The General Secretary of the FIA’s International Court of Appeal has said that a verdict on Red Bull’s appeal against the disqualification of Daniel Riccardo at the Australian Grand Prix, will only be given on Tuesday.

“We will announce the decision tomorrow morning at the latest,” said Jean-Christophe Breillat following a six-hour long hearing at the FIA’s headquarters in Paris today.

He has also confirmed that only the verdict will be given and then a full explanation around the reasoning behind the decision will be made available “by the end of the week”.

Red Bull argued that the technical directive (16:14) relating to fuel flow sensors is not regulatory. As such, they believe that the team cannot be punished for ignoring the FIA’s request to reduce its fuel flow, since the directives are generally regarded as advice. The team also tried to prove that the team had not exceeded the maximum fuel flow at any point during the Australian Grand Prix.

Both Chief Engineer of Car Engineering, Paul Monaghan and Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey were called as Red Bull witnesses and subjected to questioning. For the FIA, Head of Powertrain Fabrice Lom was called.

Observers from McLaren, Lotus, Williams and Force India were also present at the hearing.

Mercedes team representative Paul Harris – who previously represented the team at the Pirelli Tyregate hearing – was most vocal at today’s hearing, accusing the Red Bull team of “knowingly and repeatedly” ignoring the FIA’s instructions to turn down the fuel flow on Ricciardo’s engine.

He desribed Red Bull’s approach as a “flagrant breach” of the FIA’s direction and called for the court to impose a suspended further sanction on top of the original exclusion due to fears that the Austrian team will repeat the alleged offence in future.

“We are, frankly, and with great respect, concerned that Red Bull have shown such a flagrant and deliberate disregard for these rules that there is a real risk that they will do it again,” he said. “We are here to seek to ensure that does not happen. We must have a level playing field going forward for the remainder of the season.”

“We respectively submit that the most effective way of ensuring that Red Bull do not flout further written and oral instructions from the FIA – at least for the remainder of this season – is for this court to recognise the severity of their infringement and to impose a further sanction upon them, which is to be suspended for the remainder of the season so that they are acutely alert for the remainder of the season that there is no possibility of them transgressing the boundaries again.”

He dismissed Red Bull’s claims that the FIA’s approved sensors were unreliable and argued that their alternative system used to measured the flow was also not “100 per cent” accurate. He also backed the FIA’s official sensors saying that they are “rigorously tested and rigorously calibrated.”