Team principals naïve, says Dennis

Yesterday, Paul Stoddart said that he thought that doing away with the Friday private test session for the 'Heathrow' teams was 'very sad.' Dennis, however, claims that next year's single-engine formula changes the picture completely.

"The big issue was whether or not we should continue with the 'Heathrow' testing agreement [where teams restricting themselves to just 20 days of testing get to run for two hours on Friday morning at the race]," Dennis explained.

"There seemed to be just incredible naivety among some of the team principals who argued for it and refused to listen to the simple facts, which were that if it continued, then certain big teams would adopt it and effectively nullify any advantage the others had. More importantly, they would escalate cost because the big teams would bring dedicated mechanics, dedicated cars and, significantly, dedicated engines.

"We'd have run hard in those sessions and kept the mileage off our race engines by having a much reduced programme inside the official practice sessions. I think we'd have had to do that because it is such a big advantage when you have a one-engine formula.

"If we were all running on Friday with one engine to optimise our cars for the race weekend, then putting in a new engine for the rest of the weekend, that's a two engine formula. Which totally defeats the object of a planned single engine format.

"The bottom six teams are permitted to run a third car in a different livery, which has a commercial value, and they appeared to be delighted and everyone agreed. When you've agreed something after hours of discussion, had it documented and then 48 hours later you are whingeing about it, then that just blows my mind..."