“It was pointed out last year by the low-rake runners”– Aston Martin claims it warned the authorities about disadvantage to low-rake teams.
Mercedes on Friday explained that how they are struggling with the new floor regulations, as they are a low rake team, and the regulations bring them a major disadvantage.
This point has been reiterated by Aston Martin boss Otmar Szafnauer, who now claims that they informed authorities about the disadvantage they would face.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” he told Motorsport.com. “But it was pointed out last year by the low-rake runners that this would have a bigger effect than on the high-rake runners.
“And we were correct. At the time the regulations were being made, this was pointed out.” He claims that there was never a vote on this regulation, rather an indicative vote, with discretion lying with the governing body.
“No. Number one, there was never a vote,” he added. “Number two, there was an indicative vote. So that was just at the technical under committee [working group], that all the technical directors had to have an indicative vote, and three teams voted against it.
“You’ve got to remember only two teams have a low-rake concept. So even one of the high-rake teams voted against it. So nowhere near unanimity. And it wouldn’t have even passed on the eight out of 10 rule. Because three voted against.”
Need to work hard
Last year, under Racing Point’s banner, the team managed to achieve its objectives, but this year they had a rough start to the season and could grab only a point from Bahrain.
“In race conditions, we were a bit more competitive than we were over one lap,” Szafnauer said. “But compared to where we were just a few months ago here, before the regulation change, I mean, we’ve got a lot of a lot of work to do.”
