Brawn: flexi-wing row unlikely to go away

The FIA issued a rule clarification last week demanding that teams fit slot-gap separators to their rear-wings in a bid to ensure that they do not flex at high speed.

Ferrari were one of the teams that had to make modifications to their wings in time for the Montreal event, but Brawn doubts that a line can be drawn under the controversy that has raged all season.

"Well, I'm already hearing stories that people have flexible skins now," explained Brawn. "Now the brackets are fixed they sink and skim down and bend the profile of the wing. It just doesn't stop."

Brawn said he was baffled about the reasons for the FIA clarification, especially because other teams had rejected an offer by his team to make the slot-gap separators mandatory earlier in the year.

"At Imola we offered to do it," he said. "We wrote a regulation and offered it to all the teams. But no one wanted to do it, which I found quite amusing as it had caused so much controversy. Here was a solution on the table and people didn't want to do it, then a week before we leave for Canada, the FIA came along and asked us to do it.

"It was a solution to stop all the bickering, but maybe they thought it was too good to be true."

Ferrari claim that the change to the rules has cost his team a little bit of performance, because their wings were heavier than other teams that were already running the separators in a bid to ensure they did not flex.

"Our wing from a weight point of view is not very good as we've made the elements stiff enough to be self-supporting," he explained.

"There's a small loss because of the presence of the bracket, which is what we were trying to avoid in the first place. But you'll see it won't be discernable in terms of top speed."

Brawn confirmed that the team would now focus on trimming off weight from the rear wing in future races so as to ensure their performance is not compromised.