Adrian Newey has acknowledged World Champions Red Bull have been heavily hampered by the ban on exhaust-blown diffusers this year.
Technical chief admits early-season difficulties
Red Bull Technical Director Adrian Newey has acknowledged the World Champions have been heavily hampered by the ban on exhaust-blown diffusers this year.
Compared to their dominance of 2011, the current campaign has been a relative struggle for the Milton Keynes outfit. Although Red Bull are still top of the
Constructors' Championship, it is Ferrari's Fernando Alonso who leads the drivers' title race - and Newey has attributed Red Bull's early-season struggles to the change in exhaust regulations over the winter.
"It's pretty much as we feared before the season started," Red Bull's technical chief Newey told
Autosport.
"Having explored exhaust blowing technology quite heavily for two seasons and then having that taken away together with other changes like the front wing flexibility, hurt us quite a lot.
"Probably more than other people because we had been exploiting it for longer. It has taken a while to try to understand what we need to do and to recover."
Red Bull's difficulties were compounded by the 'clarification' issued by the FIA on engine mapping following the controversial German GP, with Newey sounding mildly disgruntled by the issue.
"We've been working with Renault and were suddenly faced with a clarification that was a different interpretation to what we thought we were operating to.
"That's where we are and we've got to go back and have a fresh look."
