By Glenn Freeman Thursday, May 17th 2007, 09:35 GMT
Bruno Spengler's HWA-Mercedes team have had their appeal from Hockenheim rejected by the governing body of German motorsport.
The team appealed the decision to add 50 seconds to Spengler's race time at the first round of the season, after the Canadian clashed with Timo Scheider while battling for third place on the final lap.
Spengler's penalty had dropped him out of the points, although Mercedes had been confident that they had a strong enough case to reclaim the six points that he would have scored with third place.
Despite having no points, Spengler believes he is still one of the main contenders for the title.
"We have been lucky that we have had two different winners," he recently told autosport.com. "We are only 12 points behind, and we can make that gap back."
