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| The FIA is hoping that doffing electronic driver's aids will contribute to more scraps such as this one between Ferrari driver Rubens Barrichello and Williams BMW's Juan Pablo Montoya. |
A shocking rules change, due to its especially short notice just 8 weeks before the start of the 2003 season, is the ban of traction control, along with launch control and fully automatic gearboxes. The FIA originally agreed to allowing such technologies in May of 2001 because its testing equipment wasn't sophisticated enough to detect the various teams control software, written within complex lines of programming code. It's reasoning for accepting such driver's aids was due to a suspicion that some of the teams were using them, traction control being the most controversial, and gaining a competitive advantage over those who were 'playing by the rules'.
In a bit of a sideways move Mosley offered that if teams would have to incur high costs to downgrade their technology in time for the 2003 season the FIA would allow their use for all or part of the current season, but that in 2004 they would be completely banned. The only way to regulate the official removal of these technologies would be to introduce standardized ECUs, each governed by universal software. Look for a fight from the powers that be on this one.
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| Michael Schumacher led Rubens Barrichello for the majority of the 73 lap race, only relinquishing the lead in the final meter, another bungle by the Ferrari team causing negative press to smear an already controversial season. |
Last but hardly least the FIA will create a provision in the rules for component sharing between teams, other than engines and gearboxes, so that further cost-savings could be achieved. Expected items could include braking systems, aerodynamic aids, etc.
Expectedly the Grand Prix World Championship (GPWC), a company established by European carmakers DaimlerChrysler, Ford, Renault, FIAT and BMW, denounced the cost-cutting measures and is urging its partners to do everything in their power to avoid working under them.