The flip flop bug has hit the FIA, which has now made a U-turn on its decision to ban blown diffusers in Formula 1. This means that the off-throttle blown diffuser is now legal again, after all parties unanimously agreed that the ban should be rescinded.

The issue reached boiling point at the British GP, where concessions (first to Mercedes engines) and counter concessions (Renault engines) caused anger in the paddock. FIA then realised what they’ve gotten themselves into, and rolled back the whole thing “to be fair”. Sounds avoidable if there was proper consultation. Here’s the official explanation:

“The matter was still being discussed because one engine manufacturer (Renault Sport) was reluctant to run with the settings we had imposed and continued to try and convince us that they would require alternative settings in order to maintain their perfect reliability record. At the last minute additional information was provided to us which we felt would be hard to refuse having already made a small concession to another manufacturer (Mercedes Benz).

“However, further discussions on Friday evening and Saturday morning resulted in us deciding that we had conceded too much and, to be fair to the manufacturers who had presented cars in what we considered the correct configuration, we should revert to the specification we had specified in our note to the teams on 20 June. This is how all teams then ran on Saturday and Sunday in Silverstone,” FIA said.

This would not be an issue next season, as teams have agreed to a new exhaust tailpipe position that exits the bodywork much higher up, and no longer in the vicinity of the diffuser. Any aerodynamic benefit will be kept to an absolute minimum as a result.

However, I have a feeling that some clever team will find a loophole and derive some benefit out of the new layout. The others will protest, and we go back to square one

In yesterday’s British GP, the two Red Bulls were beaten by Fernando Alonso, with championship leader Seb Vettel in second and Mark Webber in third. The Aussie tried challenging his teammate for position right till the end, when we heard a team order calling for restraint.

But the team radio snippets that we hear on TV are delayed; “Mark, you need to maintain the gap,” was actually spoken around four laps from the end of the race. This means that Webber ignored the order and went for it. He has confessed so, and unhappy team boss Christian Horner will hold a “private talk” with the Aussie.

“I can understand Mark’s frustration in that, but had it been the other way around it would have been exactly the same. It happened a couple of years ago in Turkey when exactly the same thing happened with Sebastian, so it makes no sense from a team point of view to risk both of your cars. It was obvious that neither was going to concede,” he told Autosport

“And, as we saw with [Felipe] Massa and [Lewis] Hamilton at the last corner, who very nearly made contact, it made no sense from a team point of view to allow them to continue to fight over those last couple of laps. Mark obviously chose to ignore that and didn’t make the pass in any event, but that is the team’s position,” Horner added.

This effectively means that Webber will be just a supporter from now on then? “He is free to fight for race wins. He qualified on pole position here. He had the ability, the opportunity to win this race. It didn’t pan out for him today but we will continue to give him every chance to do so.

“From a team perspective, I made it quite clear in the drivers’ briefing this morning in front of the engineers, that the biggest thing today was about getting a team result in front of all of the staff who put in so much effort into both of those cars, for the Constructors’ Championship and the Drivers’ championship.

“At the end of the day, the team championship is every bit as important as the drivers’ championship to us. And we risked giving away 33 points today in the last three laps by allowing our drivers to fight it out. As we have seen previously, that can have dire consequences,” Horner explained.

Fernando Alonso has won the British GP. The double world champ got Ferrari on the top step of the podium for the first time this season after a great drive, finishing ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in their Red Bulls. Lewis Hamilton finished fourth for McLaren, but not after a final corner scramble with Felipe Massa. The finishing order of the Red Bulls could have been different as well, if not for a last lap team order on pole sitter Webber.

Nico Rosberg (Mercedes GP Petronas), Sergio Perez (Sauber) and Nick Heidfeld (Lotus Renault GP) finished in the next three spots, respectively. The trio made a two-stop strategy work, as opposed to the three-stop race of the front runners. A former winner here, Michael Schumacher managed to get some points today.

He had good pace throughout, but a collision with Kobayashi on lap 9, and the subsequent stop-go penalty he received, spoiled his day. By the way, stop-go penalties replaced drive throughs for this race, as the latter is too light of a penalty on this track. Alguersuari was 10th for Toro Rosso.

Not the craziest race we’ve seen this season, but it’s in the upper half of the exciting scale. All cars started the race on intermediate tyres, thanks to rain throughout the weekend. Webber isn’t the best starter around, and he maintained form by being passed by fellow front row occupant Vettel at the start. He started 10th on the grid, but Hamilton was flying at the start, jumping to 6th within the first few laps. He then went wide on lap 5, but thankfully the runoff was tarmac.

