Makinen loses fourth, Subaru protest rejected.

Tommi Makinen has lost his fourth place finish in today's Telstra Rally Australia. Stewards excluded his Subaru Impreza WRC as it was found to be below the minimum weight.

Despite a protest by the Subaru World Rally Team - which threw the overall result from fourth place down into confusion - Stewards, after a two-hour meeting at Rally HQ have stuck to their decision, and Makinen has lost his three points.

Subaru Team Principal David Lapworth meanwhile has said that the team will not be appealing the decision, as it is not in 'the interests of the sport'.

"As far as the exclusion is concerned, the judgement came as a big disappointment to Tommi and the team," commented Lapworth. "Scrutineers weighed each car several times today and there seems to be a big variation between the figures they recorded for Tommi's car."

"After SS22 the car was weighed by scrutineers at 1260kgs [versus a minimum weight of 1230kgs] and after SS24 1271kgs. After SS23 the car was weighed at 1222kgs, and the only change was the removal of the spare wheel - an item that weighs less than 20kgs.

"The rules in this area are very clear, and we know that the cars are likely to be weighed at the end of every stage, so we clearly believed that the car was at its correct weight throughout the event. We will be making our own investigation into this situation.

"However, in the interests of the sport, we have decided to accept the judgement and will not appeal the Stewards' decision."

Makinen was understandably dejected, he said: "I don't understand what happened, it's a great shame that we've come so far on the event only to finish it like this.

"There was certainly nothing deliberate involved and we'll have a good look into the incident to find out what happened. That's just the way it goes sometimes and you have to accept it."

Carlos Sainz thus moves from his finishing position on the road of fifth up to fourth, with Markko Martin taking fifth and Skoda's Toni Gardemeister now takes the final point with sixth.