FIA president Jean Todt admits it is possible some illegal tricks used by Formula 1 teams will be missed by the governing body.
In an era where regulations are created through the Strategy Group, made up of the FIA, F1 bosses and teams, it has often been suggested that the advanced capabilities of teams put them at least one step ahead of those trying to police them.
This argument was recently made after the FIA reached a settlement with Ferrari over their 2019 power unit, after claims they had discovered a way to navigate around the sensors that police the 100kg per hour fuel flow limit.
But when asked by Autosport recently if the governing body can be trusted to regulate F1 properly, Todt tried to reassure.
“It is probably more complex now but, saying that, if you see the organisation of the FIA now on the technical side compared to what it was – it wasn’t always at this level,” the Frenchman said.
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“I think in a modern world, with whistleblowers and all that, it makes things much more difficult for those responsible to ask some of their team members to be an accomplice of wrongdoing.
“With people changing from one team to another one, it makes [such a] thing very difficult.
“But if you tell me, can you correctly tell me that whatever happened you would be able to detect [everything]? Then, the answer is no.”
And there lies the problem because what was most disconcerting about the Ferrari case was how the FIA needed others to blow the whistle or ask for clarification before any action was taken.
Perhaps worse though, is while eventual action was taken in the form of technical directives and regulatory amendments…
When the governing body, armed with this new information, tried to investigate the Ferrari fuel flow matter directly, it still couldn’t reach a definitive conclusion despite their own “suspicions”.