F1 champion Michael Schumacher is concerned about the short notice of the new rules, but he does not think this will slow him down.
F1 champion Michael Schumacher is concerned about the short notice of the new rules, but he does not think this will slow him down.
Schumacher told website that the decision to change the rules may have been made too close to the start of the 2003 season.
“I got to hear these decisions very late last night and it is short notice to apply certain rules,” he said.
“The teams, in the end, have to see whether they can deal with the rules or not, it’s not for me to say. I race the car and for me, it doesn’t make a huge difference because I race with whatever I have as long as everyone is racing to the same rules,” he said.
“There is simply a different challenge for me. I preferr to have all the technical possibilities, because I don’t like to compromise the race car. I like to make the race car as fast as possible and all the electronics have helped that.”
Schumacher said he did not think the changes were made to slow Ferrari down. “A good team will always be a good team. The success of a good team is not really because of one reason, there are thousands of reasons because there are so many different things on the car which make a car good,” he said.
“Some years ago, it was decided to free up the rules on the electronics, because they couldn’t control themt. Now we’re back to what we had some years ago, so it will be interesting to see how things develop and how everything is going to be seen again,” he said.
Schumacher is concerned that driving will be difficult in rainy conditions without electronic aids and radio communication. “I believe in rainy conditions, without traction control, it will be very, very difficult and you need a lot more feeling in order to be on the pace,” he said.
“At the same time, it will be quite a bit more dangerous. But it has been the same in the past so it is going to be a little bit more exciting. If there is an oil problem in a certain corner or an accident or a rain situation mixed on the track, then on the radio you can discuss that. If you don’t have a radio, you cannot.”
FIA president Max Mosley told that the teams only had themselves to blame for the organisation’s tough stance.
“We could have probably been more insistent last season so now we decided we would impose the regulations to the letter,” Mosley said.
“We got fed up with trying to reach agreement and what we are doing is applying the rules very rigorously – a sort of zero-tolerance approach – to stop them doing the things that we want to stop them doing.”
What do you think?