Ross Brawn fully backs FIA's off-throttle blown diffuser tweak

Although the FIA's decision to impose its rules clarification regarding exhaust use from this weekend's race at Silverstone has caused some controversy, Brawn thinks that it would have been much worse for Formula 1 if the governing body had held off.

With the HRT team having publicly declared that it was considering a protest against other teams over the issue if nothing was done by the FIA, Brawn feels that action had to be taken.

"Leaving things as they were, we were going to get protests and we certainly did not want that," explained Brawn ahead of the British Grand Prix.

"Fundamentally I would rather leave things alone, but what I would not want to see is a lot of protest and F1 getting into a mess and into issues and the appeal court.

"We have all been there, and we all know what happened with the diffusers a couple of years ago. This is different because the FIA were completely happy with the legality of diffusers, but now they are saying, 'somebody made a point and we can see it is a valid point so we want to control this'.

"Once you reach this stage you have to go down that route, and you cannot do anything but. The FIA are saying: 'we are not comfortable; some teams are saying we are going to protest, and we have to resolve it'. And I think the time we were given to resolve it was a good compromise, because the teams concerned could have protested it a few races ago, but they agreed to hold off and let everyone find a solution and get to where we are today."

The implementation of the blown diffuser clampdown is not without controversy, with the FIA letting teams have a variable amount of blowing depending on the type of throttle they are using, and what is needed for normal engine usage.

Brawn is hopeful, however, that no engine manufacturer would gain an advantage from being able to use more blowing than a rival.

"I think the FIA is aware of that," explained Brawn. "Even referencing the old engine maps, if they see some things which are contrary to what they want to achieve, so if for some other reason people were using engine maps in 2009 with a lot of throttle opening, then the FIA will still ask for some explanation of why they are doing it.

"But it is not likely people were doing it because it does use more fuel and does create heat in the system, so you would not do it unless there was some benefit."