10/04/2010
NEWS STORY
Red Bull team boss, Christian Horner, says his team has nothing to fear following the FIA's warning over devices that alter a car's ride height, claiming that he welcomes the governing body's initiative.
Following claims, mainly from McLaren, that a number of teams, including Red Bull, are using devices which alter the ride height on their cars, the FIA wrote to all twelve team clarifying the rules.
"Any system, device or procedure, the purpose and/or the effect of which is to change the set up of the suspension whilst the car is under parc ferme conditions will be deemed to contravene Article 34.5 of the F1 Sporting Regulations," it wrote, adding that; "any self levelling damper system is likely to contravene (article) 3.15 of the technical regulations."
However, in the wake of a highly convincing 1-2 in Malaysia, Horner says his team has nothing to fear and that the cars that are inspected in China next week will be in exactly the same (mechanical) spec as they were at Sepang.
"The car will be in the same mechanical specification in China as it has been at the previous races," he told Reuters, "so we are pleased the FIA have chosen to clarify this.
"I've actually been quite surprised at the amount of coverage this has generated," he added. "We are focused on our own performance and we take it as a compliment in many respects that people suspect we are achieving the performance we are through other mechanisms or means."
Last month, McLaren boss, Martin Whitmarsh, pointed the finger at a number of rival teams, suggesting they were breaking the rules. "There's evidence there are ride-height control systems which many people thought weren't permissible," he told the BBC. "It looks like Red Bull and some other cars are able to run lower in qualifying than you would expect if they're then going to fill the car with fuel afterwards.
"The original rulings suggested such systems wouldn't be allowed on cars but we're seeing some which seem to have them," he added. We've got to have them fitted as soon as we can, hopefully by China we'll have something on the car."
However, not for the first time, Horner, dismisses Whitmarsh's claims. "Obviously (regarding) Martin's comments he was poorly informed because there has been no such system on our car at any grand prix," he said. "If anybody did run a system in China onwards it would be clearly in breach of the technical regulations."
Despite his team's dominance in Malaysia, Horner refuses to be complacent, dismissing talk of a similar result at Shanghai. "Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes are all strong teams so we don't take anything for granted," he said.
"We'll just look to extract the maximum we can out of the car, the drivers are both in great form and we'll try our hardest to try and replicate the sort of form we demonstrated in Malaysia."