The FIA’s International Court of Appeal has upheld the stewards’ decision to exclude Daniel Ricciardo from the Australian Grand Prix following a hearing in Paris on Monday.

Ricciardo finished the season opening Australian GP in 2nd place but was disqualified after the stewards discovered that his RB10 had exceeded the fuel flow rate limit of 100kg/hr and despite warnings, his team chose to ignore the directives from the stewards to turn down the fuel flow rate.

Red Bull appealed the decision claiming that they used their own fuel flow sensor after experiencing unreliability when using the FIA’s sensors. The team were confident that their appeal would be successful.

The appeal was heard in Paris on Monday and the International Court of Appeal announced on Tuesday morning that they have upheld the decision of the stewards.

The FIA issued a statement saying: “The Court, after having heard the parties and examined their submissions, decided to uphold the Decision N°56 of the Stewards by which they decided to exclude Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s car N°3 from the results of the 2014 Australian Grand Prix.”

A full explanation behind the reasoning of the verdict is expected later this week.

Red Bull have issued a statement accepting the FIA’s decision on the matter:

“Infiniti Red Bull Racing accepts the ruling of the International Court of Appeal today.

We are of course disappointed by the outcome and would not have appealed if we didn’t think we had a very strong case. We always believed we adhered to the technical regulations throughout the 2014 Australian Grand Prix.

We are sorry for Daniel (Ricciardo) that he will not be awarded the 18 points from the event, which we think he deserved. We will continue to work very hard to amass as many points as possible for the team, Daniel and Sebastian throughout the season.

“We will now move on from this and concentrate on this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.”

Photo Credit: Infiniti Red Bull Racing Formula 1 Team