The FIA, and rivals teams, will be delighted to hear that Red Bull's technical guru fears impact of new engine mapping regulation.

This weekend sees the introduction of the FIA's clampdown on blown diffusers, namely the use of exhaust gases to create additional downforce even when the driver is off the throttle.

Though the FIA insists that no particular team has been targeted, Adrian Newey admits that his creations are to be the most affected.

"I think we will be quite heavily affected because our car was designed around the exhaust in as much as it was part of the design right from the outset," he told Reuters. "Probably with the exception of Renault and ourselves everybody else has generally speaking copied someone else's principal, mainly ours, and adapted to the car that they had pre-season.

"So it might therefore be, because our car has been designed around it," he continued, referring to the exhaust system, "it's going to be more of a hit for us but it's very difficult to forecast."

Like many, Newey isn't entirely convinced by the FIA's protestations and remains confused by the decision to (yet again) change the regulations mid-season.

"I'm slightly baffled by it because it's been declared legal forever until this race," he said. "The obvious parallel is when active suspension was banned at the end of '93, where there was no regulation change. Ferrari couldn't get their active to work and suddenly it was illegal for the next year.

"It's easy to fall into the Machiavellian conspiracy theories," he added. "Whether that's true or not, I don't know and I can't comment. My read of it would be that, of our main competitors, which are clearly McLaren and Ferrari, then Ferrari probably haven't got their exhaust to work that well so they are quite happy to see the back of it.

"McLaren probably don't know whether they are going to lose more or less than us. But probably on the basis that they could probably do with a wild card thrown into the pack, they are probably relieved to have something that is different."

Looking ahead to how his team will deal with the change he said: "We've got to reoptimise the car around a different set of parameters to what it was designed and developed to up to this date. We've got to look at whether we need to change the aerodynamics of the car itself, how we operate the car right down to things like does it affect tyre life? It is quite a big change."