Horner: Ferrari fuel smells like grapefruit juice
F1 News
- Jake Williams-Smith
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has brought Ferrari under the spotlight once again with one of the more interesting headlines of 2019 so far.
According to the Red Bull boss, Ferrari's fuel smells like grapefruit juice! The odd claim is another episode in the long-running saga over the legality of the 2018 and 2019 cars after the Italian team appears to have found a huge boost in power that may well have leapfrogged them ahead of Mercedes.
Questions were raised last season over allegations of oil burning and that it could be the reason for Ferrari's new-found pace however the FIA tightened rules surrounding the concept for this season.
Nonetheless, Horner says the smell of the fuel is distinctive, perhaps due to a possible innovation found by the Ferrari team's fuel supplier, Shell.
"The fuel from Ferrari smells like grapefruit juice," said Horner, and he wasn't the only Red Bull team member to raise an eyebrow over the SF90.
"The Ferrari engine suddenly has the same bang as last year," Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey told AMuS.
"We actually thought that the FIA had filled all the last holes in the regulations."
In Bahrain, reliability cost Ferrari an almost certain one-two finish however their rivals believe that they could be the team to beat in China once more with a significant straight line speed advantage over the competition.