On the current issue of the same weekly, published Tuesday, there’s an article about the car, and the reference is to an innovative concept for the new wing, that Minardi is developing and must be verified on the wind tunnel. So probably the rumor was, also in mid February, related to the wing and not to the nosecone although the word used on the article at the time was “muso”, (literally “mug”, “muzzle”) that usually indicates the nosecone or, sometimes, the whole assembly nosecone + wing. On the current article the word used is ala = wing.
As for the engine cover, on another Italian weekly, published it too on Tuesday, there’s an article with a couple of drawings by Piola. In the drawings there were already the winglets behind the chimneys fitted on the car in Imola, better pics will surely follow, for the moment I found this one :
http://f1.racing-live.com/en/photos/200 ... _131.shtml
As you can see they are similar to the ones on the other cars but with a further, lower, horizontal element. I don’t remember if someone used something similar or not but I wouldn’t call them a revolutionary thing, I hope the article wasn’t referring to them while talking about the original engine cover.