Nigel Mansell thinks the debut this weekend of the full FIA clampdown on off-throttle engine exhaust blowing will be “intriguing”.
“It is going to be very intriguing to see who is affected the most, and who can move ahead on the grid,” the 1991 and 1992 Silverstone winner, who will be the driver steward this weekend, said.
Many of Red Bull’s rivals are hoping the dominant RB7 is the car most affected by the clampdown.
“I hope not, although our car was designed to be more effective with the blown diffusers,” team boss Christian Horner told AS newspaper this week. “We trust in our solutions.”
The car’s designer Adrian Newey is openly worried. “Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari copied our solution,” he told O Estado de S.Paulo. “It’s impossible to predict what will happen at Silverstone, but it may well be that they lose less than us because they had to adapt their cars to it while our car was conceived entirely for it.
Another hope among the pitlane’s non-Red Bull contingent is for bad weather at Silverstone.
“Realistically, Sebastian Vettel would need to do a really crazy job to lose the title,” admits Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, “but we can’t give up and this situation changes nothing in our approach.”
Agreed Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber: “For someone to outscore him by 80 points will be a phenomenal effort so you have got to keep boxing and hang in there.”
Source:GMM
