Drivers Want Voice on F1 Commission
David Coulthard has revealed that one of the ideas that will be put to Max Mosley when the drivers meet the FIA president in Cannes tomorrow is that the drivers should have a voice on the F1 Commission
"I sincerely believe that there should be a current driver in any meeting regarding the rules, regulations or the future of Formula One," said Coulthard. "Regardless of what the FIA says about maturity, if you ignore youth altogether you end up failing to move with the times and basically living in a different time zone."
Coulthard confirmed that 14 of the current drivers will make the trip to Cannes to meet with Mosley, although the Renault and BAR drivers will not be among them. The Renault men have a prior engagement and the BAR drivers are committed to promotional appearances in Shanghai.
Coulthard is confident that the drivers' wishes for improved safety in testing will be addressed.
"That is actually my biggest concern," he said. "Okay, we have a helicopter but the basic facilities at tests have not changed since Elio de Angelis was killed (at Paul Ricard in 1986).
"At one time we did perhaps 50 or 60 laps in a day, but given the restrictions on testing we now do anything up to two race distances in a day. And that is with components more vulnerable to failure in a testing environment.
"I appreciate that we don't have the dangers of the first corner, as we do at a race, but my biggest accidents have actually come in testing as a result of mechanical failure.
"We have made progress in as far as the team principals have agreed to absorb the added costs of improving safety at tests."
Coulthard said that other items on the agenda for discussion with Mosley included the 2006 qualifying regulations as well as ideas for the sport's future beyond the end of the existing Concorde Agreement which expires in 2007.
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