Two-race ban for BAR.

The BAR-Honda team has escaped complete expulsion from this year's Formula One world championship following its alleged misdemeanour at the San Marino Grand Prix, but will be forced to sit out both the Spanish and Monaco races as punishment.

An FIA statement issued after the hearing, brought about by the governing body questioning the decision of its own stewards and demanding an appeal, confirmed that BAR had been banned for two races, with a six-month suspended sentence also put in place, effectively covering the rest of the 2005 season. On top of the ban, the team will also lose the points gained by Jenson Button and Takuma Sato at Imola.

Button's car spent six hours in parc ferme while the scrutineers checked and re-checked its weight. Although, at the end of the process, the three stewards decided to let the result stand, they confirmed that a hidden fuel chamber had been discovered behind a bulkhead within the chassis. This, it was suggested, could have been used to both conceal fuel being employed as ballast and, potentially, allow the car to run underweight as it came close to making a refuelling stop. As neither of these points was proven by the scrutineers, however, Button was allowed to keep both his first points and podium of the season.

They have now been deleted from the records, with McLaren's Alex Wurz moving up into third place - securing a podium on his return to Formula One after a near four-year absence - while Sato's exclusion also means that Mark Webber and Vitantonio Liuzzi - on his grand prix debut - score points for seventh and eighth.

BAR's ban will begin immediately, despite the team having already travelled to Barcelona for this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, and will also cover the season's showpiece event in Monaco in two weeks' time. Pending another appeal, this time from the team, Button and Sato should be back in action at the Nurburgring at the end of the month. BAR CEO Nick Fry has, however, hinted that the matter could be taken to the civil courts should the result not go in its favour.