It emerged ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix that Red Bull had made a query to the governing body regarding the sensors of the Mercedes power unit that record the enꦫgine’s inlet plenum temperature🐭s.

Red Bull is believed to suspect Mercedes of being able to make recent gains by super-cooling air through its engine plenum in a bid to boost power. F1’s regul♐ations state that “engine plenum air t🌃emperature must be more than ten degrees centigrade above ambient temperature.”

The FIA uses sensors to police this as an average over a lap and ensure the teams are runn෴ing in compliance.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was coy about the matter when asked to clarify thꦰe purpose of the query at Zandvoort.

“As is the nature wit🐈h all technical clarifications, they go continually between all the teams, and those clarifications are usually to ascertain if something is in the eyes of the governing body acceptable as a solutio🐽n,” Horner said.

“And then, of coursꩵe, if it is you follow suit. We’ve h🥃ad numerous of those this year with our car and I think it’s something not unique to Red Bull and this topic certainly isn’t unique to Red Bull.

“But obviously that dialogue between the engineers within their forums 🤪as well, within the technical working groups, it’s an ongoing process. I’m sure it doesn’t come as any great surprise.”

Toto Wolff said Mercedes ‘loves’ that its main championship rival was devoting time to qu🦂erying its engine, adding that a potential “distracဣtion for the o൩ther team is good”.

But Wolff dismissed the notion&nbs🎶p;of his team having a “special solution” to enhance its engine performance.

“I would wish we have some kind of special solution, but it🐻’s ൩the modus operandi in Formula 1, business as usual,” he said.

“Queries are being taken to the ไFIA, questions are being asked. It’s completely normal.”

Horner indicated that Honda was not the only power unit manufacturer to lodg🎀e a query to the FIA๊.

Although Ferrari team principal Binotto revealed he discussed the topic with Red Bu🐲ll, he stressed that no official query was ever raised by the Scuderia.

“No, we didn’🅺t,” Binotto said w▨hen asked if Ferrari joined Red Bull in querying Mercedes power unit.

“I think, as all teams, all constructors, we are always trying to understand what our opponents are doing. We analyse the images and look at the GPS𒁃 data.

“We had some question marks and we discussed the point with Red Bull. I discussed it with Christian Horner, but we, as Ferrari, have not raised any spec🍎ific questions to the FIA, so far at least.”