Robert Kubica – who drove a blistering debut in Hungary earlier – has been disqualified from his seventh place finish after stewards found his BMW Sauber to be 2kg underweight. The news comes as a bitter blow to the Pole who had driven so well all weekend after being promoted in Jacques Villeneuve’s absence.

The error in weight has been attributed to excessive tyre wear caused by the teams having to run on intermediates as opposed to the well-rehearsed runs on dry/grooved tyres.

In a statement, the stewards had this to say:

The Stewards accept that the fact of the car being underweight was entirely inadvertent and give credit to BMW Sauber F1 Team for their assistance and cooperation in dealing with this matter.

The reason for the car being underweight was explained as being attributable to excessive and unexpected tyre wear (and therefore weight loss) arising through continued use of wet weather tyres in comparison to the accustomed and anticipated rate of wear for dry tyres.

It is the Stewards’ view that the car did not comply with Article 4.1 of the 2006 FIA Formula One Technical Regulations.

The Stewards’ decision is that the car be excluded from the results.

The disqualification of Robert Kubica promotes Felipe Massa to 7th, and Michael Schumacher to 8th, despite not even taking the chequered flag. Although Schumacher didn’t actually finish the race, he was oficially classified 9th before the promotion because of lapped traffic. The championship lead to Fernando Alonso is now just ten points with five races remaining.