Ferrari’s rivals have again called on the team to reveal details of the settlement reached with the FIA over their 2019 engine.
Back in February, just as pre-season testing was ending, motorsport’s governing body announced it had made a private agreement with the Scuderia after being unable to definitively decide if their power unit was breaching fuel flow regulations by tricking the FIA sensor.
That drew the anger of all teams not tied to Ferrari, who were demanding answers before the matter was put aside due to Covid-19.
As the season finally began in Austria last weekend, however, Red Bull confirmed it would be brought back up again.
And asked what the main questions he has about the settlement, team boss Christian Horner was clear.
“What is in that agreement? What does it comprise of? Because obviously in our minds a car is either legal or illegal,” he was quoted by FormulaSpy.
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“Now obviously questions have been raised with the FIA; the FIA have said they would be happy to disclose that document but of course they need clearance from the other signatories so obviously it does nothing but promote suspicion when there are private agreements about legality and conformity so the healthiest thing would be to get it on the table so everybody sees what it is comprised of.
“The FIA have said they are willing to do that, it would be great if Ferrari were prepared to do the same so it puts it all to bed.”
Mercedes was initially leading the seven teams pursuing the governing body for answers before dropping their complaint after a meeting between the CEOs of Daimler and Ferrari.
F1 team boss Toto Wolff admitted, however, the whole situation wasn’t a good look for the FIA.
“In this day and age, transparency is extremely important and good governance – it’s extremely important,” he said.
“It may well have been good governance but if you don’t know, it’s difficult to judge so in the position that we are in is that we are monitoring the situation. We are not happy about last year.”
McLaren too called out their old rivals on the engine matter earlier this year, when tensions were growing over reducing F1’s new budget cap for 2021.
And in the same press conference, CEO Zak Brown echoed what Horner and Wolff had said.
“It would be good to understand exactly what happened, what they found, what the solution is,” he said.
“It was last year so hopefully we see on the data maybe what we saw last year so I think at some point you do close last year out as long as you feel it’s been addressed.
“In today’s transparent world I think it would be good to understand what was the case, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to come forward from them any time soon.”