As from the Spanish Grand Prix, the permitted amount of wing flexing is reduced from 15mm to 10mm and Christian Horner expects it to have an impact.
While it was the upgrade package introduced in Miami last year that turned the Woking outfit’s fortune’s around, it was the team’s performance in Azerbaijan later in the season that particularly caught the attention of rivals.
As the Woking outfit initially capitalised on the aero-elastic effect on its rear wing, it subsequently repeated the performance gains with its front wings, leading to an outcry from rivals.
While the FIA insisted that everything was legal and above board, earlier this year a technical directive was sent out to all the teams which ruled that revised deflection tests would see flexibility reduced in China with a further reduction at Barcelona.
“For sure it’s going to have an effect,” said Horner in the build up to this weekend’s race at Imola. “How much it affects your competitors versus your own, it’s difficult to predict,” he admitted, “but for sure it’s a significant change.
“It’s not just a tweak,” he insisted. “It will affect all of the cars, it’s just to what quantum.”
Of course, the Austrian team, like Ferrari and Mercedes, is hoping that McLaren will be particularly affected.
“It’s a 24-race championship, there’s a long, long way to go,” said Horner. “And they’re looking mightily impressive at this point. Things can change, but we need to start making an indentation into the points over the coming races.”
Asked if he feels the directive will allow rivals to make-up the deficit to McLaren, he said: “I don’t think there’s a ‘Eureka’ moment, but I think it’s very fine, because if you look at the race pace and the degradation we had there was better than or at least the same and marginally better than McLaren.
“Two weeks later they haven’t brought a huge amount of different car specifications, it’s more circuit specific that has exposed these issues and I think the braking issues that we’ve had have compounded our issue because then you lose control, everything just runs too hot.”
