A quite extraordinary and unexpected press release from the FIA last Friday stated:

“The FIA announces that, after thorough technical investigations, it has concluded its analysis of the operation of the Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 Power Unit and reached a settlement with the team. The specifics of the agreement will remain between the parties.

“The FIA and Scuderia Ferrari have agreed to a number of technical commitments that will improve the monitoring of all Formula 1 Power Units for forthcoming championship seasons as well as assist the FIA in other regulatory duties in Formula 1 and in its research activities on carbon emissions and sustainable fuels.”

This went off like a grenade in the F1 world. There are so many implications to that very pointed wording. But the first question is why the FIA chose to release it at all.

The voluntary publicising of its existence suggests that there is indeed some conflict between Ferrari and the FIA

Following queries and suspicion from Ferrari’s rivals last year that it was deriving its power advantage by exceeding the maximum fuel flow but inducing the FIA fuel flow sensor to give a falsely low reading, the governing body had already announced late last season that for 2020 a second sensor would be mandated, one with a random frequency a team would have no access to. Thereby if the first sensor gave a different reading to the second one, the cheat would be instantly apparent.

It was generally assumed this was the end of the matter – i.e. we can’t find any direct evidence Ferrari was doing this, but just in case that is what was happening, here’s an additional bit of hardware that will make it impossible. But that’s not the way the FIA has chosen to go.