Trulli Backs Call for Speed Reduction

Grand Prix Drivers Association member Jarno Trulli said on Thursday that he and his fellow drivers will assist the FIA in cutting speeds in Formula One by offering their advice to team chiefs before the October deadline.

Max Mosley, the president of the sport's governing body, asked on Wednesday for the members of the Technical Working Group, made up of Formula One engineers, to propose measures to reduce the performance of the cars.

If there is no agreement the FIA will introduce changes themselves but Trulli said the drivers back the demands for safety improvements and will do as much as they can to ensure the best solution is achieved.

"It's nothing to do with Ralf (Schumacher)'s accident but obviously the USA (events) just proved that Formula One cars are very quick, that we need more safety and that we need to slow them down," Trulli said.

"Every year we improve our performance - we ask the technicians to make the cars quicker ­ and on the other hand I think the FIA has to work to slow the cars down and to give more safety to the drivers and the spectators.

"I won't go into details but there are a lot of areas where we should work (to improve the situation) and it's not up to me to decide which areas, it's more likely to be decided by the FIA. We, as drivers, can suggest to them what we think could be the best way to slow the cars down, or to make our sport safer, but for sure, there is something to do."

Formula One was rocked ten years ago when Austrian Roland Ratzenberger and Brazilian World Champion Ayrton Senna died within two days during a black weekend in the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

The FIA almost immediately brought in design changes during that 1994 season and introduced further modifications for the following year, and no drivers have lost their lives in Formula One since.

Several drivers spoke out early this season against increasing speeds and German Ralf Schumacher could be sidelined for three months after suffering two spinal fractures in a crash in June's United States Grand Prix.

"I don't think any of us want to return to the time when we lost two drivers in one weekend so we want to prevent this, we want to try our best to make Formula One as safe as possible," added Trulli.

Trulli's teammate Fernando Alonso, 22, spectacularly crashed out of the United States Grand Prix just one lap before Schumacher's heavy accident but the young Spaniard said he does not fear stepping back into the cockpit.

"I personally don't feel any worry when I'm in the car," he said. "As soon as the race starts, I feel completely safe. When I lost the car at Indianapolis, after the first movement I knew that nothing was going to happen to me.

"The car is very safe, so from that point of view I think us drivers feel 100 percent safe when we have a crash. But at the same time, we know that speeds are very high and we are in a sport where the risk is always there."

Mosley said after a meeting of the FIA world motorsport council in Paris on Wednesday that the recent crashes have "tested the absolute limits" of safety and warned that speeds cannot be allowed to continue increasing.

Lap times have reduced by around one second per lap since last season and at some tracks the cars are more than nine seconds per lap faster than they were in seven years ago.