“I have questions,” says McLaren managing director Zak Brown, talking about the Bib affair surrounding the Red Bull team, which caused quite a stir before the weekend in Austin. Red Bull had admitted that it had an aid in the car with which the height of the front part of the underbody can be adjusted from the cockpit.
There is a suspicion among the competition that Red Bull is using the device to change the vehicle height between qualifying and the race – but this would be prohibited under the parc ferme regulations.
However, Red Bull claims that the device cannot be accessed once the car is assembled and ready to race, and Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez also emphasize that they are aware of its existence but have never used it.
But that doesn’t completely convince Zak Brown: “I don’t know whether they did it or not, but just having the opportunity raises questions,” he says and calls on the FIA to clarify the matter in detail.
Brown: Breaking the rules should have “massive consequences.”
“I think there needs to be a very thorough investigation. Because if you touch your car in parc ferme for performance reasons, it’s a black and white thing, a significant violation that should have massive consequences,” he tells Sky .
“Touching the car under parc ferme is highly illegal under the rules. So I think the FIA needs to get to the bottom of it: Did they do it, didn’t they do it?”
“If it – and I say if because I don’t know – was used in an inappropriate way, then it is definitely a performance advantage,” Brown said again in the press conference in Austin. “If not, then there is no performance advantage at all – and we want to understand that better.”
For him, it is precisely the uncertainty that makes him so wary about this matter: “As we see in the open source components, there is only one team that has the ability to change the ride height within the cockpit,” says he.
And the fact that only Red Bull has something like that raises doubts in his mind: “Why would you design something like that in the car when the other nine teams haven’t done it?”
Why have a seal if you can’t get to it?
The American also listened carefully to what Red Bull said in connection with the device. It said that it would not be accessible until the car was fully assembled and ready to race. But that’s not proof for Brown.
“I know the car isn’t always fully assembled,” he says. Even under parc ferme conditions, a team can still take the car apart as long as the same parts are reinstalled at the end.
The McLaren managing director is also a little surprised that the FIA wants to put a seal on it: “Why should the FIA put a seal on something that cannot be reached?”
“I still have questions that I need to understand better,” he says.
Brown wants to know how long the thing has existed
However, this is only one solution for the future that the association wants to make, but according to Brown, the FIA needs to go one step further. He is particularly interested in the past: Since when has Red Bull had the part in the car? And since when was it able to adjust the height from the cockpit?
“Our questions are about what may have happened historically, whether it may have been used in an inappropriate way,” he says.
Because in case of doubt, Red Bull would simply ban the part and let it get away with it if it broke the rules: “If you violate the parc ferme, then that is a huge violation of the rules and then there should be consequences – if it happens And that’s up to the FIA,” said Brown.
“We’ve already seen it in sport, including in our sport. Things like this happen. We have to trust the FIA. We just ask questions,” he says and doesn’t see himself as alone in his opinion. Other team bosses also echo the same sentiment. Brown: “We want a solution that is transparent and satisfactory for all teams.”
Source: www.sport.de
