Jean Todt confirmed one of the worst kept secrets of the summer yesterday when he admitted that development of the F2007 had been compromised following a windtunnel failure.

In recent weeks there has been widespread speculation regarding the failure, said to involve the belt that forms the rolling road breaking, but it was Todt who finally confirmed the story at Friday's press conference.

Asked if he could confirm or deny the reports, Todt said: "Yes, it's true, we had a problem with the metallic carpet (moving road) and we lost about two weeks' development, but that's not an excuse."

When it was pointed out that this must have hurt the team, the Frenchman added: "Yes, but it's up to us to have a wind tunnel that doesn't break".

Asked how long the windtunnel was out of commission for as a result of the breakage, and what alternatives the Italian team could fall back on, Todt replied: "Two week, fourteen days. And, we did not do any other alternative job in our wind tunnel because it was not working. Nothing."

The Ferrari team boss subsequently admitted that the breakage occurred two months ago.

We now await confirmation of another story doing the rounds.... which team suffered a problem in its new windtunnel when a full-size model, which had not been secured properly, broke lose, causing severe damage? We hear it happened on the night shift.