Q&A with Charlie Whiting during the 2016 F1 Australian Grand Prix

Q: We’ve seen the Technical Directive from 8.3.16. It has been summarised in this document what the teams can and can’t say; have there been any changes since then? Will there be any changes? Is that the definitive list?

CW: No, it was replaced this morning after the team managers’ meeting yesterday. There’s a few more things that they can say. I suggest you read that first. Or would you like me to tell you what they are? The main changes are that a team can tell a driver to stay out, which we hadn’t said before. They are allowed to talk to the driver on the grid, so we’ve said that the only time they can’t talk to the driver is whilst the engine is running. When the engine’s off on the grid they can talk to a driver. They can tell a driver when to turn off the delta time procedure once they’ve crossed the Safety Car line twice behind the Safety Car. The messages telling them to do certain test routines is restricted now to P1 and P2 only. Those are the main additions to that.

Q: Can you just explain overall what was the objective in bringing out these new guidelines? What were you trying to achieve?

CW: Do you mean the guidelines in general, or the latest ones? I think it’s fairly clear that what we’re trying to do is to make sure the driver is driving the car on his own, that he’s not being told how to drive the car. Simple as that, really.

Q: What kind of penalties can we expect if a driver breaches those?

CW: I think it would depend on the level of the breach. If it was a simple one, I think we would let them get away with a warning - at this stage, at least. If it were slightly more serious the stewards might consider a reprimand, but if they were to do something which really helped the driver do something he should be doing himself then I suspect a time penalty might be more appropriate.

Q: How is it decided what a coded message is? If the team says it wasn’t a coded message, how can it be decided?

CW: It can’t. Not clearly. I can’t tell you now how a coded message is going to... It depends entirely on what the message is and what the explanation is for that message. By putting down exactly what you can say, if you go outside of that it’s fairly obvious. I’ve had some very strange questions about ‘the birds are flying high in the sky today’ and stuff like that. I’d just say it’s not on the list. Seriously, I think that even by using some of these things on the list there is probably a way of getting a message across which we weren’t intending them to, but we’ll have to deal with that on a case-by-case basis.

Q: Have you had to employ any more stewards to do all this? It sounds like it’s going to be more work for you. Are you anticipating at all that hours after the race you’re still going to be combing through everything?

CW: No. We’re listening to it in real time. We’ve got four people in race control listening to three drivers each, and then we’ve got four or five software engineers listening to two or three each, so it’s relatively straightforward, for a start. Quite honestly, they’re not saying that much.

Q: A couple of drivers believe you won’t be able to capture every single message that’s put across the radio. Is that your feeling, or would you be disappointed if you don’t?

CW: We will hear every single message, yes. I’m absolutely sure of that. Going back to the coded messages, we’ve got to be a little careful about that. We could, for example, if we have some suspicion that a message is odd, say, we could then look at the data from the car and see if the driver did anything in response to that message. Then maybe at the next race if we hear the same message we’ll look for the same switch change, or something like that. We’ll build up a little knowledge.

Q: Will teams be allowed to use the steering wheel display for messages?

CW: Not to send messages. We have some very strict guidelines about what they can display to the driver. Obviously the dashboard is a very complex and highly powerful piece of equipment, and they can do all sorts of things with it. We’ve spent a lot of time in the winter going through with teams what they can and can’t display. There’s a huge document which says what you can do with all of the ECU system, and obviously the dashboard is part of ECU. In very general terms we will only allow real-time information, nothing predictive. So you can’t display on it how to use the brakes so they’ll last for the whole race - you’ve got to have warnings for critical problems, but that’s about it really.

Q: Obviously the opening laps or the opening minutes of the various qualifying sessions are going to be pretty hectic. What about blocking, etc.? What sort of guidelines will be there?

CW: There are no different guidelines. I think the drivers all know the rules about blocking. There are no changes to those rules. They will obviously have to be more careful. The teams are allowed to tell their drivers, just in the same way that they were. I agree with you, especially at the beginning of Q1 before the seven minute point every car is likely to be out there and it will be more difficult for drivers to find a clean bit of track. As long as no driver does anything silly, I don’t think there will be any problems.

Q: A clarification on what is allowed on the dash display. You said no predictions can be shown - is the fuel a prediction? Like when they say target +/-1? Or can it just display current fuel consumption?

CW: You’re allowed to see how much fuel they’ve used and how many laps they’ve done in general, but you can’t tell a driver what to do based on the fuel prediction. He has to look at it and do it himself.

Q: You’re not afraid to build a claustrophobic environment, that the basic relationship between driver and team should be affected by this situation? The situation where every conversation - even a normal conversation in a race between the driver and the team - can be scrutinised, can be subject to investigation?

