Red Bull team principal Christian Horner is satisfied that Ferrari did not break any rules during the tyre test in Imola, and is glad to see that the FIA carried out their investigation professionally.
There was an element of controversy around Ferrari during the prototype tyre test after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix a few weeks back after they appeared to install a revised floor during one of the days of running, but they were found to have run that specification during pre-season testing.
The sporting regulations indicate that specifications run during tyre tests should be a setup that has been run earlier in the year, so the Scuderia were found not to have contravened any rules.
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Horner has no complaints about this, affirming that the FIA carried out their checks vigilantly.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the FIA to police because the understanding of the regulations regarding tyre testing is you have to run in a fixed format of car specification,” he said, quoted by GPFans.
“If you need to replace a part, it can only be to an older specification of part that has previously run.
“I think the excitement about the Ferrari floor was that it appeared to have, it was certainly different between the morning and the afternoon and appeared to have some new components.
“The FIA has subsequently confirmed that Ferrari ran that floor in pre-season testing, so therefore, it complies and I think, as I say, it’s for the FIA to do that police work and due diligence.”
However, the 48-year-old insinuates that running different aerodynamic setups in two different sessions is a form of car testing rather than tyre testing.
“What we certainly want to avoid is, because these cars are so immature, it’s still very early in the development stage, that tyre tests don’t turn into aerodynamic or performance development tests,” he added
“That is not the purpose of those tests.”
Horner’s Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff did not want to go into too much detail about the FIA’s governance of the matter.
“I haven’t followed that in detail. I’ve seen, obviously, the tweet with the two pictures,” he explained.
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“But the FIA just needs to be on top of these things. It can’t be that any team runs a component in an environment it shouldn’t be doing and I guess if the FIA was not 100% on it, I’m sure they will be now.”
The test in question was a 2023 prototype as Pirelli seek to gain information on how best to formulate next year’s rubber.