Mosley warns of excessive speed
(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-07-02 06:41

Formula One must be slowed down before someone gets seriously injured or killed, world motorsport head Max Mosley said on Wednesday.

"There is no doubt that they (the cars) are now too fast," the International Automobile Federation (FIA) president told reporters in an interview at his Paris headquarters.

"We must pull it back. It's a question of probability - the faster the cars go, the greater the probability that someone will be hurt or killed.

"We now feel that the probability is too high."

Recent crashes in North America highlighted the risks.

Germany's Ralf Schumacher crashed his Williams at Indianapolis 10 days ago and could miss the rest of the season after suffering two fractures to his spine, while Sauber's Felipe Massa smashed into the tyre barriers in Montreal after a rear wheel failure, which Mosley said had been potentially more serious.

"Ralf's impact was 78G. Massa was 113G," he said. "In Massa's case, if he hadn't had the latest HANS (head and neck safety) system and the other precautions...his head would have hit the steering wheel with a force 80 per cent greater than we believe to be the borderline for injury.

"He would probably have been seriously hurt...We are at the limit. If we go on like this someone will get hurt.

"All the indications now are that we are pushing up against the barriers of what is possible and we should pull back."

Tumbling times

Mosley said lap times had been slashed by as much as nine seconds over the past seven years at circuits such as Imola or Melbourne and that was "on the limit of what we can deal with".

"That is a massive change in speed," he said.

"We can accommodate a 10th or two each year by improving the safety precautions on the cars, improving the facilities at the circuits...but it's very difficult to deal with increased speed in the order of a second or more a year."

Mosley confirmed that a meeting of the FIA's world motor sport council had agreed to give Formula One's technical working group notice to come up with changes to reduce speeds.

If no proposals are forthcoming within two months, the FIA can then impose measures.

Mosley has linked the debate on speeds with his own package of technical measures to be introduced by 2008 to cut costs and attract fresh blood into the sport.

He has suggested, among other proposals, reducing engine capacity from three litre V10s to 2.4 litre V8s and stripping out expensive electronic systems.

Wednesday's meeting in Paris was the deadline for setting the engine regulations but Mosley said that had not been done.

"We decided not to do that (set the regulations) because there's tremendous disagreement between the engine manufacturers as to the best way to go," he said.

"Some of the major manufacturers feel that we should operate under a very restricted regime. Other manufacturers feel that we should give complete freedom and they continue to spend these huge budgets.

"Our position is that the engines must either be cheap, so that the small teams can afford them, or if the manufacturers want to spend a fortune on engines they have got to be prepared to supply everybody.

"At the moment we have sent that back to them."

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