The good news is that the stewards have rejected the protests against the diffusers, which use a loophole in the regulations, of Brawn GP, Williams and Toyota. That means that the cars can race as they are and we will get the chance to see whether the Brawn BGP 001 really is as quick as we (and all the other teams) thought.
Brawn BGP 001
Unfortunately, it also means that the protesting teams (Renault, Red Bull and Ferrari) are appealing against the decision and we will have to wait until the FIA International Court of Appeal meets to discuss the matter before having a final ruling. That cannot happen before the Malaysian GP and, in the meantime, the results of the early races will be provisional.
It is a shame that the matter was not dealt with by the FIA giving a definitive ruling when the diffusers were first queried. Theories abound that the FIA has deliberately delayed the decision-making protest in the hope that the fuss would split the unity of FOTA but that is the way it has been handled and the sport must live with a long wait before a final decision is made.
In the meantime, you can bet that the protesting teams and the rest will be designing diffusers similar to the controversial ones, just in case the appeal fails. Of the teams that have the loophole diffuser already, Toyota is said to be ready with alternatives should the device be ruled out. Brawn GP and Williams may find it more difficult to fit such potentially wasteful expenditure into their budgets.
BMW, whose protest was thrown out on a technicality, may be in the worst position, Dr Mario Theissen having already said that the design of their car's gearbox makes it impossible for a loophole diffuser to be fitted. And McLaren are sitting quietly while, no doubt, their designers are working flat out on loophole diffusers of their own; the device could solve a lot of their car's problems with airflow at the rear, after all.
Even as a BMW supporter, I have to say that the diffuser should be accepted as legal. Clearly, it does not contravene the regulations and the protests against it could do little but complain that it breaks the "spirit" of the rule. That is obviously irrelevant, since it is not up to the designers to consider the spirit or intent of a rule - all they can do is make sure that their design is within the letter of the law. If the lawmakers have not been clear enough in writing the rules and have left loopholes, the designers have to exploit such deficiencies.
That is what F1 is all about, after all - designers have always found a way to beat the legislators and, hopefully, they always will. Most of the advances made in the design of the cars are the result of some clever engineer spotting a loophole and using it to make his car faster; the rest follow. Take a look at a modern F1 car and previous loophole designs are evident everywhere. The raised nose, for instance, the extended floor to create the splitter, Ferrari's hole in the nose last year, all are the result of designers seeing beyond the regulations and creating solutions that the lawmakers did not foresee.
With the present threat of standardization looming over the sport, the inventiveness of the engineers becomes doubly important. Were they not to find the loopholes and exploit them, F1 would already be a formula in which the cars are all the same and no creative ideas would flow from racing into the world of production cars.
New solutions will also bring protests, of course; the teams without the innovation are bound to be annoyed that their designers were not the first to spot the loophole. Sometimes designs can go beyond the letter of the law and then they can be defined as cheating, in which case it is only right that the protest should succeed. But, when the law fails to cover an area exploited by a designer, the team should benefit from his greater ingenuity and the protest fail. If the FIA considers that the spirit of a law is being broken, the only recourse should be to tighten the regulation at the end of the season.
So I think that justice has been done - so far. I am not so naive as to think that the Court of Appeal will see it my way and we may yet be in for a summer of appeals and counter appeals. That may suit the FIA as it seeks to disrupt the harmony of the teams' alliance, FOTA, and I can only hope that the teams heed the words of Red Bull manager, Christian Horner:
This is a sporting and competitive issue, it's nothing personal against the teams, it's simply looking to clarify regulations and our interpretations and others has been different.