in detail.
Alianora la Canta wrote:Yesterday, I discovered that the FIA had posted a new version of the 2009 Sporting Regulations. In this entry, I detail the changes between the 2008 and 2009 regulations. Many of these were in the last version of the 2009 regulations, but my copy of that version has gone missing, hence why I'm using the 2008 regulations as a baseline.
The 2009 Technical Regulation changes are more extensive and will be posted later this week.
The first thing to note about the 2009 Sporting Regulations is that the contents for 2009 have not been updated to reflect the fact that the PDF document is three pages shorter due to a slightly smaller font being in use. Also, the document says that it was published on 25 June 2008, yet it is dated 12th January 2009 on the FIA website.
The FIA still reserves the right to nominate a stewards' advisor if it so chooses, so Alan Donnelly may still be in the stewards' office. However the FIA has also left itself the option of not sending someone (which remains unchanged from 2008).
There will now be three stewards appointed instead of two by the FIA. One of them is permanent and will be appointed a non-voting chairman (note that this is separate from the advisory role Donnelly played in 2008). Previously, the permanent steward had a vote as well as being chairman, but there was one fewer steward. Presumably this is intended to assist the organisation of the stewarding.
The entrant fee for all teams 2009 has gone up €9000, but that is unlikely to cause any more problems for anyone, since every team had to pay €300,000 for entry to the 2008 series.
All teams are now entitled to use drivers other than their race drivers in practise sessions. However, since the other rules concerning using other drivers in practise apply, it is unlikely anyone other than the familiar faces of the race drivers will be seen putting helmets on to drive on Fridays.
The testing session has been amended to include wind tunnel testing. The track testing definition is still the same as last year, meaning that there are still possibilities to use promotional events to circumvent the testing ban, and also to use not-so-young drivers like Juan Pablo Montoya, Jacques Villnueve (both from now) and Michael Schumacher (from next season, assuming he doesn't do more than 2 days of testing in 2009) as “young driver training”. Formal track testing is restricted to 15000km, which must be done either before the first race of the season or after December 1. Am I the only person who struggles to see how any team would manage to break the distance limit in those circumstances?
Wind tunnels cannot be used at a speed of over 50km/second or with models above 60% of scale. Interestingly, the time and day limit has not been written into the Regulations.
If a driver starts from the pit lane, work to improve driver comfort is now permitted in the fast lane once the car is parked, in addition to the previously-permitted cooling device changes, wheel changes and work related to starting the engine.
Article 25.4 e) now obliges all teams to use extreme wet-weather tyres in the case of a Safety Car called due to rain. Strangely, despite this rule being applied since 2007, it only now appears to have made it into the Regulations.
The FIA has deleted Article 25.5, which gave it the ability to introduce tests for the maintenance of grooves. This is only sensible since nobody will be racing with grooved tyres in 2009!
The phrase “external to the survival cell” has been added to “front suspension” and “oil tanks” for what constitutes a car. This removes an anomaly which I hadn't previously noticed whereby every team that brought a spare monocoque was breaking the regulations last year. After all, everyone's front suspension was attached to the survival cell because the survival cell for an F1 car is its monocoque...
A driver who has to start from the pit lane is now formally permitted to do a reconnaisance lap prior to the start instead of staying in the pits for the entire build-up. Also, such a driver is exempt from the parc fermé rules in their entirety, which is interesting because this effectively allows such a driver to have the car modified in any way as long as the engine and gearbox aren't touched and the changes are not so big that the car would need to be scrutinised again.
An extra set of regulations has been inserted at Article 28.4 concerning the season-wide engine restriction. Eight engines is the maximum number that can be used, but there is no longer a minimum requirement for how long an individual engine must last. If anyone uses a ninth engine in the season, they will have a 10-place grid drop for every race until the end of the season. The scrutineers will fit blanking plates and seals to every engine with which teams want to do another race once the first race is completed for that engine. This procedure may be repeated for a given engine as often as a team likes (so in theory one engine could be used for an entire season this way), but once there is a race where an engine is not sealed by scrutineers within two hours of the race being completed, that engine may not be used in any more races. However, it may be used for testing or any other purpose the team/engine supplier may wish.
There is formal confirmation that the engines homologated by the FIA in 2008 are the only ones which may be used until 2013 (except for the informal exception handed to Renault).
The gearbox regulations have been modified in a strange way. The wording of the regulation concerning DNFs has been changed, but it doesn't appear to have changed the effect. It's just that now there is a more complicated wording of it. Instead of a non-finish being treated as an exception to a general rule, it is now considered that a replacement gearbox need only be used for the remainder of the race weekend. Unless teams begin changing gearboxes in the middle of races, there will be no practical effect. Otherwise it means teams finishing a race despite changing the gearbox could be penalised at the next event. Talk about making a lot of work for yourself for no good reason...
