Villeneuve Says Rule Changes Could be a Turn Off

Formula One risks artificial excitement and turning off the fans with changes planned for 2004, says former World Champion Jacques Villeneuve.

"If you look at other series where they start manufacturing stuff, people get bored," the Canadian told reporters at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

"Everyone starts screaming at each other - 'This is fair' or 'This is not fair' - and it just creates extra problems and it doesn't improve the show. Any time you try to create fakeness in racing it just makes it worse."

The International Automobile Federation (FIA) announced last week that regulations would change to save costs and outlaw expensive special engines used for a mere handful of qualifying laps on a race weekend.

Teams will be limited to the use of one engine per car per weekend, from Friday's free practice onwards, with drivers demoted 10 places on the starting grid every time they use more than one.

The theory is that the penalty will lead to more overtaking and less predictable races, with top drivers such as Ferrari's World Champion Michael Schumacher facing the possibility of starting from the rear.

But Villeneuve, World Champion with Williams in 1997 and now with British American Racing (BAR), said the changes could leave fans with less to watch instead.

Quiet Fridays

"We should use the same engine in the race as in qualifying. That would be easy enough and that way you could blow an engine on Friday," said Villeneuve.

Otherwise teams might not run on Fridays in order to save their engines.

"What will happen (from 2004) is that people won't drive on Friday. They will just wait until qualifying," he warned. "So one engine per race weekend is not good. Any extra laps you do will be an extra chance of blowing the engine during the race.

"If you are Ferrari and you get there with a year old car, you won't need Friday because your car's already set up. So you can just wait," he added.

World Champions Ferrari turned up at the first two races of the season with last year's modified F2001, a car requiring less set up in practice since the team already have plenty of data from last year. They could do that because of limited technical rule changes between 2001 and 2002. The FIA has also announced no chassis changes for the next two years.

"If you raced what you qualified, the same as with tyres, that would stop qualifying engines," said Villeneuve.

The FIA also announced the introduction of a new and immediate sanction, enabling stewards to punish drivers who cause avoidable accidents by demoting them 10 places on the grid in their next race. Villeneuve said that was a good way of punishing last lap offenders who might otherwise go unpunished.

Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello also agreed, but was concerned about fairness and suggested that it was time for permanent stewards in Formula One.

"We've been asking the FIA to do that, to bring the same guys who know us to all the races and we have a stable vision of what is going on because otherwise it is going to be really unfair," said the Brazilian.