Why F1 doesn't need to be made simpler

It's not often that events in Formula 1 put one in mind of a Marx Brothers movie, but the post-qualifying kerfuffle in Hungary last weekend, in which people were running around the paddock waving hard copies of the Wikipedia entry for Lex specialis and other legal terminology, bore strong overtones of the contract scene in A Night At The Opera.

Groucho Marx, flourishing the contract: "It says here 'The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part.' How do you like that? That's pretty neat, eh?"

"No, it's no good," replies Chico Marx.

"Well, it grows on ya. Do you want to hear it once more?"

"Uh, just the first part."

"What, the party of the first part?"

"No, the first part of the party of the first part."

"Look, why quarrel about a thing like this? We'll take it right out, eh?"

"Yeah, it's too long anyhow." [They both tear that paragraph out of their contracts] "How much you got left?"

"I've got about a foot and a half."

Perhaps in a fit of pique over being held at the circuit until late in the evening while stewards and team representatives debated clashing clauses in the sporting regulations, many in F1 are calling for the rulebook in question to be drastically streamlined. A reboot, if you will.

Indeed, one item on the agenda of this week's Strategy Group meeting is the simplification of the sporting regulations, after Mercedes complained about the "over-regulation" of F1 as it withdrew its appeal against Nico Rosberg's penalty for receiving radio assistance at Silverstone.

Momentum grew, call it groupthink if you will, after the results of qualifying at the Hungaroring were thrown into doubt for two different reasons, and then Jenson Button was penalised during the race itself for being told how to resolve a hydraulic issue that had affected his brakes.

Quite why it took three hours to decide to investigate Rosberg's pole position lap in Hungary, and what influence Lewis Hamilton had over that decision, is still not quite clear. And neither are the rules.

Appendix H of the FIA's International Sporting Code says that when double-yellow flags are waved, as they were when Fernando Alonso spun at the end of Q3, you must "reduce your speed significantly, do not overtake, and be prepared to change direction or stop".

Rosberg's contention, at both the stewards' enquiry and that curious Jeremy Kyle Show-esque exchange with his team-mate in the post-race press conference, was: "I went 20km/h slower into that corner. That is a different world in an F1 car.

"With 20km/h you are going proper slow and everything is safe. I lifted off 30 metres before my braking point. I was just rolling there, 20km/h slower until I got to the apex.

"So definitely I significantly reduced my speed and that's why for the stewards it was completely acceptable."

Essentially we were left with a semantic argument about the word 'significantly'.

"That is what the rules say," says Williams chief technical officer Pat Symonds. "So if you're asking the question about Rosberg, then my answer is yes, the stewards were correct.

"If you're asking about how much you should slow down for double yellows, that's an entirely different question. The precedent is that you come off the throttle and that shows you're paying attention.

"But the rules say you must be prepared to stop. I don't know if you can be 'prepared to stop' if you lift for a tenth."

But Rosberg's pole lap was just the hors d'oeuvre. As the chequered flag flew, drawing a welcome conclusion to a much-interrupted Q1, I'd scribbled a note on my pad to the effect that only the nine fastest drivers had come within the 107% time for that session.

Who could have expected the vast wad of paperwork that would generate? Whole forests were sacrificed to the cause of photocopying FIA bulletins notifying us that more than half the grid were under investigation, followed by another set bearing the glad tidings that no action was to be taken after all.

The problem with the FIA's sporting regulations will be familiar to anyone who owns an Apple computer.

Pretty much every year our chums in Cupertino unleash a new operating system upon the world, so by the time your Mac reaches its fourth birthday it's had four OS upgrades laid over the top of one another, and you have to nip off to make a cup of tea after switching on while it rubs its rheumy eyes and grudgingly contemplates another day at the coalface.

The 107% rule was introduced in 1996 with the intention of keeping dangerously slow cars (such as the backmarker Forti team, pictured) and drivers off the grid at a time when there were fewer cars then the maximum contractually allowed. It was struck off for 2003 when the one-lap qualifying format introduced, but brought back in 2011.

In the interim the qualifying system was adjusted several times, finally settling on the elimination format from 2006 onwards. This left a potential conflict waiting to happen, and when it finally did it was resolved by applying the legal theory of Lex specialis - that the specific outweighs the general.

In this case, Article 35.2 a) iii, which says "The top 10 positions will be occupied by the cars which took part in Q3," trumps the more general Article 35.1. That says: "During Q1, any driver whose best qualifying lap exceeds 107% of the fastest time set during that session, or who fails to set a time, will not be allowed to take part in the race.

"Under exceptional circumstances however, which may include setting a suitable lap time in a free practice session, the stewards may permit the car to start the race."

You have to feel that justice has been served here, since the 107% rule wasn't invented in order to arbitrarily shake up the grid. But does it fuel the argument that F1 is over-regulated or not?

"It's a good question," says Symonds, "because the rules do evolve, and it's easy to forget why they're put there.

"Some of us old boys have been sitting in these meetings for 40 years and we remember - and Charlie [Whiting] remembers. I tell you, the day when Charlie does go, it's going to be quite difficult because other people won't remember why these rules are there.

"What happens is that every now and then we get a situation that hasn't really arisen before, and you find you've got a conflict. What we had [with the 107% rule situation at the Hungaroring] was a conflict, and I think two legal people would give you two different interpretations, which is what the conflict is all about, and you have to decide what takes precedence.

"They made a good decision. Now the job of the guys who make the sporting regulations is to say - gosh, how many years have we had three-part qualifying? 10 years? - so we've had 200 or so races and this has never happened before, we've now seen what happens, and it just takes a few words in the regulations to make it clear what should happen.

"Let's face it, we all knew that rule and we all forgot it in the heat of the moment. It wasn't until it was picked up by the FIA that we said, 'Oh yeah, that's true.'

"There are an awful lot of rules, but they've all been put there for a reason. There are some odd ones, but..."

There's a danger here, though, that if we follow the example of the Marx Brothers and simply tear out paragraphs we don't like, or don't understand, or can't be bothered to read, that it will lead to more conflicts, arguments, and late nights waiting for trolleys full of paperwork, than fewer ones.

Perhaps, rather than following the groupthink and screaming that the championship is over-regulated, we should consider the possibility that Formula 1 doesn't need fewer rules - it just needs a rulebook with better clarity and specificity, and a clear hierarchy.

It doesn't need simplification. As Symonds says:

"If everything is written down in black and white and you have a decision tree that you can follow easily, it should be simple even if the rules are complex. If there's not much written down then there will be lots of arguments.

"You get that with the double-yellow flags: 'The driver has to be prepared to stop'. It's quite grey, that, isn't it?"

We can only hope that clear heads prevail at the Strategy Group meeting and that the stakeholders resist the pressure to make knee-jerk changes.

But as Chico Marx says at the end of that contract scene: "You can't fool me! There ain't no sanity clause!"