McLaren to appear at FIA hearing

McLaren will be hauled before the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council on April 29 to answer charges that it has brought Formula 1 into disrepute after being found to have lied to the Australian Grand Prix stewards.
The FIA announced on Tuesday that it had called an extraordinary general meeting of the WMSC after Lewis Hamilton and the team’s then sporting director Dave Ryan were found to have given “deliberately misleading” evidence to stewards following the season-opening race.
Hamilton was disqualified from third place in Melbourne after the stewards reconvened at Sepang last Thursday in the wake of new evidence coming to light, with radio traffic disproving Ryan and Hamilton’s earlier statements that there had been no instruction to allow Jarno Trulli's Toyota past during the late-race safety car period.
Ryan was suspended by McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh last Friday – and has since left the team altogether – while Hamilton later held a press conference to apologise for his role in the deception.
However the FIA did not rule out taking further action against the team and said that it would consider a further investigation into the affair once it had received a report from its stewards.
The governing body has now confirmed that the matter will be brought before the WMSC in Paris on the Wednesday after the Bahrain GP and cites five counts on which it says McLaren has breached Article 151c of the International Sporting code.

The FIA announced the five charges as follows:
- On 29 March, 2009, [the team] 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.
A breach of Article 151c is defined as "any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally".
It will be the second time in less than two years that McLaren has appeared before the World Council charged with contravening the disrepute clause, having been found guilty of possessing confidential Ferrari information in the 'spygate' scandal in 2007.