It certainly promises to be an intriguing race this weekend at the British Grand Prix in Silverstone, what with the latest changes to occur. The weather is also looking to play a part in the proceedings, with wet conditions being forecast.
This is welcome news for Mercedes GP, which is hoping to follow up on the result obtained in Montreal. MGP boss Nick Fry says that chances for the weekend are looking up, though it will depend a little bit on the weather. “We have a situation with the car that it tends to work better in cooler conditions, and it looks like it will be cooler and potentially with showers, so I hope we can do better. Obviously the result in Montreal was a much better one, so with similar conditions I hope we can do the same,” he said during a brief interview at the team’s base in Brackley.
Red Bull Racing has been far ahead of the pack, but will the latest change mean others will now catch up? “Red Bull have done a fantastic job this year, but Formula 1 can change very quickly, as we all know. It’s clear that they have some bigger benefits that the rest of the teams with the blown exhaust system, as it’s called, so Adrian Newey is saying it will affect them more than others.”
“I think that things may change for the second half of the year, but Red Bull Racing has gotten so far in the first half of the year, it’s difficult to see them being caught, but you never know. In F1 many unexpected things happen.”
“Realistically, the people we need to compete with for the moment are Ferrari and McLaren. At the moment Red Bull is a little bit out of reach, though that may change with the changes in the regulations, but we’re slightly behind the other two, so they are our immediate targets,” he said.
Newey has certainly been vocal about the latest change, and Fry is sympathetic. “In
many ways I personally have sympathy for Adrian and Red Bull – to change something as significant as this halfway through the season is a little bit tough. We’ve had a history in F1 of changing technology, but usually at the end of the season.
“If you think of the mass damper which Renault had or the double diffuser that we clearly had, these all finished to the end of the season. I do think that we need to think in the future about how we control the introduction of these things, about the implications about some of these technologies early on, and if we think it’s going to lead F1 into a situation where its undesirable, it would be better to stop it in the first place rather than have everyone spend a lot of money and time pursuing a particular innovation and then have it banned,” he explained.
Guess we’ll find out how much the latest changes will affect things this coming weekend.
The RBR chief technical officer is clearly unhappy with the ban, hinting that it’s a move in favour of Ferrari. 
