FIA puts proposed changes to fax vote

07/07/2006

As Pitpass predicted yesterday, following the meeting of the Formula One Commission, a number of changes have been submitted to the members of the World Motor Sport Council today for a fax vote.

In addition to reducing the final phase of qualifying by five minutes, it is proposed that in the first two phases a time posted by a driver after the 15 minute session has ended will count, providing the driver began the lap before the session officially ended. Up until now, the session lasted exactly 15 minutes, any time posted after that did not count.

If agreed, any changes which affect the 2006 regulations will come into force at the French Grand Prix.

The main proposed changes include:

55) Should the stewards decide to impose either of the penalties under Article 54a) or b), the following procedure will be followed:

However, unless the driver was already in the pit entry for the purpose of serving his penalty, he may not carry out the penalty after the Safety Car has been deployed. Any laps carried out behind the Safety Car will be added to the three lap maximum.

Reason: To ensure that any time penalty is properly served

115) The qualifying practice session will take place on the day before the race from 14.00 to 15.00.

The session will be run as follows:

a) From 14.00 to 14.15 (Q1) all cars will be permitted on the track and at the end of this period the slowest five cars, will be prohibited from taking any further part in the session.

Lap times achieved by the fifteen remaining cars will then be deleted.

b) From 14.22 to 14.37 (Q2) the fifteen remaining cars will be permitted on the track and at the end of this period the slowest five cars, will be prohibited from taking any further part in the session.

Lap times achieved by the ten remaining cars will then be deleted.

c) From 14.45 to 15.00 (Q3) the ten remaining cars will be permitted on the track.

The above procedure is based upon a Championship entry of 20 cars. If 22 are entered six cars will be excluded after Q1 and Q2 and, if 24 are entered, six cars will be excluded after Q1 and Q2 leaving 12 cars eligible for Q3.

Reasons : 1) To ensure that each of the three periods of qualifying finish in the same way, i.e. drivers having started a lap started by the time the session ends will be allowed to complete it, and 2) To reduce the length of the third period by five minutes as a number of laps completed in this period have no relevance to grid positions

58)

a) During a season each team will be permitted to use four drivers. Changes may be made at any time before the start of the qualifying practice session provided any change proposed after 16.00 on the day of scrutineering receives the consent of the stewards.

Additional changes for reasons of force majeure will be considered separately.

Any new driver may score points in the Championship.

Reason: To eliminate the possibility for certain teams to run a third car on Fridays.

73) Supply of tyres:

b) each tyre supplier must undertake to provide no more than two specifications of dry-weather tyre at each Event, each of which must be of one homogenous compound. Any modification or treatment, other than heating, carried out to a tyre or tyres will be considered a change of specification.

Reason: To ensure that identical tyres are available to every team at each Event.

For further details, a THe FIA's PDF file can be found by clicking, here