Webber: Rule changes won’t clip Red Bull's wings

F1 News

Date: 23/06/2011

Red Bull's Mark Webber doesn’t expect the new technology restrictions, the first of which comes into effect this weekend at Valencia, to turn the 2011 F1 World Championship 'upside down'.

Starting from this weekend, it will be illegal to change the engine mapping between qualifying and the race - ending the potential use of special qualifying settings.

The use of off-throttle blown diffusers, where exhaust gases are 'pumped' under the car - thereby increasing downforce - even when the driver has lifted off the throttle, will then be banned from the British Grand Prix on July 10. 

Speculation suggests that the mapping limit might hit Red Bull harder than most, with paddock opinion tipping Renault to suffer the greatest when the off-throttle exhaust as is restricted.

Speaking in Valencia on Wednesday Webber, team-mate to runaway championship leader Sebastian Vettel, played down the impact of the changes.

"I don’t think they will make the car any faster, but I think it is the same for everybody," commented the Australian. "We have got to adapt again, get used to it, but it is nothing new for our team to adapt to a change in regulations.

"I don’t think it is going to turn the field upside down. I think everyone will still be in reasonable shape. McLaren and Ferrari are fast, we know that. We are quick but the changes, whether they will turn the championship around, I think it is unlikely."

Now in his tenth season of F1, the 34-year-old claimed not to be surprised by such mid-season rule changes - but did highlight the financial fallout of such decisions.

"There’s always something floating around in our sport, isn’t there?" he said. "We know that. We had the double diffuser a few years ago; some people say it’s right, some people say it’s wrong and now we obviously have the exhaust thing which is their interpretation.

"It’s not within the spirit of the rules so we change the rules. Obviously, it would have been very, very cost effective for all of the teams to know this before the season started because everyone was already looking at it at the end of last year.

"You look at the people from [Renault] and those guys have done a huge, huge job, packaging their car and designing their concept around something like this [exhaust gas] working.

"So it’s not a trivial thing to throw into the middle of the season for the teams but they will all adjust. We’re not overly concerned. I’m not sitting here saying they shouldn’t have done it, it’s just that it’s not a cheap exercise for people to make adjustments."

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso got within 0.185sec of beating Vettel during qualifying in Canada, but the Spaniard played down his chances of a home pole this Saturday.

Mapping change or not, Alonso believes the Red Bull will still be the car to beat, and that the perceived difference between qualifying and race performance is down to how hard the Red Bull drivers are pushing.  

"I don’t think it will massively change qualifying," he said of the engine mapping rule. "We were following [Vettel in the Canadian Grand Prix] and he was nearly eight tenths or nine tenths quicker than us with race mapping.

"We saw a superior car at that moment, a dominant car, the Red Bull, in qualifying and in the race as well. It seems that sometimes they push a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. Because of that, in races you seem a little bit closer."