Newey: You must have a working KERS to be competitive
"The RB5 was actually packaged to take KERS and we did run it briefly pre-season," said Newey during the launch of the new car at Valencia. "We took the view at the start that there were other things we wanted to concentrate on in 2009 so we chose not to race with it through the season.
"Packaging is a challenge with KERS and the big challenge is to try and come up with a solution that doesn't compromise the aerodynamics too much, otherwise you drop the performance benefit that you get from putting KERS on.
"We are here to try hard to try and develop it through the pre-season so that we are confident that it does give us performance. I think one of the things that came clearly in 2009 was that the start-line performance of KERS was important.
"Fortunately the team that we were battling with, which was Brawn that year, also didn't have KERS so neither had an advantage over the other in that sense, so this year I think no doubt with McLaren and Ferrari and Mercedes having KERS and being extremely competitive, then we need to get it to work if for no other reason than simply performance off the line."
"First of all the car is third generation of a lineage starting with RB5, so it is further development of the family," he said. "We have adapted the car to suit the regulation changes, so putting KERS back on the car, going back to single diffuser, a few other details to suit the regulations.
"It is also difficult to design the car to Pirelli tires. We obviously had a short test in Abu Dhabi post race last year but tires have developed further since then, so it is a matter of learning as we go on through the tests."