The Court Of Appeals has denied the appeal of the Stewards decisions at Australia and Malaysia, declaring the "double-decker" diffuser designs on the Brawn, Toyota, and Williams cars as legal.What is mind-blowing about this is Ferrari's response:
"Unfortunately this decision forces us to intervene on fundamental areas of the car's design in order to be able to compete on an equal footing with some of the teams from a point of view of the technical regulations, and that will take time and money," said Domenicali.Uh excuse me, are you new to Formula 1?
If this is true, it represents a monumental tactical blunder on Ferrari's part.
The moment the team saw the first of these "double-decker" diffusers in pre-season testing, the team should have had designers investigating them, and doing change manifests to see what other changes to the car would be required to fit the modification. Even if the team was 110% confident that the diffusers were illegal, it only made sense to start planning for the moment that they were not. If this preparation was not done, it only compounds the advantage that the "diffuser club" has over Ferrari.
The rumor is that McLaren will have some revised parts relatively quickly, which implies that they have been doing this work even as they appeal against the validity of them. Allege what you like about their honesty, McLaren is never shy about doing the work.
I assumed that the well-financed teams (McLaren, BMW, Ferrari) were off doing diffuser designs even as the appeal was pending. To find out otherwise is shocking, frankly.
Ferrari has again dropped the ball, and added to the pile of evidence suggesting this season will be one blunder after another.
