Red Bull chief Christian Horner suggests F1 windtunnel ban
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner believes Formula 1 should consider a ban on windtunnel use as a radical cost-cutting measure
With the costs of running a Formula 1 team still in the spotlight on the eve of the 2015 season, Horner has outlined to AUTOSPORT his ideas for the sport's future, including various measures to make the sport cheaper to compete in.
"If you wanted to go really extreme and be really controversial, get rid of the windtunnel," Horner said.
"It's an expensive thing to run and to feed with components and parts. Get back to engineering ingenuity.
"Give everybody the same microchip for the CFD cluster and make it down to the brainpower within the team as opposed to computer or windtunnel power.
"Why not be radical? Why not make everybody have the same processes?
"If I was Bernie [Ecclestone] or Jean [Todt, FIA president], that's the direction I would be looking at."
Red Bull is one of several teams to have its own windtunnel, and Horner said it would be prepared to sacrifice use of the facility if it was for the good of Formula 1.
"[A windtunnel ban] wouldn't sit comfortably with us, but if we genuinely believed it was the right thing to do, we'd rent it commercially for another use," he added.
"As a business - as Sauber has demonstrated - they're subsidising a Formula 1 team by making their windtunnel available to third parties.
"There are always ways. Frank [Williams] has two windtunnels, and his team only uses one."
Horner believes that restrictions such as a windtunnel ban would be more effective than trying to cap spending in F1, as the richer teams will always find ways to spend extra money.
"You can't dictate how much money a team has and where they choose to spend that money," he said.
"But what you can do with the regulations is to make diminishing returns.
"So yes, you can have a nice motorhome and a nice pitwall and factory and all the rest - and pay your drivers a fortune.
"But if the regulations were in such a way, then it's not necessarily going to buy you an advantage."
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