FIA to Listen to F1 Fans' Voices

With FIA president Max Mosley having long believed that team bosses were overlooking the interests and desires of spectators in their move to agree on a future direction for F1, the FIA has initiated the survey to make sure the supporters' voices are heard.

An FIA spokesman told Autosport-Atlas: "At the beginning of 2005 the FIA launched a consultation on the future of Formula One with all of the sport's stakeholders. We felt that including Formula One fans in this process was essential.

"To help shape the future of the sport we want as many fans as possible to visit our website and complete the online survey."

This survey, sponsored by technology leader AMD, will be accessed later this week on the FIA's own website, www.fia.com. It aims to get feedback from fans on what their opinions are on the sport - and what differences they would like to see made.

Mosley is currently heading up plans to define a new set of Formula One regulations from the start of 2008 - although he has found several teams reluctant to join in those discussions until market research has been completed.

Key figures from F1 have long echoed Mosley's belief that the fans' opinions on the sport are too often ignored.

Renault director of engineering Pat Symonds is one man who has often said that more consultation should be made with the public - although not necessarily just with diehard F1 fans.

"I've always advocated that if we want to know what to do, we should be asking the public," he said last year when talking about the continued problems of finding an acceptable qualifying procedure.

"What we should do is go out on a Saturday afternoon while qualifying is on and ask the people in the street, in the shopping centres  'why aren't you watching qualifying, what is wrong with it? Why aren't you watching racing?'
 
"Those are the people whose opinion we need."

The results of the FIA/AMD survey are due to be published later this summer.

The FIA/AMD survey is conducted in association with Haymarket, which owns Autosport-Atlas.