CW: It will only be subject to an investigation if it’s not one of the permitted messages. I don’t see any change in that respect, no. The teams will speak much less to the drivers during the race. During practice - especially free practice - there’s quite a lot of talk about gaps, there’s test sequences and stuff like that. Once it gets to the race, there won’t be that much they can say that will be of any value.

Q: Coming back to the display, is it allowed to have a kind of menu there? Not reacting to certain situations, but let’s say in general? If he presses a button then he sees what kind of buttons he has to press for pit stop or...

CW: No. No, no. You can’t do that. You can have brake temperatures, tyre temperatures, tyre pressures, those sort of things.

Q: How will you control the pit boards to avoid any messages?

CW: They’re allowed to give the same messages they’re allowed to pass on the radio and no more. There has been some suggestion that by putting the lap count - for example - in red it means something, if it’s yellow it means another, white another… We do have a camera looking at all the pit boards, so if we see anything unusual we will ask why. They will do their very best to try and get as much information to the drivers as they can. I just hope they do it in a legal way.

Q: It would seem that in the past radio communications between the driver and the pits has been integral to TV coverage. Do you feel this might water down the viewer experience at home?

CW: Not really. First of all, we heard many many complaints from viewers who were a bit fed up of hearing the continual engineering assistance the driver was getting. That’s fundamentally what we want to cut out. …But the driver is allowed to say anything he wants - there’s no restrictions in what he says; it’s what the team can say to him. You’ll still get what I would call the juicy content - if someone has done something silly on track, the driver can call him an idiot and all that sort of stuff. Those are the things that generally I think people like to hear.

Q: What happened red flag in qualifying? What about happened with the one is on a fast lap? He is abandoned and maybe falls out? What is exactly is the rule? Is bad luck.

CW: That’s exactly right - just bad luck. The difference between previous qualifyings is you have to actually finish the lap before the time runs out - you can’t finish the lap unless the chequered flag is out, in which case the cars on track can finish that lap. But it is no different to before other than normally you were able to restart the session and then they could have another go. Unfortunately, that’s not possible any more.

Q: Is it right now that when there is a stoppage in qualifying the time will continue?

CW: No, the clock will always stop in qualifying.

Q: There were some concerns when the qualifying format was originally raised to be changed that the timing systems mightn’t be in place. Are you confident they’re in place? What processes have been undertaken in the past couple of weeks to make sure it all works as intended?

CW: The guys who write all the software appear to have done a fantastic job - it looks good. You’ll see in qualifying it will look quite good; you’ll have a separate countdown clock counting down from 60 seconds to zero before each of the elimination points. So you’ll have the normal countdown clock, and in a different colour you’ll have another countdown to each elimination which will look quite good, I think. If a driver is eliminated he’ll be greyed out, the colour will change and that means he’s gone - next! and so on. I’ve seen a demonstration of it, I’ve seen it working and it all appears to be spot on.

Q: The clock stops in qualifying. When it then resumes, does the elimination clock resume at the same time? If you’re last, there’s no point in going out?

CW: Yes, exactly. There would be no point in going out.

Q: Can I ask about track limits? It’s been clarified a bit seemingly over the winter as to best intentions, best efforts to stay on track. Who is going to be the ultimate arbiter of whether a driver has made his best effort to stay on track? What actually defines being on the track? Is it all four off? Is it going to be on time per sector, or the mini sectors? Who’s going to determine it?

CW: All of that hasn’t changed. The rule has just changed to say that a driver must not leave the track without justifiable reason. Leaving the track is very well defined and always has been: the white line is considered to be part of the track. So if any part of the car is in contact with the white line, he’s still using the track. That hasn’t changed. The ultimate decision will obviously be made by the stewards, and if I think that a driver has left the track and gained an advantage from doing so, he’ll get reported to the stewards. An advantage, as you know, in qualifying is normally expressed in time. In the race it can be expressed in more than one way. None of that’s changed. It’s just a bit about leaving the track without justifiable reason, so it stops drivers from going way off wide maybe in order to try and get a bit of a run at the next corner. Like Abu Dhabi - the last corner in Abu Dhabi, drivers were trying to go wide there. Not on the lap that they were going to set their time on, but for the following lap.

Q: Can I just go back to one detail? You said there’s four people looking at three drivers. Does that mean they’re rotating on the different drivers they’re watching? Because that’s only 12.

CW: No, it’s four people with three drivers each plus five engineers also doing the same thing.

