Following a meeting with the FIA prior to qualifying, which involved all the teams, the governing body has announced that it is willing to return to pre-Silverstone regulations, effectively binning the exhaust clampdown.
The letter, sent to all the teams and handed to The F1 Times following qualifying, communicates that if all the teams agree, the set-ups and strategies will return to how they were in Valencia a fortnight ago, once the British GP has ended.
This will mean that off-throttle blown-diffusers can be used how the teams originally intended when they designed their cars from Germany onwards, though the ban on engine mapping changes between qualifying and the race, which were introduced at the European GP, will remain in place.
It’s likely all the teams will agree to the mandate which will see the end of the off-throttle controversy, delaying the ban until the very end of the season.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner suggested on Friday that an end of season ban would have been a better solution.
“Perhaps [it] would have been better dealt with at the end of the season when the exhausts move to a completely different location which will remove an awful lot of the emotion that seems to surround this topic.”
The statement from the FIA reads: “The measures which were communicated to the teams this morning by the FIA Technical Department stand for the rest of the weekend.
“During Saturday morning’s Extraordinary Technical Working Group meeting, the members discussed the viability of returning to the pre-Silverstone set-ups and strategies.
“If the teams are in unanimous agreement, the FIA is prepared to adopt this arrangement until the end of the current season.”
