Ferrari head Mattia Binotto sees nothing “wrong or illegal” with Mercedes’ Formula One car’s rear suspension, but acknowledges his team hasn’t paid a lot of attention to it.
The suspension of reigning champion Mercedes has been in the news in recent days after video analysis revealed that the car’s back end slides down at high speed on the straights to increase straightline speed.
After the United States GP, Red Bull team manager Christian Horner stated that Mercedes’ system “may be quite powerful” in the remaining races of the season.
“It will have a greater influence at some tracks than others,” said Horner. “It was a reduced effect here [in the United States] but somewhere like Jeddah for example, it could be quite powerful.”
Horner did state, however, that he felt what Mercedes was doing was within the regulations.
“We don’t feel that it is illegal, no,” said Horner. “It’s something that has been used historically. We’ve seen it used by them in the past.
Binotto noted that the Mercedes system was not particularly surprising, and that, despite media attention, it appears to be legal.
“Honestly I’m not too interested in this discussion,” said Binotto. “I’m not really following them, I heard about it.
“I do not see anything wrong or illegal in that. I mean I’m even not somehow surprised the way the car behaves.”
McLaren CEO Andreas Seidl said that his team had not paid enough attention to the Mercedes’ rear suspension, preferring to focus its efforts elsewhere.
“To be honest, I only saw yesterday I think the Sky [TV] video when the analysis was done,” said Seidl in Austin. “But we didn’t spend any energy yet on on this topic.
“We have enough to do just focusing on ourselves and executing a good race weekend.
“So let’s chat a bit about it again in a week’s time, once we have looked into this as a team. And if there’s actually something behind it or it is just a ghost which is going through the paddock at the moment.”
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