The newest technical rumours from the Melbourne paddock suggest that Red Bull have taken a unique approach to their KERS device, designing it specifically for use at the start of a race, after they ran without their boost device in qualifying.
Kinetic energy recovery systems has made a return to the sport for 2011, after the teams elected to drop them for last season, with every team on the grid aside from Lotus, Virgin and HRT running the system.But Red Bull raised a few eyebrows when they were seen to run without their KERS turned on throughout the qualifying session in Melbourne.
Despite the lack of extra boost from their energy recovery device, Sebastian Vettel still ended the session nearly a second clear of the rest of the field.
The team remained cagey on the precise set-up of their KERS device after the session, with team boss Christian Horner simply suggesting that the team had a plan for their energy boost.
"Strategically we elected to not use KERS in the qualifying – it was a team decision," Horner knowingly told the Autosport website after the session, "But I'm not going to tell you what you are fishing for."
The overriding theory from the Albert Park paddock is that the team has designed a smaller version of the traditional battery-powered KERS device only for use off the start line at the beginning of a race.
If the team elected to go down that route, the obvious benefit would be to the weight of the car, with their simpler one-off KERS boost system not needing any of the recharging systems of a constant-use KERS system.
Alternatively, some have suggested a simpler reason for the lack of KERS in qualifying, namely that the team were concerned about reliability issues.
The lack of KERS in qualifying also makes the pace shown by Vettel more worrying for his rivals, given that the lack of extra boost during his flying lap would have cost him more time.
"The gap if they didn't use KERS is another half a second so it's 1.3 seconds which is not normal," McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton, who qualified second and some 0.8 seconds behind Vettel, said in the post-qualifying press conference.
After the qualifying session, Horner admitted that he had been slightly surprised by the overall gap from Vettel back to the rest of the field.
"It was a great performance by Seb and a great start to the season, but it's difficult to understand where the time between the two of them is, particularly in the last sector," the RBR boss told the BBC.
"There is nothing obvious, particularly in the last sector there has been a difference between of them so we need to have a look at the data to see why. It was phenomenal couple of laps that Sebastian has produced there."
He added: "I think we are in good shape. Great to start the new season from pole."
Red Bull did not run with KERS throughout the 2009 season, when the devices were first introduced into the sport.
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