Brawn hoping to stop F1 rule loopholes

Feb.10 (GMM) F1 is working to make it harder for teams to exploit rule ‘loopholes’, sporting boss Ross Brawn admits.

To date, when a team aces its rivals with a clever and surprising innovation like Brawn’s double diffuser of 2009, the sport can typically only ban it at the end of a season.

“The governance in the past has been the teams have to all agree to make a change,” Brawn said.

“If you exploit a loophole in the future, you can be shut down at the next race, which you could never do now.

“If a team goes out there with a solution that has never been conceived, and has never been imagined, and destroys the whole principle of what is trying to be done, the governance would allow, with sufficient support from the other teams, to stop it,” he said.

Brawn says the reality of the governance change should be that teams do not pursue ‘grey areas’ in the rules at all.

“You’ve found a loophole in the regulations and you turn up at the first race and the FIA say, ‘Sorry chap, that wasn’t intended, we’re going to hold a meeting now and if everyone agrees, apart from you, we’ll stop it’,” he said.

Brawn told APA news agency that he wants the rules of 2021 to make it easier for teams other than Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull to get on the podium.

In the past two years, only two drivers from non-big three teams have stood on the podium after a race.

“Two out of a total of 123 is unacceptable, especially when there is an increasing technical and financial gap,” said Brawn.

“We have to fight this problem together with the FIA and the teams, because the future of Formula 1 depends on it. It cannot go on like this.”