Russell casts doubt over recent F1 rule change

George Russell has cast doubt over the effectiveness of F1's sliding scale aerodynamic regulations.

The sport introduced the scheme to help bridge the gap between top and bottom of the Constructors' standings by handicapping the amount of aerodynamic testing time available to each team.

Last season's title winner Red Bull was allocated 70 percent of the overall test runs allowed - reduced to 63 percent after being found guilty of breaching budget cap regulations - whilst last-placed Williams was afforded 115 percent, with five percent increments separating the competitors.

Yet since the beginning of F1's newest technical regulatory era, only Aston Martin has made a noticeable change to the pecking order and asked if there was a better way of closing the pack up, Russell told media, including RacingNews365.com: "From a technical standpoint, I have no view or idea how that could be achieved and obviously, we've only been a couple of years now into the aero regulation and the handicap system, but it hasn't drastically changed anything up and down the order.

"Maybe the only team you can argue is Aston Martin, but I think that's probably via, you know, certain engineers joining to help push in the right direction.

"You could give quadruple the amount of wind tunnel time to the team at the bottom over the one at the top and the one at the top would probably still come out in the lead."

Keep regulations stable

Asked the same question as Russell, championship leader Max Verstappen replied: "Just keep the regulations the same for a longer period of time.

"If you keep on tweaking stuff, people always find something or one particular team will always find something a bit better than the others, and then it takes a bit of time for everyone to close up."