McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says Red Bull should face “massive consequences” if it is proven that it has used a device to change the clearance of its front bib illegally.
Red Bull admitted it has a device on its car that allows it to quickly and easily make adjustments following an FIA note that it was clamping down on the area, to ensure no team is making changes under parc fermé regulations. Such a change would be illegal and Red Bull maintains it has only used the device for setup reasons prior to parc fermé starting, but with the FIA instructing it to be removed, Brown is unconvinced.
“Well, why would you design it to be inside the car, when with the other nine teams it’s designed to be outside the car?” Brown asked when interviewed by Sky Sports.
“Ingenuity is part of Formula 1, and then there are black-and-white rules. You cannot touch your race car, other than things like driver comfort — they chose their words very carefully, saying ‘when the car is fully assembled,’ but you’re allowed to not have the car fully assembled in parc fermé when you’re working on driver comfort.
“Also, what doesn’t quite stack up is the comment that you can’t modify it. Well, then why does the FIA feel they need to put a seal on it? If it’s not accessible post or during parc fermé, then why put a seal on it?
“So, I’m very happy to see the FIA is on it. I think it needs to be a very thorough investigation because, if you touch your car from a performance standpoint, after parc fermé, or in parc fermé, that is a black and white material, substantial breach, which should come with massive consequences.
“Touching your car after parc fermé is highly illegal within the rules. So I think the FIA needs to get to the bottom of were they or weren’t they?
“Why would you design it to be inside the car when the nine other teams haven’t? So I think it’d be unfair of me to say… Of course, I have an opinion on whether I think they have or haven’t. But I think the FIA needs to be very diligent in their bottoming out whether they think they have or haven’t.
“When you see cleverly worded comments like, ‘You can’t do it when it’s fully assembled’ but I know the car isn’t always fully assembled, and then the FIA feels they need to put a seal on it, why would the FIA need to put a seal on something if it wasn’t accessible?
“I think transparency is critically important in today’s day and age. So I still have questions. I know from talking to other team bosses, they still have questions. So, until those questions are answered, I think it is still an ongoing investigation to bottom out what we know.
“I’d like some more answers before I’m prepared to kind of go, ‘Right, I guess they were or they weren’t,’ but I think the FIA will bottom it out.”
Brown believes Red Bull admitted it was the focus of the FIA note relating to the device because all rival teams were able to see for themselves.
“I think they probably had no choice, because there’s published what are called open source components — OSC — where all the teams can see what each other are doing. You have to submit the drawings to the FIA, and all the teams have access if it’s an open source component.
“So anyone, every team, which is what we do — we look at it and you can see it. So I think there was no denying that they have the ability to access their front bib from inside the car. That’s undisputed, so I think they had no choice but to say, ‘Yes, we can.’
“We know we can’t — we don’t have the access, it’s not designed that way — and from what we see in the other eight teams, [they] don’t. So I think they had no choice.”
