bill shoe wrote: ↑15 May 2018, 14:53
4. competitor team with non-Ferrari engine must have concluded from GPS data that Ferrari may be doing something illegal and are feeding rumors to press to get eventual real action.
It's always the same. Most teams are not stupid. Mercedes clearly isn't. If suddenly Ferrari seem to have a better power-unit, you can bet they will have their engineers working overtime trying to figure out where their competitor was able to gain a sizeable advantage. I bet they have a pretty good estimate which areas could be exploited for such an advantage. Obviously, they don't know exactly what Ferrari are doing, so the best way to proceed is to ask the FIA to clarify as in "hey, would it be legal if we were to do this and that, we think Ferrari are already doing it.".
If you throw around mud or at least in the right areas, some of it will eventually stick. Just look at how long teams were looking for loopholes RedBull was using to gain an advantage until finally revealing the cold blowing. Or with Mercedes/Ferrari and oil burning. Or the suspension trickery.