OCTOBER 26, 2005

World Council confirms rules

The FIA World Motor Sport Council met in Rome and confirmed rule changes for the 2006 season. The tyre regulations in F1 at the moment will be forgotten and drivers will be permitted to use seven sets of dry-weather tyres for each event. All tyres used for qualifying and race must be of the same specification. Tyre changes will be permitted at any time during the race.

The qualifying changes have also been confirmed with all cars running in the first 15 minutes of the session. The slowest five cars will then be dropped and will fill the 16th to 20th places on the grid. If there are more than 20 cars six will drop out. There will then be further running for another 15 minutes and the slowest five (or six) in that session will take 11th to 15th on the grid. That will leave 10 cars (or 12 if there are 24 cars) which will fight out for the last 20 minute segment of qualifying. Fuel may be added to the cars at any point in the first 40 minutes of the session. However the cars in the final run-off will have to take part with race fuel onboard. The fuel they use in that session may be replaced before the start.

It remains to be seen what strategies will be developed from all of this but the teams have some months to think about it all.