McLaren technical chief Paddy Lowe has admitted that the FIA's decision to ban the free use of off-throttle blown diffusers had been "strange" as teams prepare to find out whether the ban will affect the order in Silverstone this weekend.
The FIA have introduced heavy restrictions on the use of engine mapping to generate extra downforce from blown diffusers even when a driver is off the throttle.
From the British Grand Prix this coming weekend, teams will be limited to mapping designed to operate up to 10% of maximum throttle.
But the decision by the governing body to ban the technology midway through the season has been criticised by some, including Red Bull designer Adrian Newey.
And Lowe admitted that the timing of the decision had struck him as being slightly odd.
"Generally the teams are finding this change mid-season not the best way of solving the problem," Lowe told last week's FOTA fan forum when asked about the changes being made to cope with the ban.
"Also, the problem is a little bit difficult to understand because teams have been blowing exhausts through diffusers for 20 years, so the timing of the rule interpretation does seem a bit strange."
Meanwhile, despite the suggestion that the frontrunning Red Bull team would have more to lose over the ban than their rivals, RBR head of race engineering Paul Monaghan told the forum that the team was not overly concerned.
"The first thing we'll look at is what's the loss of downforce and how does that affect the balance of the car around the lap," he explained, "We can at least tailor our investigations to suit Silverstone.
"You do your utmost to identify the deficiencies it will give you and concentrate your efforts on how you're going to get back what you've just lost."
He added: "I'm sure [our rivals] have been as busy as we have and on Sunday afternoon we'll see who's been the most successful at achieving it.
"I don't think it will particularly change tyre degradation and I don't think it's necessarily going to be the magnitude of change that's being forecast in some areas.
"As long as we're still on top, I don't mind!"
Renault chief James Allison, meanwhile, remained coy with regards to how huge the impact of the ban would be on his own team, with Renault being another squad expected to lose out over the ban.
"We're all a bit coy with one another about the power of these devices," he admitted, "[The impact] will vary from team-to-team."
He went on: "I won't give you our number, but I'll give you a sense of it: if you imagine they're worth 0.8s compared with having no blown diffuser.
"We're now going down to about half of the previous authority of it.
"You've still got plenty of blowing going on because you've still got an engine running and that exhaust is still going right into your floor.
"We're not able to optimise the use of the engine to make it also efficient as a pump when we're on partial throttle. That's the new interpretation that's being applied."
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