Horner urges FIA to close 'oil as fuel' loopholes

Red Bull Racing's Christian Horner wants stricter control from the FIA on teams' using oil as fuel in qualifying, suggesting loopholes remain within the current regulations.

F1's governing body lowered the boom last year on teams exploiting the subtle oil as fuel scheme which has the ability to generate an extra boost of power at a specific time, like in qualifying.

Despite the tighter regulations, loopholes remain according to Horner.

"I think the other technical directives that have been interesting is obviously the amount of oil consumption and the way that that’s used this year,” Horner said.

"Ideally we’d like to see that go further because it still doesn’t ultimately deal with qualifying.

• FIA closes loophole against customer engine equality

"I think it contains the race, but still there are windows of opportunity in qualifying that we’d like to see further closed down."

The FIA recently released a technical directive addressing the issue of parity between customer engines and those used by a works team, which stipulated that all engines must be operated in identical ways.

The directive directly targets the use of special 'qualifying modes' available only to works teams. Horner believes a certain amount of leeway still exists however with regard to how specific engines manage oil consumption.

"It’s mainly between the engine manufacturers and probably worth speaking to Renault about, but we feel there are still loopholes in qualifying that need tidying up regarding consumption.

"We felt that it’s been dealt with in the race, but of course if you were to find a way of using lubricants in a different way in qualifying, it offers a significant performance increase.

"We would like to see belt and braces that closed down."

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