Zoom The diffuser saga shed light on other details

The FIA on Monday backed Adam Parr's claim that Ferrari said it fielded technically illegal cars in Formula One.

A spat broke out in Shanghai between the Italian team and Parr, who is the Williams team's chief executive.

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali, backed by Renault's Flavio Briatore, hit out at Parr after comments attributed to him suggested Ferrari had used illegal cars in the past.

But on Monday, the FIA said Ferrari did indeed admit to committing "a technical violation" of the technical regulations in the past during the Court of Appeal hearing last Tuesday.

"Ferrari acknowledged that multiple vertical transitions had been used by many teams in the past, including Ferrari itself, and argued that all such prior uses (including its own) had constituted a technical violation of the (technical regulations) which had been tolerated," the Court of Appeal finding said.

The FIA published the court's 20-page findings in full on Monday.

In the document, the court - which found in favour of the diffuser teams Brawn, Toyota and Williams - acknowledged the loophole that led to the saga.

Amazingly, the diffuser teams and their rivals had argued at length about whether holes in the controversial designs were actually holes.

"The (diffuser teams) and the FIA submit that, while there may be spaces between different surfaces, the surfaces themselves do not have holes in them. They contend that the spaces between different surfaces are not holes within the very specific meaning of" article 3.12.5.

The FIA also denied Red Bull's claim that the governing body turned down its clarification in January 2007 about designing a similar concept.

Monday's document reads: "The questions put to (the FIA) in previous cases were different and answered correctly and in a manner consistent with its present position."

The contesting teams had also argued that if the design of 'double-decker' diffusers were considered legal, the seven remaining teams would have no choice but to spend great amounts of money redesigning their own diffusers, creating a situation contrary to the current efforts to reduce costs in F1.

The FIA separated the concepts by stating that "the possibility of teams not presently using the Contested Design Concept incurring future development costs is not a factor relevant to the legal assessment of whether the Contested Decisions comply with the (technical regulations) or not."

D.B. © CAPSIS International
Source: GMM