Red Bull’s Adrian Newey has said he believes any compromise on rule changes for the 2017 Formula One season would be a “wasted opportunity”.
Meetings will take place tomorrow (Tuesday, February 23rd) to decide what rule changes will be implemented to reach the target of having cars achieve laps five seconds quicker than is currently possible in Formula One. Several meetings have already taken place and many alterations have already been made to the proposed plans but if an agreement cannot be met by all the parties involved on Tuesday the changes may be put back until the 2018 Formula One season.
When asked by Autosport.com what he thought Adrian Newey had the below to say.
“Hopefully, there will be an agreement tomorrow,”
“Obviously, the ’17 regulations are divided into all sorts of constituencies – the change in aerodynamic regulations and tyre size, there is the power unit regulations and so forth.
“It’s quite a complicated and intertwined relationship.
“The biggest danger is that the tendency for teams to vote for self-interest, rather than necessarily what’s best for the sport.”
Newey fears that in the interest of ensuring changes are made in 2017, that the outcome will merely be a compromise.
“That is a legitimate concern,” he added.
“The ’17 chassis regulations were first proposed some time ago with teams being allowed a window in which they could do initial CFD studies and feed back to the FIA on the results of those studies.
“Still, they feel slightly immature.
“If you go back to the current regulations, and whilst they can easily be criticised, one thing you could say about them is that they did have a decent amount of research behind them.
“These have had work in a different way, where the teams have effectively done some of the work, through that CFD amnesty period.
“The problem is, that period stopped and then there have been all sorts of attempts at diluting and changing those regulations in a period from that amnesty period to now.
“So no further work has been done on it, which is, I think, a wasted opportunity. But that’s where we are.”
It is unlikely an agreement will be reached tomorrow but the will and desire are there from all involved, it’s just a case of finding the best solution for all which has proved difficult throughout the history Formula One. Check back here to see the outcome of tomorrow’s meetings.