Q: I’d like to change tack slightly and look at something for ‘17, although it’s something you’re probably going to make a judgement on in ‘16. It’s to do with the cockpit protection - obviously we saw it trialled by Ferrari in testing in Barcelona. What was the feedback on it? How far advanced are you with it? Are you looking at the Red Bull canopy as well?

CW: I think it’s going pretty well. Obviously you know that we’ve tested the so-called halo. It’s been tested quite extensively now, and I think it will offer very good protection for a flying wheel, for example. That’s the main way in which it’s been tested so far. We need to do a thorough risk assessment on it, and we need to look at a number of related things like extrication; we’ve got to talk to the medical crews about it. I think it’s going quite well. We’ve got a separate working group just to deal with that by Mercedes and Ferrari, and I would say they’re doing a really good job on that. The Red Bull is an alternative to that. It’s considerably further behind in development, it’s never been tested, but it could offer additional protection. I’ve got my doubts as to whether it could actually be implemented for 2017, whereas I think the halo could.

Q: I believe FOM have installed a new-fangled circuit ring with all sorts of features. Does that impact on your operations in any way, and if so did everything work okay this morning?

CW: We don’t use that, we use a separate fibre ring around the track and that was all working perfectly okay, thank you.

Q: If you have to stop qualifying and by the time more than one driver has not scored a lap time, what’s happening then?

CW: If we ever stop qualifying when?

Q: Before the six or seven minutes, and there is more than one driver who doesn’t have a lap time for whatever reason. Who is to drop out?

CW: What happens is that when we start qualifying is that the drivers are put in the order of P3 and if more than one driver didn’t do P3 we go back to P2 etc, to establish the order in which they start qualifying. If after seven minutes… you said if the session gets stopped at that time, well, whoever is at the bottom of that list – it could be three drivers that haven’t set a time – the bottom one would go. That’s what would happen during the actual elimination process, that would establish the order, but then you might want to look, if there were more than one car that hadn’t taken part then they would be outside the 107%, then the stewards would have to decide whether they were able to take part in the race and then there is a separate rule that determines which order they are in, if there is more than one of them. So it could change round a little bit. But for the purposes of the classification, in qualifying, the guy at the bottom after seven minutes will go.

Q: If that happens in Q2 and Q3 what time counts? The one from the previous session or we go back to FP3 to decide who is out?

CW: No, no, what you see on the screen is what you get. That is it. So, the order… before qualifying starts the drivers are arranged in P3 order. So, whoever is at the bottom of that list at the seven-minute point will go, whether they have set a time or not. At the Q2 you will 15 cars left and again if one of those doesn’t go out in Q2 and hasn’t a time, he will go.

Q: You’re coming up with a set of requirements for Pirelli for the 2017 tyres. What level of confidence do you have that they’ll be able to satisfy those requirements and what if they don’t?

CW: There are two separate questions there of course. We were asked by Pirelli to give them a list of targets that we felt they needed to aim for for the 2017 regulations and that’s precisely what we are doing. They are confident that they can do whatever is required for the 2017 cars and if it becomes apparent that they can’t do it, well, we’ll have to deal with that at the time. I don’t have any plan for that now.

Q: Charlie, point 14 says “instructions to swap positions with other drivers”. Does that mean a team can tell…

CW: That would be if a driver had cut a chicane or something or gone off the track and gained a place. Sometimes a team will come on to us and say “was that OK?” and we’ll say “No, he needs to give that place back”. It happened in Mexico last year I think with Checo and… I can’t remember the other driver. We would tell them to tell the driver to give the place back, that’s what it’s aimed at.

Q: Charlie, just to take you back to Halo. When you mentioned the Red Bull concept, are we at the stage now where the current concept will come in regardless of whether developments over this year suggest there are better ones and we just want to get one in as quick as possible and then refine it or would we delay in 2017 if a better one was emerging and investigate that further before going with a final solution?

CW: I don’t think we would delay if another one was emerging, as you put it. We are on a course for the Halo as that has been tested thoroughly and we feel that it offers the best all-round protection. We do have, as I said earlier, a thorough risk assessment to on a number of different accident scenarios. We want to make sure we are not going to make things worse in certain circumstances, so that has to be done. But I don’t think we would delay it because we felt there was another better one coming.

Q: There has been quite a lot of winging from the drivers recently that they don’t have enough of a say in how the rules are made – just to pick an example Lewis was saying they don’t have enough of a say – but it seems that they do actually have some degree of say and when there was the meeting in Pirelli maybe seven or eight of them went, I don’t think Lewis went. I just wondered what your feeling on that was, whether they do have enough of a say, whether you plan to give them more of a say, less of a say?

