Red Bull team principal Christian Horner confirmed earlier this week that Red Bull will run KERS in Malaysia, meanwhile, Adrian Newey has said that any decision will be made on the Friday before the race.
The chief technical officer at the Milton Keynes based outfit said the decision would be based on whether or not the system would run reliably during practice, something they didn’t feel comfortable with in Melbourne.
“If we feel it’s reliable then we will try to race it,” he is quoted as saying by The Times of India. “We will have to make that decision on Friday evening [in Malaysia].”
As seen in 2009, the real benefit to KERS is at the start provided there is a long run into turn one. Albert Park didn’t show the qualities of KERS due to the relatively short distance between the start/finish line and T1.
“KERS is a benefit off the start line. So even if you are on the front row, without KERS there’s a risk that you won’t be first into the first corner,” added Newey.
The way Red Bull have packaged the system has been highlighted as the key issue, given that the team are using the Renault system which ran reliably all weekend for the Lotus-Renault outfit.
Horner however says that isn’t the case: “It’s not really a packaging problem as such,” he said. “We have packaged it in quite an aggressive manner but that wasn’t the cause of the problem.”
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