Was Ferrari justified in getting a green light from FIA? Red Bull not convinced

After the Imola Grand Prix, Ferrari completed a tyre test for Pirelli, but competitors of the Italian formation suspected that the team tested a new specification of the floor against the rules. The FIA investigated the matter and eventually ruled that team of Mattia Binotto was innocent. Christian Horner has his doubts about it.

In the morning Charles Leclerc was in action and after the afternoon break it was Carlos Sainz who stepped in. Photos clearly showed that a different floor was being used at that time. The leader in the Constructors' Championship would have broken the rules with that, but in the end that turned out not to be the case as the floor Sainz was driving with would have been an older instead of newer specification.

Horner not quite sure

In conversation with Marca Horner doubts that: "My understanding is that the rules for tire testing mean that you have to drive with a fixed specification of the car and that, if you have to replace a part, it can only be an older specification that has been tested before. I feel that Ferrari floor was definitely different between the morning and the afternoon, it seemed to have some new components."

The Red Bull Racing team boss argues that the FIA faces a big job in continuing to do this 'police work' in the coming year. There are more tire tests to come and Horner feels it is quite fraudulent. This is because the extra kilometers that are made can also provide a lot of new data from the car.

Request to FIA

"What we want to avoid is that, because these cars are so immature and are still at a very early stage of their development, the testing of the tires doesn't turn into the testing of the aerodynamics or the performance development. That is not the purpose of these tests," Horner told the Spanish medium.