On the same lap, DRS was enabled, and part of Silverstone was already dry. Team Lotus’ Heikki Kovalainen, who managed to enter Q2 yesterday, was the first car to retire after a gearbox problem. After a decent start, the Finn lost fourth gear. He was joined by teammate Trulli later for a double DNF in Team Lotus’ “other home race”.

After the above mentioned lap 9 collision between Schumi and Kobayashi, the German pitted for a new nose and slicks. He came out with blazing laps, and that was the cue for the rest of the field to replace their inters around lap 12. There was plenty of action thereafter, when Button took Massa and Lewis passed Alonso for third.

Hamilton was really flying at this moment and the move on his former “best friend” took plenty of guts and faith that the car will stick off the dry line.

The home boy couldn’t sustain the pace, and Alonso retook his place on lap 24 under DRS. Lewis pitted right after. Meanwhile Kobayashi was penalised with a stop-go for unsafe release in the pitlane. Force India’s Paul di Resta, who is British, saw his promising race (he qualified 6th) crushed with a pit stop disaster – they took out Sutil’s tyres for him, resulting in wasted time.

On lap 27, Webber, Button and Massa pitted and Alonso was showing serious pace at this point behind race leader Vettel. The following lap, both men came in the pits for the defining moment of the race. Red Bull, normally unflappable in pit stops, got stuck with Seb’s left rear, as the championship leader watched Alonso pass by helplessly. Even worst, he came out behind Hamilton, who pitted earlier.

Vettel was all over the McLaren’s gearbox, and it was a cat and mouse game while Alonso pulled away from the duo. Lewis defended very well, and seeing few attempts to get pass fail, Red Bull called in Vettel for his last set of softs. This was on lap 37. Lewis pitted a lap later, but lost his place to the undercutting Vettel easily.

There was drama on lap 41 when Button, who was in 6th, pitted for the final time. He then stopped on the grass just before rejoining the track thanks to a loose front right wheel. Out of the race, and it looks like Button’s bad luck in his home race continues.

Entering the final stage of the race, Alonso held a good lead over Vettel and Hamilton. But on lap 43, McLaren radioed Lewis to tell him to save fuel. This was the cue Mark Webber needed, and the Aussie seized the the chance to take the final podium spot from a helpless Lewis.

He wasn’t contented, racing on to catch, then challenge Vettel, before team orders broke his challenge. “Mark, you need to maintain the gap,” the order went. Webber, we feel for you.

Meanwhile, Massa had a go at Hamilton for fourth, but the tame, tiny Brazilian was never going to pull it off against the aggressive Lewis, and sure enough, he failed. Cutting in from outside, Massa was poked by Lewis but both went on side by side. The final corner saw the Ferrari went wide, to the cheers of the locals.

He didn’t win, but Vettel is still very comfortable in the standings with an 80-point lead over Webber. Alonso is now third with 112 points. The next race is the German GP at the Nurburgring two weeks from now.

The FIA has imposed a ban on off-throttle diffusers that will come into effect this weekend at Silverstone. While most teams sport a variation of it, Red Bull Racing’s Adrian Newey designed machine has made the most of it so far, and the ace engineer admits that the champs will be “heavily affected”.

“I think we will be quite heavily affected because our car was designed around the exhaust in as much as it was part of the design right from the outset. Probably with the exception of Renault and ourselves, everybody else has generally speaking copied someone else’s principal, mainly ours, and adapted to the car that they had pre-season. Because our car has been designed around it, it’s going to be more of a hit for us but it’s very difficult to forecast,” Newey told Reuters.

The RBR chief technical officer is clearly unhappy with the ban, hinting that it’s a move in favour of Ferrari.

“I’m slightly baffled by it because it’s been declared legal forever until this race. The obvious parallel is when active suspension was banned at the end of ’93, where there was no regulation change. Ferrari couldn’t get their active to work and suddenly it was illegal for the next year,” he pointed out.

“It’s easy to fall into the Machiavellian conspiracy theories. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know and I can’t comment. My read of it would be that, of our main competitors, which are clearly McLaren and Ferrari, then Ferrari probably haven’t got their exhaust to work that well so they are quite happy to see the back of it.

“McLaren probably don’t know whether they are going to lose more or less than us. But probably on the basis that they could probably do with a wild card thrown into the pack, they are probably relieved to have something that is different,” Newey added.

Is FIA trying to level the teams and give a leg up to the chasing pack? Will it work? We’ll find out this weekend.