Alvin's Formula One Blog

Meeting in Doha, the World Motor Sport Council has announced a number of changes to the Sporting and Technical Regulations. Along with these changes to the regulations, the FIA President confirmed that the focus will be on reducing costs, improving the show, making cars quicker and more difficult to drive, and reviewing the technical and sporting regulations, with the aim of simplifying the rules where possible. Sporting Regulations Points Points for both titles will no longer be doubled for the final Event of the Championship. Standing Restarts After consultation with the Teams who raised a number of safety concerns, Articles 42.7 and 42.8 on standing restarts have been rescinded. Virtual Safety Car (VSC) Following tests of the VSC system at the final Events of 2014, the introduction of the system has been approved for 2015. The VSC procedure may be initiated to neutralise a race upon the order of the clerk of the course. It will normally be used when double waved ye...

Monday 30th March 2009 Footage of Lewis Hamilton overtaking Jarno Trulli behind the Safety Car has raised more questions than answers about the legality of the move and the fairness of the stewards' subsequently decision to add 25 seconds to Trulli's time for Sunday's Australian GP. In two separate incidents missed by the televisions cameras following the collision between Seb Vettel and Robert Kubica, Hamilton overtook Trulli for third when the Toyota slid off the circuit before Trulli then retook the position when Hamilton, under instruction from his McLaren team, slowed down to let him through. The footage - now removed from the Youtube website - clearly shows Trulli falling off the track and struggling to keep his Toyota under control on the grass before belatedly returning to the track behind Hamilton's McLaren. Whilst cars are not allowed to overtake under the Safety Car, article 40.7 of the 2009...

10 June 2008 by Keith Collantine F1 is likely to have a new procedure in place for what drivers are supposed to do in the event of a safety car deployment in time for the next round at Magny-Cours. A trial of the new system will be held before the race. The plan is that, when the safety car is deployed, the drivers will be given a message by race control and will have to activate a special programme on their cars that limits their speed. Will this help fix the safety car problem? How will this affect the races? The problem The safety car rules were changed at the beginning of last year to prevent drivers from coming into the pits as soon as a safety car period was declared. This was because at the beginning of a safety car period drivers would continue racing up to the start/finish line, often out of a desire to get a pit stop at minimum cost to their race time while the rest of the field was delayed. The first ‘solution’ This was correctly judged to be unsafe and a...