McLaren: New Rules Not to Thank for Exciting Race

Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren-Mercedes managing director, warned Formula One fans today that the sport's new regulations were not to thank for the dramatic season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

The race, won by McLaren's David Coulthard, was full of drama and overtaking after a pre-race rain shower dampened the track and threw the teams' strategies into the air.

"People will then ask what caused it and I think that the weather, through massive confusion, made it fantastically exciting - that's what did it, not the regulations," said Whitmarsh. "A combination of weather and circumstance caused that drama.

"What we saw was teams at the beginning of the year trying to work out how to deal with a whole host of things. That included the regulations, but I think this was a situation which was made exciting because some teams started on intermediates, some on wets and some on drys."

The opening laps of the Albert Park race were hailed as the most exciting in recent years because of the differing tyre choices but also different fuel loads chosen by the teams before their qualifying runs.

The FIA forced teams to fuel their cars for the race before their qualifying run this season but McLaren chairman Ron Dennis has claimed new regulations such as that are "dumbing down" the sport.

McLaren, as a company, are against the changes and Dennis has joined rival team chief Frank Williams to take the sport's governing body, the FIA, to the International Court of Arbitration in a bid to get them overturned.