Red Bull's team principal Christian Horner claims that he expected the three F1 teams at the heart of the diffuser legality row to dominate the running at the Australian Grand Prix all along, a view not entirely shared by everyone at the team.
The two Friday practice sessions saw the cars of Williams, Toyota and Brawn GP put in unprecedentedly strong performances, with Nico Rosberg topping both for Williams, and the second session in particular seeing the six drivers fill six of the top seven spots. Red Bull's own Mark Webber was the only driver to break into the triopoly of dominance in the evening session. Based on this, Horner believes that the diffusers are worth so much in terms of lap time that the other seven teams would have no choice to copy the idea on their own cars, should the FIA's Court of Appeal confirm the Melbourne race stewards decision to deem them legal.
"I think that interpretation offers a performance advantage, so inevitably all of the teams, if that solution is now permitted, will all go off and pursue different variants of it," Horner moaned to Autosport on Friday evening, continuing by saying: "It is a shame, however, the FIA has ruled that their cars are legal. We obviously have the right to appeal that, but we are here to go racing and we will do the best job we possibly can. Hopefully we can be as close to the front as we can be."
Red Bull were one of three teams, along with Renault and Ferrari, to protest the diffuser designs of the three teams, which they claim is too large to be legal under the current rules. In appropriately F1-esque base-covering style, Horner also revealed that, though they hope their appeal will be upheld by the FIA, the team are evaluating their own new diffuser designs should they be confirmed as legal.
One complication for the Red Bull team is the pull-rod suspension design incorporated into their complex RB5, which may mean a few more hours doodling by the designers to get the new diffuser right.
One man who disagreed with Horner's fevered doomsaying was his own driver Mark Webber, one of the stellar performers in Friday's sessions. The Aussie man reckons that the real pace of the cars will be different come raceday.
"I think no one here knows the ultimate pace until we get going on Sunday and even then we might see teams not show full pace if they have something up their sleeve," Webber shrugged nonchalantly, "So they will be keep this advantage legality wise, which so far they seem to have done, but I don't fear two different championships in the race."
Webber and Red Bull's more urgent issue may well be the familiar dread of reliability, with both Webber and Sebastian Vettel losing large periods of Friday running with technical problems.
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