 April, 2009, at the second stewards' hearing, procured its driver Hamilton to continue to assert the truth of the false statement given to the stewards on 29 March, while knowing that what he was saying to the stewards was not true.