Mosley plays F1 safety card
Meeting yesterday in Paris, the World Motor Sport Council voted unanimously "formally to require" the F1 Technical Working Group to devise measures to reduce F1 performance, invoking Art7.5 of the Concorde Agreement. This allows the FIA to impose changes with immediate effect if they can be justified on grounds of safety, instead of giving three years notice. If the Working Group fails to propose appropriate rule changes, the FIA will implement its own regulations for 2005
FIA president Max Mosley warned the F1 team principals earlier in the week that he intended to ask the WMSC to support his position on performance reduction. By playing the safety card, he has put substantial pressure on the Working Group, which is made up by FIA technical representatives and the teams' technical directors.
Mosley's case to the WMSC was assisted by the violence of the accidents suffered recently by Felipe Massa (Sauber) at Montreal and Ralf Schumacher (Williams) at Indianapolis. A statement said that these had "tested the absolute limits of the FIA's latest safety measures". Mosley also presented the meeting with a chart showing how dramatically lap-times had been reduced over the last seven season at Imola, Monaco and Montreal - three circuits that have been substantially unchanged during that period.
The FIA is ready to get its own performance-reducing rules ratified by the WMSC in October.
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