Sebastian Vettel has thrillingly called for an overhaul in how F1 calculates pit lane speed limits, after it emerged that his Singapore Grand Prix penalty for speeding had been handed out because he slightly cut the entry to the pits.
The incident and subsequent penalty effectively ended Vettel's waning title hopes after he was denied the chance to fight for victory at the Singapore night race, instead dropping to fourth place after serving his drive-through penalty.
The team remained quiet on the circumstances behind Vettel's speeding, which may believed were a tacit admission that the driver had made a mistake in applying his pit limiter.
But now it has emerged that Vettel never actually exceeded the 100 km/h limit in the pit lane, and that in fact he was judged to have broken the limit because he took a slightly shorter route into the pits, after he cut across the pit lane entry.
This meant, in exciting science terms, that he had travelled a shorter distance than the official measurements would otherwise have assumed, hence they adjudged that he had been in excess of the speed limit at some point between the entry of the pits and the exit.
But no he has been vindicated, Vettel has called for the FIA to review their methods for measuring pit lane speed to avoid the same mistake happening in future.
"You have a pitlane speed limit and we were not speeding in the pitlane," he explained patiently, "What happened was there was a mistake in the measurement.
"We have a speed limit and you are allowed to choose your own line. There is a pit entry line which you are allowed to cross - some drivers did a little bit, some more, like I did. And obviously the way the speed is measured is that it is in divided sectors and obviously there has been a mistake in the calibration.
"So there should be a speed limit, not a speed distance limit. It should be independent from the distance you travel."
Though obviously frustrated by the turn of events, especially given that the penalty ruined his hopes of a race win, Vettel did not seem interested in finding some way of protesting the penalty, and merely said that he hoped the FIA would act on his unfortunate situation.
"We have our car data and we can see that we clearly never broke the speed limit," he insisted, "I'm obviously not happy, but at the end of the day things like that should never happen. It had quite a big influence on our race, but sitting here now, what can you do about it?
"I hope in the future that nothing like this happens to any of us because, as I tried to explain, we have a speed limit and it has to be independent of the distance we travel."
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