FIA downplays launch control fears

Toyota driver Jarno Trulli last week expressed his belief that some teams had found a way to simulate launch control, banned from this year along with other electronic aids.

The rules state: "No car may be equipped with a system or device which is capable of preventing the driven wheels from spinning under power or of compensating for excessive throttle demand by the driver.

"Any device or system which notifies the driver of the onset of wheel spin is not permitted."

Trulli believes some teams may have found a way to simulate the banned systems.

"I'm not going to name any names, but I think that some teams have already found a way to automate the starting procedure and reduce to the minimum the chance of spinning the wheels under acceleration," Trulli was quoted as saying Autosprint.

"I'm not saying someone's cheating, even though we've received some conflicting information at Toyota."

Mosley, however, was confident teams would be unable to break the rules, and he admitted he found comments like Trulli's annoying.

"They are going to find that very difficult," Mosley told reporters in London on Monday. "First of all you have got to circumvent the ECU and secondly you have got to somehow disable our spy in the cab that will tell us that is going on.

"One has to remember that what people run in private test sessions is entirely up to them and I think it is going to be extremely difficult to do it at a race.

"It is quite annoying that people say this (sort of thing). When we originally stopped launch control and traction control and everyone was running around the paddock saying that the other teams had it. Then finally we gave in and said: since it was so now believed that everyone is cheating, we will free it up.

"And what happened? They all stalled, none of the launch control systems worked and we had to have a special practice at Monaco in case they all ran into each other on the grid. It showed they weren't cheating, but the perception was that they were."