brawn

After a row over blown diffusers earlier this season, new regulations for 2012 were drawn up to negate off-throttle blown diffusers by moving the exhaust exits further up the car’s bodywork. Brawn, however, told Autosport that he still thinks the rules allow teams to exploit the gases, and that teams have been trying to close the loopholes as they find them.

“I don’t think it is 100 per cent sorted unfortunately, and there is another meeting of the TWG (Technical Working Group),” Brawn said. “I think everyone, as they get more and more into it, are trying to close off the loopholes, but there is no guarantee that somebody will not come up with some scheme.”

Brawn said that the problem now is that teams can’t keep closing the gaps in the rules as they discover them, and will start having to exploit them as they finalise their 2012 cars.

“It is fairly robust, but I would not say it is 100%, and I think the difficulty now is it is reaching a stage where teams will take their opportunities rather than change the regulations. Teams go through a period of finding the best regulations they can with good spirit and proper intent, and then you reach a stage where those regulations are fixed with the best intent. But if an engineer comes along with a good idea we have to consider it.

“In our case it is still relatively conventional, but whether someone else will come up with something dramatic I would have to wait and see. I would not say I am confident that there will not be an innovative exhaust scheme because once we have learned something you cannot unlearn it.