F1 reveal "rule-busting phase" to combat loopholes with 2022 cars

F1 2022

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F1 reveal "rule-busting phase" to combat loopholes with 2022 cars

Ross Brawn famously found a loophole in 2009 regulations

Ian Parkes

Sunday 16 January 2022 12:30 Updated: 11:15

Ross Brawn has conceded to F1 undertaking "a rule-busting phase" in a bid to stop teams finding loopholes with this year's new regulations.

Brawn famously won the constructors' and drivers' titles in 2009 with his eponymous team following the discovery of the double diffuser that cleverly circumvented rules in place at the time.

Now, as F1's managing director motorsports, he and his department have attempted to sift through the all-new aerodynamic regulations that come into force this season to ensure there is little scope for such ingenuity.

Asked in an interview with The New York Times whether any potential loopholes had been spotted on this occasion, Brawn replied: "If you look at what happened in real-time, especially when I was a technical director, it was the odd occasion when a team would come up with an interpretation.

"Therefore, it was quite extreme in terms of when that happened. It didn't happen every day of the week.

"Trying to anticipate every loophole or every interpretation is very difficult but for sure, our process was to understand the problem, design around eliminating the problem.

"Our group spent some time looking at the sensitivities of the different areas to see where there could be some scope left for the teams to evolve their designs and change their designs.

"Then we did have a rule-busting phase where we did try and break the rules and see what loopholes we could find. We went through that.

"I won't pretend we would've found every loophole, but we definitely went through a regulation testing phase of seeing where we could find some opportunities."

Questioned on whether there was the prospect of another Brawn double diffuser in the pipeline, he said: "I don't think so, no.

"But you never know. Nobody expected it before it happened."