01/12/2006
NEWS STORY
Super Aguri is hoping to bring about a change to the new rules for Friday testing at Grands Prix, which (in 2007) will mean that all teams can run only two cars and two drivers.
Teams may choose to run one of their regular race drivers and a test driver, indeed BMW have said that Sebastian Vettel will participate in the Friday sessions, but it is far more likely that the majority will rely on their regular race drivers.
Super Aguri wants to see teams 'forced' to 'sideline' one of their regular drivers, and place a test driver in the second car.
"We are looking to the next Formula One commission meeting to ask the other teams to make it compulsory to have a test driver on Friday," Daniele Audetto (right), Super Aguri's managing director, told Reuters. "Otherwise, with only two cars available, I will not give an advantage by running a test driver to other teams that will be using their regular drivers."
In recent years, the teams which finished outside the top four in the previous season's constructors' Championship were allowed to run a third car, and third driver, on Fridays at Grands Prix. From next season, all the teams may use two cars and two drivers. The 'third driver' rule allowed a number of talents to show their stuff, and in July this year, when the new rules were announced, Pitpass warned that the revised Friday rule could lead to a lost generation of talent.
Under the new rules, the two Friday sessions are expanded to ninety minutes (from sixty), and the teams are free to change engines without penalty. In theory this should see the main drivers doing more mileage on Fridays, with a knock on reduction in testing during the season, but some feel that this will not be the case.
"If you use a young test driver, you will be less competitive for setting up the car and therefore the qualifying and the race," said Audetto. "So either everybody uses a third driver on Friday and that must be compulsory or I think very few teams will give a chance to a test driver on Friday.
"We have to wait and see if a test driver is important or not next year," he added
The proposal will be put forward at a meeting in Monaco next week. However, with the admission that Super Aguri will be sharing technology with Honda, and some sources claiming that the SA07 will effectively be a modified Honda RA106, the Japanese team might already be on a 'sticky wicket'.