According to autosport.com the Spyker team raised their protest on Thursday and there were several lengthy meetings between the Malaysian Stewards, Spyker and Toro Rosso. The Toro Rosso team were also witnessed to have taken parts of the car into the Stewards area for further scutiny.

However at that time there was no clear decision made, and on Thursday the Stewards had said that they would delay any decision until the following morning, before Friday practice.

Come Friday the Stewards at Malasyia took the easy option out and said they would make no decision at all. How can this be? Well Spyker have taken out a separate arbitration against Toro Rosso in the Courts, and according to Formula One News they decided to leave the decisions up to them.


The FIA backed the Malaysian Stewards up with a statement:

"Spyker have made an application for arbitration and must by definition therefore be deemed to accept that a dispute such as this (the grounds of the protest being effectively the same as that matter to be determined in arbitration) does not fall within the range of disputes to be settled under the FIA 2007 Formula One Sporting Code.

It is considered therefore that it would be entirely inappropriate for the Stewards to involve themselves in a matter being dealt with at the instigation and election of the Protestor, Spyker, in an entirely different forum. It follows, that this Protest is inadmissible and the Protest fee is accordingly returned."

The decision is that since they've taken it to the Courts then there's going to be nothing decided until the Courts decide.

However, in the meantime Autosport.com have the story that Ecclestone has decided to do what needs to be done and get everyone round a table and talking about the issue. He's trying to organise a Team Principals' meeting during the weekend to bring an end to the dispute.

It's difficult to see what the solution is as the whole issue is that there's a Constructors championship in which there are two non-constructed teams. The two options are that either these two teams are not included in the Constructors championship or that they are in the points system but share nothing in the distribution of the television rights money.

Whichever it is the issue is still well up in the air and very undecided. We await to hear if Ecclestone can find a decision between them all or if we have to wait for the Courts. In the meantime we have the Malaysian Grand Prix to look forward to, with both Toro Rosso and Super Aguri on the grid.