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Upgraded Engines:

On the uncertainty about the number of engines the teams will be able to use over the season:

It’s eight engines for the whole year. A driver will only incur a penalty if he uses a ninth engine. So the teams can use the engines as they like. There’s no three consecutive race rule because there doesn’t seem to be a need for it any longer. The engines will not have to do three complete events now.
In the past, as you know, the two-race engine was used only on Saturdays and Sundays.


Now, for 17 races, the eight engines will have to do the three days of each Grand Prix. What the teams will do is to have a Friday engine that’ll probably do the first four races or something of that nature. They’ll then take the engine out and use another one for Saturday and Sunday. All we’ve got to do, - it’ll be extra work - is to make sure that these engines remain sealed and are untouched.

On whether this means being able to change the engine whenever necessary:

Exactly!

On the performance gains that have been allowed for the teams, especially for Renault:

As you know, I can’t really give you confidential information. But we gave all the teams the opportunity to submit a list of things they would like to change in order to achieve engine parity, because there seemed to be some disparity between engine performance, which was not intended. Then, with Honda’s withdrawal – they appeared to be the ones down on power – the engine manufacturers agreed among themselves that they would not seek any engine parity changes, and they would allow Renault to do something.

It’s what I would describe as a minor upgrade. It’s a one-off thing; it’s not an on-going thing. Now, teams have submitted their list; we’ve agreed to it and that’s the end of it until 2012.

Safety Car Rules:

On changes to the safety car rules this year after it was difficult to follow in 2008:

The rule introduced in 2007 was a bad one, and we’ve gone back to the 2006 regulations. The only difference is we intend to implement a minimum time back to the pits. When we deploy the safety car, the message will go to all the cars, which will then have a “safety car” mode on their ECUs. As soon as that message gets to the car, it’ll know where it is on the circuit, and it’ll calculate a minimum time for the driver to get back to the pits. The driver will have to respect this and the information will be displayed on his dashboard.
If you remember, the reason we closed the pit entry was to remove the incentive for the driver to come back to his pit quickly. That’s gone now, as you won’t be able to reach the pits any quicker than your dashboard display allows you to.

Private Testing and the Use of Wind Tunnels

On other measures taken recently in order to reduce costs:

What we’ve done, as far as regulations are concerned, is to slash the maximum amount of testing from 30 000 to 15 000 kilometers. Moreover, there will be no in-season testing. That means no testing between seven days before the first race and 31st December of the same year. So no testing whatsoever except for eight days of aero testing in a straight line.

On how this might be a big problem for young drivers who want to get into F1:

There’s provision for a few days of young driver training as well.
On the big cut in wind tunnel testing: That’s right. No more than forty hours per week for each team.

On why this measure was taken and what it implies:

This is simply because some teams were running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with three shifts -including model makers- and all that sort of thing. Quite clearly, it’s very hard for a team that hasn’t got that kind of resources to keep up. Forty hours a week seems to be something everybody can cope with.

On whether they will be able to check that nobody uses a sub-contractor to do extra work in a private facility:

We’re obviously looking into all those things: if it emerged that anyone had been doing something underhand, they would be in very serious trouble. Also, we’re putting measures into place in order to make sure that people don’t have any incentive to do so.