I now want to lay out what I know, have personally seen or been told (and I will say who told me) about the aero issues and my involvement.
Firstly, there is absolutely no vendetta or malice meant to any of the parties involved. Like I told Tony when I went to talk to him before the protest, this is not personal, this is to get a clarification.
A little history before I ramble on, I built and tested an extension of the floor pan to the center of the rear axle in Jan 06. I tested it at Sebring (which led to the infamous forgot to remove carb cover story) along with the FC and db-1 bodywork. my testing found the FC bodywork had highest top speed, db-1 with extension lowest and it pushed more. Once we saw the layout of last years r/o track decided db-1 would be best. This year because of the added high speed turns and the need to really rotate the car in the tight sections, decided to run FC body with an extension. I tested Wed with that set up. Last run tried it without the pan and it solved the high speed understeer (duh, it works).
It all started for me last session friday, I pulled up on pit road behind Tony for a black flag, as we waited to go out, I saw what looked like a FC diffuser that had been cut off. It appeared from the rear of the car to be much more then a 1" step from the outside plane to the raised inside plane. After helping repair a FV that I made contact with ending my session, I went to Cliff Johnson and asked about tony's diffuser. He then said I needed to talk to Gerald as he had other aero issues.
Gerald showed me pictures of the front of Tony's car. There was an extension of the floor pan/undertray in front of the front axle, people have referred to this as a splitter, dive plane, etc whatever you call it. His biggest problem was that it was what appeared to be carbon fiber which is disallowed in the bodywork rules and led to another issue with carbon fiber mirrors. (side note: the mirrors were ruled as attachments and not bodywork so CF is ok as long as it is not blended into the body making it an integral part of the bodywork). I brought up the issue with the diffuser, which they had not even noticed.
We then proceeded to find the head tech inspector and brought him to Gerald's car to ask specific bodywork questions. The issue of the splitter was shown and he interperted it as an airfoil and not allowable. What we reffered to as a diffuser was interperted to be a venturi tunnel and also not allowed.
On Saturday word then spread around the paddock, at least the south paddock. I found Cliff first thing and he informed me Gerald and the tech guy had been by and he didnt give a sh!t and would take it off. I assume someone told Tony as his car no longer had the piece in front of the axle from the best I could tell.
On Sunday, Tony only ran one or maybe 2 ( dont have our notes and am going from memory) sessions and did not have an extension/undertray/diffuser at all.
race week on seperate post
John