The National Court is the UK Disciplinary, Investigatory and Appeal Court as required by the Statutes of the FIA and the International Sporting Code. The Court is independent of Motorsport UK and administered by an external lawyer and the judges are drawn from a panel of experienced motorsport lawyers and suitably qualified motorsport professionals

Sitting on 5th August 2025 Tony Scott Andrews( Chair), Peter Daly, Simon Gnana-Pragasam Case No. J2025 / 22

Mr Nick Bamber and Ms Sian Woolley appeared on behalf of Motorsport UK. X appeared before the Court with their parents. X was represented by his Legal Consultant.

NON-SELECTION APPEAL – X

This is an Appeal brought before the Court by X’ s Father on behalf of his son. 1. The facts are that X had applied for a place on the Motorsport UK’ s Enhanced Diploma in Sporting Excellence Programme at Loughborough College, the acronym for which is‘ DiSE’.

2. To be successful an applicant must meet numerous criteria, all of which are clearly set out in within the Motorsport UK Selection Policy document.

3. The selection Panel determined that X failed to meet one of the necessary requirements and his application was unsuccessful. It is against that decision that this appeal lies.

4. The Appeal is pursued on the basis that Motorsport UK has a discretion to waive the stated criteria if there are extenuating circumstances. The appellant asserts that there are such circumstances in his son’ s case to which Motorsport UK should have given consideration, and which would have satisfactorily addressed the matter upon which X failed to meet the required standard, in this case a requirement to have attained a particular grade at GCSE level in the English paper.

5. The Court has heard direct evidence from X himself, from his father as to the difficulties X experienced, and from a previous teacher and via video link from tutor as to the considerable effort made by X to overcome those difficulties.

6. Mr Bamber, for Motorsport UK, advised the Court that when the application had been received it had initially shown that the grade requirement had been met but this was subsequently shown to be inaccurate albeit by a very small margin and that no reference had ever been made to any extenuating circumstances until after the Selection Panel’ s decision had been notified to the Appellant.

7. Evidence was given by the Head of Motorsport UK’ s Competitor Development, Mr Tom Hartley, and also by the head of Elite Sport and Development at Loughborough College, Mr Matt O’ Dowd.

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8. Mr Hartley explained that within the programme at Loughborough, Motorsport UK was but one of many sports and had a predetermined number of places allocated to it. The offers which had been made to successful applicants had filled that allocation. There are a number of reserve candidates should any of those selected fail to meet the necessary GCSE grades once the results were known or withdrew for some reason.

9. Mr O’ Dowd explained that the DiSE course contained a significant theoretical element such that a pass in the GCSE English paper at the stated level was important and that candidates who did not meet the GCSE requirements might well struggle at Loughborough.

10. The Court heard that selection for the DiSE course comprised two quite separate steps such that a candidate put forward by Motorsport UK would still need to be approved by Loughborough College for acceptance onto their course, this also subject to their own internal appeals process.

11. The Court found the evidence given by Mr Hartley and Mr O’ Dowd extremely helpful in reaching a decision and it is to be hoped that the Appellant will consider it in the same light.

12. The Decision of this National Court is that the Appeal fails. 13. Motorsport UK make no application for costs. 14. The Court does, however, recommend the course of action put forward by Mr Hartley, that X, while continuing to be supported by Motorsport UK on the UK Futures Academy Programme and hopefully attaining the necessary grades in the GCSE examinations taken this summer, should simply re-sit the English paper which he took last year, attain a better result and apply for a place on the DiSE course next year.

A. Scott Andrews, Chair 5th August 2025

Revolution- September 2025