Webber: safety in tests remains sub par

The Williams driver said Red Bull's David Coulthard, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, would meet team bosses before next week's Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona to discuss the continuing concerns.

"We are a decade behind where we should be," Webber told reporters at the European Grand Prix. "All the (safety) improvements the FIA has done, in terms of the circuits and the cars, are great but the thing we are missing, the last ingredient, is the medical backup at tests. It's nowhere near the level of races."

The Barcelona meeting had been expected to focus on the new knockout qualifying format, which several drivers want to tweak, but Webber said that was a side issue.

"The qualifying thing is actually small fry," he said. "I've been championing the testing thing for the last two years. Testing is probably the most dangerous part of our job because we are testing new things.

"Things do fail in testing, we are testing tyres to the limit, we are testing wings and suspension and things, and sometimes the engineers do make mistakes and there are crashes. At certain circuits at the moment we are very, very light on (medical support).

"If something bad happens, and every month we get closer to it happening, the shunt will happen in testing and they always happen in the bad spots...we've been lucky."

Formula One has not had a driver fatality during a race since Brazilian triple champion Ayrton Senna was killed at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

There have been big accidents in tests and Webber listed the Spanish circuits of Barcelona, Valencia and Jerez as the ones causing most concern. Teams do the bulk of their winter testing there because of the warmer conditions.

While a specialised FIA medical team attends all Grands Prix, test sessions are private affairs with teams paying the circuits to use the facilities.

Webber said the governing body, teams and drivers needed to come up with a solution.

"I'm sick of the little walls that we come up against," he said. "We just have to find an answer. It's not rocket science, it's 2006 now.

"All the other improvements we have made have been phenomenal and this hasn't really changed. It's not good enough.

"Maybe the drivers should pay for it. That would be embarrassing. Let's chip in and get some doctors. That's how bad it is.

"There's plenty of ideas floating around but not much action."