Cheery and controversial Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko has offered his strongest implication yet that the FIA's sudden clampdown on off-throttle blown diffusers is aimed at slowing down the frontrunning caffeinated squad.
The FIA has acted to restrict the use of the new off-throttle diffuser systems over the next month, after the practice of using engine mapping software to control the exhaust gases heading through the blown diffuser became de rigueur on the 2011 grid.
From the European Grand Prix this weekend, teams will no longer be able to run specialist qualifying-only engine mapping programmes designed to boost their single lap pace.
Then, from the next race in Silverstone, teams will be limited to running mapping designed to only simulate up to 10% of maximum throttle output from the exhausts.
The FIA has been pushing for a ban for some time, but some have suggested that the loss of the off-throttle systems will affect Red Bull more than their rivals.
And Marko, ever-happy to stir up some controversy, hinted as much in an interview on the almost-interesting Austrian Servus TV channel this week.
"This time [the ban] seems to be in a hurry," he mused when asked about the FIA's decision, "I would say it is about [the dominance of] Red Bull."
But he added that the champion caffeinated squad was already working on minimising the impact that the impending ban would have on the team.
"We would not be Red Bull if we did not already have ideas about how to mitigate the effect [of this ban]," he smiled cheerily.
He added that the ban should also affect McLaren more than Ferrari, saying: [McLaren] copied our system very well...[but Ferrari] never really got it under control."
But Renault technical chief James Allison suggested that it was hard to tell which teams would be worst affected by the impending ban.
"It is not easy to judge the effect of this change on our competitiveness," he mused on the official Lotus Renault GP website.
"The loss for each blown floor car will come from two separate effects – how much downforce will you lose and, in addition, how much will the loss of this downforce upset the balance of the car.
"All blown floor cars will lose downforce under braking as a result of these new restrictions. Some teams will lose more and some teams less; it is hard to know exactly what relative loss LRGP will suffer."
Meanwhile, the FIA also confirmed that the reasoning for their ban on qualifying-spec mapping for Valencia was that the systems were against the spirit of the 'parc ferme' rules, which forbid significant changes to cars between qualifying and the race.
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