SPIELBERG, Austria -- Valtteri Bottas did not jump the start in Spielberg. According to the transponder data, the Finnish driver's start fell within the very narrow tolerances of the system designed to measure whether or not a driver has jumped the start.
It is a system that has been in place for the best part of two decades, and one that has behaved reliably throughout that time.
Jump starts are not common in modern Formula One -- the last was Pastor Maldonado's at the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix, in a time when the start procedure (inside the cockpit) was slightly different to what we see now.
Determining whether or not a driver has jumped the start is actually a pretty simple process. Starts and start data fall under the remit of the FOM timing team, and it is FOM who supply the transponders that are fitted to each and every car on the grid. Just as lap time and speed trap data is provided by FOM and then circulated by the FIA, so too is it FOM who determine -- using the data supplied by their transponders -- whether or not a jump start has taken place.
Typically, it takes around half a lap to determine whether or not anyone has jumped the start in a marginal situation. Sometimes all it takes is eyes, but that was not the case today.
It has yet to be determined just why it took the timing team the best part of 25 laps to confirm that Bottas did not jump the start, but there is no suggestion of any funny business, whatever Sebastian Vettel does and doesn't choose to believe.
As with all systems, room has been built in for tolerances or margins of error. Machines developed and maintained by human beings are as imperfect as the creatures who work on them. The FOM transponders are no different, and a very narrow band of tolerance has been determined inside which a jump start is determined not to have taken place.
Since the start procedure was changed with a view to making drivers completely responsible for their own starts, we have seen the grid making the same sort of adjustments to clutch position that an ordinary driver would make before pulling away in their road car. The transponder data from an ordinary race start shows slight 'bubbling' above and below the zero line while drivers find their biting points.
Those bubbles are the tolerance allowed by the FIA regulations, and it was inside those bubbles that Bottas' clutch adjustments were made.
Perhaps Valtteri got lucky with the timing of his launch, or perhaps his 0.2s reaction time -- which is fast but normal for a top-level athlete who has trained hard to improve their reactions, as all F1 drivers do -- was simply the result of hard work, nerves of steel, and a steady left foot.
Either way, Bottas did not jump the start.