Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul has admitted that the French outfit has been using its now illegal automated brake-bias system for "so many years" and never expected that it would be declared illegal.
Renault were thrown out of the results of the Japanese Grand Prix after rival team Racing Point protested the legality of their cars. The stewards declared the system, which uses a GPS trace to adjust the cars brake balance, a driver aid which is banned under Article 27.1 of the sporting regulations.
Renault have said they won't protest the decision but insist they had nothing to hide, with a video released pre-season clearly showing the system being used. Abitebould confirmed it has been used in previous seasons and has never been an issue.
"I don't want to go into the details, but it's not from this season, it's from before," he said on Friday. "It's been used for so many years that we never thought it could be put into question until what happened recently."
Whilst Abiteboul admits it can be considered a driver aid, he believes its a grey area with other devices widely in use also falling under the same description.
"It's a driver aid, just like as we said before a number of things are driver aids – I'll give you one, energy deployment. It's all lap distance based. At some point you need to accept that there's an element of subjectivity."
Abiteboul added that he was confused as to why the FIA, having been alerted to the system many months ago, didn't open dialogue with Renault directly to make them aware of their stance of the systems legality.
"It's a technology that has been used for a while. Another party [Racing Point] has asked to have an opinion, the normal course would have been to ask the FIA and then go towards a TD [Technical Directive] or for the FIA to engage in a discussion with us directly, not in the context of a race, not through the stewards.
"In the case we could have had the opportunity to exchange. Because before the events of Suzuka there was never such discussions and there was never such speculation regarding the legality of our system.
"It's not something that we've done because also we were absolutely convinced – as further demonstrated – that we were legal, and we were legal from a technical perspective."
