Red Bull has denied claims team boss Christian Horner questioned the legality of Mercedes' heavily upgraded W13.
As the second pre-season test began in Bahrain on Thursday, rumours the Brackley-based team would introduce a car featuring almost no sidepods were proven accurate as a radical new design was revealed.
F1 journalist Alberta Fabrega explained the changes and how Mercedes have opted for other ways to ensure the lack of a sidepod doesn't impact cooling.
“Mercedes sidepod cooling inlet is inverted and narrowed with a lot of extraction louvres. Seems they placed intercoolers in a higher position," he wrote on Twitter.
#F1: new Mercedes sidepod solution. Looks like another inlet. Upper crash structure like a wing with lot's of fins behind the mirror. #AMuS, #BahrainTesting pic.twitter.com/LQsOn24wGJ
— Andreas Haupt (@andihaupt1) March 10, 2022
The reason for the dramatic sidepod designs as seen on the Red Bull, Ferrari, Williams and now Mercedes is a need to optimise airflow around the floor to achieve maximum ground effect performance from the new Venturi tunnels.
Unsurprisingly, technical director James Allison told Auto Motor und Sport: “This is the most extreme packaging we’ve ever had."
The design is reported to be worth around a second in lap time performance, as well as helping Mercedes reduce weight, which has been a problem for every team bar Alfa Romeo.
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 10, 2022
This quickly led to claims Red Bull was questioning if the 'sidepod-less' concept is within what the new 2022 rules intended.
“The new Mercedes violates the spirit of the regulations,” team boss Horner was quoted as telling Auto Motor und Sport. “For us, there are some parts that are not legal.”
However, the team later put out a statement denying those comments, saying: “Christian Horner has not given any interviews regarding Mercedes’ car. Any quotes being attributed to him this morning are incorrect.”
Whether this does escalate into the first potential protest against a car design in this new era of regulations, we'll have to wait and see.
