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Formula One
F1:  Will There Be A Protest Over McLaren Or Not?
The controversy over the modifications to the McLaren MP4-25 may be growing...
SPEED Staff / GMM  |  Posted March 12, 2010   Sakhir (BHR)
The McLaren MP4-25, complete with controversial modification, took the track for the first practice of 2010 Friday. Jenson Button was fifth, Lewis Hamilton sixth. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
After McLaren's 2010 car was declared legal by the FIA Thursday official protests from rival teams appeared unlikely.

"It looks like it's legal so we will look at developing our own version," Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said in Bahrain. "Engineers are creative people. I'm sure ours will find another way of doing it.”

But just prior to the teams getting the green light for opening practice at the Bahrain season opener Friday morning, Renault's technical boss Bob Bell felt differently, delivering a scathing verdict on what could become known as 'knee-gate'.

Asked about the monocoque air inlet that is triggered by the drivers' left knee on the MP4-25, Irishman Bell said the Woking based team had "driven a concourse through the spirit of the regulations".

He said it was a "joke" and "nonsense" that the FIA had green lighted the "completely illegal" innovation, which will now spark an "arms race" within pit lane.

When asked by BBC radio if Renault will submit an official protest, an angry Bell answered: "I honestly couldn't comment on that, to be honest."

It is believed direct copies of the McLaren system, with airflow into a cockpit inlet controlled to the rear wing by the movement of the driver, are unlikely for two reasons.

First, the 2010 monocoques are homologated, making significant alterations difficult and it is believed that rival teams do not yet fully understand McLaren's ingenious solution.

"From what I understand, there are no grounds for a protest," said McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh. "I don't think everyone yet understands the nature of the systems that are on our car.

"So if they put a protest in, it would potentially be on a wrong set of assumptions as to what we've got. We will see," he is quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

Whitmarsh, who is also chairman of the F1 teams' association FOTA, cheekily suggested that rival teams might copy the inlet on the upper left surface of the monocoque for the purposes of "cooling their drivers".

He said the unnamed engineer responsible for the idea will be outed within time.

"Secrets in F1 have a remarkably short shelf-life and we will make sure that, in due course, the individual gets quite a lot of credit," said Whitmarsh.

If the trick is designed to give the McLaren machines a great deal more speed than the rest of the field, it may not have worked as Friday; both Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton were fifth and sixth on the speed charts in the first free practice.

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