Replacement gearboxes must now use the same gear ratios as the previous box. Otherwise there will be a ten-place grid drop instead of the five-place grid drop that has previously been the case. The gear ratios can be changed at the next race, even if the same replacement gearbox is kept (unlikely, since a new four-race sequence for the gearbox begins at the next race in this situation under the 2009 regulations).
Strangely, gearboxes will no longer be sealed to prevent use between races. So in theory a team could put a gearbox into in-house testing between races. Why any team would want to is beyond me. Since seals are still in place to prevent modification of the gearbox, it is unclear why the usage seals have been taken away.
Gear ratios may now be changed once at the first race of the four-race cycle without penalty, which must be a relief for any team that has ratio installation problems. However these are few and far between.
It will be permissible to charge and discharge the KERS system in parc fermé. It may also be removed for storage overnight by teams, as long as the FIA technical delegate marks it first (to ensure that the unit stored overnight is the unit raced the next day).
The regulations on post-qualifying parc ferme changes to aid driver comfort have been altered. The addition or removal of padding now requires a scrutineer to observe the process. If the FIA Technical Delegate orders such padding to be added, then it must be removed before any weighing procedures. This implies that the Technical Delegate has now gained the specific power to order padding to be added for driver comfort, which was not previously the case.
It is also permissible to refill drinks containers in parc fermé. However, drinks containers are now restricted to 1.5 litres. Some teams run as little as 500ml and some teams actively discourage any drinks container to be carried at all unless it is a particularly hot or difficult race. I am not aware of any team which uses a container that is more than 1.5 litres, so this regulation will almost certainly have no effect, except to ensure that everyone with drinks containers starts with a full one.
The provision that six cars will be randomly checked after qualifying has been removed. I feel this is not a particularly good development with regard to regulation compliance.
Instead of a flat time of 6:30pm for every track, post-qualifying parc fermé now begins three-and-a-half hours after the end of qualifying. In practise, this means there will usually be an hour less time out of parc fermé than before, but it also means that if qualifying is delayed for some reason, that teams won't lose out as a result. Also, it means that the Singapore procedures are no longer at variance with the regulations. This may make the post-qualifying procedure a bit more organised for everyone. Cars are released to the teams at 8:30am on race day instead of a flat “five hours before the event”. One assumes that Singapore will be an exception to this rule...
Interestingly, teams may request that one car be allowed out of parc fermé for an extra two hours “for marketing purposes”. Work on this car is forbidden during the two-hour extension, but it's not clear how that will be enforced. Presumably it will be enforced somehow, if only by the press complaining that the “marketing car” hasn't been seen by them...
If more than one car is starting from the end of the pit lane, then anyone who got to the end of the pit lane between 15 and 5 minutes before the start has priority over drivers who get there later. In addition, those arriving after the 5-minute signal must queue in the order of arrival. Otherwise, the system in previous years (that drivers queue according to their qualifying position) remains in place.
A car whose wheels are changed after the three-minute signal no longer has to start from the back of the grid nor suffer a drive-through penalty. Instead, a mere ten-second penalty (added to the time at the end of the race) will be applied. Is this leniency or simply the FIA stinging after the repercussions of using the Raikkonen-at-Monaco as an example of all teams being equal?
Article 40.5, which stated that the Safety Car would join a race by sitting in the pit lane with its lights on and then join ahead of the leader, has been made Article 40.6 for no apparent reason. The rule forbidding any form of dangerous, erratic or excessively slow driving during Safety Cars has been re-numbered from 40.7 to 40.5. The old Article 40.6 (which concerned pit lane closures) has been deleted entirely. Hurrah!
If the Safety Car driver determines that conditions are not safe for lapped cars overtaking, the message “OVERTAKING WILL NOT BE PERMITTED” will be shown. Which is fine except that part of the point of having a Safety Car is that overtaking isn't safe on at least part of the track in any case. Why not simplify things by having no overtaking at all, like the olden days?
A penalty has now been defined for anyone who refuels during a race suspension despite not being in the pit lane when the suspension was triggered. The penalty is ten seconds of time. This appears to be the latest fashion in penalties. Whether it proves any more appealing than the grid penalties that were previously in vogue remains to be seen.
The rule change protocol is identical to 2008. The PDF also includes, for the first time, the engine homologation regulations (Appendix 6).
This is generally good news. I hate it when the pit lane is closed and the race is made into a lottery. It happened too often.
More of drive-throughs, 10-sec penalties, 10-grid drops and worst of all...25-sec penalties.