Why will they have to change it? They already drive a slowish outlap to heat the tyres up.
Hey man. I don't know about you but phantom cautions are awsome. Just when the racing is starting to get repetitive letting everyone take a small break, get new rubber and bunch the field up. Whats not to like? But F1 needs a new restart rule, this whole "go as fast as you want but don't pass" thing is BS. Let them pile up and get called back via the start lights.
Then lets call it "Short Prix Racing", and make it heats of five laps each? That's what phantom cautions are about: Fake spectacle. How dull would it have been for a safety-car to bring Hamilton back to the front in the 2007 Brazilian GP? How many would've cried foul?
The problems we've had with on-track passing were purely mechanical: Drivers actually
couldn't pass because the cars were too inefficient in another car's wake. That's supposed to be fixed for next year, so we'll see.
To Metar:
1. Preventing teams from running customer cars has increased costs and driven teams out of F1. F1 will not survive if costs aren't decreased.
Yes, but cutting the budget on a team's refreshments will help more than cutting tire-warmers. It really is a cheap thing by any standard of professional motorsport. As previously said, if BTCC teams can afford it, everyone can.
2. Launch control and traction control have already been banned in F1. I like technology too, but if you allow too many driver aids, then you cannot possibly call F1 drivers the "best drivers in the world."
Why? The fact that a car has more grip, or is capable of using it better, doesn't make things easier on a driver: He then has to adapt to make the most of it - gain more speed. If a driver's job gets easier because he's got traction-control, then he's not worthy of the seat - the real drivers will use that confidence to push the cars harder where they couldn't previously.
Also, I think that surviving years of training and graduating to F1 should instantly qualify you as the best: You still need reflexes, thinking, and raw skill far more than in any other series.
3. Drivers can safely race on cold tires if they know how to do it. Bridgestone/Firestone Tires supply both F1 and the IndyCar Series. Bridgestone/Firestone developed an IndyCar tire that can grip at 230 MPH (370 km/h) on a cold day at Indianapolis. They already use what they learn from the IndyCar Series to develop tires for F1 (Example: 2005 USGP). So what exactly is "less safe" about cold tires then if a good IndyCar driver can drive at 230 MPH on cold tires?
Correction: Drivers can race safely on cold tyres if they push less until they're back in the optimal window.
Remember than an IndyCar slick is a completely different animal to the tyres F1 runs: It has to withstand much less lateral forces (in the road-circuits) or exclusively high speed running (on the ovals). It's all a matter of how wide the tyre's operating-range is, and how it behaves in and out of that range.
Fact is, though, a driver on cold tyres has less grip, and that means it's automatically less safe than a warm, grippier tyre: Not because it means drivers will spin, but because less grip means less means to prevent an accident or other emergencies. The fact that it's also slower has nothing to do with it.
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