Newey: “Red Bull heavily penalized by blown exhaust ban”

Red Bull technical director Adrian Newey has said he believes his team will be affected "quite heavily" by the blown exhaust ban which comes into force at this weekend's Formula 1 British Grand Prix.

“I think we will be quite penalized since our car was designed around this exhaust concept,” Newey told Reuters.

“Probably with the exception of Renault and ourselves, everyone else copied the principle, which was fundamentally ours, and adapted the car they had before the start of the season. It could happen that, since our car was designed around this idea, that the ban would be even more penalizing for us, but it is very difficult to predict."

Newey also admitted that he was amazed by the way in which the FIA ​​decided to ban a system previously considered legal.

“I'm quite annoyed because it was declared legal until this race,” he added. “The obvious comparison is with the ban on active suspensions, which was outlawed at the end of 1993, so there wasn't a mid-season regulation change. Ferrari couldn't get its active suspensions to work and they suddenly became illegal for the following year. It's easy to fall into conspiracy theories. Whether they are true or false I don't know, and I can't comment. In my opinion, among our main competitors, which are clearly McLaren and Ferrari, Ferrari is the one that has not managed to make the exhausts work best and therefore they are quite happy with this change. McLaren probably doesn't know how it will go, whether it will lose more or less than us. But they are probably relieved to have a factor that could mix up the values ​​on the field."