JULY 25, 2016

F1 rules on agenda for strategy group

The abundance of rules in F1 today will be discussed by the strategy group in Geneva later this week.

The abundance of rules in F1 today will be discussed by the strategy group in Geneva later this week.

Throughout the Hungarian GP weekend, complaints about the regulations were abundant, including when Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg continued to argue about the yellow flag incident of qualifying.

"Rules are rules," their Mercedes team boss, Toto Wolff, insisted.

"If Lewis raised this issue, it is only because there are too many rules. We need to do something to reduce the amount of rules and make them simpler and easier."

Ferrari, meanwhile, was furious that the stewards did not penalise Max Verstappen for his defending tactics in the race with Kimi Raikkonen.

"Why do we even have rules," Raikkonen wondered by Finnish television MTV, "if they decide 'This is ok', 'This is not'?

"It is one of the things with F1 today that needs to change. It just looks bad and it's not fair. If there is a rule, it should be applied exactly the same way each time."

"The rules," argued team boss Maurizio Arrivabene, "have become too complex where they should be clear and simple.

"This issue has already been put on the agenda of the next strategy group meeting, because we want to race, not sit buried in all sorts of documents," he added.

F1 veteran Jenson Button called it a "joke" that he was penalised for being told over the radio how to resolve an hydraulic problem.

"Stopping an incident should be praised, not penalised," he said. "The sport's got a long way to go before it's good again."

(GMM)