Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was quoted by Auto Motor und Sport yesterday, raising doubts about the legality of Mercedes’ bellies and suggesting that they were not in line with the “spirit of the regulation”.
Red Bull later denied that Horner had spoken to the media, clarifying that in reality the one with the German publication was just an “off record” chat.
The first public statements on the matter therefore only arrived today and with these Horner explained that Red Bull’s latest analysis is that the Mercedes solution is fully compliant with the rules.
“Mercedes has proposed an extreme solution, a different interpretation,” explained Horner. “But to answer the next question, if we think it’s legal, don’t we? Yes, absolutely. It seems like he has all the credentials.”
When asked why he changed his comments so abruptly from what Michael Schmidt reported, Horner said, “Well, I think we know by now, there were comments that weren’t exactly those.”
“I think it is an innovative machine. It is an interesting solution as far as we are concerned. But it seems to us that it complies with the regulations. It is just a different interpretation, a different solution.”
George Russell, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Motorsport Images
While other teams, such as Ferrari, have acknowledged that some aspects of Mercedes’ design are a bit on the edge of regulation, especially when it comes to the mirror area, Horner tried to downplay this.
“There is really nothing that defines the spirit of the regulation. One thing is either compliant or it isn’t,” Horner added. “It is not up to us to judge. The FIA has access to all the drawings and such a solution could not fail to be presented to them in advance”.
“It’s an interesting, radical concept. Whether it’s fast or not, only time will tell. But in terms of compliance, this is a matter for the FIA.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has never had doubts about the legality of the concepts introduced by his team.
“The process is very clear: when you go in a specific development direction with your team, you exchange CAD data with the FIA and make them part of the process,” he explained yesterday.
#Horner #Mercedes #bellies #extreme #legal