Abiteboul fears teams cheating on engine parts, as the complicated rules provide a grey area that they can take advantage of.
Abiteboul wants FIA to come up with simpler engine regulations, one’s that can be enforced without the presence of a ‘grey area’.
There has been a lot of debate about the Ferrari engine this season, as it has been able to extract greater performance than all other engine suppliers this season(particularly Mercedes).
Abiteboul has called for standarisation of parts, so that when FIA wants to look into any possible wrongdoings, the complexity of the system does not drive them away.
“I don’t want to create a debate here, but I think we need to think how we can help the FIA, regarding the enforceability of the regulations.
“I really believe that the complexity of the engine is such that I would not want to have myself to police it. So, I think we need to figure that out.
“I really believe that some elements of standardisation are not just useful but absolutely necessary if we want to retain some confidence between all the participants.” he said as quoted by Motorsport.com.
Abiteboul admitted that Renault actually knew how to go about ‘cheating’ or taking advantage of the current regulations, something that isn’t quite healthy for the sport.
“I think that, frankly, if we wanted to cheat on the current engine, we would know how to do it, and that’s an issue. We are a very large corporation and we would never do such a thing like that, we can’t afford the reputational risk.
“I’m not saying that anyone is cheating, but I think it’d be good to get rid of all the speculation, by doing some local and targeted standardisation, and we’ve put forward some proposals in relation to that.” he concluded.
Do you think Abiteboul has a point or is he just being a bit salty with respect to the amount of performance that Ferrari have been able to extract.
