FIA urged to change qualifying rules

Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen were each docked five grid positions for holding up other cars during the final seconds of qualifying, as they returned slowly to the pits in a bid to conserve fuel.

But beyond the sporting aspect of the situation that arose yesterday, the near-misses that Nick Heidfeld and Fernando Alonso came through has highlighted the dangers of cars running on track at full qualifying speed while others are touring around.

And it is the fear of an accident that has prompted calls for a maximum laptime rule to be introduce from the next race in Bahrain to ensure there is no future repeat of the incident.

BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica, who was one of the drivers returning slowly to the pits in the closing stages of qualifying, said changes were needed because he feared for his own safety while quick cars were overtaking him.

"When I was doing it, I was not feeling safe," he said when asked by autosport.com about the need for a rule change. "Not just for the other drivers, but also for myself.

"Here it is quite easy to go off-line so as not to disturb the others. It is a very wide track and it is quite easy to see. But if something like this happens where you have uphills and blind places, then that is quite dangerous."

Kubica believes that the most obvious solution to the problem would be to introduce a maximum laptime criteria, similar to that which is in place for drivers on their formation laps to the grid.

"On the way to the grid, we have a limit in time, and it would be better to have the same rule in qualifying," explained Kubica.

Honda Racing team principal Ross Brawn backed called for a change to be looked at, especially because there is a safety aspect to what happened.

"It didn't look very nice, did it?" he stated. "Maybe we do need to have a think about the format and see if there is something we can do to prevent those issues in the future.

"People are in a difficult position here. They know they should run fairly quickly but also know that they should save fuel. Where is that balance?

"We almost need to take that decision away from them and say 'you have to do this'. There is now a maximum lap time to go to the grid, so if we are applying it then (before the race), then maybe we can apply it in qualifying as well."

Williams technical director Sam Michael added: "I think the guys that were there in that situation handled themselves very well. They all stayed out of the way as much as they could, but I am sure it will come up in the team managers' meeting, because it was a bit too close. The speed differential was massive.

"I think something will probably happen in time for Bahrain."