Following BMW's protest of the diffusers being used by three teams, Ross Brawn has said the row which has overshadowed the first two races of the season could have been avoided.

Speaking to reporters at the Sepang International Circuit, the Englishman revealed that he had attempted to simplify certain aspects of the 2009 regulations, but the proposal was rejected.

"If I'm frank, I didn't say 'look, we're going to do this diffuser if you don't accept this rule', because I'm not going to tell people what we're doing," said the Englishman. "But I did explain that I felt we should have a different set of rules to simplify what needs to be done and I offered them and they were rejected. So my conscience is very clear.

"The rules that I put on the table would have stopped a lot of things. It would have stopped the diffuser and all those bargeboards around the front, it would have cleaned the cars up. But nobody was interested... though they are very interested now."

As expected, several teams protested the diffusers on the Brawn, Williams and Toyota in Australia, however, the protests were thrown out when race official declared the cars fully legal. Subsequently, Ferrari, Red Bull and Renault announced their decision to appeal the ruling. Then, this weekend in Malaysia, BMW lodged its protest, and this too was rejected, leading to the German team also appealing the stewards decision.

In addition to his role as team boss of the former Honda team, Brawn leads the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) Technical Working Group, something which Bernie Ecclestone has openly questioned. In a recent interview with the Times, the F1 supremo said: "Ross is the guy that runs the teams' technical committee and probably knows what's going to happen before other people, or is in a position to guide things. There's a massive conflict of interest."

"I've always tried to wear two hats," said Brawn. "One is what's good for Formula One, and I wear that hat for a certain period. And then I take that hat off and it's what's good for my team. When we get into actually designing a car, you can't go back and say 'I've found this great new feature, I'd better stop it.' It's a different hat you have to wear."

Referring to some of the comments made by rival in recent weeks, the Englishman said: "They are uneducated and uninformed. If they looked at the facts then they'd realise that."