Details on the double diffusor issue

Auto Motor & Sport explained it in a nice article: The upper of the two diffusors has to get its air from somewhere, so the teams using them had to cut holes in the floor which are only legal if they aren't covered and you can see the sky through them, so to say. This rule and interpretation thereof has been around for years. Brawn and Toyota designed the holes in a way that a huge part of the opening leads to the diffusor and only a tiny slot serves as a "window".
Now the rule changes Brawn proposed last year would have outruled the second diffusor, but they wouln't have touched the issue of the holes, which are a much bigger problem when it comes to interpreting the rules. The diffusor itself might very well be perfectly legal, but if Brawn/Toyota/Williams new interpretation of "hole in the floor" is not accepted, the diffusors will be worthless.

That brings a new spin to the whole issue, imho. Yes, three teams caught the others with their pants down and the double diffusor is a great idea, but if the premises under which they were designed clearly contradict long-accepted and well known rules, the question if they are legal or not might not be as clear...

 

Thanks Florian, interesting.

Yet again the rules , I blame one person for the whole of this mess, again

Brawn's quote: "If I'm frank I didn't say 'look we are going to do this diffuser if you don't accept this rule' because I'm not going to tell people what we're doing, but I explained that I felt that we should have a different set of rules to simplify what needs to be done.

"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. It would have stopped the diffuser, it would have stopped all those bargeboards around the front, and it would have cleaned the cars up.

"Because it was clear that when we started to work on the regulations that there were things that you could do, and we needed to perhaps clean them up, but nobody was interested. They are interested now."...LOL they sure are Ross, well done lad..

 

What Brawn and the others call 'slots' are the same 'holes' that've clearly been illegal for the last 15 years.
Its the issue behind the diffuser protest and why I think the ruling will ultimately go against them.
Otherwise a pandora's box is opened, not just the diffusers permitted.

 

Well Steve, the rule changes that Ross proposed would effectively have made double structures like the second diffusor illegal. What he completely ignores in all his talk about how he was smarter than everyone else is that those diffusors need to get their air from somewhere, so you have to cut holes in the floor. And what Modeler posted about the holes...

... pretty much sums it up. It's not the diffusors themselves that are the specific problem, it's the holes they need to work.

 

Yes but, IMO I think Ross was trying to get this clarification on the rules, without giving the game away as to what he was trying to achieve, nobody seemed interested, so he went ahead now this is either a grey area of the rules and Ross has taken advantage, or it maybe he just pushed the mutual understanding of the rules between the teams, either way IMO it could have sorted before this stage, because now we have a situation where the results of 2 races could be deemed wrong in the true sense of the sport.

IIRC the results will stand though, but that isn't the point IMO.

 

Hmm. Don't lose sight of how fraught was the time between roll out and the first GP.

Any pro-active action at that point risked losing cars from the grid.

That's why I said "ultimately".

Their highest priority was keeping any Japanese manufacturer in F1.