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marcl
Corrected fuel useage people recon Riccardo would have been 4th or 5th.
How do they know given we don't know what the fuel-rate was?
From what I understand from the report and what rival team engineers told those in the paddock is that he wasn't constantly over the fuel-rate (when on full-power with a looser mixture), but consistently, as the FIA report said. That's a big difference. From what engineers were saying, the sensors were prone to interference that caused spikes in the fuel being reported. The flow rate wasn't changing, but the sensors were reporting, in a spike, that more fuel was being used. Other teams responded by lowering their fuel-rate to eliminate these peaks, but Red Bull chose to ignore the "unreliable" FIA data and use the data reported by their own sensors. From what I understand it's highly likely the Red Bull didn't ever actually exceed the 100kg/h, but the FIA's sensors (with the interference) said otherwise.
If that's true, even if extra fuel was being used, it was likely only ever in a brief spike, so likely to generate probably a fraction of a tenth of a second per lap. It's likely they weren't
actually using more than 100km/h fuel at any point, but merely chose to ignore the "unreliable" FIA sensors and used their own calculations/sensors, whereas other teams slightly lowered their fuel-usage so they were reported as legal by the FIA sensors. In that sense they did gain an advantage over the opposition, but it's certainly 100% clear they actually cheated.
It will be interesting to see what the appeal brings - it seems it might be worth arguing, and I'd love to see how much of the above is true. I can't see that the result won't be upheld though.