Mosley: “F1 shake-up not just due to diffusers”

6 April, 2009

Max Mosley at the weekend said he does not believe “the inversion of the established order” in formula one can be simply reduced to the controversy about diffusers.

According to AFP France, the FIA president made the comments on a visit to the Portugal rally, adding that he has no idea which way the Court of Appeal hearing on April 14 will go.

The Briton said there are arguments “for and against” the use of the so-called double or triple-step diffusers.

At Sepang last weekend, meanwhile, Ross Brawn revealed that he proposed to the F1 teams’ technical working group a full year ago to amend the 2009 regulations so that certain loopholes could not be exploited. “I offered them and they were rejected, so my conscience is very clear. And those rules that I put on the table would have stopped a lot of things,” he told reporters in Malaysia.

Brawn third driver Alex Wurz agrees that, with the regulations ultimately set in stone, no-one can now complain about legitimate side-effects of the loopholes.

He told Sport Bild: “In my view formula one has regulations, and where within these rules you are able to innovate, you do. All the teams do it, and our diffuser is a good example.”

Meanwhile Mosley has given a cautious thumbs-up to the success of F1′s new regulations. Speaking at the rally of Portugal last weekend, the FIA president said that on the basis of the recent 2009 season opener, the changes to improve overtaking seem to have worked.

“At the moment it looks satisfactory,” the Briton is quoted as saying by the French language news agency AFP. “Melbourne was better than last year, it appeared that it was easier to overtake, but we will have to wait for three or four more grands prix before knowing if there really is an improvement,” Mosley added.

While in Portugal Mosley visited the ’outstanding’ Algarve circuit. The country’s hopes of returning to the formula one calendar got a shot in the arm last weekend. The FIA President said the facility, already used in the winter for F1 testing, is “enormously impressive” but stopped short of saying a grand prix is necessarily around the corner. “It would be a matter for them to make a commercial arrangement with Bernie,” he explained.

In terms of gaining the approval of the FIA, however, Mosley said the venue has already been inspected by the Paris body and attained “grade 1″ status. “It’s an outstanding circuit so I think there’s no doubt if they made a commercial agreement with Bernie Ecclestone and FOM there wouldn’t be the slightest difficulty about putting them on the calendar,” he added.

Mosley also revealed plans for a “world engine” that in 2013 would be capable of powering FIA categories including formula one, world rally and F2. He said: “It would work in turbocharged form for F1 and then all the way down to naturally aspirated form for the lesser categories and in a turbocharged or naturally aspirated form for the world rally championship.”

The FIA president said the planning phase of the project is in its “very early days”, with the car manufacturers to be involved. In the case of F1, he said “peripheral areas” of the engine will be open for development, including KERS and other energy recovery systems to be introduced.

Asked for further information, he said energy could be collected not only from braking heat as at present, but “from exhausts and even from the cooling system”. Referring to the universal FIA engine, he added: “If we can – and I’m not sure we can – find a way of combining all forms of motor sport in that system then this would be useful because of the huge sums spent on motor sport.”

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