Red Bull Not Married to KERS in Malaysia

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner didn't seem very convinced that his team will make use of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) in the upcoming Malaysian Grand Prix. Even though several voices within the Milton Keynes organization have insisted in recent days that both RB7s will be KERS-powered at Sepang, Horner last weekend said that he won't compromise the performance of the car only for the sake of using the aforementioned technology.

Although dominant in Australia without using KERS, the upcoming weekend's race at Sepang will require the unit more than ever, due to the long straights that the Malaysian track is comprised of.

However, should the unit lack reliability as it did at Melbourne, Red Bull will have no problem further postponing the debut of their KERS for later in the season.

“Obviously the motivation and desire is to have it onto the car as quickly as possible, but we won't compromise the performance of the car or the potential reliability of the car if we feel that the system isn't race-sturdy yet,” said the Red Bull boss.

However, he did emphasize the importance of having KERS fitted onto the RB7 on a track such as Sepang, as the difference between using it and not having it at all could be in the vicinity of half a second.

“It didn't hurt us too much [to run without KERS] at the last race, but it is, you have to remember, a free extra 80 horsepower, so over a lap it's effectively free lap time of anything between 0.3-0.4s,” he added, while insisting that should the unit work as expected on Friday, than the team will definitely use it throughout the weekend.