BAR and Button escape with two race ban

Jenson Button's BAR Honda team were banned after being found guilty of "highly regrettable negligence" at San Marino GP.

Jenson Button's BAR Honda team were banned from competing in the next two Grands Prix after being found guilty of "highly regrettable negligence" at last month's race in San Marino.

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The verdict, which fell way short of the season-long ban called for by motor racing's governing body, International Automobile Federation (FIA), was handed down by the FIA's International Court of Appeal.

The court ruled that the car Button drove to finish third at Imola was underweight.

In addition to being excluded from Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix and Monaco on May 22 the British-based BAR outfit have retrospectively been thrown out of the San Marino race and stripped of the points won there - their first of the season.

They also have a six month ban suspended for one year hanging over them and ordered to pay all the costs of the case.

BAR vigorously deny they used an illegal hidden second fuel tank to gain an advantage on their grid rivals but FIA president Max Mosley said he felt they had been let off the hook by the four-judge panel at the FIA's Paris headquarters.