The reason why the Tornado class wanted to move to the carbon mast was because some teams were spending big $$$$ developing a better alloy stick. Remember, the T was a multi manufacture OD class meaning you could build any part of the T yourself. The alloy stick did not include tollerances for bend characteristics. The carbon mast was to be a very stricted OD mast which not only had to meet certain dimentions, but also bend charateristics. It was to be built only by Marstrom for the first 4 years until Marstom recouped it's investment in development, before being opened up to other manufactures.

The difference with the Viper is all mast come from the same supplier and you can not privatly develop one. If they choose a carbon mast, they will still need to be strict OD, far from what the F16 class is or ever will be.