De la Rosa downplays F1 revolution

The McLaren test driver reckons the raft of changes will help make overtaking easier, but he has warned those expecting a revolution to forget about that idea.

"Yes, definitely," said de la Rosa when asked if overtaking will be easier next year.

"Considering this is Formula One - if people think the introduction of KERS and the reduction in downforce and slicks is going to transform Formula One, then forget it.

"It will still be a wide car, there will still be aerodynamic effect and offline will stay dirty. It will be easier, but it won't be MotoGP. And people need to understand that.

"The changes are headed in the right direction. The difficulty comes from having so many changes and a massive reduction in testing for next year.

"It will make fine-tuning your car between the races very difficult. It's going to be very interesting - and there won't be enough time to test everything."

Formula One cars will run a lots less downforce next year, which in theory should allow drivers to run closer to each other and overtake.

The sport will also return to racing with slick tyres, which were abandoned in 1997.

De la Rosa said the new tyres will help make up for the loss of downforce.

"It's very different," the Spaniard, testing today at Barcelona, said of the 2009-spec car.

"Obviously, the slick tyres give you a lot more grip - so although we will be running with reduced downforce, the overall grip of the car won't be that different to what we had.

"But it's the balance front to rear that will change - the slick tyres have a very strong front-end going into the corners and they have very good traction coming out.

"Overall, to simplify things, I think the slick tyres will give us laptime in the low-speed corners and because of the reduced downforce we'll be slower at high speeds."

The McLaren driver also admitted there is still a lot of work to do before the KERS system is ready to go racing.

"We are still learning about it," he said. "It requires a lot of fine-tuning to the car - especially in the braking. KERS has to recharge itself - so when you press the brakes, it generates an extra resistance that you have to somehow compensate for to balance it out. That means interacting with the engine braking and the brake balance.

"You just have to find the best compromise; it's not just fitting KERS and going quicker, you have to balance it into the whole system. If you don't have it properly tuned, it will be very sudden. The difficulty will be to smoothen all the transitions."

He added: We have three tests - in Barcelona, Jerez and Portimao. There's lot of new things to be tried on the car, starting with slick tyres. And we will run with tyre warmers so it will be easier to warm the tyres and control the tyre pressures.

"We will also be starting our KERS programme for the first proper test at a race track. And we will be testing with reduced downforce, running with all the body furniture taken off the (MP)23. It's all about trying to learn as much as possible within a very limited testing mileage."