CW: I think they get a lot of say. We have, as you know, technical and sporting working group meetings, to which a driver is always invited. The take-up is very low, but they are invited and they get the agendas and the minutes of the meetings. There is a seat on the FIA Circuits Commission for a Formula One driver but again attendance is not as high as one might like. They do get an opportunity every race weekend to sit, in this room for example, later this evening to discuss whatever they want to. We don’t just talk about what’s happened on the track today, they talk about all sorts of things. That’s another perfect opportunity to discuss anything they wish. I’m always happy to talk to them. We had a meeting in Barcelona, as you know, quite a few drivers actually turned up for it, which was nice. Lewis was invited but he didn’t come.

Q: Charlie, can you explain to us why the driver torque demand map freeze? Were they playing with that?

CW: Why we set the freeze on the torque demand maps. Because the drivers should be able to do that themselves. All engine functionality should be dealt with by the driver. So, if he wants to change it he can and he has all the things open to him. He just needs to be briefed and I think the better drivers will inevitably do a better job.

Q: Charlie, how do you invite the drivers for the briefings? Do you message the team managers or the drivers directly? Because I asked the Red Bull drivers, they didn’t attend the meeting in Barcelona, they said they were not informed.

CW: That is untrue I’m afraid to say. Daniel was involved in another meeting so he couldn’t come, which was fine; it wasn’t a compulsory meeting. But all the other meetings I mentioned, through the GPDA they get agendas of the meetings a week beforehand… the meetings are planned further in advance of that… they get the agendas and then they get the minutes. Circuits Commission that is all planned well in advance. They all know what time the Drivers’ Briefings are at race and they all come or in fact they are obliged to. So, I don’t think that’s very accurate to say, because they were both invited and if I had to I could give you evidence to that effect.

Q: Charlie, when the first team-to-driver communication limits were first announced you said the FIA was going to looking into telemetry limits as well and maybe a clamping down in that area for this year. How far did that investigation go and is it still something that is being looked at for the future?

CW: No it’s not at the moment. We discussed it. The cars are fitted with a standard telemetry system this year, as you probably know. My current feeling is that if the team can’t pass information that they’re getting on telemetry to the driver, except if it’s a critical condition, then there’s less value in trying to limit the amount of information. If it’s just coming back to the team then that’s fine.

Q: Charlie, one more question. If I could ask you the driver involvement issue a different way round, do you think the sport and the rulemaking process needs more involvement from the drivers?

CW: I don’t think it needs more, because they’ve got adequate. They’ve got many, many chances to talk about the rules with us. I honestly don’t see how they could have much more. And of course, even at Formula One Commission level, there’s nothing to stop a driver asking their team principal to put their point across, because all the teams are on that commission. But by that time they have had lots of chances to give their view.

Q: Hi Charlie, I just wondered if you or the teams have expressed any concern about only being able to have critical messages about the cars? Certainly in the first few races are you worried that we could see more retirements because it’s just critical messages being relayed to the drivers?

CW: I don’t think so. I would be very surprised. I have not heard any concerns of that sort from the teams. I think they have got themselves pretty well sorted out.

Q: Charlie, with the new radio restrictions and the new tyre compound and the greater choice coming in, do you think that the radio restrictions are maybe limiting the potential of the tyre strategies that could be implemented with this new strategy, give that the teams can’t tell the drivers to come in until the la on which they need to come in?

CW: I’m not a strategist, but I would have thought they will talk these things to death, as it were, before the race and they will know what they are going to do and the teams are allowed to bring a driver in, as long as he comes in on the lap in questions, so I think if they wanted to change strategy, they could just say “box this lap”. They can’t tell him what tyres they are going to put on but they can show him, for example. I can’t see why it should change. As I said, beforehand they will know exactly what they intend to do in the race and if circumstances change and they want to alter that strategy they still can, it’s just that they can’t discuss it at length with the driver.

Q: One more question on the Halo. Some people start to construct scenarios that might be even worse than without the Halo. For example, the frame could be hit by a smaller object which is then redirected to a part of the body of a driver which is less protected than the head or, for example, if the car goes upside down the frame could hook in somewhere and give the car a different direction. How do you compare the one risk against the other and what gives you then the good feeling to say “well, we protect more than we cause any damage by introducing the Halo?

CW: Well, this is a job for the professionals and we have some professionals working for us to do a proper risk assessment using finite element analysis. I take the point. I’m not qualified to say exactly how one goes about that, but things like the high nose versus the low nose argument, there was some suggestion that the lower noses might allow a car to underneath another one, but the assessment we made was that there were far more accidents likely to happen with nose-to-wheel contact with a high nose resulting in cars launching. We’ve seen many times that happening, but very few times cars going under others. That sort of thing was a fairly simple risk assessment to make. The Halo is far more complex and there are a number of things that need to be assessed. As I say, we do have professionals doing that and I will trust their judgement.

