SPEED's Bob Varsha thinks it will be intriguing to see which of the seven teams without the "double decker" diffuser makes the best use of the rule clarifications.
Ross Brawn arriving at the appeal hearing in Paris on Tuesday (LAT)
So “diffusergate” is now officially over, and if you are among those who labeled the Brawn, Toyota and Williams teams as cheaters you can dine on your words with a nice chianti while the rest of us get ready for the resumption of the season in China this weekend.
More importantly, if you are among the seven teams without a similarly effective device to extract air from under the car and create extra downforce for better cornering speed, you’d better get moving. At last word Renault and McLaren each have something in the wind tunnel, while Red Bull (and Toro Rosso) designer Adrian Newey has cancelled his trip to Shanghai in order to sharpen his pencil and go to work on one, and Ferrari has no doubt placed the trick aero part high up on the to-do list for the new Emergency Performance Enhancement Committee, or whatever they’re calling it, based at the factory and tasked to come up with something, anything, to get the Scuderia off the schneid.
Estimates of the time it will take for the teams to get their new pieces on their cars vary from next weekend in Bahrain to Monaco more than a month from now. That latter timeframe seems odd, since most of those without the clever “double diffuser” design element said they either looked at the idea and put it aside, or presented a similar idea to the FIA and were told it was illegal, so they had at least a basic design in hand. Add the fact that those teams have had a good close look at the creations of the “diffuser three” since testing in Spain as much as two months ago, AND given all the sport’s well-deserved reputation for quick development, one would think everybody’s response would be fairly well advanced by this point.
Judging from reports, the FIA International Court of Appeals hearing in Paris Tuesday must have been fascinating. It took eight hours (presumably not including the traditional three-hour Parisian lunch) and featured nearly forty team members, witnesses and lawyers. Among the high points, testimony (not the appropriate word, since the ICA is not a court at all, but simply a panel made up of FIA executives and attorneys) included Ross Brawn making the point that many recent championship-winning cars could arguably be described as being in violation of one rule or another, presumably including the cars with which Ferrari, led by Brawn himself, won more than a few world championships.
It was sad to hear that old colleagues Brawn and Rory Byrne, who designed those Ferraris, and the Benettons before them, that the two developed into winners for Michael Schumacher, took personal shots at one another. Those emotional moments were leavened by long debates about one mundane item or another, including a lengthy discussion of what constitutes a “hole” in a car’s bodywork, during which it was noted that one of the ‘judges,’ a gentleman from Malta, repeatedly dozed off, which in turn reminded me of my law school days…
