Teams to discuss safety car rules changes

As autosport.com revealed earlier this weekend, a number of drivers are pushing for the safety car regulations to be revised. Some want to eliminate the influence of backmarkers at restarts, while Jarno Trulli has called for urgent action about when the lead driver is allowed to restart the race.

Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn has admitted that current talks between the teams and the FIA to frame regulations for 2008 includes debate about new safety car rules.

"There is quite a lot of discussion going on about the safety car and there are some meetings happening in the next few weeks," explained Brawn. "They are with the FIA and drivers. There is free opinion."

Brawn believes that it was worth discussing the possibility of allowing backmarkers to be shifted out of the battle for race positions - although he was unsure whether it would be a positive step.

"It's good and bad," he explained. "The safety car is a chance to liven the race up and it's a shame when you have a lot of backmarkers in the way of the lead contestants.

"I don't think we can do it in F1 because of the width, but in other formulae they line up the leaders on one side and the backmarkers on the other. But you can see in Montreal, whoever wasn't driving on the track was going to get completely screwed because of all the rubber on the track.

"There is a lot of discussion going on about the safety car and how we should run it. And that's one element that's going to be discussed.

"There are other aspects that we have to look carefully at, like the pitstops that take place when the safety car is first deployed. There is an incentive for people to try and dive into the pits as soon as possible during a period when it's dangerous. So there's a conflict.

"And I think there is discussion about closing the pitlane once the safety car is engaged to remove the incentive to come into the pits.

"It's much better since the FIA got tough on it, but how slow do you go, knowing that the quicker you get in the pits the more advantage you have?"

Regarding how easy it would be to let backmarkers through, Brawn believes that perhaps a better solution would be to move the lapped cars back down the order.

"Maybe you have to push them back," he said. "They are about to be lapped anyway, so maybe you should let the first six or eight go forward and leave the rest to go back.

"But you have to manage the situation to inform everyone, and our radios are not 100 per cent reliable. So you can imagine the confusion if you haven't got a really good communication system."