Red Bull wings grounds for race ban

That is the claim of Andy Green, the technical boss of Force India, who thinks a team with a lower status in pitlane might have been punished very harshly by the governing FIA for a similar infraction.

After qualifying for the 2014 finale last Saturday, stewards disqualified both Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo when their wing was found to be overly flexible.

If this had happened to us, we would have been excluded like BAR in 2005 with its hidden fuel tanks.

Andy Green

But Germany's Auto Motor und Sport claims it was not just the degree of flex that alarmed the FIA, but the fact that the wing was designed specifically to control the bending by way of a strip with built-in springs.

Designer Adrian Newey, however, insisted: "With other cars it was even worse - Williams for example."

Williams denied its Abu Dhabi wings were illegal.

Force India's technical boss Green, meanwhile, suggested that Red Bull had been pinged in a case of clear rule-breaking.

"If this had happened to us, we would have been excluded like BAR in 2005 with its hidden fuel tanks.

"But Red Bull only had to start from the pitlane. It was a less severe penalty for illegal wings than Lotus had for Romain Grosjean's legal engine change," he added.

On Twitter during the Abu Dhabi weekend, Force India supremo Vijay Mallya described Red Bull as "cheats".