Q: can you tell us the minimum tyre pressure for this race?

CW: From memory it’s 18.5 rear. Actually I’ve got it here, as it happens. It is 18.5 rear and 21.5 front.

Q: Charlie, will you make cockpit protection mandatory on all cars? I ask that because Lewis recently said he’d like to be given the choice of whether to have a cockpit protection or a Halo.

CW: I think that’s unlikely. We didn’t make HANS options and we don’t make crash helmets optional, so I suspect that will be the case with the Halo.

Q: Charlie, can I follow up on Michael’s point about the potential for Halo to make the situation worse. If we were to get a situation where a tyre bounced off Halo and was directed towards the crowd. I know that you said that you have risk assessors looking at various impacts for Halo, but is that something that’s being considered, safety of driver versus of crowd?

CW: Yes, yes, it would certainly be taken into account, yes.

Q: Charlie, still on Halo, did you use the accident of [Felipe] Massa to do any studies if Halo will save him?

CW: The resulting research from Felipe’s accident was the visor, the Kevlar visor panel, which, as you know, the spring hit right where the visor overlaps the helmet. Now that visor is far more resilient. That’s what emerged from Felipe’s accident. Now, quite clearly, the Halo in its current form, there is space for a similar-sized object to go underneath it. That’s beyond dispute. But what we are trying to do is to prevent is what we feel is a far more life-threatening situation, which is a wheel. We are taking a 20kg wheel on an upright assembly and projecting it into these devices – we’ve done four or five of them – at 225km/h and it’s got to deflect a wheel from the driver’s head, and that’s the test criteria. In answer to your question, the research was done to try to make Felipe’s injuries less likely but through the crash helmet and visor.

Q: a set limit that the drivers have to be able to get out of the car within, I think it’s five seconds. If adding a Halo means that the driver can’t do that, will you extend that limit or will you consider scrapping the halo idea altogether?

CW: I don’t think we would scrap the Halo on the basis that the driver needed an extra couple of seconds to get out. I think the benefits of the Halo would be far greater than the slightly worse situation of a driver taking a bit longer to get out. One team did put a Halo on their car and did get the driver to see how quickly he could get out and it looked perfectly simpler and arguably easier, because the driver can get hold of this thing and lift himself out much easier. It looked very simple I must say.

Q: Charlie, would it be fair to say that Halo is being introduced in Formula One despite it perhaps not being requir3ed mainly for Formula One, it’s just Formula One’s stature that is leading to that, because you could argue that wheel tethers have prevented wheels flying in Formula One and oval racing might be more suited to this?

CW: No, I don’t think so really, because wheel tethers obviously work but they cannot prevent wheels coming off in every scenario. We know that. We saw last year in Japan, Dany Kvyat’s car for example, the wheels were separated but they were very close to the car, they don’t go flying anymore, the tethers prevent them doing that, but they ultimately can fail of course, so I think it’s a very worthwhile thing to continue to protect against personally.

Q: Just to follow up on that, will you strengthen the tethers even more though?

CW: We are, in fact. For 2017 they are going up from 6 kilojoules to 8.

To follow on Chris’ point about oval racing, is Indycar at all in conversation with you and the research you’re doing on Halo?

CW: Not that I’m aware of no. They haven’t expressed any interest.

Q: Charlie, the Halo could have an aerodynamic effect. I would assume that you are going to have a standardized design…

CW: That’s the plan, yes…

Q: …in that case, when will the teams know this design, because they are obviously working on their 2017 aero already.

CW: That’s what this little working group is for, in order to finalize mounting positions for it and the strength of those mounting positions because that’s just as important of course. I think the end of May is the target.

Q: What is the timeline for other categories of motor sport, because surely it’s not just going to be Halo goes on F1?

CW: Inevitably it will trickle down, but I can’t say at this point what the timeline would be, no.

Q: Charlie, what sort of risk assessments have been made regarding the 2017 regulations in terms of speeding the cars up four or five seconds a lap, they’re now 700kg compared to considerably less than that when the cars were going that speed before and obviously that means higher impact energy involved?

CW: It’s not so much a risk assessment it’s just a simulation. In the way we make sure that circuits are safe we just take a typical speed profile of a Formula One car, put it into the simulation and it tells us how big the run-off areas have to be and what speed a car is likely to hit the barrier at, and as far as we can establish the type of speed profile that we are likely to see we’ll end up with lower top speeds but higher cornering speeds. We are entirely confident that the current circuits won’t be in any trouble.