Red Bull’s team principal Christian Horner revealed that the team didn’t run KERS on their RB7 during qualifying or the race after they questioned its reliability.
Speculation in the paddock suggested the team was running a ‘start-only’ system, however, they weren’t running a boost system at all and had completely removed it from the car.
“We haven’t had KERS on at all this weekend,” Horner told the BBC. “We didn’t want to tell anybody, but looking at the start … It didn’t look like we needed it.
“We were a bit nervous about telling everybody before the race. We ran it on Friday and we weren’t happy with the reliability, we felt it was a potential risk, so we took it off both cars and didn’t race it at all this weekend.”
Horner hinted that the design of their system has been compromised by Adrian Newey’s tight packaging of the car, which has resulted in some issues with the system.
“We made a decision with the KERS, he added. “It’s quite a complex system, it’s an interesting technology, but Adrian [Newey] being Adrian would not compromise the car around the system so it has had to fit into his aero shape and that’s presented some bigger challenges.”
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