Champ Car hammers cheaters
Tony Cotman, the Champ Car series race director, removed 40 per cent of Team Australia's push-to-pass feature, which lets drivers deliver a substantial 50bhp extra to their Cosworth engines during a race.
Champ Car introduced the feature a few seasons ago to encourage overtaking. Drivers have 75 seconds of the push-to-pass feature available in a given race.
Some drivers were penalized after a software glitch was discovered in the electronic device, which subsequently led to warnings of penalties if any driver used the function in Assen.
The problem surfaced when Sebastien Bourdais hit the button, which mysteriously activated the pit lane speed limit restrictor and caused the car to lose speed.
Champ Car then told all teams to refrain from using push-to-pass because of the potentially dangerous glitch.
Bourdais and teammate Graham Rahal did not use the feature at Assen, so their Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing team has escaped any penalty.
But Power and his teammate Simon Pagenaud face being swamped by rivals late in the race if they have used up the reduced time allotted for use of the push-to-pass boost.
The team's US-based co-owner Derrick Walker has appealed against the penalty. Yesterday he presented Cotman with data in a bid to have the penalty lifted for the squad's home race.
The other drivers who face the penalty are Dan Clarke, Ryan Dalziel, Neel Jani and Bruno Junqueira. Courier Mail